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Nervous Breakdown and Struggling with Therapist on Vacation.

9 replies

littlethree · 30/03/2024 17:22

I've been struggling to recover from a nervous breakdown for the past two years. I had my initial nervous breakdown in 2022. I've been with my psychologist for the past 10 years and in the past 3 years we have seen each other twice a week and in the past two years since the nervous breakdown, we have been also having email check-ins about twice a week. I have C-PTSD and depressive and anxiety disorders and have been hospitalized before for them. I have been abandoned more times than I can count, since age 4. I'm 50 now. So, so so many people have left me and I've been alone in my life. Everything has been falling apart. My spouse only stays because we have a special needs child and we don't even seem to love each other. I have no friends. I feel like life is a warzone, just trying to avoid pain and suffering all the time. My defenses are always up. The only respite and safe place from that war that is my life is my psychologist. I can't tell you how steady and consistent and caring she has been for all our ten years and continues to go above and beyond. You aren't with a person for 10 year without having some stronger connection. Yet in Spring 2022, she unexpectedly was gone. I thought I had lost her and I was totally alone in the world. That was the trigger for the nervous breakdown. She did return, but I just broke down when I saw her again - having had to hold in so much all that time she was gone and it just flooded out. And it wasn't like I wasn't crying all the time before then either. I was in a horrible place, but the outside world (spouse and work) was tired of it and just yelled at me and told me to behave (literally). So I had to push it back down, dissociate it from it. There has been no safe place in my world except my psychologist. And now she is on break again for the next 10 days and it is taking all of my energy to just keep going. There are safety measures and we talked a lot of about it and if I am in a very bad place (like VERY bad) she wants me to text or call her and she has backups if I can't reach her. And I 100% know she means it. But my nervous breakdown from the believed loss of her in the past combined with all the other losses and abandonment life is just overwhelming me. I told her as we were ending out last session (yesterday) before we parted that I'm pretty sure I'm going to fall apart afterward. And I did. I had to hide myself in the bathroom for a while because I couldn't stop crying. I'm still crying, but it is taking ALL my energy to keep this up. She knows that I had event last night, because I told her and she was glad I told her - plus she was also giving me second back-up contact should she not be available if it gets bad). It can't get much worse than what it feels like now. But I don't want to bother her so I'm just trying to struggle through this alone. There are two states of life I exist it: I experience that I'm alone in the world and that I'm a mistake OR I just know that I'm alone and that I'm a mistake, but I can dissociate from it. In other words my only options to the belief I'm alone in the world and a mistake are two either experience it or dissociate from it. When she is gone for a longer time, it is hard to dissociate from it. I know that I shouldn't be relying on her so much. I've told her as much. She is such a contrast to the rest of my life though. She is consistent and stable and extremely caring BUT the rest of my world has none of that. Sometimes seeing what she brings my life is hard because it is such a contrast to what I don't have out here in the world. I'm so very tired of all of this. It is getting harder and harder to dissociate from the pain and I'm just experiencing it more and more.

OP posts:
Prinnny · 30/03/2024 17:26

Wow, your relationship with this person is not healthy and appears to cross professional boundaries. She shouldn’t be contacted on her annual leave by you, I think you really need to find a new therapist, I suspect she feels it too but knows how much you depend on her so is in a difficult situation.

littlethree · 30/03/2024 17:30

I don't think you can fully understand the professionalism of our relationship from just these words. I don't contact her on leave. She wasn't on leave yesterday. She just said to contact her if I'm in a very bad place. Please don't get lost in your presumptions of a relationship you really aren't qualified to understand from just once post. 🙏 I don't want the point of my post to get lost.

OP posts:
PervOrNoPerv · 30/03/2024 17:33

Sorry OP but I agree with the previous poster that your relationship with your therapist is not normal or healthy.

littlethree · 30/03/2024 17:34

This just shows people aren't hearing what I'm saying and choose to invalidate my experiences. It is a mistake to venture out into the world and be vulnerable. Thanks for reminding me of this.

OP posts:
semideponent · 30/03/2024 17:38

OP, is there a way you can help yourself focus on her coming back rather than her going away? Like having some kind of physical count down (start with 10 marbles in a jar and empty one marble each day? - that kind of thing). So you can actually see the time counting down and look forward to your next meeting? Sometimes having a kind of "counter" that you have control over yourself can help with the anxiety.

I'm suggesting this (or something like it - something that works for you) because you say she was "unexpectedly" gone in 2022, which makes me think it was deeply unsettling and maybe you weren't sure back then when she'd come back. But this time, she's talked to you about it in advance, you know she's going, and you know she'll come back. So there's an opportunity for you in this. It really is a different situation.

Be really, really kind to yourself.

PervOrNoPerv · 30/03/2024 18:10

littlethree · 30/03/2024 17:34

This just shows people aren't hearing what I'm saying and choose to invalidate my experiences. It is a mistake to venture out into the world and be vulnerable. Thanks for reminding me of this.

How are people invalidating your experience by pointing out that this is an inappropriate client/therapist relationship?

YourNimblePeachTraybake · 30/03/2024 18:14

I am so sorry.
I saw the same therapist for fifteen years. What helped me during her absences was to write a sort of blog to her but only email it to her once she was back at work. It kept the connection going for me.
I know how hard that it. Do phone the Samaritans or other helplines, if it would help keep you going. You can do this. You can continue to exist and be held, even when she isn't physically there.

WinterDeWinter · 30/03/2024 18:22

I don't think this is considered a breach of boundaries in 'depth' psychotherapies like psychoanalysis or psychoanalytic psychotherapy where the relationship between therapist and patient is the canvas of the recovery, as it were.

I'm sure it would be with less in depth modalities.

OP, I think the suggestion of a diary or even letters (you could perhaps even post them to her practice address with her permission) is a really good one in terms of keeping the connection alive for you.

I'm really sorry you're feeling so bereft and abandoned. Try and remember that her return will eventually also become part of your reality, and this expectation of return will hopefully become increasingly embedded for you.

Balloonhearts · 30/03/2024 20:45

OP this is perfectly normal, ignore the people who don't understand. I have trauma therapy too with a focus on attachment issues and I totally get how hard it is when they're away during a crisis point.

My therapist usually arranges a text check in once or twice during the break or a short call if I really am not stable at the time. It really helps to keep the connection, is this something you and your therapist can set up?

Otherwise try and have one thing each day that you look forward to. It can be anything. A bit of cake. A film. Going for a walk with the dog. Anything. It helps to use it as a countdown.

So I have the next season of Supernatural to watch, then one of those nice cupcakes from Tesco.

Then the next day I'm going horseriding with a friend then my check in text with therapist is next, then I'm going shopping in the High Street.

Then the day after I'm going to go and groom my friends new foal then my therapist is back from holiday and I see him the day after that.

When I put it like that it doesn't seem so long.

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