Thanks ECHOES and alex_k.
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ECHOES said:
How do you feel about your T's seemingly sudden scheduling ineptness?
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Well, this was the first thing we talked about in my solo session: how he didn't return my call all week and how for the last two weeks he has double booked someone else during my session time. These are professional goofs that affect therapist-client relationships so they needed to be discussed. My T is very transparent and doesn't play games such as "I won't call her back to teach her that she really doesn't need me," etc. So his failure to call me, as well as the 2 double bookings, were a professional lapse, not some sort of convoluted therapeutic action. He apologized and explained to me that he is really overextended professionally right now, and he talked about how his practice has grown in the last year and is now completely filled up, how he gets close to 50 or more professional emails a day and can't find time to reply, much less deal with the the phone calls, and every second is scheduled, including his time going from one appointment to the next in his car when he is offsite (he schedules phone calls then). I asked him very directly, "what are you going to do about this?" in a no nonsense tone. It was almost like I was an employer and he was an employee, and I was demanding accountability and better job performance. Later, I realized that I kind of am his employer! (or at least one of many.) I do, after all, pay part of his salary. He responded very professionally with a list of steps he was planning to take to solve the problem: hire a receptionist to help deal with calls and emails, take one morning a week off for personal time (so he's not run so ragged), and budget in 1 unscheduled hour each day to deal with paperwork, calls, etc. He said he would have to prune his client list to achieve this. (Aaaackk! Don't prune me, I wanted to say, but held back.) Anyway, it was a good exchange, he realizes his actions are affecting clients, and he has a plan to fix things and do better. Then we shifted to the heart of our session, the stuff that I had come to share with him.
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It's funny how you describe both you and the other woman saying neither of you wanted the slot after all. I wonder what T was thinking!
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Well, I found it kind of amusing, and I hope he did too.
I think he also got the message that his failure to handle the scheduling properly had caused me some angst.
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alexandra_k wrote:
its great how things work out sometimes huh.
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It is indeed. I had several scenarios in my head for how things might go that evening, but how it worked out is not one I had ever dreamed of.
