Amanda died.

Amanda was a former client of mine and, in large part, the reason I have not returned to counseling. So I wasn’t surprised when I felt relief when I heard the news of her death. And I wasn’t surprised when the wave of guilt for feeling that relief washed over me. Needless to say, I have mixed feelings.

A social worker from a local psychiatric hospital had left me a message early in the week. Her message asked me to call her back regarding Amanda. And that it was important. I didn’t call back that day. I didn’t want to talk about Amanda. I didn’t want to hear about Amanda. I didn’t want to think about Amanda. But my guilt about not doing my part as a therapist for another therapist started to get to me. So the following morning on my long commute to my new, non therapy related job, I called the social worker back, knowing she wouldn’t be there that early but still appearing to have interest in helping in whatever situation had ended up in. that day when I saw the social workers number pop up on my caller id, I didn’t answer. My excuse to myself was that I was busy at work and I was but I could have made time. I didn’t call her back that day. I decided the next morning that I should just talk with her and get it over with. So I called and left another message asking her to call me back and that I would have my phone with me so I would be sure to get her call. And once I said it, I was committed to do it. So when the number came up on my caller id, I answered and closed my office door.

That’s when she told me that Amanda had died. She told me the circumstances, the questions that had arisen. Apparently, Amanda walked in to traffic on a busy highway and was struck by a car. She was killed. The detective investigating the incident wanted to call it a suicide and close the case. His reasoning was pretty straightforward and seemed logical. Here is this woman who has long history of psychiatric problems who has walked in to traffic. She even had a wristband on from her most recent stay in a psych hospital.  So it certainly looked like a suicide.

The therapeutic community disagreed. It seemed that no therapist having worked with Amanda believed she was actually suicidal. The common belief, including my own, was that suicidal threats were a tool of emotional manipulation that Amanda used frequently. If she wasn’t getting enough attention or getting her way, she would play the suicide card.

She was also on a fixed income. She was on disability and also received money from her adoptive mother in Nebraska. Both checks came at the beginning of the month. She was able to blow through that money seemingly in an instant because of the crack habit she had. Knowing that, you could always see a pattern in her psych hospital admissions; she would come in towards the middle – end of the month and discharge around the first of the month – when the checks came in. The accident happened at the beginning of the month which would have been when she had some money and thus could afford some crack.

At any rate, the social worker had asked the detective to check her system for crack. She was thinking that Amanda had gotten high and in her intoxicated and disoriented state, had accidentally walked in to traffic. As it turns out, that theory worked for the detective. So I believe they ended up calling it a traffic accident and closing the case.

Well, the reason she was even calling me was because no one seemed to have any contact information for Amanda’s family. The only contact she had was me. And that was only because Amanda had listed me as her former therapist on all of her paperwork. So the call was to ask me if I had any contact info for Amanda’s family. But I honestly think she needed to process the whole situation as well.

I called her back after I had scraped up as much information as I could find in Amanda’s file. I couldn’t find a number but I came across a few names and the cities/states in which those names live. In order to find them, though, I had to thumb through countless Thank You cards and medical records. She would have the doctor’s offices and ERs send me copies of her records every time she went – which was a lot. I never asked her to do this. I believe that she did it because she felt like she always had to prove to me and everyone else that she wasn’t lying and to show “proof” that there was really something wrong with her – thus she was deserving of any sympathy or pity you may be willing to offer.

The irony is that she was lying. Perhaps not about specific doctor’s appointments but basically about everything else. Not little lies but lies about major life experiences and traumatic events. She was so fearful of abandonment that she would make up traumatic events in order to prolong her therapy. I’m in no way trying to deny that she had a difficult life or minimize the trauma she did experience. I do believe that she suffered a lot of trauma during her lifetime. And, regardless of what she might have thought, I had never given a client up because they weren’t traumatized enough. My belief is that if a person feels traumatized, then that is what he or she is there to heal. In other words, there is no height chart outside of my office that says “You must have this much trauma to ride this ride.”

But I did quit treating her. I confronted her about a big lie she had told me and after a lot of denial, she finally admitted that she had been untruthful. Her lies and several other factors have been a large factor in me not returning to counseling. I’ve never thought that I won’t go back to it but I’ve known all along that I needed to take some time to recoup after the experience with that client. She exhausted me mentally & emotionally.  I kept trying to help her but because of her lies, we rarely made much progress. Here’s the rub. She didn’t want to progress. She wanted a friend. And if she had to settle for a therapist, she would. She was so amazed that when we first met up that I didn’t judge her or call her “sir” that she instantly put me on a pedestal.

She idolized me. And, I believe, she actually wanted to be me. And that scared me more than just a little. When I got a new phone, she got the exact same phone. She asked where I went to grad school and then enrolled in some classes at that college. She said she had attended some on-line classes at my undergrad college as well but that was a lie. My undergrad college doesn’t offer on-line classes. She saw the pictures of my pets on my desk and she went out and adopted a kitten. She asked what the different brands were of the make-up I wore (back when I wore make up) and where I bought my clothes (note: I’m about 5’5” and she was over 6’ tall). She stole all of my business cards out of my little holder.

Overall, she freaked me out. I knew she idolized me. I knew she wanted to be me. I didn’t know how much she wanted to be me though or to what extent she would go to. I checked my credit report a couple of times just to make sure she hadn’t stolen my identity. My emotions were truly torn. I wanted to help this woman but I didn’t trust the words coming from her mouth or her motivations. That kind of tug-of-war wore me down. I had used up my emotional & mental energy, run through the emotional & mental reserve and even gone into a sort of deficit. Just ask my ex-husband.

I had already terminated treatment with her before the stroke but had continued on with other clients. So then I had the stroke and had to refer my clients on to other therapists. But even after I started recovering, I didn’t start counseling again. A lot of other things were going on at the time and those factors also played in to my decision not to start counseling. But, in large part, it was Amanda.

So I’m relieved that she is dead but not in a malicious way. I guess I had this belief that if I started counseling again, she would find out and begin contacting me again. It took a lot of time to get her to stop contacting me so I didn’t want to take the chance of waking the sleeping dog, if you know what I mean.

I should differentiate though. I am relieved she is dead but not happy about it. I do feel sorry for her. I hurt for her. I am sorry that I couldn’t help her. But I am relieved that she doesn’t have to feel the pain this life had caused her, that her suffering has ended. I am relieved that she has moved on and because of that, I can move on.

So I will end with these words to Amanda:

Amanda,

I truly hope you find more peace in death than you ever did in life. 

Namasté.