Posted by mair on June 2, 2004, at 20:46:28
In reply to Re: And another thing » mair, posted by Aphrodite on June 2, 2004, at 20:02:41
Here's my take on what happened with my T. I think she didn't bend herself over backwards to make me feel welcome about calling maybe because when I first started seeing her it was really for some very directed CBT. Also I've wondered if she didn't because she really didn't know at that stage whether I was going to be the kind of person who called all the time. Once my therapy evolved away from CBT, looking at this in the most favorable light to her, she may have thought she had given me her phone number or assumed I understood it was ok - certainly I'm capable of getting her home phone out of the phone book; she's not unlisted. And certainly I could reason that she'd rather I called than hurt myself. So while on a certain level, I did know it would be ok to call, I wasn't ever going to call without some sort of an invitation.
We've been over this ground alot. When all of this first came out, she tried to communicate with me when it would be ok and when maybe it wouldn't. Ultimately, she figured out that I'd always hang myself up on trying to reason whether I was in sufficiently bad shape to entitle me to call. Her rule with me became "call whenever you feel like talking to me." Of course i've pretty much never called so it's a safe rule for her.
I think my T made a mistake by failing to bring the subject up a lot sooner (in fact I may have been the one to raise it first). I do know that it would have been better for both of us if this had been addressed earlier, and I know that my take on the phone call issue, was very different from what she had probably intended.
This is just a long wordy way of saying that you will probably do both you and your T a favor by bringing this up at your next session.
Good luck
Mair
poster:mair
thread:352994
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040522/msgs/353185.html