Ghosted? How to get over the silence
Understanding why that happens is better than turning to chatbots
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The sadness and hurt of being ghosted can linger because of the lack of explanation and closure.
PHOTO : ADOBE STOCK
As a practising psychiatrist, I have had patients whom I have been seeing regularly, sometimes for years, who simply stop coming. An appointment is missed, then another. Calls or messages from the clinic go unanswered. The uncertainty can be unsettling.
In the absence of an explanation, conjectures rush to fill the gap. Did the patient recover and decide that treatment was no longer necessary? Were they dissatisfied with me? Did I say something that upset them? Or – one of my biggest worries – did something terrible happen to them as their condition took a turn for the worse? Had I somehow been unhelpful, incompetent or even harmful?