The unexpected phone call in the middle of the night. The client who never returns for another session. The news of a community case of COVID-19. In our daily lives, and in the therapy room, the looming of an end is always present. Although endings, separations, and partings are a natural part of living, the abruptness of these experiences are often devastating.

This research aims to gain understanding of such experiences of abrupt endings specifically centring on the author’s experiences as a beginning therapist. Within psychotherapeutic literature, there is an emphasis on the importance of endings in therapy. This includes an extensive literature on techniques and the client’s experiences of endings. However, there is a significant lack of knowledge about the therapist’s experience of abrupt endings in therapy.

A heuristic self-search inquiry into my experiences of abrupt endings was conducted from which I elucidate the core feeling of groundlessness in my experiences. I explicate this further into four successive micro-moments: the rip, the scramble, the tension, and the poignancy. A powerful realisation that my experience of abrupt endings relates to my terror of abrupt death re-organised my findings, revealing my dance around death and the ways I attempt to retain or regain power in my engagement with death.

The discoveries of this research have significant implications on the psychotherapeutic profession, such as the importance of including the therapist’s experience of ‘bad-byes’ in research and training programmes. Profoundly, this research also holds important personal implications for our own inevitable confrontation with death, especially the power within our personal journeys.