By Mirel Goldstein

(This is a fictional story and is not based on work with any client.)

Leah comes to me after her previous therapist retires.

She has taken a break from therapy for several months yet finds herself feeling increasingly sad and depressed.

“I have a voicemail my last therapist left me a couple of years ago,” she says, “when I was going through a hard time with one of my daughters. I find myself listening to it over and over again. I miss her. I miss the sound of her voice.”

“How is it for you to be here with me now?” I ask gently, “with someone new, who you don’t know very well?”

Leah looks down for a moment.

“Well, it’s hard. You’re not the one I really want to be talking to right now. I wish I was back in her office. Her name was Ariella.”

I nod.

“Would you like to tell me more about her—or about your work together? It sounds like Ariella was very special and important to you.”

Leah sighs—a heavy, tired sigh.

I get the feeling everything feels like too much for her. That it feels like it would take way too much effort to find the words to explain.

I sit quietly with Leah, trying to notice more about what it feels like inside of me to sit with her; what this opening scene is saying to me about what she wants and what she needs.

Therapists aren’t interchangeable, obviously.

I can never be Ariella for Leah.That much I know. Even though in a way I think to myself that she seems to wish I could be. Or that maybe she just wishes the transition didn’t have to feel so lonely. That I could really understand.

Who and what can I be for her? I wonder.

I smile at Leah, trying to show I care, yet without pushing her to work harder than she can right now.

“It looks like it feels like too much effort to try to explain everything to me,” I say quietly. “Like you’re too tired… and maybe a little defeated.”

Leah nods.

“I wonder if you sort of wish I could already know what Ariella meant to you—without you having to say it.”

Leah pauses, then says quietly, “I knew she was retiring for a while. It wasn’t like it was a surprise. She had told me a couple of years ago—that she was planning to leave the country in a couple years, and that she was sick, and that she wouldn’t be working anymore.

When she first told me, I couldn’t imagine it. I couldn’t imagine leaving her behind, being without her. 

It wasn’t like this sudden thing. We talked about it so much. We really did. 

But there was something I didn’t talk to her about. Now I wish I had. But as safe as I felt with her…and I trusted her with my life…well I wasn’t sure if it would hurt her. Or ruin our good feelings as we said goodbye.”

Leah pauses. I look at her invitingly, in case she wants to say more.

“So the thing is,” Leah continues, “well sometimes I started to think that maybe… maybe a new start with someone else could be something good. Maybe there was something someone else could offer me that Ariela couldn’t. I’m still not really sure.”

“Do you want to tell me more about that?” I ask gently. “Like what are some of the things you feel she did help you with—and what are some of the things you feel someone else might offer you too?”

I pause.

“I’ll let you have a minute to think about it.”

Leah sits quietly for a moment.

“Well,” she says slowly, “Ariella was very kind to me, very kind… but… she never really managed to help me with my OCD that much. I always felt like I could count on her though—like I could turn to her whenever I needed something. She was steady, calm, grounding. She was just always there. She never froze up at anything I said or needed. She made me feel safe.”

“Safety is important,” I reflect.

“Yeah,” Leah nods. “Safety is important. But sometimes… sometimes it gets too safe. And, well, I never really felt like she knew how to help me with my OCD.”

She shifts uncomfortably.

“It’s sort of under control now. It got better over time, but… I still spend a lot of time doing my compulsions, which…” She glances down. “I don’t really want to talk about right now.”

“Okay,” I say in as chilled a voice as I can, shrugging my shoulders like it’s ok either way. “You don’t have to talk about anything you’re not comfortable sharing. It’s totally your space.”

Leah nods again, relaxing slightly.

“Sometimes I felt like… well, I don’t really like saying it out loud, but…” she hesitates. “Sometimes I felt like I was smarter than Ariella was. She was very kind to me—like a good, safe friend. Maybe even a mother figure. But intellectually? I wasn’t always sure. Sometimes I felt… I guess… like I was a bit smarter than her.”

“How was that for you?” I ask carefully.

“I don’t know,” Leah says. “I tried to tell myself it didn’t matter. I liked what she gave me emotionally. She was really my first therapist—the first person who helped me feel like I could trust someone. Someone who wouldn’t just fly into a rage like my father used to do when he was drinking too much. Someone who wouldn’t just change the rules on me.”

She pauses, as if to gather herself.

“My mom…” she continues slowly, “she was so caught up with my father’s drinking that a lot of times, well, she couldn’t really come out of herself enough to be there for me. Other times, she was there—and we were so close. It was complicated. She was my best friend… but sometimes she was just… absent. I understood it wasn’t her fault. But still…”

Leah’s voice trails off.

“Ariella was the first person I could really count on,” Leah says quietly. “The sessions were my safe place. I didn’t have to worry about her feelings or whether she’d be preoccupied with something else during my time. It was the consistency. That consistency was everything.”

“I hear that,” I say softly. “It sounds like that was something different from what you’d experienced before.” 

Leah nods.

“It sounds like Ariella was the first attachment figure who could really hold you—someone who was consistent, predictable, grounding, steady. And that maybe you had always longed for that, and that finally having it was so powerful and healing.”

I pause for a moment, then ask carefully: 

“And… I think I also heard you say that sometimes you felt you were a bit smarter than Ariella.”

Leah looks down.

“Would you want to say more about that right now—or would you prefer to leave that for another time?”

Leah doesn’t answer.

I sit with her for a minute, quiet, reflecting inside myself about her ambivalence—about how hard it must be for her to even think about telling me what she might want from me that she didn’t get from her other therapist.

I also feel a little bit shut out, as if I can’t compete.

Sixteen years of therapy with Ariella—I imagine how  hard it would have to be to let go of that enough to start something new with somebody else.

Starting over doesn’t mean starting from scratch, of course. But there’s a kind of intimacy—so many shared understandings, so many unsaid yet known things—that only years of therapy can build.

Some people think sixteen years is too long. But I know, having sat on both sides of the couch, that some types of healing take a really long time. And that after a while you kind of stop keeping track of how long it’s taking.

At the same time, a new therapeutic relationship is a new opportunity—a new dynamic, a new mirror, a new personality that evokes something new.

I know I can offer Leah something.

And I hear, in what she’s saying, that there was something she longed for that wasn’t fully available with Ariella—something about intellectual companionship, specific help for her OCD, perhaps even to be challenged a bit more. 

I wonder quietly inside:

Is Leah looking for someone she can idealize?

Someone she can feel on the same wavelength with?

Or something else?

Maybe she felt she had to trade emotional safety for intellectual connection.

Maybe she’s afraid to want both.

It’s early days yet.

I don’t want to push too far, too fast.

In our next sessions, I try to explore with Leah a little more.

“Do you feel you’re betraying Ariella,” I ask softly, “by talking to me about what you didn’t get from her?”

“Or even by talking about her at all—does it interrupt the good feeling you’re trying so hard to hold on to, because you miss her so much?”

Leah nods, and I see a few tears forming in her eyes.

“It just feels like so much to start over again,” she says. “And I miss her. I miss that space. I miss just sitting in her office and feeling like I could just…be. However I showed up, it was safe.

I didn’t have to take care of her. I’m worried now. I don’t know you yet. I don’t know if you’ll be like that.

I don’t know if I’ll have to take care of you.

I don’t know if I’ll push your buttons.

I don’t know if you’ll—”

She hesitates. I wait. We lock eyes.

“I don’t know if you’ll… like me,” Leah blurts out.

“Ah,” I say gently. “So it sounds like you’re worried about what I’ll think of you. And it sounds like you felt loved by your previous therapist. And now you wonder: Will I love you too? Will I like you? Or will I judge you? Will I see you with critical eyes?”

“Yes,” Leah says. “It’s hard to talk about. I feel so vulnerable.”

“I didn’t feel vulnerable anymore with Ariella. I was comfortable.” Leah offers. “But then there’s the too-comfortable—and the OCD that didn’t really get treated. They told me you could help with that.”

“I wonder,” I say carefully, “if you worry that you’re leaving Ariella behind. That if you get something from me you didn’t get from her, it would feel like a betrayal. Especially if it happens quickly—if it doesn’t take as much time to build trust with me as it did with her.”

Leah nods, taking in my words.

“You know,” I add, “sometimes when people come into their second or third therapy, they’re ready to do work they weren’t ready for before. Sometimes things consolidate because of the work they already did. And the timeframe, the way it unfolds—it’s often out of our hands.”

“It sounds like that uncertainty brings up a lot of fear and ambivalence for you.” I add.

“Yeah,” Leah says. “I don’t know. I just… I find myself missing her so much. I miss her so, so much.

And yet sometimes I wonder—am I missing her?

Am I missing the therapy?

Or just the idea?

The idea of a safe place—something I projected onto it?”

“It sounds like,” I say slowly, “you’re holding a lot of different feelings at once.

Gratitude for what you had.

Longing for what’s lost.

Hesitation about wanting more.

And uncertainty about what you even want now, because you’ve changed.”

Leah nods. “My relationships with my daughters… they were a mess. You have no idea. Ariella helped me. I internalized a lot. I learned how to show up for them—how to be present. I learned that from how Ariela was with me. And now my daughters and I  have really good relationships.

Same with my husband. We had hard times, but now we’re close.

The groundedness I got in therapy—it mattered.I don’t know what I would’ve done without it.”

She pauses.

“And we talked about it. We talked about her leaving. I cried. A lot.I thought I had grieved. But you know what she said to me in our last session? Ariela said: ‘Sometimes people can’t really grieve until it’s actually over.’”

Leah looks down.

“Yeah,” she says. “The idea of her leaving—that was one thing. But now that it’s real? It hurts. It really hurts.”

“And here you are,” I say quietly, “still hurting. Trying to absorb and understand what you’re even feeling.Trying to start something new with me, even while part of your heart is still holding on to what was.And you’re not even sure yet if you can trust me—if I’ll be safe. And yet, you’re being open.You’re sharing your hesitation, your pain.You’re giving me a chance to hold it with you.Maybe even in a way that Ariella couldn’t—or at least not right now.

As Leah left that day, I sat alone for a few minutes, feeling the weight of what she had trusted me with.

There is a particular tenderness in sitting with the echoes of another therapist’s work—the love, the grief, the ambivalence left behind.

I knew I could never replace Ariella, nor should I try.

But maybe, in time, I could become part of Leah’s growing sense that new bonds are possible, even after loss.

Therapy is, after all, not about erasing what came before.

It’s about building something new in the spaces left behind—something different, not better or worse, but equally real.

Something that, with enough patience and trust, might one day feel like home again.