I sent an angry email (well, actually an angry shared online journal entry) to my T today, and now I am terrified of how he’ll react. I have this overwhelming feeling of dread. I wrote that I trusted him, but I think I was just fooling myself. I keep checking my email, and feeling this terror in my body as the page loads, and then relief when I see he hasn’t responded.

Some background: My T was supposed to come back from a 1-week vacation in the beginning of July, but instead he injured his back and has not been back to his office since then. He was originally supposed to come back on September 2nd, then he postponed his return until September 16th, and now he’s postponed it until September 23rd.

I have had a some online sessions with him in the past month, and they haven’t been as bad as I anticipated, and it has been really helpful to be able to connect with him, but I am still anxiously awaiting the day he gets back to the office. I am really, really angry with him for “abandoning” me. He didn’t even send an email saying he wouldn’t be back in the office tomorrow as planned- he just changed his return date on the home page of his online portal.

Here’s what I wrote to him:

I am really scared of sharing this anger with you, but I am choosing to trust you when you said that it was okay for me to be angry. I am trusting that you won’t intentionally hurt me or abandon me in retaliation. I’m trusting that you won’t distance yourself from me “for my own good”, because I’m too dependent on you. I am trusting that you won’t ridicule me for caring about stupid things. I am trusting that I won’t damage you with my anger, that you can withstand me. Well, sort-of trusting that. I feel the need to temper what I wrote by saying that I can imagine that the responsibilities of your job might seem overwhelming sometimes, and the effort that you put into it might go unrecognized, so regardless of my anger, I want you to know that I do notice all that you do and I appreciate it, and I care about you.
__________________________________________

Why do you keep putting return dates up when they don’t mean a thing? What’s the fucking point? Just say you hope to be back in mid- to late- September, and you’ll put a more definitive date when you know for sure. And then really only put a date when you do know for sure. Is September 23rd a real date, or are you going to just quietly change it again the day before, no apologies, no notice?

Here’s a fucking clue- it is a BIG DEAL for me that you are gone. I feel like a big part of me is in suspended animation, frozen in place until things are normal again. And you seem to treat it all so casually, like it doesn’t affect anyone else when you aren’t back when you say you are going to be. Like it is just a small inconvenience.

This whole situation sucks, but I can deal with the fact that you aren’t able to be back yet. But the way you’ve handled it has made an inherently sucky situation many times worse.

Let’s review:

-You go on vacation and are supposed to be back in the beginning of July. On the night before you are supposed to return, you put out a required form on the portal, saying you’ve been injured and won’t be back on Monday. You offer no other explanation or apology, only stating “I regret any inconvenience and strive to provide quality services. I hope to return as quickly as possible; however, it's important to clarify your needs just in case I'm out for more than a few days.”

-Two weeks later, you send out an email stating that you have been seriously injured and hope to return to the office on September 2nd. You offer no other explanation or apology.

-On September 1st, you send out an email stating that you won’t return to the office until September 16th. You say that you had surgery the week before, and apologize for the long absence and that you won’t be back the first week of September as originally planned.

-On September 15th, you change your return date on the portal home screen to September 23rd.

Does this really seem like the ideal way to handle the situation? You not coming back from vacation on the day you said you would be back is not an “inconvenience”, it is a HUGE DEAL, especially for clients with attachment/abandonment/trust issues. You treat it so nonchalantly, like it means nothing to you and shouldn’t mean anything to your clients. And to then not say anything for two weeks, when you hadn’t explained anything about what was going on and or even made it clear that you would be gone for a while, seems really neglectful.

I know I’ve expressed my distaste for your required forms before, but let me just reiterate how much I hate them. They feel like a power-play, like a violation. Like not only are you abandoning me, you are forcing me to be a part of it. And the language you use is always so cold and weirdly formal. It feels like you hide behind it. I have to remind myself that you aren’t like that in real life.

Each time you are supposed to be back in the office and you aren’t, you must have a pretty good idea that you won’t be back for at least a few days beforehand, so why wait until the very last minute to let your clients know? It certainly does me no favors. It just gives me false hope and makes me feel like an idiot for thinking it might be true. My trust in you is shattered each time it happens.

The anger it brings up in me is immense. I feel like throwing up. I feel hopeless. I feel powerless. I hate that all of my possible responses to your actions only hurt me. I hate that anyone reading this would think that I’m overreacting and crazy.