Posted by LadyBug on March 23, 2006, at 0:59:38
In reply to T on vacation, posted by wishingstar on March 22, 2006, at 21:36:02
I go through this struggle too. When my T is flying somewhere she'll call me from the airport and leave me a voice mail. We decided to do this quite sometime ago, actually it was her idea. I have the voice mail to listen to while I'm gone. Sometimes it's harder for me than others and we have learned through experience to talk about her leaving as far in advance as we can. She is famous for telling me at the very last min. of our visit so we have no time to process my feelings and I leave feeling abandonded. My T. has let me take her picture. I keep it in my journal and when I feel like I need to talk to her, I write in my journal. She also has a small gold heart on her key chain that I gave her when she went out of the country in Feb. This helped me know that a little part of me went with her. She didn't give it back when I saw her again, but she has since gone out of town and told me she still had it on her key chain. I call her voice mail sometimes when she's gone, just to hear her "gone" message. I know when she's back when she changes it back to her regular voice mail.
I think spending your therapy money on yourself is a great idea. If she hasn't left yet, maybe you could give her a call and maybe have her leave you a voice mail for when she's gone??? I've taken something small from her office before too. That sometimes helps.
How long have you been seeing her? And do you feel comfortable talking about how you feel when she leaves? It's taken me and my T. a LONG time to figure this out. And even after 9 years of seeing her, I still am very triggered by her leaving. It is much much better than it was before. I used to have a hard time with just the weekend and her not being in her office!! How's that for fear of abandonment? I do understand. You can share your feelings with us here on Babble, we've all been through what you feel now.
LadyBug
poster:LadyBug
thread:623503
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20060312/msgs/623556.html