Quote:
Originally Posted by Fixated
No, I can't see several 1 or 2 week breaks spread throughout a year or two as worse than a single 12 week break. This isn't some office job, although it's incredibly rare for that to happen in an office situation too. This is a job that is predicated on the human element of person to person interaction and relationship building.
Maybe this is just a culture thing? (You're from Sweden, right? Europe).
I could not imagine my T going on such a break, and I couldn't imagine myself taking such a break if I were a T.
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Yes, there's a culture difference here I guess... I would feel quite uncomfortable if my T did not have even a 4-week holiday in the summer, since that's mandated by law (the minimum annual holiday is 5 weeks, though most people start getting additional vacation days as they get older) ; you have the right, by law, to take four consecutive weeks unless there is some extraordinary reason. When I said "several shorter holidays" I meant vacations of at least three weeks. (As you know there is no such thing as a European culture, but this has been the norm in Sweden for at least 30 years.) A therapist is not supposed to model unhealthy behaviour for their clients, right? Well,
given the local cultural norm it would be very unhealthy for them to take only one or two weeks at a stretch. This is not a universal truth of course, but nor is it a universal truth that a T should not be away for more than two weeks, just because that happens to be the norm in some countries.
I don't mean to derail the thread and as I've said I know how hard this is. But adding some kind of dimension of the T being unreasonable or this being unimaginable behaviour in Australia surely won't make it easier. It may feel unreasonable. It did for me when my T took nine weeks off. But knowing without having to reflect that it was a completely normal and reasonable vacation was a help.