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Originally Posted by sunrise
fallenangel, that sounds very very hard.  And very scary to feel that this decision is so out of your control.
If you can get an idea of how much your monthly T visits are costing (2 co-pays), maybe you could propose changes to save that much over a month. "To save $50 each month (or whatever 2 co-pays is), I will take the bus instead of driving, stop eating lunch out, and work a few hours a week at the fast food restaurant." Keep trying to find a job. It's hard out there, but some places would rather pay a student minimum wage than an older more experienced worker a higher rate. ARr there campus jobs available or a campus job board?
Can you explain more about the "insurance crap" that is going on? Are your parents thinking of dropping you from their plan and having you get the student insurance where you go to college instead? (Student plans like that often don't provide much for mental health services.)
I think it is important that you let your parents know this. They may not see the "value" of therapy for you right now. They may not have detected the positive changes you are so aware of. Can you talk with them and tell them what is changing for the better for you? If I was thinking about discontinuing my daughter's therapy, and she came to me and said, "Mom, this is helping me so much. I am much better at doing X and Y since I started and now we are working on Z, which as you know I have a lot of trouble with. I really want to continue", then I would think twice about making her end therapy, even if it was a financial hardship. So I think talking with your parents about your benefits from therapy is very important. You can also tell them ways you will save money to help out. And if they see how important it is, they may decide they can cut back on expenses elsewhere to help out with the cost.
About a year ago my daughter wanted to quit therapy, she had me convinced she didn't need it anymore, wasn't benefiting anymore, had accomplished what she needed to, etc. I proposed she go every other week instead of quitting all at once. She wasn't too happy about that but agreed. Meanwhile, her therapist contacted me (with my D's permission), and I met with her. Her T really wanted my D to continue therapy and had good reasons for this--ruptures among other things. She convinced me to support my daughter in continuing therapy rather than support her in cutting back. As it turned out, her T was right. They are still together over a year later and doing well. Fallenangel, my point with this is, that it might even be helpful for your therapist to talk with your parents and give her professional opinion on why you should continue therapy with her (I am assuming she thinks you should). Parents may value it more if it comes from the mouth of a health professional, or at least it will confirm what their child is saying.
As others have said, also discuss this with your T. But don't leave your parents out of your plan on how to deal with this. There may be ways to get them on board with you, either through talking to them yourself about the value of therapy, or by your T also talking with them. If your T does talk with them, you can go over with her carefully what she will and won't talk about, so you can be assured she won't reveal any of the content of your therapy, which is confidential.
 
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My copay is $35, so $70 a month is a lot. I'm not spending any money, but since I don't have a source of income, there's not much I can do at the moment.

There are some on-campus jobs, but to my knowledge, they are all full. I'm planning on swinging by the employment office tomorrow just to check, though. And I'm trying to take steps to save my parents money. I'm going to start seeing an on-campus (free) pdoc, and stop seeing my old one. That will save us at least one copay a month, which helps. I would like to continue seeing him, but right now, I have to give him up to make sure that I can continue seeing T. To be honest, he's a LOT more replaceable than T. in fact, I kinda feel like T is pretty much irreplaceable.
The deal with the insurance is that my provider sent my T and I both a letter saying I had something like 8 visits left this year that would be covered. So given that, T told me that she would continue to see me for the amount of my copay, which means she is already seeing me for significantly less. I'm still on my parent's insurance, so there's no trouble with that.
My parents are honestly SO supportive of my therapy. My family has commented several times how much improvement they've seen in me, and mom in particular knows about my SI and stuff, so she wants me to continue working on that, of course. It's not her fault at all...things are just really tight right now. She knows the good that therapy is doing for me, and I know that she totally supports me wanting to go and work on what I need to.
I already know that T is going to call my mom sometime about the insurance deal, and she's going to discuss our plan. I told her that is okay, so maybe you're right, and that will reinforce the idea that I'm benefiting from this. At this point, I'm honestly not too worried about what T will or won't say. I know it will be a strictly businessy-type call, plus, I'm 18, so she REALLY can't say anything to my mom.



Thank you so much for your reply.