Therapeutic endings: Reflections on the termination of counselling-based research relationships among patients with cystic fibrosis and their caregivers

Abstract

Some time and temporarily scholars suggest that separation is one of the most arduous of human experiences. Given what is often a long history of unpleasant relationship endings, the clients of therapy themselves may be particularly susceptible to painful ruptures. Informed by a qualitative approach, I describe and explain how 10 Canadian children living with cystic fibrosis and their caregivers felt at the end of a research-based counselling support programme. At the programmes’ end, the participants reluctantly but unquestioningly accepted the decision. However, they expressed their desire for ongoing and continuous therapeutic opportunities to help them manage weighty emotional issues, such as living with grief and loss. I theorize the findings using time and temporality scholarship. Although academics and clinicians regard them as separate pillars, I suggest that participants experience considerable overlap between “research” and practice”. Further, I propose that researchers and clinicians pay attention to therapeutic endings as an important issue in research. Finally, using a time and temporality lens, I use the findings to discuss how therapeutic work might better be regarded as occurring in the space of psychological time, rather than linear time. In so doing, it is evident that time and temporality are critical to how young people with CF and their families experience therapeutic endings.