The thread by GenCat about session endings and timing got me thinking and brought into awareness something that’s been starting to bother me in my therapy – the way one hour a week just isn’t enough time to achieve any of the things that I seem to be needing from therapy (or more to the point, from T.)

I gather there’s a whole range of different approaches Ts take to length of sessions, out of session contact, availability to the client on an as needed basis etc but I’m stuck with a T who adheres to one hour a week and absolutely no out of session contact whatsoever, no correspondence will be entered into and this is really starting to bother me.

I’m beginning to see that my inability to feel safe or to trust T (apart from other factors as well) has a lot to do with the fact that he’s simply not there for me outside of that one hour and that what I’m really needing is to know there is someone on my side 24/7, to the point where if I needed or wanted to, I could get in touch with him whenever I chose. I’m finding it exceptionally difficult to envisage ever opening up to him emotionally because what can be done in one hour a week with so many years’ worth of pain and rage? And then I’m left to carry the burden on my own for the rest of the week and that’s not ok – I didn’t shut down on everything in the first place just for the hell of it, there was a reason I couldn’t cope with it all by myself all along.

What I’m wondering is how others cope with this set up – how do you ever get to feel safe with and trust your T when they put such (in my opinion) draconian conditions on their availability, how have you gotten to the point where you are able to open up during that one hour and managed to deal with the fallout for the rest of the week without shutting down on T and therapy and feeling abandoned because of it? And ending up hating and feeling totally disconnected from T in the process? Can you really do deep emotionally intense work in just one hour a week? And how do you fool yourself that T is there for you the rest of the time when s/he so patently isn’t?

Thanks for any thoughts

Torn