When your first time is memorable for all the wrong reasons.
You show up hoping he’s happy to see you. He isn’t. He doesn’t say he isn’t, but his entire demeanor is cold and distant and you know this isn’t starting out the way you’d wanted it to. You think that maybe if you can talk through things with him that you can turn it around.
That’s when he tells you that it might seem like what you’re having with him is an open conversation, but by the end of the session, you’ll have to find a new therapist.
You can tell he means it. He decided it well before today apparently, was it days before or was it mere minutes after your previous session ended last week? You’ll never know, but you know you’re the last one to know, and that feels humiliating. You feel betrayed and insulted that he’s already decided everything about your termination for you, without getting your input about any of it. You want to get angry, but the shock is overwhelming. Instead of anger you feel yourself shutting down, and you slip into an emotionally detached level of awareness. You’re there and yet you aren’t.
He asks you questions about what you’re looking for in your next therapist. Do you want one who will be fine with you emailing them, for example. Ah, so your emails were a problem. You’d suspected as much but never could get him to say it. Now his lack of clear boundaries is being held against you.
You answer his questions about your potential next therapist, the one who hasn’t met you yet and doesn’t know how unlucky they’ll be to get you as their client. This therapist asking you questions now is excited about your next therapist, that’s all he wants to talk about. Not what you’ve accomplished in therapy and how it will help you moving forward. This isn’t a celebration, it’s an item on his checklist, so he can say that he got rid of you in a professional manner. It’s about him. What you say barely registers. You have Deja vu of trying to communicate with the narcissistic, abusive, addict exes that you’ve unfortunately had. You weren’t a person to them, you aren’t a person now to this man either.
You learned a long time ago that when someone wants to get away from you, you let them. You also learned that whatever people dump on you, you can handle it, and you learned that you have to handle it however they dish it out, because they’re plans might affect you but are never about you. They don’t consider or include you in the planning stage, you’re only collateral damage in the execution of their plans.
It will occur to you later that you could’ve left the session early because you weren’t feeling at all emotionally safe, but you don’t think of that while it’s happening in real time. You were trained years ago to be a good little soldier and keep going. There was never anywhere safe to run to all those years before; it doesn’t occur to you to run now.
You’re a strong person it would seem. He tells you again that you are. You think it’s funny how people seem to think it’s okay to hurt you because you’re strong. It means they can hurt you without guilt.
You turn to trying to learn from this experience. You want to know why this is happening. There’s no clear, simple answer it seems. He says something about how he’s reached his limits with you as your therapist. You ask for constructive feedback, for what you can do better as a client in the future. He tells you that you’re a very good client. As he says it, he leans towards you and makes eye contact and you see a glimpse of the version of him that you like and feel safe with. You think he means it, but then you feel sick of being dumb and gullible. All it can be is another way of him saying it’s not you, it’s him. Which means he’s saying it’s you.
You’ve had men be done with you before. You’re too much work for them, you aren’t worth it. You feel naive for thinking that paying a man to stick with you would make it end any differently. You say to him, partly as a joke and partly because you really want to know: What does it say about you if you can’t even pay a man to stay? He laughs. At least you can still make people laugh when you feel like you’re being destroyed on the inside.
As the session drones on, any fears you voice about your therapeutic future are glossed over or answered in a passive aggressive manner. They’re answered without really being answered. What happens to you next isn’t his concern. He’s showing and telling you this repeatedly during this session, yet you still seem to think you should matter and feel surprised and hurt when you realize again that you don’t.
The end finally comes. The climax is lackluster. At the last second you wish him Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. He tells you Happy Holidays in return and gets off the call.
He walks away getting what he came for.
You walk away feeling broken.
You curl up in bed, feeling beat down. The tears don’t come right away, but you know they eventually will. You get up and finish your work day. That evening you write in your journal that your therapist terminated you today. You don’t write his name or any of the details because you can’t face them yet. The pain has started to hit and it’s already bad. You know it will get much worse before it gets better.
You go into self-care survival mode. Make sure you eat something, stay hydrated, exercise, try to sleep, don’t despair when you have a lot of trouble sleeping. You try meditation but now it hits different. It makes you think of him. You try to reclaim it the way you’ve reclaimed so many things that were temporarily ruined after previous breakups, but you feel more depressed the more you meditate so you stop.
At some point you find another therapist. You know from the outset that it won’t be longterm. You don’t picture yourself as a longterm consistent client ever again.
Your new therapist seems good. You like him. He helps you process what happened and gets into talking about relationship dynamics with you. You like the sessions with him. Your talks are interesting.
When you feel the time comes to end therapy because you know you have to get out before you get in too deep, you text him that you think your next session should be your last.
You show up hoping he’s happy to see you. He seems to be. He starts talking to you about ending therapy since you’d told him you planned to end it today. He’s not pushy and doesn’t try to talk you into continuing sessions. He also doesn’t seem to be interested in getting rid of you. Part of you thinks how he must not know you well enough yet to realize that you’re too much to deal with, or else he’d be happier to see you go.
He wants to know if you’re going to be okay, wants to know what support you will have, and what your plans are. He seems genuine in asking you if you’re going to be okay, even though you’re strong. You’re surprised by how he’s talking to you and that he’s making this about you and your well being. After this session you’ll never see him again, but you realize that you trust him.
You tell him your plans and he talks with you and at the end you thank him for helping you. He shakes hands with you. He doesn’t seem repulsed by you. You want to hug him, but of course you don’t. You leave feeling happy about how it went and a little sad that you won’t get to talk with him again.
Not going to therapy feels strange at first. You go through some challenges and you make a mental note to talk to your therapist about some things, only to realize that you have no therapist. It gets easier, or at least you get used to it so it feels easier.
You continue to work on your healing. You study and write and make sure to do things you enjoy every day. Some days are better than others. You feel like healing is slow, but it feels like you’re moving in the right direction and that’s good.
At some point you decide to give yourself a big mental and emotional gift. You’re going to allow yourself to count both of your termination sessions as your first time—not just the first one. You hesitated to do that because part of you was afraid that maybe you’d just be tricking yourself into feeling better about how bad your first time was. But it’s not a trick. You did have two first times—one with a man who didn’t know or didn’t care what he was doing; one with a man who did. And that makes all the difference.