Standing Up To the Headshrinker

I'm going to tell my therapist tonight that I'm taking a break.

Okay, so I see a therapist. So what? People seem to be so open about the drugs they take to cope, so why shouldn't I be just as free to cop to my non-pharmacological efforts to deal with life's messiness?

I've been seeing therapists on and off since around the time Kevin was born. When Kevin was a newborn, I joined a little Mommy & Me group for new mothers through the hospital where Kevin was born. We'd meet once a week with our infants and sit around a big table in a conference room, sipping coffee, looking haggard, and talking about the ups and downs of new motherhood. The facilitator of the group picked up on the fact that I was in the throes of some pretty heavy-duty postpartum depression, so I began seeing her privately.

Then there was the guy I saw for a few years, beginning shortly after my dad died, when my first marriage was in its final descent, and continuing through the first year or so of Michael and I being married.

Now there's M. Michael and I actually started seeing her jointly because, in all honesty, the first couple years of our marriage were, shall we say, full of adjustments. I totally credit her with giving us the tools to build a strong foundation and a happy marriage.

I began seeing her on my own this past Spring when I received a certain letter from my estranged mother, which sent me into something of a tailspin.

And now it's been six more months of therapy since then, and I need a break. Obviously, I'm all for therapy - I'm all about self-awareness and growth and endeavoring to heal from the things that wound us. But I'm not in crisis at this point, and I haven't been for a while. That's not to say that I have it all figured out, or that I've grown as much as I ever will. It's just that things are going pretty smoothly at the moment; there is, of course, the daily ups and downs, but I'm doing fine. I don't take it as a good sign when I dread going to see M because I don't really have anything to talk about. I don't take it as a good sign when I sit in her office for an hour and listen to her regale me with stories about her in-laws (whom she loathes) and her grown son, and then hand her a check at the end of the hour.

Last time I saw her, a couple weeks ago, she ended the session in the usual way: "See you in two weeks?" I replied, "Do I need to?" "Every session is an opportunity for growth," she responded. A little cowed by this, I went ahead and made the appointment, feeling kind of resentful about it.

Why do I feel anxious about the prospect of telling her that after tonight, I'm not making another appointment? That I'll call her when I need to? Why am I afraid to stand up to her? It's kind of ironic, isn't it? I mean, I'm supposed to have learned assertiveness, among other things. And I'm not knocking her, I'm really not. She's great, she's helped me a lot.

She likes to tell me that she's been seeing her own therapist every two weeks for fifteen years. Holy shit. I don't know . . .

There is a passage in a book I am currently reading:

"'Psychiatrists seemed to feel anyone could be cured by psychoanalysis if one stuck with it and was cooperative. So one went year after year. One year, two, three, four, five and six.'"

While she's a marriage and family therapist (MFT) and not a psychiatrist, this really struck a nerve with me, and really was the fuel I needed to resolve to tell her tonight that I'm going to stop for now. See, I don't want to be one of those people who continues to go year after year, who begins to believe that they need it year after year. I don't want it to become my crutch, like I can't deal with the ups and downs of life without the constant guidance of a therapist. I think often the best growth comes from just dealing honestly with one's life.

Ack. We'll see how it goes.