If You Can’t Terminate with Care

I’m laying here trying to go to sleep and finding myself angry about the termination I experienced this year.

And I’m just tired of being angry about it.

I know the anger is covering up the hurt . The hurt of never really getting to process it with anyone.

What I can’t wrap my head around is how a trained trauma professional can justify something like that in their mind.

Because I can’t.

I’m feeling the harm that someone else’s ego won’t let them see, and it deeply upsets me.

It’s not even the termination itself , it’s the way it was done.

The lack of care I felt. The dissonance between what was said was safe and what was shown.

You can be skilled as fuck, but none of that matters if you retraumatize the client the second they start to open up.

That’s not trauma work.

Yeah, I’m bitter.

Yeah, I’m angry.

And I’m speaking from a place of pain, but I mean what I say:

If you can’t terminate with care,

you can’t practice with care.

Lately I’ve been trying to remind myself that filing the formal report , no matter how it goes , is the only thing I can do to try to stop other people from going through the same thing.

It’s how I’m advocating for myself.

But even knowing that, the hurt doesn’t stop.

She once said that this was sacred work.

But the way it ended… that wasn’t sacred.

It felt like abandonment wrapped in justification.

Now I’m holding the pieces of something that was supposed to be handled with care.

Author’s Note:

I know not everyone will understand the kind of pain I’m speaking about here. For people who haven’t experienced complex trauma, this may just sound like anger or bitterness, but for those of us whose wounds get reopened during trauma work, a rupture like this doesn’t sit on the surface. It cuts through layers that were already fragile, already scarred.

My fear is that people will misjudge this kind of pain, or mistake it for overreaction. But what I’m describing isn’t just about a single event, it’s about what happens when trust, safety, and vulnerability collide with abandonment inside a process that’s supposed to heal.

I’m also well aware that pain inflicted doesn’t automatically mean something was unethical, but that’s not for me to decide. What is mine to name is the harm I felt and the truth of how it changed me.

In my personal view, there’s often a gap between what’s considered ethical by systems and boards and what feels ethical on a human level. Paper standards can miss the tenderness and responsibility that real care requires.

This piece isn’t about blame. It’s about truth and the hope that, one day, care will truly mean care.