I told myself that I was done: self-sufficient, brilliant and with 1000 euros per month in my pocket to prove it. Two and a half months later I was walking around Vienna repeating only one sentence in my head: “I am alone in this world and no one will protect me.” The imagery has also got gloomy: an isolated and afraid boy whom no one can help.

I have never been good at tolerating ambiguity and always went for resolving life’s complexities by my own actions. Consequently, my outlook on undergoing psychoanalysis has been practical: I am paying money and the results must come at some point. At which? Well, I’d just type my diagnoses into PubMed and I’d find statistical expectations for my case. Deterministic and analytical, with no room for mistake outside of standard deviation. The problem with that? People, and I, are more complex than that.

When I had been in psychoanalysis 3 times a week for nine months, I was still experiencing unresolved somatic flashbacks and fears of closeness akin to my father’s belt in my childhood. Needless to say, I was dissatisfied with that: “I can explain my traumas and reactions in dozens of ways, but I still have them. Why is that, if I have figured it all out?” I started looking for research that shows the effectiveness of psychoanalysis for C-PTSD (self-diagnosis, but absolutely correct). The confirmation bias, enabled by online research, proved to me that I should focus on something quicker and more efficient, such as EMDR. Pre-frontal cortex, amygdala, the limbic system… I prepared for my termination like a PhD candidate for their defence. What can I say — I felt very proud coming to my sessions and having intellectual conversations about my “intra-psychic conflicts” and why I behave the way I behave. In hindsight, I remember my analyst saying that it felt as if I was the one “conducting” psychoanalysis, not him. I did not pay attention to his remark then, but now I understand that I could not clearly see how much I needed him just sitting there, being emotional support for me. We have a saying in Russian: “A human needs a human” (“Человеку нужен человек”), yet I could not stand admitting such a mundane need to myself.

The termination was quick — I felt my intellectual triumph at showing my analyst how much I knew about neurobiology and how self-sufficient I was, not needing him anymore. “I’ll go for EMDR and will be happy to see the results there.” Needless to say, EMDR does show results quicker than psychoanalysis, but these methods are simply different and used for different purposes. We departed well, even though it was evident to me how painful my analyst found my sudden, decided-in-five-days termination. I still wonder whether my own inability to depend on people led to my terminating so quickly without asking for his opinion on our progress (he eventually mentioned it was excellent, and in hindsight, I can agree with him, even though much progress still had to be made). It was only recently when I realised that this triumph stemmed not from my correctness, but from the little anxious boy inside me who learnt that he cannot depend on anyone but himself, and for whom the utopian view of absolute autonomy is taken as a commendable outlook on the world.

This understanding came from a deep sense of isolation. When thinking about my previous analyst, I unexpectedly started sobbing and said to myself, “I need mom. Oh no, him!”. The Freudian slip was evident. It was only then when I started feeling myself instead of purely intellectualising, and I realised the part of me which my analyst used to care for: a little isolated boy who is afraid of this big hostile world. This boy still lives inside me and he started screaming louder when he felt lonely again. I need psychoanalysis — not as a sophisticated intellectual, but as a wounded individual with a deficit of (a) basic trust in the world and (b) unconditional love.

I then contacted my previous analyst, saying that I was wrong to contradict him about what problems psychoanalysis works with, that I feel the relational void our therapy was filling, but not anymore, and that I feel “alone and without defence.” He replied saying that he cannot take me earlier than six months later — which I do not fully believe. I think he may be protecting himself against the risk of my fleeing again. This has been a bitter pill to swallow, yet I am telling myself that I am young and sometimes naturally stupid, so I can make mistakes like any human being. Still, his response has illuminated for me the way I should formulate my therapy goals. This is the most prominent part of my email to enter psychoanalysis with another analyst:

I need psychoanalysis because I lacked a protective figure in my childhood who would have defended me against my physically abusive father. When I enter transference, I project the protective figure onto my analyst, who sees my past wounds and is able to recognise the afraid and isolated boy inside of me. In essence, I am not coming for insights (I have a strong Observing Ego on my own), but for corrective experience and to slowly teach my nervous system basic trust in the world.

I hope I will get an answer and that I will learn to approach relationships with trust, humility, authenticity and vulnerability. We are all messy people trying to do our best, and I am no better than others. This is who I would like to be in my new analysis: raw, afraid and beautifully myself. My termination has taught me the importance of certain relationships and how I can sabotage something good just because I fail to trust others. I hope I will learn from my mistake and not repeat it again, and that I will connect with my new analyst — not for insight, but to relearn trust.