Abandoned By Therapist

[lisa c]

I don't really know where to start. I am new to all of this forum stuff, but I feel the need to get this off my chest, hopefully with other people who can understand what I am going through. I am a thirty five year old wife and mother of two and to the outside world I present an image of a warm, confident and friendly person. However I have been battling mental health issues since I was about thirteen when I first began cutting and drinking. At fifteen I was admitted to a adolescent psychiatric ward for quite a lengthy stay and have ever since suffered horrendous periods of depression and have been seen by a variety of mental health workers none of whom have ever really been able to help me. All of this changed four years ago when I met with a wonderful psychiatrist

[lucy]

Hi Lisa

Nice to meet you, im a married mum whos 35 and has 2 kids :0) it sounded lioke you were going to say more on your post but ran out of steam. Would be nice to here more

Lucy

[Nice ziggy]

[i too think you have some more to say. I hope you can post some more. Reading what's not there I am guessing your therapy has come to an end and you fel abandoned. If your therapy was on NHS it could be time limited, if you were going private maybe it ended cos the therapist was of the opinion she/ he couldn't do anymore to help. Either way I hope you have some other mental health professional to support you through this difficult time. If I am way off matk I apologise.

Please post again.

[lisa c]

I don't really know where to start. I am new to all of this forum stuff, but I feel the need to get this off my chest, hopefully with other people who can understand what I am going through.

I am a thirty five year old wife and mother of two and to the outside world I present an image of a warm, confident and friendly person. However I have been battling mental health issues since I was about thirteen which was when I first began cutting and drinking. At fifteen I was admitted to a adolescent psychiatric ward for quite a lengthy stay and have ever since suffered horrendous periods of depression and have been seen by a variety of mental health workers none of whom have ever really been able to help me. All of this changed four years ago when I met with a wonderful psychiatrist. (had to re-enter at this point because I appeared to get lost inside the network so I hope this still makes sense, like I said I'm new to this!) After all these years I finally got a diagnosis of BPD and possible Bi-Polar Disorder. She was kind and sympathetic. Qualitiies which, up until this point appeared to be alien to the mental health professionals, and she offered me psychotherapy and family therapy and this is where I met my psychotherapist.

He began work with me as a couples therapist, seeing both me and my husband but as time progressed I found myself beginning to like and trust him and this was when he offered to become my one to one therapist. Over the course of four years I finally began to change. I began to trust and even like people. I began to enjoy spending time with friends without being certain that I would eventually disappoint them and make them hate me. My husband noticed a huge change in me especially the fact that I learned to say sorry! After a long period of time of not working I had reached a point where I was going for job interviews and I had stopped cutting myself for over a year. Better still I had rediscovered an early passion for painting and was about to embark on an MA in fine art, something that I would never a dreamed of just a few years ago.

All of this because of a therapist. He offered to go to visit galleries with me, which I knew was some minor boundary crossing, but I loved the fact that he trusted me enough to do this. I was trustworthy all of a sudden and I did not believe for one second that there was anything at all inappropriate about this, I believed he was using the human touch in order to give me a sense of self worth, that he was sticking his neck because he truly believed in me and because of this there was no other way to repay him but by beginning to believe in my self. He would quite often telephone me at home to see if I was okay and there was a time when I was feeling low that I bumped in to him by the river near my house and he walked and talked with me for a while, disclosing that he lived nearby. He visited me in hospital after an operation and brought me a bunch of flowers and kissed me. We exchanged gifts and whenever either of us went on holiday we sent each other postcards. I have trouble with my body image and in therapy he would often comment nicely on my appearance (I don't really want to be specific about the details here) which made me feel a little better about myself. I know I am rambling here but I need to give a picture of what four years of therapy was like for me. I practically lived for it.

Anyway in my last session with my therapist I noticed that he seemed preoccupied and I asked him if anything was the matter at which point he seemed to get a little angry and snapped that 'therapists have private lives too!' this was so unlike him and I remained silent for the rest of the session and when I arrived home I couldn't stop crying. I knew in the pit of my stomach that something was wrong. A couple of days later I telephoned the psychotherapy dept. where I was told that my therapist was off work and wouldn't be back for a few days. I spent the weekend worrying and on the following Monday I rang again only to be given the same line and that my therapy for that week was cancelled. Now, in the past whenever he had to cancel a session he would always telephone me personally even when he was off sick, but this time there was nothing. What made things worse around this point was that a lot of my issues in therapy were about my biological father who left before I was born, leaving me at the mercy of an abusive mother, but I had recently met up with him and spent a considerable amount of time alone with him for the first time in my life, I was feeling terribly confused about my feelings towards him because after years of hating him I actually began to find myself liking him. Consequently much of my time in therapy was spent discussing all of this stuff. I so desparately needed to talk to my therapist and began to lose myself again, becoming anxious and panicky and smoking and drinking more, culminating in me going out on the Friday, drinking myself into a stupor and losing four hours where I ended up in a safe centre being tested for rohypnol (not sure of spelling). The next morning I awoke to find a letter saying that my therapist was not coming back to work in the foreseeable future, as simple as that!! Gutted does not begin to describe how I felt. At one point I was physically sick. There seemed to be nowhere to turn. It was weekend and the psychotherapy dept. was closed, there was nowhere where I could find any answers and it drove me spare. My husband ending up dosing me with valium just to get me through the next couple of days because I was in such a state.

This next bit, I know, is insane, scary, stalker stuff, but on the Monday I made my husband drive around the area where my therapist lives and almost immediately we spotted his car driving down the road (I really cringe when I think about all of this, but I didn't know what else to do) I made my husband, much to his horror, follow the car to my therapists house, where we pulled up beside his car. I feel ashamed when I think of the look of horror on his face when he saw me! I apologised for what I was doing, but he seemed to understand. He knew me well enough to know how frightened I was feeling (an obvious terror of losing people) I hadn't even known if he was alive or dead. He assured me that he was okay, physically, but told me that he wasn't allowed to tell me what was going on, except to say that he knew in his heart he had done nothing wrong, leading me to assume that he had possibly been suspended. I felt a little better just knowing that he was still alive!

When we arrived home my husband rang the psychotherapy dept. and they apologised for the letter and offered me an appointment to speak to the head of psychotherapy the next day. Now, to back track a little, during my last session my therapist had given me a draft of a book that he had been writing and later that day (after speaking to the therapy dept) he rang me to suggest that it would probably not be a good idea to mention that I had this book. I was shattered, that he had known how I would react to his disappearence and not contact me because he wasn't allowed to but to then ring me to save his own skin!!!! It just made a mockery of the last four years and yet still I feel a need to protect him. I have recently met up with my new therapist who seems very nice, but, you know, it's not the same. The obvious issue that I need to discuss with her is my therapist and his abandonment of me, however, I really daren't say too much, I couldn't possibly tell her some of the things I have mentioned on here without getting him into more trouble and yet these were the things that made him so special to me. They explained my attatchment to him and that attachment being of vital importance to discuss in therapy. This is all such a dreadful bind and I don't know how to handle it other than going back to my old defence mechanisms such as cutting which I have done and I am disgusted by!! I am drinking so much more again and I just don't feel able to cope with normal life, it is taking every bit of strength to continue being a good mother, but I can't be a good wife/cleaner/artist as well. It's too much to ask when all I want to do is curl up in a ball and go to sleep. I don't know what to do. /quote]

[lucy]

for me raeding this it sounds like your old t crossed to many boundaries, it sounds like he was to involved.

This all must be awful for you and i dont think folllowing him was that bad unstanable if you had been left not knowing

You need to speak openly with your new t and learn to trust her

Lucy

[bibiddi]

Lucy is right.

I think it would be good for you to explain everything to your new therapist.There is no reason for you to hold back on anything.Talk about the draft book if you want.It will help with all your feelings.

You have no need to keep any secrets about your old therapist.

"I had rediscovered an early passion for painting and was about to embark on an MA in fine art, something that I would never a dreamed of just a few years ago.All of this because of a therapist."

All the positive stuff you have described arent all because of a therapist.

They were there inside you all the time.

You were the one who did the work.You learnt to trust.You learnt to change.

I can imagine how much it hurts though.

[lisa c]

Lucy is right.

I think it would be good for you to explain everything to your new therapist.There is no reason for you to hold back on anything.Talk about the draft book if you want.It will help with all your feelings.

You have no need to keep any secrets about your old therapist.

"I had rediscovered an early passion for painting and was about to embark on an MA in fine art, something that I would never a dreamed of just a few years ago.All of this because of a therapist."

All the positive stuff you have described arent all because of a therapist.

They were there inside you all the time.

You were the one who did the work.You learnt to trust.You learnt to change.

I can imagine how much it hurts though.

Thanks for taking the time to read all that stuff. I know I should talk to my new therapist but I can't. All those positive things seem to have gone away now so I don't think they ever really belonged to me in the first place, I just try to please people. It's good to know that there are people out there who know how I feel, like I said, I am new to this and still trying to find my way around cyberspace. Thanks for your words.

Lisa