Goodbyes and Badbyes
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden
T. S. Eliot, Burnt Norton.
The way that we say goodbye can tell us a lot about the way that we form and maintain relationships. Saying goodbye to someone often stirs up other goodbyes, and draws energy, often painfully, from other endings. For some people, saying goodbye to someone can feel like the other person has died or has abandoned them. In order to avoid the pain of saying goodbye to someone we sometimes opt for methods that make for what we might call a “badbye” instead of a goodbye.
The analyst Herb Schlesinger in his book Endings and Beginnings describes several ways people can react to an impending goodbye:
Flight — unexpectedly just leaving without saying even a cursory goodbye, avoiding saying goodbye by not sticking around, running away.
Withdrawal — not leaving physically, but becoming emotionally absent, uninvolved, detached.
Regression — a return to use of prior symptoms or acting-out ones feelings instead of putting the goodbye into words.
Dependency –clinging to the person we must say goodbye to, avoiding saying goodbye by not letting go.
Denial — not acknowledging the goodbye or minimizing its significance.
Anger and blame — following the unconscious assumption that “if one has been hurt, someone must be held responsible,” blaming and becoming angry with the person who is leaving or from whom one must separate. This is sometimes called abandonment depression. The term can sound misleading because it doesn’t sound like depression, it sounds like rage. But the rage is a secondary emotion intended to protect the person from feeling the primary emotion of depression.
Resignation and apathy — feeling disappointed, hopeless, deciding never to become close to anyone again.
These can all be thought of as various forms of badbyes. The all backfire to some extent in their attempt at preventing bad feelings from a separation. For, as with many things, tackling something head on is often better than trying to avoid it.
The alternative is to try more deliberately to have a “good-goodbye.” When I worked at a hospital day program for people with severe personality disorders, graduations from the program were marked by a whole string of goodbyes — with one’s individual therapist, various groups one was a part of, and the community as a whole. Graduates usually felt a bit goodbyed-out by the time they left. But that was quite deliberate on the staff’s part, because we had seen over the years how easy it was for people to try to dodge and avoid saying goodbye, and that they were seriously missing out in doing so.
A good-goodbye as we developed the practice had several key features — (1) It’s a process and not abrupt; (2) it involves telling the people who are leaving or whom you are leaving that you will miss them (if you will), and specifically for what; (3) saying what you hope for the other person in the future; (4) and putting both positive and negative feelings into words.
Overall I have found that really saying goodbye can be work, more for some people than others, but that the effort is usually rewarded, and certainly better than one of the many badbyes we might have instead.
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