It Wasn't How I Expected Or Wanted It To Be

I deliberately held off writing a post about the end of therapy until I'd had a few days to get used to the idea. On Friday, after my final therapy session, I was numb, but I knew that a huge factor in this emotion was that I had not managed any sleep at all on Thursday night.

The session itself was strange and not at all how I expected it would be or how I hoped it would be. It started with me being asked how I was. That was fairly easy to answer because I was incredibly tired so I told my therapist that I hadn't had any sleep at all the previous night. He queried this. Was I sure that I hadn't dropped off at some point? Yes, I was sure, and I proceeded to tell him all the things that I had done in an effort to get some sleep.

He then asked me what my feelings were about the end of therapy. I told him that I regretted the end of the one bit of routine in my life, that I was scared about not having the regular contact with another human being that the therapy appointments guaranteed, and that I had an overwhelming feeling of being abandoned.

And that is how I feel now. Abandoned. Left on my own again. It was not a good last session. There was no real ending. It was a conversation that was ended with "I'm afraid we'll have to leave it there" and a "Goodbye" and a handshake.

I'm not sure what I expected, but it wasn't that. I had hoped for some sort of closure, some hope for the future. Instead I feel as though I have something terminal and I am in the final stages. I feel as though I have just been left to die.

I Will Not Panic; I Will Not Get Anxious

In less than 48 hours I will be setting off for my last psychotherapy session. I have often written on this blog how difficult I find it during the days before each session, though at the moment I am quite calm. But Friday morning may be a slightly different matter.

The termination of psychotherapy should mean the end of my sleepless Thursday nights but it also means the end of the one routine item in my otherwise empty life. Friday mornings have meant a regular opportunity to talk to another human being, and most importantly to be able to talk to someone who genuinely wants to know how I am rather than the question just being a platitude.

Yes, I have a couple of friends with whom I correspond by email on a daily basis, and both of them (and they know who they are) do much to encourage me and to help me get through my dark periods. But they are both many miles away and so actually seeing them and talking face to face is a rare thing.

I am telling myself that the psychotherapy has made a difference to me. It has helped me to see that it is not my fault that I am ill, that I am not responsible for how I feel, that things in my past have made it difficult for me to deal with how I am today. Medication helps with the panic and the anxiety, but it does not help with the loneliness and the empty feelings. Talking has helped with them, but I now have to see if I can cope with them on my own. And that is the most difficult part of depression to deal with; the isolation and emptiness. The end of therapy feels like I am being abandoned yet again.

Psychotherapy And Termination

As usual for a Thursday night I had to make do with just a couple of hours sleep last night. But for all that I was quite alert when I left the house this morning to make my way to the hospital and my psychotherapy session. And I was fine until my psychotherapist came to fetch me. From that moment on I started to get into a panic and by the time that we got to the room that we use my heart was pounding and before I knew it tears were running down my cheeks. I don't know why I was like this, maybe it was because of the way that I have been feeling for the last week or 10 days.

My psychotherapist let me get myself together again and then started the conversation by asking if I had thought about the termination of the therapy that I have been undergoing. I haven't; probably because I know that I am not yet ready for this eventuality, but there is a problem with the fact that I am not ready. I have known from the start that this therapy would only be for one year and the end of that period is approaching. I should have been prepared for this subject being broached because of something that my therapist asked me last week, but I suppose that I didn't want to think about it because I don't think that I am ready to end therapy.

It is about six weeks until my year is completed, but Easter is going to fall within this period and that means that I will not have therapy on Good Friday. So today we talked about the termination of our therapeutic relationship and how that made me feel. That was easy to answer. I feel like I am being abandoned. Though I have made a lot of progress over the period that I have been having psychotherapy, I know that there are still a lot of things that I need to come to terms with before I can say that I can cope without it. And that is an achievement in itself.

When my GP referred me to the hospital for this psychotherapy, I was sceptical about it. I was not sure that it was the right thing for me, possibly because of my horrific experience with the first therapist that I saw all those years ago. The two assessment appointments that I had at the hospital were very traumatic but the psychologist who carried out the assessment thought that I was a good candidate for this type of therapy and that it would help me. He was right; it has helped because I am able to do some things that would have been impossible a year ago. But I am still not at the stage that I want to be and this means that I need to continue with therapy of some sort so that was the next thing that we discussed.

One of the three possibilities was sort of dropped almost immediately. I don't think that my therapist thinks that it is right for me, so although he offered it as a possible option, it formed no further part of our conversation. The other two possibilities have given me a lot of food for thought. He could refer me for group psychotherapy at the hospital that I attend now. This would mean that I would be taking part in the same sort of psychotherapy but in a group rather than as an individual. There are merits to this but also one major difficulty. The difficulty is that I am not sure how I would cope in a group as talking to other people about myself and my feelings is not something that I find very easy. The other possibility is that I be referred for full-blown psychoanalysis. Unfortunately this would not be available on the NHS so I would have to pay for it, but my psychotherapist does feel that this could be the way forward for me.

Obviously this is going to form the basis of my psychotherapy session next week, at least to start with, and it is something that I need to think about and investigate in the meantime. I wish that I didn't have to stop therapy with my present psychotherapist because I have got used to him and I feel that we have been getting somewhere. But it has to happen and I will have to accept that. But I can't help feeling that I am being abandoned and that whatever happens I will have to start all over again.