).It was a good productive session despite my crying through a lot of it. NewT is a very smart, well informed, experienced T who has good background in dealing with patients who have had bad experiences and bad endings in therapy. So he gets all the feelings I'm experiencing. He even made me laugh a few times through my tears. I do think in some ways I challenge him but not in a bad way... and he is up for the challenge. He told me if I EVER see or think that he is acting fearful of me that I need to bring it to his attention immediately. He knows that I was always concerned that I was too scary for my other T and he does not want a repeat of that.
When I first walked in he told me he only got my message this morning and that he does not check his vms over the weekend. He gave me his cell number to call and also told me he has a beeper and to use it when I need to. He said if he does not respond in 20 minutes I need to beep him again. He encouraged me to email him as well. He seems very open to outside contact which is really what I need. So with that out of the way he wanted to know about the letter my T sent me.
I backtracked and told him about the email I got last week wanting to terminate my son. Then I told him how I ran into T in the parking lot and how we both waved and then he evidently wrote the letter to me on the same day. I have to believe that seeing me again was directly responsible for him reaching out to me in the form of this letter. Then I let newT read the letter and he said... he is praising you to the heavens and even in the other emails he sent me since the termination he always says wonderful things about me. NewT said that it does not add up because if he was saying such great things about a patient he would not terminate them ... especially abruptly. So he is convinced that my T has very strong, even romantic [his word] feelings towards me and they scared him and he panicked and didn't know what to do. He was afraid of his emotions and attachment towards me and maybe even afraid of my feelings towards him too. So he ran. And this is why he is avoiding me but yet sending me emails saying such nice things.
NewT said that he does not know if we will ever get the truth from oldT but that I should write him a letter, basically telling him that I know how he is feeling and to talk about the countertransference and to ask for a meeting or two to process what happened and to really help me to transition away. New T said that oldT would not want him in the room and he does not think this will happen but that "I" have a good chance of getting a meeting or two. NewT wants to help me write the letter but he told me to work on it now and we can discuss it. I had told him what I really wanted was to hear the truth from oldT and to tell him how I feel. I want him to know that I know how strong his feelings are for me, that feelings are just that and won't kill or hurt us and are only unethical if we ACT on them... which neither of us ever did. In some way I think it would be a relief for oldT to know that i know so he is no longer trying to hide from me and it's all out in the open. Unfortunately, it would have helped both of us greatly if he had pursued supervision to help him deal with his feelings.
On some level I still blame myself for what happened even though newT says I did nothing wrong and I could not control my Ts feelings. I never wanted my T to care too much for me because down deep I KNEW if he did he could not handle it and would flee from me and I was right.
We talked about how important psychodynamic therapy was for me and my issues and how he didn't feel I would be served by CBT and he understood why I would always resist that approach when my T tried to use it. What was interesting was that he told me the school where my T trained was basically of a behavioral type education and not psychodynamic at all and my T had no idea of this method nor did he understand transference/attachment (which was quite obvious). He said that he really should not be treating adults at all.
At one point we were discussing relationships and I piped in with some comments about right brain connections etc and he smiled and said "can I get you to stop being an intern for a few minutes?"
I laughed at that. He said he should send me down to the Psychoanalytic Institute in our city and they would just love me there. I would be their star patient. That was nice to hear.I also asked him a personal question which he answered (nothing serious) and he said he was happy to answer some quetions because I needed to build trust with him after being betrayed by two Ts. I had told him about D and what she did to me in that meeting and he was truly appalled by that. Shook his head as if to say "I cannot believe this". I also confessed to him that I read his dissertation and he was totally fine with that and we discussed it. It's very hard to throw this guy and he is quite open and direct. I like that because I am too tired to try to read in between the lines right now. Of course we are not doing much "therapy" just talking about what happened to me with oldT.
I told him I felt i needed to go back to see oldT for a few sessions to try to process things and that I felt it would help me to move forward. He said that oldT would not want HIM in the session because he's pretty tough and would demand some answers and would strongly defend me (nice feeling that). I told him I needed the truth from oldT and not some silly excuse that I needed a trauma T. He agreed in that without this closure it will take me about one year to get back to doing any real therapy at all. I told him that I feel I have regressed to 3 years ago before I started therapy. Only difference is that my mom is deceased now. But I have slippped into all my old ways and behaviors. Partly I think because I am angry with the new me who drove away my T and caused all the problems. I was changing into a new and better me but I have lost her/killed her off. I don't want to know her because this is what caused my T to leave me.
And so he told me I should write a letter to my T and confront him about the countertransference, get it in the open and request some meetings to do a proper transition. My T had written he wanted to make the process as smooth as possible. Now he needs to step up. I'm not really sure what I need to say and I may email newT for some guidance. I sort of spaced out in the session while he was explaining it to me.
He said that unfortunately he does not think I will get any more than that one termination session for my son. That part is quite sad for me. I told newT how I blamed myself for costing my son this relationship which was so important to him and to me. I should never have done therapy with him. NewT said that this was NOT a dual relationship and actually very beneficial for my T to see both of us and work with the dynamic of seeing how we interact together. So the claims of oldT that this dual relationship is aproblem is not valid at all... but my T claims that my son is no longer is patient because he has not seen him for a long time....we discussed suspending treatment during the summer and then I was in the hospital... after that T left for 3 weeks and will not talk to me so I could not make an appt for my son for the past 7 weeks. I tried and tried and gave up. So he is using this and apparently he has the right to do this, even if it's not morally a nice thing to do.
And so I have an appointment next week same day and he said if he gets a cancellation he will let me know for this week as I asked to come in again.
As I left work today I just sat in the parking lot and cried cried over this all over again. I don't know how this happened, how I got to this terrible place and I didn't want to go home even though I promised my son to take him to the book fair. I cried over the fear that my oldT will never allow me to speak to him alone again, or that I will ever recover from the huge hole in my chest. It hurts even to breathe. I like newT but he is not who I want him to be. I want my oldT and to go back to my home and see his dog and sit by the fireplace and to feel safe again. A co-worker found me in the parking lot and tried to help me but I finally sent her home and left so she wouldn't worry about me.
I guess I should go start the letter...but it's just so hard to know what to say...
Thanks for listening.
TN
, that image really helped to smash the still lingering beliefs I have that a) I was doing something wrong for seeking therapy in the first place, and b) the termination was my fault. 
