Posted by alexandra_k on July 1, 2005, at 2:24:35
In reply to Re: Why do I always fill guilty when I call, posted by rubenstein on June 30, 2005, at 15:32:45
I never used to call.
When I was doing DBT it was supposed to be part of DBT to establish contact between sessions (mostly so no contact could be a negative consequence of SI). But I wouldn't call. So she started calling me - which I hated to start with.But we talked about it. And I said that I was scaired that if I started calling I would lose my self-control and be calling all the time. And she said that she would tell me if I called too much. That she wouldn't wait till it got to be far too much and she had to terminate me. But I was still afraid of that because I would have felt mortified even if she just told me very politely that I was calling a bit much.
Eventually... I used to call her about once a week which was alright.
I don't like calling. But I do like emailing. The clinicians here aren't too sure about that... I don't think it is typical for them to hand their email addresses out to their clients. But I really like email because I figure I can just email them if I need to / want to, I have a chance to try and phrase it properly, and they can respond more at their leisure.
I do think it is worth talking about though. It might be to do with fears of becoming a 'bad' patient who will be terminated. It can help if they give you some kind of concrete idea what 'too much' would be so that you know.
I think different therapists feel differently about different degrees of out of session contact. It is worth finding out a bit more about what your t's limits are.
poster:alexandra_k
thread:521503
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050628/msgs/521835.html