Dear Therapist: I’m Worried That I’m a Burden to My Therapist

Read: Dear Therapist’s guide to staying sane during a pandemic

Since your therapist has talked with you about the fact that you don’t need to “take care of him,” this seems to be something you’re already working on. Maybe you’ve talked about how taking responsibility for other people’s feelings has affected your relationship not just with him, but with your friends and family members and co-workers too. And perhaps you’ve also talked about how your need to protect others is really a way of protecting yourself: Putting yourself last distracts you from looking at yourself at all.

In other words, you say you’re trying to protect your therapist, but I have a feeling that the person you’re trying to protect is yourself. If you stop having sessions, you don’t have to examine your feelings and patterns and behaviors at a time when you may, like many people right now, feel most vulnerable. But this doesn’t really protect you—it just makes it harder to feel the full range of your emotions, which is ultimately what helps us connect authentically with both ourselves and others.

Read: I’m growing exhausted dealing with my sister’s anxiety

Now would be a good time to make an appointment with your therapist, and to open that session by telling him what you told me. Instead of guessing how your therapist feels, you can ask him directly. It will reassure you to hear that it is our professional duty as therapists to assess whether we’re able to work with our patients even when we might be going through a challenging time in our own lives; if your therapist needed time away from his patients, he would make arrangements for them while he took care of himself.

One day, this pandemic will end, and if you dig in and use this time to more deeply understand how this pattern of protecting others gives you a false feeling of safety, you’ll start to see yourself the way your therapist actually does: not as a burden, but as someone who has finally let herself be seen.

Dear Therapist is for informational purposes only, does not constitute medical advice, and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician, mental-health professional, or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. By submitting a letter, you are agreeing to let The Atlantic use it—in part or in full—and we may edit it for length and/or clarity.

Lori Gottlieb is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a psychotherapist based in Los Angeles. She is the author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone.