Same Old Song, new lyrics

I’ve written a couple of essays on the loss of my therapist and its impact on me. I’ll say I am relatively stable as I deal with losing someone I  had grown to trust on a professional level. To know her own personal demons was never part of the plan. When I go to someone for my own issues, the last thing I imagine is that therapist sharing their own personal struggles. It sometimes never even enters my head to imagine my therapist in a struggling state of mind. I’m the one getting the help, not them. At least, that’s the way it is supposed to be.

So how do I move on from this experience, what are my takeaways? Firstly, I don’t suggest that my struggles increased with her loss. In truth, this has been easy to handle, which speaks to my own sense of stability. I have a Bipolar diagnosis, and she helped me to stay sane with that madness. I’m not trying to be overdramatic, just speaking as clearly as I may. I feel comfortable with my diagnosis. It all makes sense to me. Where I do feel fortunate is that I am not using this tragedy to more justify my own actions. I am seeing it, experiencing it and taking care of my own responsibilities. If I didn’t do that I might be sitting in a crisis room at the moment. Fortunately I have benefited from living in a therapeutic environment – enough to imagine how to move on from this loss.

I’ll speak to this whenever it might come to mind. It is healing in its own sense to be able to voice my grasp of what happened without sensationalizing it. I think that is the whole key to being ok with ourselves. So in that irony of fate, I’ve lost my goto for exploring my insecurities and vulnerabilities. I’ll now find another therapist. In doing so, I will remember the wonderful insights that my former therapist instilled in me in our sessions. I’ll also remind myself that I’m living a pretty healthy lifestyle in retirement. I have a lot of positive resources in my life that let me smile and embrace the peace around me. My therapist is responsible for that and she left me in a confident position to handle the imperfect nature of the human condition.