Rubber Bands and Chewing Gum

Dear Anita – It’s Been Three Years.

Here we are again. Another year has rolled around and once again it is the anniversary of you breaking my heart – I don’t usually refer to our ‘end but not end’ in that way, it seems overly emotional and hyperbolic, perhaps – but that’s exactly what you did when you abandoned me so carelessly back in May 2023.

It’s now three years since you came back from your holiday, and having had a health scare whilst you were away – which I am pretty sure was all panic and anxiety related- announced that you were going to have to bring the counselling with me to a close because you needed to “cut the stress” out your life. In that moment, complex trauma clients like me represented a stress that you no longer wanted to carry…or could no longer carry. And I get it. By the time you crashed out, you were totally burnt out and had been on this collision course for the best part of eighteen months.

But your life stress stuff isn’t an adequate excuse or justification for the harm you caused me in the time leading into the end and during that terrible couple of weeks before I walked out the door for the last time – because there was so much you could have done to mitigate against the situation you found yourself in. You chose time and again not to do anything about the strains you were put under in your personal life and instead buried your head in the sand acting like you had no choice or agency in what was happened and that “things getting worse before they get better” was somehow inevitable. You continued down the path of what I called the “slow motion car crash” and ended up taking me out with you and that just isn’t fair.

The first time you had a big wobble with me and I realised that things weren’t ok with you was eighteen months prior to our ending. You dropped the ball with me in a massive way and then you fell apart with/on me as we tried to repair the rupture between us. It was the first time in the time that we worked together that I had consciously taken on a role of caring for you, it was a total role reversal and you commented at the end that maybe you should pay me for the session because it was “meant to be your session not mine”. In that session I gained a huge insight into how you manage (or don’t manage) stress and conflict in your life. I learned of your family dynamics, and the patterns you fall into in your personal relationships. I saw then how you avoid and avoid and avoid until you break.

I guess, I trusted that having me shine a light on things and your recognition that I “saw it” all long before you did, that you would then put things in place so that you didn’t find yourself in a place later down the line where you were so overwhelmed by your private life in so big a way that it would creep into your therapeutic work and cause even more harm to people that did not deserve to be damaged. I assumed, then, that you would go back into your own personal therapy and take more supervision…because isn’t that what ethical practitioners do? And you have always prided yourself on working ethically. I am not sure, now, that you really understand what that word means.

As it turned out, you did what you do best when things get too hard, you pretended (to yourself) that things were ok. You assured me that you were feeling better and that things were better. And I guess they were for a couple of months – on the surface at least. But then I started to sense once again that things were not as fine as you perhaps suggested.

When I brought that to you, you denied it. You told me that you had a handle on everything and yet I still felt things were off but perhaps it was a me problem – perhaps it was my trauma skewing the reality of the situation and causing me to panic unnecessarily? You admitted to “running away” and “hiding” at weekends by driving six hours to escape home and to avoid having uncomfortable conversations with your family. You insisted that it was helping to get some headspace even if the driving was exhausting and you were frequently tired on our Monday morning sessions having driven home late on Sundays.

Over the next months, your behaviour changed towards me, subtly at first. At first, you just felt less ‘there’, less attuned to me somehow. And then it became tangible. You were less prepared for our sessions, you text and responded to me less, and our longer sessions got taken off the table altogether. There were all sorts of small (but big) changes that really unsettled me over a period of several months. You just weren’t the you that I knew so well anymore, but frustratingly maintained time and again that there was nothing wrong between us, that you “loved me” and that it was all going to be ok. I was not the problem and I was “not even on the list of things to change”.

It didn’t feel ok, though. As time went on my insistence that things felt off somehow started to get met with, frustration instead of reassurance. When I listed the various ways in which I felt you had withdrawn or were less available and attuned you eventually doubled down on me, turned it around, and suggested that perhaps I was “too dependent”. That really hurt me. Nothing had changed from my side. I was no more or less dependent than I had ever been. But you had changed. Your capacity had changed. And you were reaching a point where you were experiencing compassion fatigue and burnout. You eventually admitted to all of this to me – but not before gaslighting me for months first. It was crazy-making for a long time…and just not fair – especially given my history.

Your complex clients are such good barometers to the weather in the room – and outside it. We are sensitive. Yes. Hypervigilance forged in childhood is both a blessing and a curse. We see things ahead of time. We sense it. And our bodies do not lie. If I start to feel weird in my body and my nervous system isn’t calibrated then something is off…and that needs looking at with curiosity and openness. We may shine a light on uncomfortable truths but you as a therapist need to be able to ground yourself and be prepared to shine a light into your own dark corners and face whatever is there.  

It’s really devastating to me to realise today that the impact of our ending has been hurting me for almost as long as the time we were actually working together. I went into therapy with you hoping to heal some significant trauma and yet, I feel like more core wound has been left more painful and open than it was before we started. Of course I am not upset all the time now, but May is always hard.

I was so clear and explicit with you from the beginning about what I needed and what my wounds were and you assured me that you were completely capable of working with somebody like me, that you understood complex trauma and how delicate the work was, you knew what a commitment this kind of work was on both sides of the therapeutic relationship, and importantly – you were totally horrified by what I told you about my therapy with Em.

For a long time, you really were brilliant. I can’t deny that. We built a relationship that was so healing to me. You gave me the space to bring exactly what I needed and held it all so carefully. The first eighteen months or so with you was truly life-changing… and I miss that version of you so much. I miss the Anita that felt so steady. You were so warm. So present. So good at what you did. I sometimes find it hard to believe that that person doesn’t exist anymore and sometimes I doubt if any of what we had was even real. But it was. I have so much evidence of the love and care…

Sadly, I also have so much evidence of the carelessness that came about when things went to shit for you. I am quite an understanding person. I tolerate a lot, often to my own detriment and I understand that your life imploded. I get it. Mine has – over and over. But, I cannot forgive how you mishandled our ending. I deserved better than what you delivered. You should have had a plan that day you came back from holiday. You should have sought supervision first. You can’t just fudge your way through this kind of thing and hope for the best…or not with clients like me.

The mixed messaging from you at the time was just so fucking wrong. I know it wasn’t easy for you, and had you been in a better place you wouldn’t have had to end, but struggling or not, you had a duty of care to me (and to your other clients) to not cause any more damage than was absolutely necessary and you were like a loose fucking cannon. You told me time and again that “this isn’t what either of us want” and that “we would figure something out” and “find a way to connect” straight off the back of telling me we had to end and that gave me false hope but equally felt like it was the truth – because how could we possibly go from the relationship we had to nothing? It didn’t seem possible.

But you were like a yo-yo for those couple of weeks before I walked away. In the end you couldn’t tell me whether we were ending long-term, or taking a longer break, or whether we were going to be renegotiating our relationship altogether but not as a therapist and client. You mentioned meeting for walks and coffee and finding “another way” and of course I didn’t want it to end so clung on to anything you were saying.

I didn’t want to leave. But in the end, your lack of being able to be a container for any of the mess meant I had to leave without proper resolution- you just couldn’t do it. I cried so many tears – so did you. And the day I left (it wasn’t planned to be the last time – but I couldn’t keep hurting myself) I asked you if we could leave things as they were because it was all to painful (on both sides) and for us to agree to meet up three months down the line and figure out what needed to happen when you were through the immediate stress with your health and sick family member – whether that meant ending fully or finding a path through. You agreed. We hugged and I walked away, never for one minute thinking that would be the last time I would see you.

I sought out a new therapist in the meantime and did my best to hold myself together.

When three months rolled around, I contacted you and you told me:

I know it’s hard so so hard for you. Things haven’t improved my end and I am sorry to say my own inner child is really suffering and in no fit state to help others. My workload has shifted into couples work which is much more head than feelings. I also know this really isn’t helpful to you and I’m sorry. I just didn’t expect myself to react the way I have to my situation but I guess how could I know if I have never experienced it before. Xx

I knew there was no return to therapy with you then, and after the initial setback with Hannah, I found Elle and committed to working with her and tried to process all the hurt and pain from what had happened with you. I still wanted an ending though. I felt like the work we had done deserved that, at least.

At intervals I have reached out to you to try and get that ending and you have sent me variations of this sort of message every time I have asked to meet:

I’m still not in a good enough place and still running on empty.

The more time went on the more ridiculous it seemed. I know you got married last year – so I would imagine that if you are both working, and able to plan a wedding then the very least you could manage would be an hour in the room with me saying goodbye…acknowledging what was lost…

But no.

Your avoidance, I guess, is understandable. Why would you want to retread old ground when you have moved so far beyond what happened? You’ll have notched all of what happened between me and you, and you and others like me, to your burn out and act like none of what went on is a problem now. You weren’t firing on all cylinders and made some mistakes. You’ve neatly compartmentalised it.

But this isn’t about you Anita. Yes, your life imploded – but your clients deserved to be treated with more care. If for no other reason than we paid you to be our therapist. You weren’t a friend or a parent or someone who can ride roughshod over us. We expected a degree of competence – or I did. And instead… you added to my trauma. That’s not ok. You cannot repair what you have done to me, the damage is too great – but you should at least have tried to repair a bit and end well even if that was way down the line.

Part of me feels stupid for still caring about this still. I guess I am just frustrated that we never got to really end things in a good way. A good enough ending is so important in therapy – and after the shitshow with Em, I never in a million years imagined that you wouldn’t want to try and provide some kind of corrective experience to that hideous situation.

Our ending was due to unfortunate events in your world – and so all the more reason it could have ended well. There was no rupture. You said that it was nothing to do with me, or about lack of love or care. It was just a set of crap elements all coinciding at once and you breaking. We should have been able to come together and celebrate what was good, and give space for what was lost and I am so sad that that hasn’t been possible because I can’t help but wonder why you wouldn’t want to do this with me, or for me…if the three and a half years we spent together were what I thought they were.

This letter may seem full of blame. It’s not. If I were to see you now, it wouldn’t be about blaming or anger or anything like that- I just would like to see your face, see that you are better now, and say goodbye to someone that I loved.