I'm Not Ready for Another Goodbye

Yesterday I found out about an overlap between my personal life and my therapy, and I am terrified that I will lose my therapist.

All I seem able to do is cry and try to figure out whether talking about the fear would help or whether keeping my mouth shut is the better choice.

Carrying the fear alone is hard. But I'm scared that if I talk about it, that will be the thing that causes everything to fall apart.

I'm not naive. I know there are other therapists out there. I know she isn't some special superhuman.

But it's taken a long time to get here.

Between my last long-term therapist and this one, there were a lot of starts and stops. A lot of trying to trust. A lot of trying to find someone I felt safe enough with to do the deeper work.

And now that I've finally gotten to that place, I'm terrified of losing it.

Part of me thinks, of course. What did you expect?

Something always happens. Maybe not immediately or in the same way. But eventually something shows up that changes the relationship, complicates it, or ends it altogether.

And part of me is angry at the universe.

I've been careful this time. I've tried to be thoughtful. I've tried to be mindful of my own history and the ways I can get tangled up in relationships. And now something I could have never accounted for feels like it's threatening the relationship I need in my life.

And there is something really good here, with her. She knows so many of the things I am deeply ashamed of and she hasn't judged me. She has stayed. She feels like a monumentally meaningful relationship in my life right now and she's the first therapist I have learned how to speak to in the room without relying on email to help me speak. I feel connected to her. Seen and known by her. And I don't know if I can survive another loss of someone who matters this deeply to me.

I feel like I'm stuck in a double bind.

If I don't say anything, I carry this fear alone. I know it will bleed into the relationship eventually. It already is.

But if I do say something, if I tell her that I know there's an overlap between my personal life and my therapy, then I have to accept that I can't control what happens next.

Maybe nothing changes.

Maybe everything changes.

I know I can't control the factors that could lead to termination or guarantee any outcome, and I know certainty isn't available to me.

But knowing those things doesn't make me less terrified.

Right now, I'm just terrified.

And I'm hurting. And I'm feeling a loss that hasn't even happened yet.