Tas, I don't know the answer. Any discussion around contact, texting and email with my T makes me freak out because she gets it wrong all the time....we are getting better at it by discussing it openly.

The only real answer you will get is to ask him directly.

I would be really upset by this if it happened to me.

The other thing going through my mind - is the therapeutic process is owned by both of you and surely both parties should always negotiate and discuss changes like this. If it is really important and helpful for you to maintain doing this - go back to him and plead your case, don't accept his "rule" without full explanation and understanding.

Same old advice - discuss it with your T.
Somedays

((TAS))


Am I reading you right in that you text'd him
twice a week to make sure he was still there? Rather
than to address any other specific issue?

The reason I ask is because although I hsve free
rein to contact my T between sessionsif I have anything I need help
With; I would also regularly contact her to ask how she waas feelingo
due to her health problems and she asked me to try and stop
doing that as she felt it was fuelling my attachment to her.
I wonder if your T is thinking along the same lines.
Perhaps you could ask him outright his reaasons for his
change in attitude or perhaps agree to text once a week for
a while. But in essence; yes talk to him about it to get some answers.

Thank you SomeDays! I definitely plan on speaking to him about it...I wanted to make sure that I did not just react but wanted to think it through.

Thank you for your advice
T.

Avoidant

I would just touch base...because I have trouble staying 'connected' if you will, for lack of a better word. It's like as soon as I walk out the door, he doesn't exist anymore. I hope I am not sounding too weird...

The Therapist does not prefer me to contact him outside of the meeting time...he wants me to talk to him about it in session...

When I am struggling and have contacted him, he wants me to work through it on my own and get stronger in doing that.

Thanks,
T.

TAS, our Ts sound alot alike. he's made it clear from the beginning that he does not like email. from time to time if something happened that i wanted him to know about, or thought about something i wanted to express after a session, i'd email him anyway. just a few sentences. he's opened it up since, saying he doesn't mind an 'occassional' email. so, the between session contact is pretty limited. he hasnt' said so, but i think he's operating like your T, where he wants me to rely and depend on myself to come to some resolution on most things, if possible. but of course as usual, and as you know ... talk to your T about it.

Tas - I too have a severe problem with keeping my T in mind - ie as soon as I leave her I have lost the connection. It is very debilitating for me and distressing.

My T and I talk about the possible origins of this - in that (in real life) I was left alone from birth for a long time and would have been left in my cot with not much human input. I never attached properly to my caregivers. For me - there is no predictability to a caregiver coming to soothe me, talk to me, no reliability to them returning etc. When I write this - i can actually feel the abandonment. I have described the entire process to my T about what she does and how it feels and it all relates (for us) back to the initial days, weeks, months and years of my life.

Compounded with that is many abandonments, rejections etc. So I am wired NOT to attach, not to ask for help etc etc - and yet the therapeutic process is requiring me too. It is very confusing at the best of times.

SO for T and i - what I need is a lot of small (and sometimes large) predictable and reliable check-ins and contacts from her. We have a contact schedule during the week. She checks emails on 2 set days, she texts me on another day and I can contact her via text if I am struggling, I can email at any time - but she only checks it twice a week. I have weekly sessions and when things are tough like now - i am having 2 x weekly sessions.

I am a terribly avoidant client, even though I am attached to my T (mostly) and have known her for a very long time. This is all a lot of contact - Is it enough? No. I am still struggling badly - because it hasn't been consistent enough or reliable enough for me to imprint in my brain that I can depend on my T. She might have to do this for another year before I can trust it. Then I might move off the newborn development stage and onto a toddler stage.

This is how long this stuff can take.

So I am a bit bothered (and distressed) when I read of T's doing this. OBviously there might be lots of good therapeutic reasons why your T has decided this. I didn't just turn up to my T and she suggested this contact schedule - it took me a year of falling apart constantly and us trialling all sorts of things - but it is something we worked out together. Did i ever say to her I need a, b, c - nope, i just fell apart and she worked it out - I didn't know what I wanted, what I needed or how to ask for it. But we did do it together, we discussed it openly, we gave each other feedback, we talked about it.

It is YOUR therapy, so I really recommend talking about it and suggesting what you think would work for you.
SD

Somedays, that was beautifully explained - it makes so much sense to me.

What bothers me is that when a client already knows that this is the kind of contact they need and openly asks the T, T's seem to see it as manipulative and not to be taken seriously but to be thwarted instead. A kind of Murphy's Law in therapy I'm so glad your T is working with you on this and not attempting to push you to be more 'independent'.

TAS I see no reason whatsoever for your T to withdraw 'touching base' contact and see SD's explanation as being valid for your situation. Perhaps if you felt minded to, you could show your T SD's post? It explains it really well and has the advantage of coming from a third party so it's not something T could pick over in order to winkle out your (bad and unacceptable) motives and reasons... I do sound very negative towards Ts here don't I? That's because I've never gone along with the 'avoid gratifying the client' policy that most Ts seem to adhere to sooner or later and like SD get quite bothered when I read about Ts withdrawing or withholding extra contact with their clients.

I hope you can talk to him about this, I know if it were me, I'd resent it so much that whatever trust I might have in a T would be sorely tested by such open denial. I suppose there's no reason to assume that he is acting NOT in your best interests, but sometimes I think that what a T deems to be 'best interests' isn't always those of the client. Just sayin'

LL