Separation Anxiety

Every time T is on vacation I go through this and after 3 years it has not gotten any easier. It might actually be increasing. Ugh. Stupid me even turned down a session the day after T gets back so I am waiting 3 extra days to see him. It sucks.

I know I am not the only one who struggles with this. How do you cope with the fears and uncertainty that comes with breaks in therapy?

I just had to put trust in him, although I wish I hadn't looking back.

Keep busy when they are gone

Write a letter to him, tell him all the things you are doing. You can send it to him, or wait and give it to him at your next session.

My T goes away for four months every year. It's excruciating. Last year he insisted I see someone in his absence but I'm hoping he won't insist on that this year. I was able to email and text him while he was away but then we had a text fight in July and I didn't speak to him until the end of September. I just count the days until he's back. It's agonizing but it's all I can do.

I use to journal. Cry. Rage. And of course. Await the postcard she is to send me.

Oh wow, this has been such a tough thing for me to cope with recently. It's awful and I'm sorry it's still so bad for you. I count down the days, to an almost obsessive extent. Well - not almost. I have a countdown on my phone, I keep a diary of what I've been doing so I can figure out how long, say, two weeks feels like. I jot down a lot of notes about what happens to me so I can talk about it when T gets back. I usually don't talk about most of the things but it's a sense of security to have it there.
I wish you all the best. The time will pass.

R's breaks always used to be my biggest issue with him. I already have his april holiday dates and he knows to give me 2 months notice to get ready!

Initially I wasn't allowed contact when we first started, but what changed was the fact that let me have have contact. It didn't work well in august, because I still expected him to stick to his usual 2 day limit. But before Christmas I suggested a 10 day limit for a response. That way I knew I had a safety net which I always went on about. How long is your T away for? Is contact possible?

-I asked him to write me a letter/email before he left. I stole this idea from another poster here and I read that a few times.

-I have a transitional object, which I always carry around with me.

-I spent the allocated therapy money on myself, (a massage) at my normal time.

-I didn't need it at Christmas, but I have previously seen back up T's.

(I also cry, get angry at him for being stupid and going on holiday in the first place. Set up a countdown on an app that counts the days, hours and seconds and spam the Dear T thread with that.)

I am 3 years in with my current therapist, and this is the first therapist that I have spoken consistently about my separation anxiety. Every time before her absences and every time afterwards, ad nauseam. She has been very patient with me. I have found a decrease in my anxiety and recently have found times were I haven't even been bothered.

In addition to talking about it I also text her in between sessions, mostly to check that she's still there.

I used to really struggle with breaks, without fail over the 2 years and instead of getting easier, each break seemed worse! I liked to know I advance but then I would fret so we settled on 3 weeks notice, the session before a break was always a little rough and so was the first one or two afterwards.
Most breaks we emailed on the session day which kind of helped, however the last break she took she refused, but then again she was leaving anyway so she had already checked out from me I think.

I wonder how much root this has in how our childhoods were?

It sucks and the worst part for me is that we always seem to have a rupture on his return. We are just recovering from the post-christmas rupture and he's away for a week at the end of Feb.

He told me all his holidays for this year already. Thankfully it looks like after Feb there's just going to be a week in June and that's it till Christmas.

For me, a lot. i have serious abandonment issues. I know I do. I really struggle with the lack of contact when T is away because I had no way of contacting one parent and the other often liked to pretend I didn't exist. Fun times. T has never said I can't email but I also can't risk the rejection or anger..... *sigh* But I also don't want to see T right now because of my shame over being dependent.

Basically I am a hot mess right now.

For me, having a voicemail I could listen to from former T helped. Sometimes she would send me a new one while she was on vacation. I used to make her a homemade card when she went on vacation and asked her to wait to open it until she got to her destination. Whether or not she did IDK, but it made me feel like I was still with her and in her thoughts. Of course we would talk about it, and how the breaks affected me. With new T I see her sporadically, so I'm not sure the breaks would affect me as much. HUGS Kit

For me it is hard, i try to hang on to the positives of our work together and I do listen to his voicemail a couple times til he gets back in the office.