my therapist broke up with me

that’s right, i read the e-mail thread to a friend and that is how she summarized it. let me start from the beginning, more or less.

my therapist and i had been working together for about 4-6 months at a low cost counseling service. the service helps graduated students achieve there 1000 hours of clinical hours required to hang their shingle. my therapist had reached a point where he was headed to private practice.

he offered me the option to stay with the service or come with him to his private practice. i felt as if i had a good rapport with him, so i took his generous and special arrangement even though i would only have a session every other week.

as i thought about the arrangement, i began to fear that my therapy needs might not completely be met with an every other week meeting. i emailed him, let him know my concerns, told him i still wanted to continue with the arrangement yet keep an eye on my concern.

he replied speaking of some of my strengths but leaned heavily on my concern of potential shortcomings in regards to my therapy needs. he went on intimate that i continue with the counseling service. the option to continue with him at his new practice had completely disappeared .

i ask for clarification since i said i wanted to continue with him while keeping an eye on my concern, nearly completely opposite of his new offer.

he replied, again, leaning on my strengths and potential shortcomings of our agreed upon arrangement. he went on to say i would probably feel resentment about my new level of service. he went on with an implied, if i were you statement insisting it would be best for me to go with the counseling service.

i made my final replied.

i told him i was disappointed with the handling of the situation.

first, i expressed my surprise that he could foresee an emotion for me for an event that hadn’t even happened. I followed up that with if i felt resentment, it would be up to me to work through it, with potential assistance. finally, I mentioned no one could foretell if working through the emotion might create a therapeutic breakthrough or stumbling block.

secondly, i reminded him i knew what i thought was best, when i had earlier and clearly expressed my desire to remain with him with the agreed upon arrangement.

then, i expressed my sadness and anger that the voicing of one concern could flip a switch from go to find help elsewhere.

finally, i told him these were my final words on the situation and asked him to honor my request and not reply.

i have heard of other people being fired by their therapist. the thought of that scared the shit out of me for the fear of a feeling of major rejection. when push comes to shove, i got fired by my therapist, with him sending me back to the counseling service without an option of continuing with him. he seemed to ignore the agreement we had made days earlier. yet, looming fear of rejection never materialized. instead, i continued to feel baffled wondering how the expression of one concern could wreck such havoc. full disclosure: a currently feel a little burned about the whole idea of therapy and rightfully so, i’m planning to take some time off from therapy to let the body readjust to such a violation of trust

the other obvious observation is the strength of the patient client relationship i saw was a ruse. the strength I saw really had no foundation, if one spoken concern could bring down the house of cards.