The Bittersweet Goodbye is Real

Since I came back to work part time on 11/05/2025, I've been working knowing that at the far end my last day seeing clients would be Tuesday 12/02/2025 and staff (me and another LCP) would spend 3 days discharging clients, counting up IT and office equipment, finally locking the doors on Friday 12/05/25.

Last week I emailed all of my clients who haven't scheduled to see me from 11/06/25 to 12/02/25, checking if they wanted to schedule another couple of sessions or if they wanted me to discharge and close their file, which is the option the vast majority of clients took. So I spend a good amount of time last week discharging them and closing files.

Each client discharge brought to mind the awkwardness of their Intake session, "ah-ha" moments I was privileged to witness in sessions, and memories of tragedies shared and successes achieved. I teared up as I looked over most of the names on my client list. I wish I could take dozens of them with me, but I can't. I'm moving into a position that's not focused on outpatient therapy.

For me the good news is that I've already found a full time position at a local 74 bed inpatient hospital, completing Intake assessments, treatment planning, and discharge planning for both mental health and detox patients, in addition to providing individual, family and group sessions, and floating over to offer PHP and IOP 1:1 sessions, processing and psychoeducational groups. 

My last day at my current gig is Monday 12/01/25. My new gig starts 12/15/25. I've never taken any time off between job changes, but given my own mental health struggles, the objectively fucked-up way the termination of my current position has been handled, and my need for time to process all of it, I feel entitled to have ten days off between,

Whenever I get a new client I go into Facebook and try to locate them and block them. When working at a prison, this was literally for my own safety.  With middle school and high school kids this was purely for privacy boundaries and I've continued that practice for many years since. I'm well aware of the Wisconsin Department of  Health Services and best practices of not contacting or accepting contact from former clients for at least two years after the end of the professional relationship. Two years is a long time to be motivated to search for someone and start social contact with them, which is the point of that limitation. As much as I care about my clients now, in two years will they even be interested in any contact from me, and me from them?

I hope I've offered the best care I could to my clients. I want all of them to succeed, whatever that looks like for them, and if I played any role in that coming to fruition, I am humbled, I hope I've made a difference. I hope I've compassionately prompted change.

I continue to and always will hope....

                                                                

…and then there’s this…

After my therapy session but before my ninth and final acute Ketamine session on Friday, October 31, 2025, I responded to a voicemail from a Vice President in my organizational hierarchy. She bluntly told me that the “large national insurance company that owns the outpatient agency” I transferred to from a remote home-based position in November 2024 has made the decision, based on “multiple considerations” (corporate speak for “these outpatient clinics are not making a profit or at least not a large enough profit”) so all of these agencies will close permanently on Friday, December 5, 2025.

There are three agencies in Wisconsin that are closing: in De Pere where I work full time, in Appleton where we have a prescribing nurse practitioner, and the Oshkosh office where two clinicians were recently hired.

Granted, it was/somewhat still is a cluster fuck where I work. Because there are only two full-time LPCs in the office we have no admin support on site.  We started out with one, but she was let go “due to down-sizing” shortly after January 1, 2025. So that leaves A LOT of shit for the two of us to do. Because I’ve been at the De Pere location the longest, the toiletry supply/carpet cleaning company thinks I’m in some sort of managerial role and their sales rep regularly calls me or stops into the office unexpectedly and thinks talking with me will result in additional services we will purchase from them. The last time he called me, I finally told him, “Dude, I am not a decision maker here. I’m a therapist, that’s it. Here is my director’s email address. She’s based on the south side of Chicago. Good luck.”

One of the situations I hate most about any employment environment is having to fix another department’s mistakes. We have a “central scheduling department” whose location is completely unknown to me. When new hires are going through the on-boarding process, we submit our schedules to a different department that creates our schedule which includes our preferences such as not working with telehealth clients, not working with couples and/or families via telehealth, the age range of clients’ counselors feel comfortable working with and that sort of thing. Then the mystical schedulers who receive calls from new clients are supposed to follow the clinician-created availability…but sometimes they don’t.

And if a new Intake gets scheduled outside of the parameters I’ve provided, it’s up to me to contact these clients and explain why I can’t see them and provide them with next steps, so they are seen by a clinician who meets their scheduling preferences.

That drives me ABSOLUTELY CRAZY.

I have enough work to do and spending time talking with clients, apologizing profusely for a mistake I DID NOT make, but I am held responsible for fixing makes me want to scream.

 

There is a process to make the schedulers aware of such “mistakes”, but I swear it’s a 12 step process that I don’t have time to complete.

These are some examples of how I got burned out at work, only to be compiled by home stressors, that led to my recent FMLA for Ketamine therapy. I have gained significant insight into what leads up to burn out for me and am starting to better manage my perfectionism, maladaptive beliefs that I am independent to the point that “I don’t need any help or support” to get through life while increasing my insight that I didn’t get this far in life without the help and support of family and friends, and that I do the best I can with the information/skills/resources available to me at the time.

This is a much more balanced way of living, which I’ve secretly craved for so long that sometimes I have to double check the validity/reality that I can truly live this way.

In my therapy session on 11/07/25, I suddenly came up with this concept of “Kristine 2.0” which involves getting in touch with core beliefs and values that can propel my life forward, which will likely involve cutting off some of my previous beliefs and values that served me at the time, but are no longer useful or effective.

Despite the nervousness and support of my husband, parents, and siblings, to name a few, I feel good about taking some time in December to keep exploring my beliefs and values, keeping what I need and leaving the rest. The last three Holiday seasons have ranged from totally shitty to barely tolerable at best. I want this season to be filled with hope, love and peace, and I truly believe I can make it so.

Phoenix Rising