change of therapists

[sandra-leigh]

I go to two therapists, on for gender therapy specifically, and the other for general life therapy. My life therapist definitely knows about my CD/TG nature: the question I brought to her in my initial session was, "How do I take all these good things I've found through CD'ing and incorporate them in to my everyday life?" And I got lucky: she just happened to have previously worked at the local clinic that specializes in LGBT, so she was no stranger to CD/trans and no stranger to thinking of them as normal. I have gone dressed to my sessions with her many times, and she has been supportive as I have gone more transgender.

Well, her family decided to move a couple of provinces away, she put in an application for a position to get things rolling... they hired her, and they want her to start right away. I found out in my session today that she'll be gone in 3 weeks.

I scheduled one final session with her before she leaves.

She has been considering for each client whom it would be more appropriate to refer the client to, based upon the client's needs and the specialties of the therapists involved. The one she was thinking of for me is a fellow who for some reason or other spends about a week a month in the city I live in, and the rest of his time in San Diego. And apparently he does have specific experience with transgender and transsexuals.

I told her to go ahead and set things up for an official reference and review of my files together.

I've been getting along very well with the existing therapist, and having her leave is certainly not my first choice. But perhaps different perspectives from someone with trans experience will be beneficial. So it is a Change, a Disruption, but some good things might perhaps come out of it.

Oh yeah, my massage therapist is leaving in a couple of weeks too. Also a nuisance, but we'll see. Who is going to inflict massive pain on me now? :doh:

[Anne2345]

I am sorry that you are losing your therapist. I recently lost mine about a month ago under similar circumstances. It was devastating. I had been through sooooo much with her, and had been as brutally honest with her about myself as I have been with anyone in my life (including myself). I tore down many walls with her assistance, and learned much about myself. I looked forward to every session, even if I knew it was going to be a difficult session and a cryfest. She created an atmosphere in which I was able to dig down deep into myself, view hidden and buried truths, and get to the bottom of issues. I trusted her with my raw essence. She worked nothing short of miracles with me (and based on the mess that you all know I can be, that is really saying a lot -lol). Given all that I had been through with her, all of the emotion I had experienced, all of my soul that I had poured out to her, it was very difficult to lose that relationship. It hurt much to lose her.

The prospect of starting over with a new therapist, however, was not appealing to me. But for recognizing that I was still very much in need of therapy, I probably would have quit after she left. In this, I had serious doubts as to whether it was even possible to begin over again with someone else after everything I have been through with my other counselor. But I gave it a reluctant try, and so far so good. As I have become more comfortable with my new therapist, each session has become more productive and meaningful. She also brings a new perspective to the table, and I am beginning to view this in a positive light.

Regardless, I know it can be difficult to lose one's therapist. But if you can keep a positive attitude (which you seem to have), hopefully the disruption will prove minimal, a new perspective will be fruitful, and a long standing, beneficial, therapeutic relationship forged. I hope it works out for you. And I am really, really sorry, though, that you are also losing your massage therapist! That is just too much to handle all at once . . . .

[sandra-leigh]

And I am really, really sorry, though, that you are also losing your massage therapist! That is just too much to handle all at once . . . .

I handed in my annual performance self-assessment today at work, and I could not honestly rare myself well in terms of the goals that had been set out. I knew from the way it was talked about when it was introduced last year that people they wanted to keep would be forgiven much, and that people they wanted to get rid of would be punished for not meeting deadlines forecast a year in advance even if circumstances had turned out to make the deadlines unrealistic. And most of the year I've had reason to believe that I am going to be in the you're-not-good enough camp. The internal structure of the program I was working on turned out to be rotten, and I wasn't able to fix the problems before the (arbitrary) deadline. The structure was so rotten that I was perpetually finding yet more things that had to be torn up and redone, so there was never a point at which I could say "this meaningful portion is done". But that's not what my boss had expected: he had expected visible changes to the program display every few months -- but the only visible change that was ever going to be there was that a part of the program that crashed would now produce a nice output that looked like all the other outputs. His understanding of what was being aimed for was very different than what he had assigned me to do... and since he's the boss, it is his expectations that have to be met, no matter how wrong.

So I handed in my self-review today and I'll get back the answer in a couple of days, and basically if he happens to be in a good mood that day then I get to keep my job, and if he happens to be in a bad mood that day then he just has to say he doesn't need my position anymore, and it is bye-bye for me. My organization doesn't hire and train / promote / re-assign people: my organization creates a job description and then hires people to fill that role, and if the role disappears then the person is shown the door. No promotions: either the role still exists or it doesn't. You either continue to fill the same role or you quit your old role and get hired for a new one (that probably has requirements that you cannot match because they refused to train you in the new requirements, saying that they were not needed for your existing role.)

For this and other reasons, there are significant doubts that by the end of the month that I will still have a job. Or that, if I do, that it will last more than a few months longer.

The life therapy, the massage therapy, the physiotherapy, the doctor I'm going to for depression treatment: these days I need them just to get through the stress of my job. Let alone the stresses at home, and the stresses of being trans. All of the people I just mentioned, and my gender therapist as well, have recommended multiple times that I get a new job.

My therapists wonder how I manage to survive everything I'm going through. I am not even close to being a font of "good sense" and pollyanna ways of looking at the bright side, I get grumpy, I don't know what to do, I don't clean the bathroom or vacuum like I should... but I get by, my life continues, when the standard wisdom says that anyone with even half of my difficulties would be expected to have severe coping problems.

Anyhow... Yah, I'm going to miss my therapist for sure. But it isn't personal, it isn't in my control, it isn't anything I've done, and I trust my therapist to have given real thought about who could best work with me. On the scale of everything else, this is a glitch. (Now, when my hair stylist went out of business a few years ago... I still haven't recovered from that!)

[Julia_in_Pa]

Sandra,

A couple of years ago the sh&t fairy also visited me.
I lost my job due to a layoff and also lost my place to stay within two weeks of each other.
Time to grieve, accept and work at finding replacements.


Julia

[sandra-leigh]

The sh&t fairy, when I was expecting the boob fairy. I knew I should have typed my list to Santa instead of hand-writing it!

[sandra-leigh]

So I've just come back from my last session with my original therapist. Slightly over 4 years with her, and I've gone through a lot since then. The sessions were not getting "stale", either: they were very much fresh and interesting. Fortunately my situation is more hopeful than it was a couple of weeks go, so the last session was a positive one, a peaceful parting rather than a crash.

The years would have been quite rough if I hadn't had her counsel.

Ah, life goes on....