Posted by pinkeye on July 1, 2005, at 19:11:47
In reply to Re: I quit therapy today » pinkeye, posted by happyflower on July 1, 2005, at 18:57:34
Ok. I am sorry.
I didn't mean to be un supportive.
I didn't say you were abusing phone privileges. What I was trying to say is, sometimes, the therapists give us lot of freedom, and then we become used to using it. But at some point, the tehrapist gets overwhelmed or feels he is giving in too much and tries to restrict it. Then it ends up hurting us the most - because we are used to more privileges. So from the beginning, if we have clear demarking and expectations - like how many phone calls in a month are allowed, how long the phone calls can last, what kind of issues warrants a phone call etc, it saves us heart ache later. I had that experience with my previous T - the rules were almost always very ambiguous - I could write whenever I wanted, howmuchever I wanted, but the kind of replies would vary so widely. Sometimes I will get two replies in a week, sometimes once in 3 months, and I didn't know what to expect and whether I am bugging him.
If he had said something like "You can write 2 emails per month, and I will reply once a month" then it would have been lot more consistent and given me lesser room for speculation and this development of worry and fear that I am abusing it etc.. And also that would have saved me a lot of trouble when he stopped writing, if he had said "now you can write 1 mail per month, and I will reply once in 3 months"..I hope you are seeing my point. Sometimes when the Ts trust us and give us privilege, we get to decide, and since we are in an intense emotional state, we are not really sure of what the right thing to do is.
That is why for your own sake more than his, I advised you to keep your expectations of his phone support to the minimum. I didn't say you were abusing - more I was saying that you need a clear expectation to save yourself lot of trouble down the line. And I was definitely not trying to be like a big sister and say "See - I told you so"..
poster:pinkeye
thread:522069
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050628/msgs/522128.html