Last week, I emailed T a copy of a post I made here on PC to the thread "A Safe Place to Cry?" which made me feel very vulnerable. In my email I stated that sending the email raised my vulnerability with him to a new level; that I was putting a lot of faith in the trust I had in him and his ability to help me see that expressing these needs were not shameful or embarrassing, or made me look like a child.

His response was simply "Just wanted to let you know I received this and I look forward to our session to discuss this thoroughly." I felt really let down; that he could have at least added a single sentence along the lines of "I can see how important this issue is to you, and I will treat it with sensitivity and care." I sent him an email expressing my hurt and disappointment that he did not address my feelings in his generic response; that he was in fact reacting similar to the way my husband had been lately - solve, solve, solve - never mind addressing the feelings. This was his email response:

I feel the best way to address these feelings and concerns is to do so in session (face to face). So I intentionally do not give substantial responses to emails because I want to reinforce addressing and processing important issues in session versus via email (which as you can see is not my preferred modality). I value the emails that you have sent as a way of emerging into addressing these feelings in session, but I do not want to stymie your progress by reinforcing the processing of these emails via the internet. Although this may not meet your wishes in the moment, I feel that we need to maintain the frame of treatment as being a process that happens in the room together, where we can give full, complete attention to discussion what you're feeling, thinking and experiencing with greater accuracy and productive dialog. So my brief responses are to acknowledge receipt of your emails and to let you know that the information is important and will be a focus of our next session. I hope you can understand my rationale.

We discussed this in session today, and he said that this will be his practice from now on - acknowledgement only. That if anything has an emotional content, I should wait and send it on Thursday for discussion the next day during session (we meet on Fridays). I can understand his reasoning in a way and I agree in theory, but my heart feels hurt. I feel like I've been cut off from a source of understanding and guidance that has been there for me for the past six years, and is now gone. I have never abused the email privilege, one per week, a lot of weeks none. As I've posted before, we are moving toward termination some time in 2013, so maybe this figures in somehow?

I could really use some input on this. Thanks, and hugs to everyone