By: Stacie McLean, LMHC
Whether your counseling is a light-duty consultation or you’re in THAT place — the temporary and intense place where your therapist feels like your lifeline — the announcement of a counselor’s leave of absence can be disorienting and even a little frightening.
You may start to wonder, “Who will have my back? Do I need a temporary therapist? Will they understand me? What if I don’t want to come back? How will my therapist respond?”
You may even feel angry, seeing undeniable evidence that this important person in your life has other relationships and other demands on his or her resources that get in the way of their steady presence with you. You might feel like like abruptly ending the therapy relationship — either to punish the therapist or to avoid processing feelings of fear, betrayal, and loss that could surface.
I recommend you hang in there and work with your therapist on these feelings. It’s his or her job to help you get through it in a way that helps you grow and feel better about life challenges like this. He or she will not abandon, reject, or punish you for having upset feelings about the absence!
What to expect from your therapist
Unless the leave is the result of an emergency or sudden life event, your therapist should provide you with as much notice as possible; ideally, they should give at least a couple of months’ notice and in the best of circumstances, up to 6 months. As the leave approaches, he or she should directly address plans for your care and you should feel secure that there is a safety net in place for you at the level you need it. By the time leave starts, you should have a clear understanding of whom you will be working with or whom to contact if you need help.
If the therapist is suddenly absent due to injury, severe illness, or death, he or she should have had a plan in place in which an alternate person contacts you to inform you of events and help you arrange for continuing care. If your therapist will not be returning, I strongly recommend you continue care at least for a time to process the loss and plan for your wellbeing.
What the therapist expects from you
We need (and want!) to know your honest feelings about the leave. We aren’t leaving because we want to abandon you — we have just come to a place in which we cannot adequately provide services and we don’t want to leave anyone without good care! We WANT to know if you are sad, angry, wary, or really doing okay. Your honest feelings will help us make appropriate arrangements and get you to a place where you feel the leave is manageable and not overwhelming.
We need accurate feedback about the level of care you need — if you want continued support from another provider, we will arrange it; if you prefer to wait and just need to know whom to call if the need arises, we will arrange that, too.
We expect you NOT to terminate your therapy soley because of the leave. There are legitimate reasons to end your treatment, but an upset reaction to a leave of absence needn’t be one of them. Appropriate reasons to terminate include: a natural closing point (you’ve received what you need and feel finished), a wish to try another provider because you feel your therapy hasn’t been hitting your targets (and you’ve told the therapist), and financial or life priorities that outweigh the benefits of therapy at this time.
A strong, emotionally-loaded urge to end the relationship is a good indicator that you would be best served to tell your therapist and let him or her help you with it. That’s our job!
A final note:
Your therapist should be able to process any curiosity or concerns you have about his or her leave. Common reasons for leave are also major life events: birth of a child, significant injury or illness, or a career crossroads in which the therapist must take a break in order to avoid severe burnout. (FYI: Burnout is never about you — it’s about the therapist’s own ability to meet client needs. Clients don’t cause burnout.)
Obviously, you will notice physical changes on a pregnant therapist, or a cast or bandage on an injured therapist, or perhaps signs of illness. You can’t help it! Rest assured we already know you likely have feelings about it, ranging from fear/concern, to resentment, to excitement, to curiosity. We know this and expect to help you with it. Please share with us!
What we don’t expect — and in fact actively try to avoid — is to solicit a particular reaction from you. We are watching for gift-giving, caretaking, fear, and other responses that are about us. A few well-wishes and questions are normal; excessive worry or any gift-giving could be about fears that we won’t return or don’t care about you anymore. If gift-giving is genuinely part of your language of affection, please know that the best gift you can give us is not material but rather honesty about your reaction. THAT is the most useful to us!
Please feel confident that we definitely still DO care about you, and we value our work with you as an important part of our lives and livelihoods. Whether or not we are returning, it is important to us that you have a clear understanding of your care plan and that it feels manageable to you. Though we may need to go on leave to take care of business in our own lives for a time, your care is a priority.