Posted by zenhussy on December 28, 2003, at 13:49:00
In reply to Re: Does Your T Call You Back??, posted by Speaker on December 28, 2003, at 13:27:57
>I'm with you, I never have felt like I was in an emergency...hospital state. My old T consistantly reinforced his availability in between sessions and once I did call. I got his answering machine and it said in case of emergency call this number...my next session I told him I had called and gotten the answering machine but didn't leave a message. He asked why I didn't call the emergency number and I said nobody was dying so I didn't think it was an emergency...I have lived through the terminal illness of my husband and a daughter who was critically injured so my definition of emergency is also different than most. He changed his message on his machine and it now says in case of an emergency or an immediate need please call said number. Soooooo all of that to say it's not like I call in between sessions but if this therapy is a team effort as the T says, it must be nice to only be on the team one hour a week with not thought of the team in between. Am I overeacting? It seems like such an important part to me I'm wondering if this new T is a good fit even though I find him easy to talk with and very insightful.
Speaker,
Firstly my deepest condolences about your losses. That absolutely can colour what you perceive to be an emergency situation. Your former T sounds wonderul to have changed his message. What an accomodating and perceptive thing to do for his clients. Kudos to him.
As for overreacting? I don't think so. It sounds like having the option and being reassured that that option exists is important to you. If it is important to you then it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks.
Just reading your words about this being a team effort and how nice it must be to only spend an hour a week on the team pierces my heart. It sounds very lonely and resentful. I'm not saying you are those things but telling you my perceptions of what I read between the lines.
Easy to talk to and insightful are great T qualities but can be found in many different therapists. Over the years I've had so many different therapists that it would be amusing to list their different phone/contact policies. Some were happy to take my money and tear me open one hour a week but wouldn't conceive of allowing a client in pain to contact them between sessions. Ugh. I do NOT need that in my life. I didn't ever last long with a therapist who wasn't available after hours or didn't have some sort of back up person.
Not that I have had to call after hours often but in the past fifteen years I've probably had ten middle of the night phone conversations with different therapists. I consider those phone calls to be the difference between life and death in my situation. Not that every late night call was a suicidal one. It was more of the consistency of someone being there for me.
My situation consists of complex ptsd. I experienced a series of incidents over a month of my life when I was a teen and from the total isolation I felt (and some was not just my perception but true isolation) I now know I need someone to be there for me whenever I might need them. It doesn't mean I call my pdoc or T for every bump in the road but when bigger things are coming up now I know I can call them and am learning to trust them when they encourage me to call.
Guess I'm in a little more unstable place if I'm with people who are encouraging me to call them anytime.
digression over
zenhussy
poster:zenhussy
thread:293814
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20031221/msgs/294036.html