Therapy Today

In the client’s chair
Left behind
Orla Murray
I’m writing this at the
beginning of a break from
therapy, because my therapist
has abandoned me. Or gone
on holiday, depending on
how you look at it. I miss him.
At least I think it’s him I
miss and not just the
experience of therapy. Can he
mean something to me, over
and above the therapy, or am
I making that up? I don’t know
anything about him and if I
don’t know him, then can I
be missing him? I suppose I
do know how he is with me,
the way he relates to me. Is
that the same as knowing him
– a little bit? Is that part of
who he is, or is it just a façade,
performing a duty?
I don’t like the idea of missing
what I get out of him, rather
than missing him in his own
right. It seems so transactional.
He’s a person after all, not
some sort of therapy vending
machine. Whilst therapy could
exist without him – there are
other therapists – it wouldn’t
be the same therapy that I’m
missing now. I couldn’t just
pick up from here with
someone else. I suppose that
what I get out of him is the
relationship with him, so he’s
inseparable from what he gives
me and then takes away again
when he goes on holiday.
When I began therapy I
read quite a bit about it, partly
because I was interested but
probably also because I was
trying to figure out what I
should be doing. From this I
gleaned that breaks were meant
to be significant. The first
few holiday periods came and
went, whilst I waited to feel
something in relation to them.
I did miss having 50 minutes in
the week that I had protected
from work, but I didn’t seem
to be that upset by his absence.
He would sometimes refer
to a break having happened,
as though it mattered. I would
feel a passing irritation that
‘I had an inkling that
when he announced
a holiday, I was so
quick to manage
away the feelings
provoked that I
barely had time to
see what they were’
my experience was diverging
from the theory and that he
was following the theory
rather than me. In
reality he was probably
just acknowledging the
interruption, in the absence
of any comment from me.
So I didn’t mind the breaks,
but... As time went on, I
noticed that the mention of
a forthcoming holiday stirred
a vague but insistent sense of
wanting him to stop talking
about it. I had an inkling that
when he announced a holiday,
I was so quick to manage
away the feelings provoked
that I barely had time to see
what they were. I thought that
perhaps I caught a fleeting
glimpse of disappointment,
but it would go to ground
before I could be sure. And
I would find myself thinking
reassuringly that it would be
OK, I could do something else
with the time, or that it would
save money, or that it wasn’t
for that long, with no firm
idea of why I might need to
comfort myself this way.
More recently, the
disappointment at him going
away has been coming through
loud and clear – I can’t avoid
it. Or maybe something’s
changing and I have less
need to avoid it. This time
around, I’ve also found myself
expressing irritation to friends,
albeit it only in the safety
of a joke. I feel completely
unreasonable not wanting him
to go away. I know that to do
this job well he needs to look
after himself, and that to rest
properly he needs to leave
work behind. But if he leaves
work behind, what does he
do with me?
Even without a break, I
have trouble believing that
he would bother himself
with thoughts of me between
sessions. This makes it hard
to re-establish a connection
the following week – I never
have any faith there will be
anything to connect to. If
there has been nothing in
between, there can be
nothing for me to get hold
of or to pick up – I have to
create it all over again.
During one especially long
break, caused by our holidays
running consecutively, I read
a whole stack of books about
therapy. Not, for a change,
to understand how it was
meant to work, but to try and
discover what I might mean
to him. I knew that a book by
another therapist couldn’t tell
me definitively what I meant
to him, but I just wanted to
know what the possibilities
might be – what did other
clients mean to other
therapists?
This break has passed now.
During the second week I
began to get excited about
seeing him again. Then, a few
days away from our session,
I started to feel anxious. I
couldn’t think about being in
the room; my mind refused to
settle on it, because it felt like
there would be nothing there,
like I would have nothing of
value to say, that I would find
myself alone, with someone
opposite who I couldn’t reach,
unable to trust that he might
reach me. Being lonely in
therapy intensifies the feeling
because it’s the wrong way
around. It’s not meant to
happen like that.
Orla Murray is a pseudonym.
8 Therapy Today/www.therapytoday.net/November 2010