Posted by sunnydays on December 31, 2007, at 20:32:00
In reply to Emails + psycho therapy, posted by Maxime on December 31, 2007, at 18:55:10
I email my T all the time - quite often daily, if not more. He says I can email as much as I want and that when I am ready to write less I will. And I do go through periods where I don't write hardly at all when I am feeling better. Specifically over break he told me I could email him as much as I want to.
The boundaries for him come in that he sends very short responses, and only answers one or maybe two emails per day, although he will read them all, if quickly. He also only checks his email at work, which he has told me and I know not to expect an email if he's not at work. And since he doesn't respond to all my emails I don't expect more than about one response a day. I certainly understand that he doesn't usually check his email very reliably and I can't count on it, so in a crisis I have other things I know I can do to reach him and/or someone else at the agency where he works.
He seems to think it is something useful because I write much better than I speak. But I do think there is still a sense of boundaries kept. He doesn't respond to the pages I send him except with a word or two, and then we will talk sometimes about the topics in session, but usually only if I bring them up first. So the onus is still on me to do the work.
A suicide note? Well, I've written about suicide, but I would never do that to him. He generally knows when I'm in crisis and we set up more frequent phone check-ins and things like that to make sure I'm ok.
I think it crosses boundaries, but not necessarily in a bad or unethical way. It just depends on which boundaries a particular therapist-client pair find important to maintain the therapeutic space.
Also, I think most or all of my emails go in my chart, so that's another layer of protection for him and there are sometimes things I save for sessions because I would never want them on paper for someone to see.
sunnydays
poster:sunnydays
thread:803481
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20071215/msgs/803501.html