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I'm going to miss Ms. Analyst. I think.
Actually, I'm really not sure, and that's probably a good thing. Last Wednesday I came to our regularly scheduled session, and was finally able to accomplish something that had seemed impossible to do: I told her I was disembarking from psychoanalysis (or "terminating" as they like to say in the biz), and 45 minutes later when I left, it had held up. She may not have agreed with me, but this time, Ms. Analyst couldn't stop me from following through.
Now, after four years of working together, once a week for 15 months and then 3x a week since July of 2008, we have just six sessions left together. It's exciting. It's nerve-wracking. It's satisfying. It's confusing. It's emotionally overwhelming. It's time.
Why Now
At first, it seemed like it was just the outside world that was pulling at me to give analysis a great, big rest. The businesses I'm involved in are growing, slowly but surely, and the four hours a week I put into PSA (counting travel time) - that's 16 hours a month, or two whole work days -- have never seemed so precious. Diverting the funds that currently go into analysis towards all of the other needs of my family is also a priority. Every cent I've ever spent on my therapy has been worth it, but after a while, it can definitely feel like those bills are adding up.
But something equally important was converging with the everyday stresses that clocks and dollars can put on us all: I felt sure I was ready. When I first met Ms. Analyst on a March day back in 2007, I had some clear basic goals to achieve, but there was so much else that I didn't know was ahead: big shifts awaited for me to make, broken circuits in my brain were going to be rewired in electrifying fashion, I had undiscovered dimensions of awareness and reality to cross over into.
The empathic embrace of an effective dyad lay ahead of me. A determined patient and a galactic-class therapist - which I strongly believe Ms. Analyst to be - working together can move mountains, one session at a time. And we did that.
Do You Understand?
With the pressure heating up, my mind snapped into place shortly before that session: Today was D Day (Disembarkment, that is), once and for all. And that's exactly what I told her.
Ms. Analyst saw it differently. To her, my decision to depart analysis was part of a predictable pattern: Get uncomfortably close to my inner darkness, then flee. "I'm not surprised that you want to terminate now," she said. "We had just gotten closer to the abyss, drilling down, and coming closer to things that may be very difficult to face. Several times in the past, this is when the urge to run has come up. Now you're doing it again, but I don't think we're done yet."
She had said things like this before, and in the past the result had always been an overwhelming anxiety that gave me too much pause to leave The Pod for good. Feeling perplexed and defeated, I would grudgingly agree, stay on...and sure enough, important progressions would be born in the weeks or months that followed.
But not this time. My practical, real-world concerns were a factor, but there's something else that's made me able to stick to my guns, and disembark from psychoanalysis for real. That's because, like I said, it's time. I can't prove it - and Lord knows I've tried to lay it out logically for Ms. Analyst in the two sessions since, to no avail.
But I know what I know, and I know that I've gained dozens of powerful mental tools in my time with Ms. Analyst, and now I'm ready to put them to the test. The moment has arrived to take it all into my own hands. That feels scary, but it also feels extremely empowering. It feels really good. And Ms. Analyst has done the job that I asked her to do -- I want that to feel good to her, too.
Back to Life
Way back in the day when I started psychotherapy -- this wonderfully bizarre practice of telling your unfolding life story to a specially-trained listener -- I had a lot of expectations of what would happen when the time came for us to separate (if it ever did).
We would float, zen-soaked, in mid-air in our final sessions. I would be a billionaire. All of my questions about me would be answered. We would telepathically, simultaneously agree that our mind-blowing time together could coast gently to a stop.
But there's been none of that, of course. I see now that it's impossible to predict how your psychoanalysis will end. There are a million different ways to feel. I can only wonder what else I'll go through, in these six sessions that will close out the month of March and this constructive chapter in my life. I'll be paying close attention, and I'll be sure to let you know how they go.
How do you imagine the final days of your therapy? How will you know when to say when? As I'm finding out, the end of the journey is really just the start.
-- Mr. Analysand
