Posted by Dinah on July 14, 2008, at 16:20:40
In reply to I got a letter from my T! ;-(, posted by LadyBug on July 14, 2008, at 13:47:57
I think it does explain a lot to me, but maybe not in the same way it explains itself to you.
Given your previous relationship, I'm thinking that her retirement is due to something going on in her own life, something that affected her ability to be the same therapist to you that she has been in the past. And part of her saying maybe she'd been too sympathetic is her worrying about what will happen to you when she's gone. Letting a client rely on you when you expect to be there is one thing, but I imagine therapists with clients who rely on them have some second thoughts when they think of leaving those clients without support.
Naturally, the proper course of action is not to peck the client out of the nest, or covertly drive them away. And maybe she doesn't think of it that way at all. But that doesn't mean she wasn't doing that on a subconscious level.
Unfortunately therapists are only human, and they're more human when they are facing their own stuff. (As I well know.)
If you think she's capable of being reflective on all of this, including her role, it might indeed be worth giving this relationship the closing it deserves after so much caring on what I'm sure is both sides - even if she's being too self protective right now to acknowledge that.
But if you think she's not up to the task, it might be better to do as Raisin suggests.
Strange. We all recognized that something had to be going on in her own life to make her so different with you. And now we see it has. How much better it would have been if she had just been transparent on this topic, and shared a bit of what she was going through and how it might be having an impact on your relationship. And let you two grieve together. Instead of keeping up the pretense of a blank slate, while ignoring the fact that you were also being carried along on the current that was changing her life.
poster:Dinah
thread:839683
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20080709/msgs/839707.html