Quote:
Originally Posted by mindmechanic
The therapist said that she was back to back all day and cut the patient before me short by five minutes because she needed a short break. She said that she cut that person short instead of moving me back by five minutes and text messaging me that she would be running late because she thought that it would be upsetting to me. When I noted that she was one minute late, she got upset and shared the above with me – that she had already cut the person before me short by five minutes for me – but that I was still disappointed in her and that I was setting up an impossible standard for her.
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I just feel like time and time again, the therapist reacts from her personal countertransference feelings. We repair. But I feel like we keep on getting into these little fights, repair, and only to fight again. I feel she's too relational. It's tiring. I never get to talk about therapy material anymore because we just get into these fights every Monday evening and repair the next two times we meet and only for a fight to happen again the next Monday.
I'm her last patient on Monday. I told her that I don't want to do Monday evening again because she's usually tired. We both acknowledged that telehealth is more exhausting than in person therapy. She would have the stamina to see patients at 6pm in person but not since the pandemic when we moved to remote work.
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As you said, it's the T's responsibility to manage her workload. Scheduling clients back-to-back sounds like a bad idea even at the best of times, though many Ts do it anyway. I'm surprised no-one in 30 years had an issue with an unexpected late start yet.
Although, teletherapy does make it more difficult on the client's end as well - my exT would run a few minutes late every now and then, but I saw her face-to face and knew she was behind the door with someone else and she did give me extra time in turn, so there was no reason to worry or feel slighted. With current T, we did teletherapy from the start (except for a few months in person when the lockdown eased up a bit). She's consistently 1-2 mins late, so now I tend not to worry too much unless she's more late than usual, but I remember there used to be this brief period of uncertainty when I started working with her, between the official start time and when she actually called, when I'd just sit there ready to start and wondering if she'll show up at all.
I think the bigger problem isn't her being late, but her getting defensive about it. Why it bothers you, how you feel about, it is all important therapeutic material, something she should be interested in and try to explore in depth, not brush you off with 'well no-one else had a problem with it so far'
BTW this dynamic happened between us with my xT as well, walking by / failing to discuss heaps of juicy material that perhaps could have gotten us ahead, in favor of getting into fights. There isn't much I can say that's likely to be helpful, though. Have you tried to discuss this pattern with your T?