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Old Aug 22, 2017, 08:23 AM
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peaches100 peaches100 is offline
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Member Since: May 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by StickyTwig View Post
I wonder if she would have preferred the phone calls, and thats why she suggested them? In phone calls it is easy to empathise without saying much, you can simply make sympathetic mmm hmm noises, and there is a lot more room to bounce things back making the conversation more fluid and interactive.

With email it is very hard to adequately empathise with someone. The email often sends a complex message and its hard to get across that you've heard it without simply parroting it all back, which feels quite clumsy. For example she could say "It must be so hard to be going through this with your mother in law, especially as she feels so much like a mother to you" which is just repeating back what you said. Or alternatively she could analyse it a bit further, but she might get it wrong leading to misunderstandings and offence! Either way, it takes quite a lot of thought and effort. There may be a sense that whatever she writes isn't going to fully cut it so maybe she doesn't put much thought in at all.

So I can certainly understand what that you feel hurt, but I can also see it a bit from your T's point of view too. Giving a good reply to an email really is hard work!


Hi Stickytwig,

You made some good points. Yes, I know my t doesn't like email very much. I know she doesn't like getting too many, and she doesn't like them to be very long. So maybe she doesn't like sending them often or typing much either. Her reply just felt so scanty, I guess. It felt like I had put a whole lot of my heart and feelings and energy into telling her how I feel...and she responded with the bare minimum. I felt like she didn't want to spend the time or energy to actually support me, but just give the appearance of it, and that really hurt considering that she is the one who offered it. I guess maybe the underlying hurt has to do with me feeling so attached and invested in the therapy relationship, and the realization that her personal investment seems far less.