DISCLAIMER: For Anyone Who Has Never Been In Any Kind Of Counseling or Therapy: THE FOLLOWING LETTERS ARE NOT NORMAL AND WERE WRITTEN UNDER EXTRAORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCES. IT IS 100% THE CLINICIAN’S JOB TO TERMINATE APPROPRIATELY, WHENEVER POSSIBLE, WITH THEIR PATIENTS OR CLIENTS, WHO SHOULD NEVER HAVE TO WRITE LETTERS LIKE THESE. PLEASE DO NOT ABSORB THE FOLLOWING AS INSTRUCTIVE, BUT, INSTEAD, AS CAUTIONARY.
You are about to read my own termination from a therapist who did not know how to do it. (She actually said that. To me. In session.) It was the product of over 3 years of therapy (with a therapist who possessed intact boundaries), writing, praying, talking, learning, contemplating and journaling. To protect the guilty as well as the innocent these are not real names. Instead I am swapping them in, in chronological order by gender and place, from the oldest printed book using movable type in the West.
First, the letter I sent to my former “retired” therapist (though she told me she was retiring, it was no difficulty to learn, or leap to believe, that she continued to practice, and, yes, is still practicing to this day:
Dear Eve,
I withdraw all previous permissions I have given you to acknowledge me in public, to use any of my writing for any purpose, to contact me, or to discuss (aloud or in print) me, my therapy, or our history with any person, including your family or mine. This means you may not talk about me with Adam, who brought up issues from my treatment room into vet appointments. This is the most important thing you need to read. These are my boundaries. I will enforce them. For instance, if I discover you publish anything that I can prove references my case I will take you and the publisher to court. My proof is 7 years of bills, insurance notices, journals about our work, and 100’s of session recordings & emails. We were going to write a case study together; I saved everything. In fact, by the time you read this I’ll have a copyright to all the emails, both to/from your personal AND University addresses. All I have to do is save a backup to a flash-drive & mail it to myself. Addressed to me & stamped/dated by an arm of the US Federal Government, it is what is considered “a poor man’s copyright.” It’s legal, will take less than 10 min. & cost less than a buck. My therapy is mine, alone, to tell.
I’m doing this because your deficiency of boundaries made our relationship so sick that I am amputating it, like I did my grandma & Ex. There’s something wrong with a therapist who tells a pt they “should write a book together someday,” gifts her home phone # saying “Now I don’t give this to all my pts,” & shares details about her father’s alcoholism, her son’s AIDS scare, & her discovery of his childhood sexual abuse – and all this (&more) within the first year of treatment. There’s something wrong with a therapist who initiates discussion about this book for 7 years & ends treatment telling the pt they’ll begin writing it soon (I taped you) instead of terminating appropriately. Or a therapist who volunteers her personal email saying “RARELY do I give this to a pt” & her cell # saying “Now I never give this to my pts but I want you to call me after that trial…” Or who gives a pt a few photos of her granddaughters & has the pt lecture with her. Or out to her farm, where the childless pt plays with her toddler grandson, holds his tiny hand while they all stroll, & picks him up when he lifts his little arms to her because the big dogs have overwhelmed him. Or who provides treatment for a year for “no fee,” while allowing the pt to incur a year’s worth of debt for each full billable hour. Or who enters the waiting room, already over 10 min late, only to usher in a drug rep right in front of the pt, saying, “I’ll just be a few more minutes,” – not just once, but so often that she doesn’t need to speak: she merely needs to smile at the pt while holding up her index finger (gesturing, “just a moment,”) & pat the pt on the head (like a puppy) as she escorts the rep inside.
As you said, you were accountable to Dr. LastName, not me. I am also sending him a letter. I enclosed a copy for you.
I am doing much better now, under ethical care. My psych meds are under the authority of a physician who knows how to diagnose and medicate. My therapist’s staff has never been abusive, nor would it be tolerated. I toughened up. I reclaimed, without guilt, the independent, introverted, introspective nature that makes me “me.” I am discriminating about who I allow in my life; yet, I have plenty of good friends. I have a peaceful, quiet, cozy life, as stress-free as possible: Goal Accomplished. I will never again ingest a medication that has not been prescribed by a real “doctor” who graduated from an accredited school of Medicine, and am vocal about my Strong opinion that NURSES have NO business prescribing psychotropics. The Most Profound and Durable lesson I took from therapy with you is the one you repeated most often: “Lisa. I want you to be able to take what you’ve learned, here in the treatment room, and be able to apply it out in the real world.” I have done that! What you taught me was: to NEVER let anyone know me so well, see me so vulnerable, take so many emotional risks, and, for God’s sake, to never, EVER trust anyone so much. What I learned from you was that trust/risk/openness/etc. are all very bad ideas.
Expect an empty box in campus mail. It’s for the shadow box & thank you book I made, if you would be so kind as to return them. They include photos of me, and that feels violating. I lost so much to you that I cannot get back – time, energy, money, trust – but I CAN get my extraordinary art back. If you’ve destroyed the items, please return the box empty, to inform me. I included pre-addressed packing materials, so no writing is necessary. (Writing anything would be “contacting” me, & violating my boundaries.) Although it took longer without you, I have finally terminated with you.