End of therapy

One of the saddest parts of my work is when clients end therapy, or cancel an appointment and simply disappear from the radar without responding to my messages with the question “are you planning to continue our work?” after a week or two or a month.

Usually, at the first meeting, I agree on a conclusion — one meeting at which we sum up, share everything that remains for each other, gratitude and dissatisfaction, warmth and regret. But sometimes I forget to agree on this, and sometimes clients forget about the agreement. Some end the relationship with a short message: “I have decided not to continue.”
I’m reading this and there are a lot of questions in my head — what happened in our contact that the person decided to interrupt it, what prevented him from telling me what was wrong? Where did he fall into shame or fear? I feel annoyance, sadness, resentment (how could that be, we agreed!) But that’s me.

And a person who breaks off a relationship “via SMS” deprives himself of a piece of appropriating the experience gained in contact — what worked, what was useful and what wasn’t, what suited him and what didn’t, what can be taken into another relationship and what didn’t work. Completion is also an opportunity to talk about negative feelings that are scary to express during the process, but which can be expressed and accepted by others, even if this is the last meeting (this does not make such an experience less valuable). The lack of completion — that very “closing of the gestalt” continues to draw back part of the energy — you…