I’m Scared That My Therapist Is Abandoning Me

Please don’t leave me, doctor.

I saw four therapists before the one I have now, over a period of four years. It never really clicked with the others. The first kept trying to explain my depression, exploding with eureka moments about what had or hadn’t happened to me, most of them incorrect and highly inappropriate.

The second one was fine, referred through my GP. She would advise me to make a playlist of happy songs, or to imagine a happy place. Not bad ideas, but perhaps not sufficient for major depression and self-sabotaging behaviours.

The third saw me for seven weeks, at which point she said that I needed someone way more qualified as I had “a lot going on”. I felt hurt. I hadn’t really liked her in particular, but I felt like she was giving up on me, was labelling me incurable. I felt incurable for sure.

So I postponed finding a new therapist. I let myself wallow and struggle, losing another year of my youth to the darkness. Then someone close to me passed away, and I knew I urgently needed help, that this was a make or break moment. I went to a new GP, explained, and got referred to a new therapist. She was sweet, she listened a lot and called me brave, I didn’t believe her. She thought that I had a personality disorder, I had researched them before but they seemed too good to be true, too easy a way to explain how messed up I was.

She gave me a two hour test, involving endless questions and scenarios. I made myself promise that I would be completely honest this time. That I wouldn’t say what I think they want to hear, I wouldn’t minimise the ‘weird’ stuff. I would be upfront. And I truly was. It was painful, I cried, I blushed, I nervously scratched at my hand. But I remained completely honest about the dark hole that I had been trapped in since fifteen years old.

I was diagnosed with three personality disorders. My boyfriend likes to say that I never do things halfway, if I’m going to have a personality disorder then I’ll have three. But the therapist explained that they would focus on Borderline Personality Disorder as that was the strongest and possibly the roots to the other two. And she said that I would have a new therapist, one specialised in it. I was just getting comfortable, after bearing my soul, and now I was being shipped away. Across the hall, but still.

But then I met my new therapist. She started by telling me about herself, as she said that we should be comfortable together. She asked if I had questions about her. No therapist had ever asked me that. I asked her why she specialises in personality disorders and trauma. She told me that she likes working with people long-term, really getting to know them, and that usually happens with these diagnoses. She also said that most of the people she works with have been through various other options until they come to her for schema therapy. She likes that they can finally be helped, that she gets to be a part of that.

I wasn’t scared by the idea of this being long-term. In fact, I was overjoyed. She was committing to me. She wasn’t going to pass me off to someone else, she wasn’t going to say we’re finished when I’m still trapped in the hole. So I kept my promise of being completely honest and open. And she taught me more about BPD, why it is diagnosed late, how I can learn to separate myself from it.

And for the first time since the dark descended on me eight years before, I could see light. Most days were still difficult and heavy, but I saw hope again. I began to understand what parts are me and what parts are my disorder, and she tried to teach me that I was worth saving and caring for.

A year passed. Grief still crept up on me. Some mornings were harder than others. Self-isolation knocked me down a few steps. But I was getting better. I knew it, and she knew it. She told me this, I beamed with pride. But then she asked if I thought we still needed to continue, or if we should begin rounding off our treatment.

I began to panic. I stared at the screen (appointments over video call for COVID-19) and searched for words. I quickly came up with things I still wanted to work on. Addressing my grief instead of shoving it away. Being able to say no to people without a cloud of anxiety raining down on me. Learning to be alone, learning to love being alone. She nodded and took notes. She said that we would extend my treatment, I’d receive a call about planning for more appointments.

I was relieved, but also strangely guilty? I hadn’t lied about the things I needed to work on, but I had maybe overstated their weight. It plagued me, the idea that she was done with me, I internalised it and felt like she was leaving me. Like everyone else does. But what plagued me more was that I was dishonest, that I claimed to need her longer before really thinking about the answer. Therapy did take up time that I could use elsewhere, it sometimes felt like a hassle. I sometimes searched for what to say in a session, running out of ideas as the week had gone well.

But we always found something to talk about. Because there was still lots to explore within my schemas and patterns. Each reason I had listed was something I did need to work on, something that did affect my daily life.

More than that though, the fact that I was so terrified of losing her is reason enough. One of the main symptoms of BPD is a fear of abandonment. Sound familiar? I was attached to her. I was afraid of losing someone that helped me to be so much better. I was scared to lose such a constant in my life, when I lost someone less than two years ago, and friends along the way. I was reduced to anxiety by the idea of stopping our sessions, and that is exactly why they shouldn’t stop.

One day I will need to end our sessions. I’m sure my health insurance will kick up a fuss eventually. And it won’t be easy then either. But it will be manageable. I won’t feel ready before, but I’ll feel ready after. I’ll understand that she isn’t abandoning me, I’m the one leaving the nest. Because I’ll have my mental illness in check, I’ll be living my life as I would without it, I’ll be happy. And she will be the one who guided me to that day.

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