Posted by mair on December 28, 2003, at 11:00:17
In reply to Does Your T Call You Back??, posted by Speaker on December 27, 2003, at 16:27:26
I find this policy strange because I think there's alot of middle ground between feeling that the opportunity to talk to your therapist would help, and being so bad off you need to be in an ER. I think I'd have to be sitting in a motel room with a loaded pistol pointed at my head before I'd consider myself a suitable candidate for an emergency room.
My therapist never expained her policy about phone calls and I never asked. I did infer, from the fact that she didn't raise the subject, that she really didn't like being called. (she certainly also never offered me her home phone number although it's easy enough to find her in the book) Also she is only in her office 3 days a week and I didn't know how much she checked her messages. During a really down period she finally figured out how averse I was to bothering her. Therefore her policy with me became that I should call her whenever I felt like talking to her (with no qualifiers as to "need"). This policy works for both of us because she knows I pretty much would never call; my notion of what is a dire emergency is so different from that of most people. Whenever I'm not doing very well she continually reinforces the message that it's ok to call her.
I don't think she checks her office messages more than once a day so if I really need to reach her I guess I'd have to call her at home. In several years of seeing her I've only called her once - on a Sunday after hearing that sar, a former poster here, had committed suicide. She wasn't home but she did call me back as soon as she got home and heard my message.
I think I may be at the far end of the spectrum with regard to my hesitancy to call. My former therapist actually used to call me when he knew I wasn't doing well. He said it was because he didn't think I would ever be the one to initiate contact.
Mair
poster:mair
thread:293814
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20031221/msgs/294000.html