I contacted a T yesterday (Wednesday) to ask if she's accepting new clients and whether we can set up an initial consult (either phone or in-person). She wrote back today (Thursday) that she is accepting new clients and she is available on Tuesdays, Thursdays and every other Saturday and asked what day works best. I said any of those, sooner is better. That was seven hours ago and I have a feeling I won't be hearing from her until tomorrow at this point.

I didn't send her a long stream of consciousness about some issue I'm dealing with, I didn't send her a complex problem to resolve…I simply asked her, in a one-sentence email, to schedule me in her next available time slot…indeed arranging even a 10-min long phone call to see whether she was a good fit would have sufficed. Surely that doesn't take seven hours? This is the kind of thing that would have taken my former therapist 5 minutes to an hour to resolve (depending on whether she was in session).

I feel that given her limited availability (only Tuesdays and Thursdays…and every other Saturday) the lag in response time could mean pissing away a whole week.

I know that seven hours or even a day is not a long time in the grand scheme of things. Maybe she's having a crazy, busy day. I'm not having some kind of emergency. I just feel like this doesn't bode well for future scheduling…I don't expect an immediate response but scheduling shouldn't take days (what if I need to make plans and it takes days to schedule every appointment?). It also makes me feel like she's not trying to be helpful…and I don't want an unhelpful T! Reaching out to a new T can be a stressful experience…I feel like the kinder thing to do is to send even a short response back, even if she doesn't yet know when she can fit me in.

I'm already turned off and we haven't even spoken. Am I being anxious and unreasonable? How long does it take to contact your T re scheduling?