The Breakup Theory Episode 21 - Breaking Up With Your Therapist w/ Shuli and Caroline
We may all need therapy to a certain extent—but when do we end it? Breaking up with a therapist is a kind of practice breakup: it’s a controlled environment where you can exercise your own determination and decision and face the consequences practically and emotionally.
In today’s episode, Caroline and I respond to a listener’s letter about breaking up with their psychoanalyst after five years. Right now, there is such an emphasis on therapy as a means to address trauma, as well as to adjust to the terror of the current conditions in the world. There is also a whole industry of self-help that coincides with shaming of people by individualizing their faults and failures. We may all need therapy to a certain extent—but when do we end it? Breaking up with a therapist is a kind of practice breakup: it’s a controlled environment where you can exercise your own determination and decision and face the consequences practically and emotionally. As the listener details in their letter, ending things comes with a large dose of ambivalence, and we tend to reason our way through it with pros and cons, or assigning blame and guilt. However, as the breakup theory tries to suggest, we can breakup for no other reason than it is what we feel is right in the moment. Caroline and I have a far reaching discussion about all of these ideas and many others, ultimately as a way to support the listener in their decision and their already well thought out process of marking this ending. But this conversation should be helpful to any listener, in or out of therapy, as another approach to encountering our feelings about the end and our own attempts at power and control.
As always, if you want to submit a question, scenario, or problem for us to discuss from an anarchist/autonomous and queer perspective of ending things, you can write us at https://form.jotform.com/thebreakuptheory/stories or call us at (917) 526-6548. We love to hear from you!
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The Breakup Theory is a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. CZN will help you discover a library of amazing audio projects, so check them out at channelzeronetwork.com
