I am currently going through a cycle of high out of session contact. Currently, I have daily contact with my T either with a session or an email. There's been times where the daily contact wasn't needed and I was unsure if I should send it. Where I am right now, I have to work hard to not spam her - which I haven't done so though I have emailed her on days I have session or emailed her 2x one day (morning and evening). Our session yesterday was about the wanting to spam her. I didn't ask to be allowed and she didn't say I could or could not. Like stopdog says, we are all adults and on one level, we don't need permission to email. On another level, if any contact from any person becomes harassment, the receiving person has the right to deal with it as they desire, such as ask not to be contacted, block sending persons email address, all the way to legal means. In these relationships, there's the real risk of a T deciding that the patient needs something that the T cannot provide. I don't feel like I need permission to email her, she has said I could email whenever. I don't believe her with that statement because I fear if I actually let go of the internal rules that keep me from spamming her; she'd get overwhelmed, believe she could not help me, that I need more intervention support than her OP model can manage.

I think that's the dilemma there, with some of us that struggle around this type of topic. Do we trust their word and thus be able to really express ourselves freely so that they may be able to see what is needed to help us... if they can help us... OR do we protect ourselves by protecting them from our behaviors/desires/thoughts - in the meantime, perhaps we end up doing other behaviors that might be damaging to ourselves in different ways as we hold onto the boundary we put in place to keep this relationship with our T a possibility.

I am sorry you are going through this. It is very painful. Your statement to your T was an honest expression of your emotional state. Stated the way it was stated, it's also a threat. Makes it hard for both of you. Have you gotten to the place that when you are in that dissociated state that you can still tell/sense/know the difference between wanting to do something and the doing of the something? There are lots of things I want to do when I'm at a highly stressed state. Being able to state them as a wanted action rather than a doing action; I believe has been helpful for my T to know that I am still safe - to others and to myself.

I don't have any answers other than to keep talking to your T about what happened, what it means, what the purpose of out of session contacts were for you, how they were helpful and how they were a hinderance, how you can find other avenues to support yourself, where she could fit into that... and at what point does things indicate that you should seek more help - what are the signs that you should engage in crisis intervention and what that looks like - especially if you used to use her and now she is expecting you to use other tools; what tools are available to you?