Tomorrow I will be returning to therapy after several months “off”. It feels like good timing, but I wonder how it will be different this time around. I started going to therapy shortly after Boris was hospitalized for suicidal ideation for the first time, in June 2017. We also saw a couples therapist for several months. After Boris died, I continued with the same person I was seeing for individual therapy, and I began EMDR and brain spotting with a different therapist. On top of that, after about a year, I attended a therapist-led support group for suicide loss. It was a lot of therapy! After a while, I saw my therapist less frequently, and after about 3 years, I stopped EMDR/brain spotting. Last summer, I began to feel like my monthly therapy sessions were feeling stagnant and I was not getting as much from it as before. I continued to go to see if things changed, but they did not. A friend told me it was normal to “break up” with your therapist and she suggested that it was time to move on from this person I’d been seeing for four years. But, that felt really difficult for me for many reasons. Sometime last fall, my therapist asked me at the end of a session if I wanted to take a break. So, I said yes. Since then, I have not reached out and she has not either. It felt like it was a mutual break-up which was much easier than I expected.
Fast-forward to more recent weeks and months, I have been feeling like I need to return to therapy. I have been feeling more tired and blue lately and feeling pretty “stuck” in life. After searching for several weeks, I think I found someone who might be a good fit.
I wonder what it will be like to tell my entire story to someone new in a therapy setting. To tell someone about Boris–about his life and his death and what it has meant to me and how I experienced it. Because my last therapist was working with me before Boris died and was there with me in the immediate aftermath, this will definitely feel different. This person is meeting me 4 years post-loss. I know I am different now and I hope that this new perspective will be helpful and healing. I am somewhat nervous about re-telling stories and re-living experiences because it has been a while since I have talked about it in this way. This is a new experience in my grief and I know it is ultimately positive, but I will admit it feels like it is going to be really hard.
I am writing to reflect on this because I hope to share more about this experience of returning to therapy and seeing a new therapist in future posts.