I think I was just fired by my therapist.
I guess if I was 100% honest with myself , I should have see it coming. First of all, I think therapy is brave and I’ll continue to seek help and guidance when I need it. Being at a place in your life where you know the sessions are necessary can be a pivotal moment of change in ones life.
In the past three years I have seen 3 therapist. In my whole lifetime I have seen 5 different ones. And I will tell you the most important moments of clarity had nothing to do with any licenced clinician. I guess it was a willingness to be open to have someone else hold space, embrace possibility even when I didn’t think I could.
I chose this most recent therapist because she worked with a lot of teenagers. And also because she had two therapy dogs in her office. Some teens with a mere affliction of angst. Others with deep rooted depression, clinical and otherwise. I needed to describe Ian to her. I told his life story, The only story I knew, and with that I wanted to diagnose him with a disease I couldn’t see. I wanted absolution from any responsibility or wrong doing because I love my son so much. There’s no vision of a mothers love that includes comprehending his suicide.
She’d say all the usual legalese that would absolve herself. But never anything that would save me. She said without meeting him, we’d never really know. That based off what I had told her, he appeared to be THE kid. I know. I know. It’s bananas I tell her. It’s nonsense and who can make sense of THIS kid, ending HIS life, the way HE did. The life I dreamed up, created, wished, yearned and pleaded for. It would never make sense that he was gone.
Near the end of each session, her attention undoubtedly would turn to me and my needs. I scoffed. What needs? I need my kid back. And if I am being honest, the sight of her therapy dogs, humping their toys, beds, each other…me. They gave me a slight reflective pause. A dose of levity that we all needed under the heaviness of teenage suicide.
But I could tell, she didn’t know what to do with me. Fuck…same dude. She called me an “overcoper” and to this day I still don’t know what that means. But if I tried to understand it from her point of view. I was doing all the things. Sitting perfectly in my grief, palms up and heart open and willing to feel everything. The way it was, how it is now, with no expectation on outcome. Or…was I looking for someone to come and save me?
The last two sessions with her, she acutely described how I was not suicidal, did not desire to be medicated, and asked where I saw this going.
So, is this a case of it’s me not you? Are you breaking up with me? In the end I think she was right and needed to free up the hour for someone in more critical need. It singed my skin at the time, but as a serial overcoper, I am still finding my way.