Hi Perna, it's a moot point now. I wanted to discuss the issue before our legal meeting. I was unable to so there is no point in discussing it with T in the future. This was a "time-sensitive issue." As I mentioned, I've moved on from stressing about that since there's nothing I can do to make it possible for me and T to go back in time and take care of this. What I came to understand from reading and responding to the posts here was that what is actually more important to me is that T didn't respond to me the one time I told him I needed him for something "important." Good to see you here again.

MissCharlotte, thanks for your insights. I can tell you get what is going on with me and it is always so wonderful to be understood. I think you are right, T doesn't know I am recreating a lifelong pattern in therapy with this incident--the pattern of reacting to rejection by severely withdrawing. I guess that is one thing we are supposed to use therapy for--to recreate entrenched patterns of behavior so we can work on changing them.

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
Are needy clients less deserving of return calls or e-mails? What exactly does needy mean?

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">MissCharlotte, no, I don't think "needy" clients shouldn't receive return calls. I guess what I was thinking was that a needy client--by which I meant one who puts frequent demands on T's time outside of session, such as by emailing and calling a lot--often gets return calls. Maybe a T would return 90% of such a client's calls/messages. But for me, who has been very respectful of my T's boundaries, and not made demands on his time outside of session, it was the one time I wanted him to respond because I told him it was "important", and he didn't, so my response rate is a miserable 0%. I guess I felt since I don't make lots of demands on him, the one time I did, he could respond. (This is not to say I don't believe that people who are frequently contacting their T shouldn't be--their T's clearly have different boundaries.) Come to think of it, there was one other time that I sent him something substantive in an email (beyond logistics) and he didn't respond to that either. (I sent him an article he had requested and wrote a paragraph about the parts I felt were significant and how they related to my situation.) Perhaps by not responding he is trying to gently tell me not to communicate with him outside of session. If he doesn't respond, I can save face by not having to have him reprimand me, and the behavior will be extinguished. If he responded, the behavior would be reinforced. I think the behavior has been extinguished.