Saying Goodbye

Hello, and welcome to my blog.

I am a child therapist working in Los Angeles and I want to share through this blog what it is like to provide psychotherapeutic services to children. In an effort to protect confidentiality to the utmost, names in this blog will be changed, no direct quotations will be used, and information may be slightly altered. I will also focus on my own experience of providing clinical services so you can get a feel of my own process as well as the overall therapeutic process when working with children. If this sounds good to you so far, then read on!

I am starting this blog by writing about saying goodbye. That is, in therapy, when we go through a process called “termination” with our patients.

Why is it that no matter how well things are ending, it is always difficult to say goodbye? This morning while I was meditating, I began thinking about a 10-year-old boy I had a final termination session with yesterday. I call him “The Big-Headed Boy” because he when I first met him, he was so thin and small, his head appeared almost too large for his body (I’m glad to report that he has grown into his head over the time that I have seen him. But that’s another story!).

We had been working together approximately 14 months. Like many of the children I see, he was initially brought in because he was physically abused by his father. The boy and I had been able to work through much of the trauma in that time. We had developed a good relationship. Through therapy, he had learned ways to feel less anxious and generally safer in the world. He had learned to be more assertive and to stand up for himself, including most recently by speaking up and telling his mom that it was embarrassing for him when she said certain things about him in front of other people. He was still a shy and anxious, sensitive boy but he’d also grown tremendously. It was wonderful to see this transformation and it was time to say goodbye.

We sat and made goodbye cards for one another with colored construction paper, markers, pencils, and sea life and puppy stickers. He worked slowly, thoughtfully, and as I could see on his face, sadly. When it was time to exchange the cards, he said he did not want to read what I had written for him. He was saving it for reading at home. There really was no reason to explore this with him. No “What makes you want to take it home to read on your own?” business. I knew. It’s just too sad. So, I also agreed that I would read his message privately after he left. Then, I verbally shared with him what I had written in the card I’d made for him (without telling him that I had written such things in the card).

Having to end therapy with my patients has taught me a lot about goodbyes. I’ve learned that I really hate goodbyes (as I have hated them since I was a child – goodbyes were loaded for me, but again, that’s another story we’ll possibly get to later), and will probably continue to always find them to be difficult. No matter what. However, as we all know, goodbyes are also necessary and provide the child with the healing experience of a positive ending where they can say what they feel and have the other person know and honor those feelings.

For me, it’s important to tell the kids I work with that they have given me a gift. I tell them how lucky I have been to know them, to have watched them change, grow, get better, have more courage, become less scared. Then, when they leave the therapy room and move into the next phase of their lives, even if they are only 10 years old, it is my hope that they can do so with greater sureness and a well-filled heart.