thank you for all of your replies!!

tay - yes, i think you're right re: austin-T going pro bono so i can use the money for moving out instead. basically i am on a pension so i have enough to pay Austin-T, but i don't have that much more to buy food, pay bills, buy train tickets etc. getting therapy does take up a disproportionate amount of my income, but it's also been the one thing keeping me alive so it hasn't really been an optional extra for the past few years. when i first started seeing pdoc, i would earn $180 a week, and he used to charge $160 a session. that remaining $20 went towards my train ticket to uni each week (=$12.50) and my monday morning coffee ($2.50). the remaining $5 would be pooled across the month so i could buy my meds, and anything remaining would be saved so that i could go out with my friends when i had enough to afford to join in.

the situation isn't quite as desperate now, but i do still worry about meeting the essentials. after rent/basic bills/food/meds, i will still need to travel to uni, have an internet connection, print articles etc. i know that if anyone can live on a tiny budget it would be me, but i'm still trying to figure out how to make it all work. Austin-T going pro bono helps immensely, but i think all of that will go straight into rent. it's stressing me out. but i keep telling myself at least i will lose a bit of weight .

exotic - yes, i think a big concern of mine is that he might have very high expectations. he mentioned having briefly worked with someone this year but then leaving things half undone and my impression was that he hadn't been satisfied with that person's work. so i'm a bit scared to find out where the bar is set. i guess i can just be very upfront about my abilities & limitations and let him decide whether he'd like to try with someone who will be less than ideal. the one thing that could work in my favour is that i am as pedantic as he is, so he will probably not get upset when i take a long time because i am trying to make things perfect.

impy - i agree that i think he has good intentions. he has always surprised me a bit because he is rather... unconventional, sometimes bordering unethical. e.g., when he disclosed about his other client (whom he wanted me to meet so i could move in with her) and me being a good fit because she has OCD also. the thing is, he really does have good intentions. i feel like whacking him on the head for being so daft.

i like your wording for how to bring it up with him. i will memorise & blurt it out the next time he brings this up (hopefully not until next year... maybe he will forget?).

the thing that gets me is that i know he has good intentions. he has already offered to supervise & pay me should i need someone when i become an intern psychologist. that is possibly the most generous offer anyone can make (paid internships are few & far between: most interns need to volunteer these days, and some even need to pay their supervisor for the priviledge of doing work ). he's already been upfront & said if it wasn't an intern he'd have to pay double for a fully qualified psych, so at least i know what he gets out of the deal. but seriously, i know ppl in my class who would pay him a fortune to have him be their supervisor. of course, i don't know if i would accept when the time comes (maybe i will be lucky enough to get a postgrad offer?) and he might also have changed his mind. but it makes me think a little bit more seriously about whether to do this web development thing with him, just so i can get a sense of how he is to work with.

sunny - thanks for all your info re: ethical guidelines. now that you mention it, i do recall reading somewhere that bartering services would be an appropriate alternative should the client not be able to pay for therapy in full. so i can stop panicking about that .

re: when all of this stuff would take place. i would expect that we kept the therapy hour separate and met at a different time for the website stuff. he has a proper office set up at pdoc's hospital (where his computer lives) and then he works privately in a different suburb (where i usually see him). i think maybe seeing him in one place for therapy and then seeing him in another place for the website could work out ok. even if there is some other sort of arrangement that takes place, i really do trust him to keep things separate. that's the way his head works, and it's also the way i think too. we use it a lot together in therapy - actually draw boxes around my issues and assign a time for each one to be dealt with. i am sure if he knew this thread existed he would come down on me like a tonne of bricks, because this is meant to be a "next year" discussion topic.

sunny, i'm wondering what you meant by the "rules" surrounding your therapy relationship changing & how it meant you needed to trust him more?

i am intrigued as to why your T thought the interview would be 'ok' within the therapy hour? i'd be up in a huff, too ~ you're not paying him to give him publicity!! i wonder how his ethics thought it would be ok - i would have thought the reverse would have been a lot more appropriate, especially since you were interviewing him about a different role.

ktgirl - yes, i did feel a bit funny that one minute it was pro bono and the next i was expected to pay in services. i kind of feel like if it was that much of a problem to see me pro bono he should have discussed this with me earlier (rather than just sending a txt after a session letting me know). but the other thing is that he knows i am very uncomfortable even accepting the discounted rate from him, so i actually would prefer to do something rather than accept his services for free. he had offered to see me pro bono when medicare ran out (back in august) but i told him i would rather terminate than accept his services for free - it goes against my ethic. i have only seen him once (last week) where i didnt pay anything and it felt very weird. i dont like it. but i thought it would be better to wait until i see him next (he's gone off to a conference - again ) because maybe by then he would be more receptive to letting me pay again. i'd tried to protest the week prior when he only charged me $50, but he got a bit rude about it so i complied. hmph. doing a website probably would make me feel a bit happier if he won't allow me to pay in cash.