Is it normal for a final therapy session to be quite disheartening?
I don't know if this is the wrong place to post this. Sorry if it is.
So I recently had to stop seeing my therapist, as I just graduated. I knew this would happen, so although it wasn't necessarily a natural ending in the sense of 'finishing' a course of therapy, it was expected.
We had our final session, and it was a a little... depressing. Not in the sense that it would be the last time I'll ever see her, or even that this'll be my last therapy session for a while, but in the sense that it was the total opposite of uplifting. Now, I *never* expected, and wouldn't want, for her to give some bullshit motivational speech or whatever. It's not helpful, and she knew I hated that. However, I hadn't anticipated that she would basically spend the session giving me a bit of an ultimatum almost.
I'm not very good at articulating, uh, anything, but I'll give it a go. I have depression and anxiety. She's a CBT therapist, and so we mainly did behavioural activation, along with a some questioning of negative/maladaptive/disorted/irrational (whatever you want to call it) thoughts. In our last session, we explored the fact that I tend to always believe that anything good in my life will 100% be shortlived, and that I have to limit any good feelings I have to neutralise myself so that when things inevitably get bad again, it will feel relatively less bad than it would have done if I'd come down from a high. This means that I spend my whole life feeling numb, empty, and bored, but I am slightly protected and safe from huge lows (which I still get, but feel less bad than times I've been surprised by them, if that makes sense). She basically gave me an ultimatum: decide to allow myself to feel good things, or continue on how I am. I explained that both of those felt like terrible options and I don't fancy either, and that it doesn't feel like a choice anyway. She agreed it wasn't a conscious choice, but that it might be something I could work on with a future therapist. And that was about it.
I'm definitely not trying to make her look bad in this post, or imply that she's made me feel worse, because she's not a bad therapist and she hasn't made me feel worse. She said all of this in a gentle way. I can see where she was coming from, and what she was trying to do (tough love, motivating me to see another therapist, encouraging me to challenge me thoughts, helping me see there's another way to live), but it's left me feeling a bit shit. Like, I really don't want to live either of those versions of life, and I don't think I have the capacity to even try the other way even if I wanted to.
Sorry that this is super rambly and might not make sense. I was just wondering if this is a normal feeling to have post-final therapy session? I haven't found it very motivating so far.
Edit:
TL;DR: I had my final therapy session. I was given an ultimatum. It was a bit disheartening.
@givepetitpoisachance This does not seem normal to me, although I am not an expert.
After reading your description of what happened, my feeling is that therapy didn't get as far as your therapist might have wanted, particularly when you mentioned "some questioning". So I can imagine that your therapist might herself have had a feeling of being disheartened, frustrated, or even angry at herself for not getting further, and perhaps instead of expressing her feelings openly she kind of hid them behind her "gentle way" and pushed her feelings on to you.
So I think what happened does make sense (and your description wasn't at all rambly
).
If you'd ever like to chat about all this, feel free to message me.
Charlie
@RarelyCharlie hmm, interesting. I hadn't considered her own feelings about it. That's a possibility I think. I did wonder at the time whether she was frustrated at me for maybe not bringing the (seemingly) more important, more entrenched, thoughts to the table sooner, so I guess that's a similar idea.
I'm glad it made sense. Thanks for your kind reply :)