Hi everybody,

My t and I are having some boundary issues - mainly regarding email. I want to give a short summary of my situation to find out if the majorify of people here at PC believe that my expectations for contact with my t are too high/demanding or not. I realize this is something my t and I have to work out between us, and comparisons don't always work. But the problem is that I don't know if my t is overly strict or I am acting overly needy and entitled.

I've been in therapy 10+ years for various issues, mostly related to my childhood (alcoholic father, emotional neglect, verbal abuse, SA, frequent moves, social rejection, overly sensitive nature, etc.). My t is committed and capable, and I know she cares about me. We have done much work together and I have grown a great deal over time.

The problem is. . .I've always needed email contact between sessions in order to hang onto a feeling of connection with her, and to tell her difficult things I have trouble saying in person. Even after all this time, I find it excruciating to express certain emotions and fears. So email has helped me "break in" a subject ahead of time in an indirect way so that it is easier to discuss it in session. Also, there are times when my therapy causes intense pain to surface or I get triggered and have trouble "putting it away" when the session ends. When this happens, I have problems concentrating at work, sleeping, dissociating, and/or containing emotional distress. At these times too, sending and receiving 1-2 emails per week has helped me greatly. Though there have been times when there has been some misinterpretation or misunderstanding of the meaning of something that was said in email - which had to be clarified - in general, it was an important component of my therapy. For a long time, my t seemed OK with it, would accept a couple of emails each week, and would respond promptly, sometimes in detail.

Over the last year though, I've noticed a definite change in how my t reacts to my email messages. She responds to them less promptly and with a very brief 1-2 sentences. There have been a couple of times when I've emailed her in a crisis and told her that I need her to respond as soon as she could. (One of those times, she texted me that she was busy driving, and called me 6 hours later; the second time, she replied a few hours later saying she was busy with family in town and would get back to me in a couple of days.)

Needless to say, I was very hurt and disappointed! I have major issues with abandonment and having been left alone as a child during times of crisis when my parents didn't pay any attention or respond with help. It has been one of my biggest fears in therapy that one day I would need my t, and she would not be there for me. And my t has been well aware of this all along. Yet this last year or so, it has happened 2-3 times.

When I email my t and tell her that I need her support, and it feels like she "blows me off," it is a huge trigger for my past issues. It unleashes loads of pain and feelings of deprivation that I know aren't reasonable in the "present moment," but they feel every bit as traumatic as what happened to me as a child! My t is well aware of my sensitivity to abandonment and how much it hurts me if I reach out and she doesn't respond. I admit that it has not happened often that I have needed her and she hasn't responded. But when it has happened during a time of great distress and I've made it clear that I need her help and she has either failed to view it as a crisis - because she is busy with her own activities or minimizes it in her own mind as "not really urgent," despite what I've said, it feels like a betrayal of my trust and a lack of understanding/empathy toward this very painful issue.

These two occasions of "lack of response in crisis" took place during October-December, and since then, my t and I have had trouble getting past the rupture it has caused, even though we've talked about it several times. Initially, my t blamed it on me, saying that it was unreasonable for me to expect her to reply to me 24/7, and she indicated that I needed to learn to respect boundaries. But it didn't feel to me that I was asking for too much. As I said, I usually emailed a couple of times between sessions. I did not leave phone messages. I didn't call her after hours, or at home. I didn't make middle-of-the-night phone calls or threats to hurt myself. I never asked her to meet me outside session or to be my friend. All I wanted was for her to allow me to email 1-2 times per week and to reply within a few hours, or at least that day. Is that unreasonable?

After talking to my t about it several times, and her telling me that she can't always respond to my messages as promptly as I want her to, I decided to stop emailing altogether. It caused me to feel too hurt at times when she was too busy to get back to me when I needed her to. She also let me know that if I did continue to email her, it needed to be brief and infrequent. She never really explained to me why she decided she didn't want to email anymore between sessions. I don't think she is overloaded with patients because in the past, she worked full-time, and now she only works 2-3 days per week. But for whatever reason, she has changed how she responds to my requests for email contact/support.

It has been about 3 months since I decided to stop emailing her between sessions, and with the exception of 3 or 4 occasions in a 12-week period, I am doing pretty well in scaling back and trying to meet her new boundary. But I feel increasingly distant from her without any contact between sessions. Also, although we talked about having me write things down instead, and then bring them to my session, it isn't working. I thought it sounded like a good idea and was willing to do it. But I don't seem to have anything to say now. I don't feel motivated to write. Nothing comes to me.

I'm very attached to my therapist, understand that my needs for email contact are probably too great and representative of the issues that have driven me into therapy, and don't want to terminate. I also am not angry with her most of the time, as I know she is not trying to hurt me on purpose. She must feel that I need this boundary. But inside, I am hurting. Sometimes I go to session and can communicate logically and in an adult-like fashion, and feel that we make headway. But there are large parts of myself that I hold back now. I don't share the deeper, more painful and vulnerable parts of me now. I'm too afraid that if I resume deep work in therapy and should suffer some kind of emotional fallout, flashbacks, etc., I can't trust my t to respond to me when I need her support. My therapy feels stalled out. As time goes on, I feel increasingly like I'm losing touch with not just her, but my own inner self. I have a lot of pain inside me, and I don't want to be alone with it. I was alone with it too much as a child. If I can't have my t's support when I need it, then I'd rather push those parts of me away forever. I can't do it alone again. I can't!

I honestly don't know what to do. I don't feel right about demanding more support from my t if she doesn't feel it is appropriate for some reason, or if she doesn't feel she has the capability to provide it. The last thing I want is to feel like a burden around her neck or make her feel obligated. (This is exactly how I felt with mom.) Yet trying to adjust to no contact between sessions just isn't working for me.

I read on PC about other people who have t's who let them email as much as they need to, sometimes even contact them at home, or even have sat up and talked to them for 1-2 hours in the middle of the night if a crisis occurs. I don't expect that. I just want to be able to have contact with my t via email between sessions, and it hurts me that she doesn't see it as a NEED, but perhaps just a WANT.

I'm at such a loss. . .after all these years and hard work with my t, I feel like she has let me down. . .abandoned me when I need her. . .and I don't know if I can get my trust back. I also don't know if I'm the one at fault for having extreme demands and expectations, or if my t is being too strict.

If you can, PLEASE HELP ME UNDERSTAND . . .