The class was broadcasted to sites around the state, and we could see and hear her on a TV screen, but she couldn't see me. We could talk to her over microphones, but I rarely talked during class either. The person next to me grabbed the microphone faster, and sometimes I'd tell her what to say. I don't like talking over microphones or even telephones, and avoid it if I can. But I loved each class - it was always the highlight of my week, and I would go home and email her after class. That was three years ago, now. And it was a year after that before I met her in person, since we did e-mail only for several months at the beginning of therapy.

I think that we did get a lot done through e-mail, including before it was therapy. After a while I think that the lack of facial cues was a problem. There are ways to maintain the feeling of support through e-mail, and she was good at that at the beginning and when I was a student, but it tended to slip after a while, and I was begging for some approval or a little bit of smalltalk, and the more I begged, the more she withheld it.

Now that we are doing f2f only, sometimes I do email her a picture or something the night before I have an appointment, so that she knows what I want to talk about. That's been going well, but at some point if I keep doing that I expect that she will say that I'm using email to avoid having to say things to her out loud, which I think I do. It's so much easier to say what I need to say in writing. It's just not as good for receiving the response that I need.

I got into the same pattern with my previous T. He was not so good at e-mail, and didn't always answer. I really struggled to say things that I needed to talk about during a session. So we used to mostly chat during a session, then I went home and e-mailed him, and then went to the next session to ask for his response to my e-mail. Interesting pattern, huh? I have an easier time writing to express myself, but I don't get enough satisfaction out of that mode of communication as response.