Part of this whole email thing may be due to the size of practice a therapist has. Some may have 100 clients (or more) they see very month!! Yikes, that could turn into a lot of emails during the week if he/she did not have some kind of boundary on it.

If I were a therapist, this would be a hard decision for me. Some clients really need this and others would abuse it and send an email every time they got the impulse to do so. The boundary (IMO) should be set between the client and therapist. Not every client receives the exact same treatment and I think emails should faulter in there somewhere.

Like I have mentioned before, I am the only client that emails my therapist for things other than appointments or general questions. I didn't know this for a long time, so when I found out, I was quite embarrassed.

She basically explained that I do not hide behind my emails (I did at first), but they are ways for me to process during the week, get a quick feedback from her, and help our sessions to be more productive when we meet. I definitley spent months just sitting on her couch with nothing to say and was getting so frustrated that I wanted to end therapy altogether. She knew I was pretty close to leaving. Her comment was "What do you need to feel safe? What can we do to build trust? Is there something that you can do to make it more comfortable for you to talk about your feelings?"

This was the week that I sent her my first email. At the next session she was blown away and said, "Now I understand. You are a writer. Your emotions flow well onto paper. This is a gift. Keep writing and we will work through this together. Just let me know when you need feedback and I will respond to you. If not, we will discuss them in our next session."

We went from her just briefly skimmimg through the email and highlighting some points, to having her read the entire email out loud to me, and now I bring my journal notes and read them out loud to her. When it is a particually tough topic, I do go back to having her read it to me. There are times when I have parts I want her to read, and then parts I want to read.

This works very well for us. I have a feeling that a 'cold turkey' is coming soon. That would be a session where I do not want to go because I don't think I have anything to say. I don't have any journal notes to bring. This session will more than likely be the one where a meltdown/breakthrough comes. I may not even talk much, but the emotions will poor out. That will be very healing for me.

I still ask her periodically if I am getting on her nerves with emails. Every time she tells me, "No you are not bothering me, you are not driving me nuts, you are not crossing any boundary line, you are not boring me to tears, and any other thing that you may be telling yourself!"