The Diary of a Therapist in Therapy #2: The Break

Therapy is already over... and has been for a while.

So, I’ve realised that once again, I’ve done that annoying thing I do where I make a promise or a commitment to delivering a specific piece of content and then fail to deliver on said promise and commitment. Documenting my therapy journey, while not the most recent failure, is certainly one of the many areas I have been unsuccessful in meeting the agreed expectations I made with you. However, there is a good reason for this (which has contributed to the radio silence in this particular area).

I have been on a therapy break since the end of September.

My partner started an evening college class, which clashed with the usual day I had therapy, which required attempts between my therapist and me to try and find a different day to meet. However, as I am sure is common with those who deliver private therapy outside of the usual 9-5 to accommodate therapeutic spaces for those of us who work 9-5, this proved difficult. I could not see my therapist at a different time on the original day as my partner’s evening class started quite soon after work, and my therapist had no clients who could be shifted around or who were ending therapy any time soon. Therefore, we agreed that we would hand the issue back to the lead of the therapy service for them to try and reallocate me to a new therapist. Hopefully, one that could see me on a different day.

However, this has not been possible. For whatever reason, the lead of the service could not find anyone to take me on a client, which is a shame. But oddly, I have been OK with that. As noted in my first blog about this, I wanted to go to therapy to help me understand more about my ability (or my own assumed lack of ability) to cope with parenting and to see what it was like to be in the other chair. And there were some insights on both counts, which have been interesting. And at the same time, I have not felt the need to go back to therapy.

I have reflected on whether this is an avoidance of starting the whole process over again, but I don’t think it is. I think I had some of those light bulb moments, which were helpful. I also now have a better sense of what it’s like to be in the client’s chair, and I have learned some things that I like about it. And what I don’t like. I have started to try to implement both aspects into my own practice. So, overall, I have managed to get something out of what I wanted from therapy in the eight(ish) weeks that I went, and that feels OK for now. I’m not against the idea of re-engaging with therapy, but I don’t have as strong of an urge to try to figure things out with someone else as I previously did.

So, did it work? Well, yeah – I guess it kinda did. It didn’t end in the way that I might have liked. In that my therapist and I didn’t get an opportunity to finish in the most ideal way (we put the therapy on pause for a few weeks while they tried to see if they could slot me in anywhere else in their schedule, but in the end, once the situation has been handed back to service lead, we didn’t see or speak to each other again), but that feels OK, too. One of those “it is what it is moments”. And we weren’t necessarily in the depths of anything too intense at the time, so I didn’t feel like I had started something that didn’t get finished.

I still have some reflections that I would like to share with you from those eight weeks, and some of you have asked me questions about my experience, so I would like to answer those, too (sorry for not getting around to them yet!!). So, I will make a more concerted effort and commitment to putting written words to those reflections and answers and actually give you something worth reading. And making the fact that you have signed up to my blog worthwhile.