Posted by pegasus on April 11, 2004, at 15:27:13
In reply to Compassion of Convenience, posted by Speaker on April 10, 2004, at 10:15:14
This is such a hard one, isn't it? Sometimes I feel just like you describe, too. And your T didn't really help that with her statement, which maybe could have been phrased in a more supportive way.
Although, I can also see why a T might feel the need to explain some of those conditions. I know there are people who really make their Ts lives miserable by calling them with "emergencies" day and night. And that has got to be hard. The Ts that I have had have dealt with it in a way that I really like. They only checked messages during the day. But they encouraged me to leave messages at night, if I needed to. That way, they got uninterrupted sleep on a regular basis, but I also felt welcome to call.
My current T says that I can leave her as many messages as I want, and she will only call me back if I specifically ask her to. She made it sound like that was a big favor to me: this way I don't have to worry about her calling back unless I really want her to. But it also kind of feels sometimes like I would have to beg to actually receive any help. I brought this up with my old T once, and he got very uppity about it, saying that that was *not* what it was about. It was about setting realistic expectations, and considering his pragmatic limits - not the limits of his caring. This was a really big deal to him. And I'm sure it's a tricky thing to balance for all Ts.
just my 2 cents.
pegasus
poster:pegasus
thread:334855
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040409/msgs/335260.html