To be upset that my therapist wanted to forcibly end our relationship when I was 7 months pregnant?

[AreYouThereGodItsMeHarriet]

I’d been seeing her for roughly 18 months on and off when seemingly out of the blue, midway through a session, she said she thought we should end our relationship because she felt I was too attached to her. She gave me the option of just ending there and then or having one more final session for closure.

I’d lost a baby a year previously and she had supported me through that time. For her to not at least see me through the subsequent pregnancy felt absolutely awful. Yet she said it shouldn’t matter, that there’s no shortage of other people who do the job she does and that the relationship with a therapist shouldn’t be any more emotional than the relationship with the builder who builds your extension.

To cut a long story short, she was able to be talked round and agreed to keep things going. However she says my strong reaction at that time was unusual and is indicative that I have some quite serious problems.

I’ve been surprised by this view if I’m honest. Surely not many people would take being abandoned by a therapist under those circumstances completely in their stride? AIBU?

Thank you. I was genuinely curious to see what proportion of people would find this situation upsetting. It’s a lot lower than I anticipated so I maybe do have more serious problems than I’d thought. Quite where I go with that though I don’t know…

Something nobody really seems to have picked up on as I perhaps didn’t emphasize it enough is that it felt hugely significant to me that this happened when I was in the run-up to giving birth again after having lost my last baby. I just didn’t feel I had the emotional capacity to deal with anything else at that time and wanted to cry out, ‘Please, could you not just hold on a couple more months until I’ve got through the birth and baby is safely here?!!’

The therapist actually did do a complete U-turn and offered a much more gradual wind down, for which I am enormously grateful. Because I had a PTSD diagnosis I had a specialist care plan for the birth. There were therefore other professionals involved and it was agreed between them that I should have continuity of care from that therapist, rather than it being something I negotiated myself. I’d always been open with her about feeling attached to her and she was aware that I had quite a lot of distrust of HCPs generally based on pat experiences.

Let's assume there is good reason for her decision that it would be better for you - and for her - for you to see a different therapist. No doubt she will have some suggestions of potential other options: my suggestion would be to use those suggestions and get yourself a new therapist.

She wouldn't have made her decision lightly - and becoming overly attached can be a big time problem for therapist patients - particularly if they have issues with co-dependence, respecting boundaries, and personal responsibility. It might be worth doing some self reflection and determining whether any of those issues may apply to you.

As for being "abandoned" during your last trimester/childbirth: it's not a therapist's job to take the role of friend/family member/doula/birth coach, or indeed any other form of person to lean on during your childbirth experience or preparation. Indeed therapists are there so patients can lean on themselves and develop coping strategies and skills to be able to do so. I think you mentioned you have PTSD: therapy for PTSD involves the patient developing coping skills so they can self sooth - and the fact that a PTSD response can be triggered sometimes without warning (though, again, the treatment involves people trying to identify what might be more stressful or set something off) means that it's especially important for the patient to be self-sufficient in terms of their coping mechanisms...The fact you feel "abandoned" and that this impacts your pregnancy and ability to cope with PTSD etc in any way - or that you thought the therapist would have some key involvement in your birth etc rather suggests that there is a co-dependence on your part that isn't healthy.

While you are figuring out a replacement/new therapist (which should be something you are trying to work out now, rather than waiting for the therapist to tell you it's time to part ways) try to also figure out your birth plan (as much as one can have one - babies have a habit of throwing a wrench in the works as far as plans are concerned) and why the people who actually will be there are the birth with you (presumably if you are having the baby at hospital you'll have the nurses/doctors/midwife etc etc - and they will help you) aren't - to your mind - sufficient such that you feel you will be "abandoned" if you don't still have the therapist for future appointments? Presumably it was never the case that the therapist would be attending the birth with you, so they aren't "abandoning" you. Fortunate women, of course, have friends/family/partner etc who may be their birthing buddy. It's okay to not have one of those - plenty of women give birth with medical workers for company and have a lovely experience.

PTSD is cruddy - particularly when associated with a previous loss as bad as the one you experienced. But remember: you dealt with that loss before. You coped. You have conceived and are growing a child - so clearly you are coping. And for the vast majority of the day you have absolutely no contact with that therapist at all - all you have are the coping strategies she's helped you develop and they are working. And you'll have those strategies regardless of whether she continues to see you in the future. Give yourself some credit and start leaning on yourself and the strategies you've already learned.

Exactly!!

Perhaps, but the therapist needs to handle things professionally and telling the client mid-session that she thinks they need to finish immediately is totally unprofessional and should really be reported to the therapist's regulatory body. It's absolutely not the way any self-respecting therapist would handle things.

I wouldn’t be impressed/would be very upset if my builder announced he was abandoning my build halfway through.

But if there is something about the client that is triggering the therapist personally to the extent that even with their own therapy / supervision they believe they can’t get past it and continue to be helpful to the client, surely the only ethical way to act is to end therapy.

I agree it doesn’t sound like it’s been ended in a good way here, but therapy therapy relationship has to work for both sides.

This sounds very unprofessional, unethical & counter therapeutic OP. You should be given an opportunity to discuss when is the right time to end, & have a clear map of when that will be & what form it will take - often frequency is reduced or further spaced apart, with support available remotely in between, depending on what kind of therapy you’ve been having, type of therapy its goals & the contract you agreed at the outset. Your therapist should be skilled in broaching this with you & in helping you navigate ending the therapeutic relationship, one that is unique & way more intimate & exposing than the one one has with their builder! I’m kind of outraged on your behalf that that is the way she describes & views her professional role. Seriously look her up & raise your concerns with her professional body. If she’d told you from the outset that after x no of sessions she will with no warning suggest therapy ends, either there & then, or the session after, would you have been happy to proceed? Of course not. Therapist like this do real emotional harm. Therapy is relational & is a canvas upon which your own relational & attachment style will be projected. Endings should be carefully managed by the therapist -they are times when dependency & attachment are known to be challenged & acknowledgement should be given to what that will mean for you & where appropriate, discussion & time given as to how to cope when therapy is no longer happening. It’s really really poor of her & a complete disregard & disrespect for your feelings & understandable vulnerability at feeling not surprisingly abandoned by her. I strongly urge you to express what it is making you feel honestly & that you ask for some time to process it & navigate it with her therapeutically. And most definitely report her. What professional qualification does she hold?

Therapists are not obliged to continue with a client if it is affecting them negatively. My friend burned out a therapist and was offloaded. They are human too.

It was the therapist that said she was too attached not posters.

Because you sound like a complete Imbecile.

A therapist can terminate a relationship. Yes they have supervision to help them cope and they have specific training but they are not slaves with no choice. I know you don't like that but I'm afraid it's the way it is.

This is a horrible thing to say. Of course a therapist's feelings come into it: their humanity is what makes them so much better than getting textbook feedback from an AI. Their humanity's the reason we don't feel some practitioners are right for us and others are.

Yours isn't the only reply asserting the view that therapists aren't allowed to bring their own feelings (and personalities, by extension) into the room. That idea's unrealistic and cruel.

We expect all sorts of professionals to bring their feelings - modulated if appropriate, but still present. We also expect them to absent themselves if their personal feelings make the relationship/consultation/service sub-optimal. If you were seeing someone about a hysterectomy, for instance, you'd likely welcome some concern but would want a different HCP pretty quick if they expressed a belief in woman's destiny as child-bearer, regardless of any issues.

A good therapeutic relationship is a "relationship", comparable to romantic partnerships in some ways but different in that it's understood to be time-limited and that there's a different power dynamic. Good therapists use a lot of skill to manage this dynamic for the client's benefit, the end goal being to arrive at a point where the client can manage her own feelings, boundaries and expectations.

Bad therapists use it to keep their clients dependent on them. Some even become co-dependent with their clients. Weirdly, some respondents here seem to be wanting this sort of enmeshment - I don't know if any of them are in therapy, but I hope not. OP's practitioner didn't do anything wrong. She didn't ghost her, insult her or dump her by text! She explained that she felt OP was enmeshed and, correctly, that the relationship would therefore be unhelpful if continued. Perhaps she also felt she, herself, was at risk of over-involvement: we can't know that but, if she did, it multiplies the reason for ending it.

She sounds like a mature, thoughtful practitioner. It's very disappointing for OP - and I hope your later discussion about her continued engagement as part of your maternity team, @AreYouThereGodItsMeHarriet, has both reassured you and allowed you to set new goals regarding your own emotional boundaries and relational expectations

Based on what you have said and your circumstances YANBU. Imo if a therapist feels you are getting too attached or too reliant then of course it’s in both your best interests to wind down - but gradually (unless for some reason to do so would be dangerous for you or them eg. stalking or verbal/physical violence but it doesn’t sound like that’s the situation here).

Finishing there and then or even just one more session is not gradually. Ideally if you’ve been going weekly, you’d move to fortnightly, then monthly etc before finishing. And ideally she’d also recommend a therapist she thinks you’d be better suited with, if you feel you still need someone to talk to.

You shouldnt know she has children.

Ask her to refer you to another therapist and see the both of them until your baby is born.

Continue on with the new one if you need to talk after the birth - but possibly a mother/baby group and your local infant welfare nurse and family will be your support network.

Trust your therapist to be acting in a professional manner.

What does she mean when she says your reaction was unusual? What did you do?

"She was able to be talked around and agreed to keep things going"

Makes you sound manipulative and it would worry me.

This. You don’t dump your client you work through it. And if it come to a point that the only option is to end therapy you don’t just dump this on someone suddenly. And it sounds incredibly unprofessional for her to say that and then backtrack?!? If she thought she could no longer offer you therapy then she should be sure if that decision before telling you that’s what needed to happen (and then help you transition to someone else) Very odd and unprofessional behaviour.

People slagging off the therapist....she is human!

She is allowed to say "No, enough, we are done here"

How often do you have appointments with her?

I agree with this . It was/is very abrupt .

What a lot of waffle & full
of contradictions.

what I said t is NOT horrible thing to say 🙄🙇🏻‍♀️

it is not 'cruel' FGS.

the therapist has a professional role here. Her feelings should not come into it, she has supervisors and mentors if she needs them.

she is supposed to be providing a professional service to a paying client.

no professional therapist tells a client half way through a session that they need to end the therapy sessions. Nor do they end them abruptly when the patient has had previous pregnant trauma & is about to go through the final few weeks of pregnancy & birth.

There are ways to end the therapy if the therapist can't cope with a clients needs, announcing mid session that it needs to end is NOT the way go about it

Actually a professional therapist is absolutely supposed to end contact with a patient should they feel they are getting to attached to them, it's the main guideline of being a therapist should a patient get to emotionally involved etc then a new therapist should be found and the patient moved on. I find your replies concerning and proving you have made a connection that is not a therapists job. In our section 6 months max per patient before they move on to the next patient and we get 2 years per office before we get moved on due to keeping us safe from obsessive patients and other similar problems. Clearly your therapist is uneasy about something and I suspect the talked around won't last long if she stays true to the guidelines.

@4kids3pets
It dépends on the type of therapy. Psychodynamic psychotherapy is not designed to be completed in 6 months. This is long term therapy and there is nothing unudual about it listing several years.
@Caligirl80
The points you suggest she self-reflect are precisely those you would expect to reglect on in à session with your therapist in psychodynamic therapy.