I understand the temptation to run away – I have felt it too. Try to stay in the room, and in the moment. You’ll be glad you did
T
his is my last column for you. I am shocked and delighted that I’ve been allowed to carry on for almost two years, saying such controversial and true things as: the oedipal complex is real and all of us have one; psychodynamic psychotherapy is an effective and vital mental health treatment and we must fight for it in the NHS; and Midnight Run is the best film of all time. It has been a joy and an honour, and, now we are here, I’ve been thinking about the significance of endings.
Because they are significant. Sometimes, having no time left can make it possible to feel and say what was impossible before. They can invite an intimacy and truthfulness and grief that some find overwhelming. It’s not unusual for patients to talk of dropping out, or to skip the final session – to call it a waste of time, to want to leave the room before the end.
But the ending is one of the most crucial experiences of good psychotherapy; an opportunity to suffer the loss and to mourn. A chance to feel the disappointment and rage of wishes not granted and needs met and unmet. To put into words the true feelings of abandonment and gratitude and not knowing and despair that come with the ending of something that has been important, that we want to hold on to. When we have been struggling with these feelings since infancy, spending our adulthood unconsciously killing them off with addictions or repeating them in dissatisfying relationship dynamics or scrolling them away, a therapy ending offers different possibilities. When you skip the end, you rob yourself. I know all this – but I also understand that wish to leave the room.
