kmay... when I first started seeing this T it was six weeks after oldT abandoned me. I was still traumatized and very mistrustful of any T. After about a month or so, my T said we could ask oldT for a "treatment summary" so that he could find out what oldT had to say about my dx and what kind of therapy he was doing. It took two requests and six weeks to get a 3 paragraph letter which my T said was not worth the paper it was written on. There was NO clinical info in that "summary".
So then I decided I wanted my files. OldT again gave me such a hard time I had to hire a lawyer to strongly suggest he give me my files and records. Again it took NINE weeks to get them and when I got them I understood why. OldT need to recreate "notes" that he took for each session. They were called "progress notes" and were SO wrong it was a joke. What he didn't realize is that I kept a detailed journal of each session and nothing matched what he wrote so of course i knew he made it all up and it was so general it was pitiful. Things like "patient expressed anger today" or "patient was sad today". Duh.
The point I wanted to make here (before I began to ramble LOL) was that during all of this I was terrified for my current T to read what oldT would say about me. I was scared it would change his mind about me and he would side with oldT and then get rid of me. And although I was not fully attached to him yet, I did feel that he was an excellent and experienced T for me and I did not want to lose him. In fact, oldT would not send the files to me he would only send them to my T and I made my T swear and promise that he would not open the package until I saw the file first.
And so one stormy April day a box arrived to my T and I opened it during our session. I read everything first quickly and then decided to share what I felt I wanted to at the time. My T was truly wonderful that day and it would have been way more painful to do this without him present with me. I took everything home with me and eventually I did share everything with him including how wrong the progress notes were according to MY journals. My T said he didn't care what the notes said... HE knew me and who I was already and nothing my incompetent oldT had to say would matter to him at all. He supported me in requesting the files because I wanted them.
So... I would say that it would be a good idea to get your files but maybe you should wait awhile and develop more of a foundation with this new T before attempting something that could be painful. Having that trust is very helpful in processing the painful past.
Can you tell us more about how things are going with this new T?
Hugs
TN
