I can text, email or call anytime I feel I need to. It's been one of the most helpful aspects of my therapy.

A phone call is the only thing I expect an answer for- he will almost always call me back by the end of the day, or he will send a text saying he will ring me in the morning. If I text it's usually just a quick update to report that I am doing better after having a hard time. He might send me a quick reply to that, but it's not something I usually expect. Occasionally I would text him from the middle of a stressful situation (usually something medical), and those he usually answers with a quick reply whenever he might be free.

I use email frequently to work through difficult things or to record good times- it's probably most like a journal, and I regard it as something he's free to read or not, as his time allows. It's more about me working on this stuff through writing and having somewhere to deposit it.

He is the first therapist I have ever worked with this way, and he is the only therapist I have really found helpful. My first therapy experience was retraumatizing, and I can see now how much the lack of outside contact contributed to that. For me, the outside contact is a safety net that has allowed me to work on traumatic issues without being retraumatized, and to experiment with ways of helping myself while being strongly aware that there is a helpful presence nearby.

My therapist was very encouraging about reaching out for help early in our work together. I had always been pretty secretive about the grief and trauma I had experienced, so it was a new thing to open up to someone about the depths of my sadness and have someone actually be there to help me. His mode of therapy is very much about practicing to develop the strength to take care of oneself, and this has been working very well. I used to just abandon myself and give in to despair a lot, and now I realize there is so much I can do to help myself, and I have a responsibility to myself to do that.