When T is "Too Busy" to Reply

peaches: I've suggested you see another T for a consultation several times in the past years. You've never wanted to do that. Maybe now you're looking at it differently and will take the step. On the other hand, it seems to me you're just disappointed and frustrated with the email situation.

What if your did what mine does, and sent only 1 email per week no matter what you wrote? You wouldn't have expectations of anything else. Or, just stop email like you're thinking about. But I still think a consultation with someone else, to review your years of therapy and get another opinion, would be a sensible idea. It doesn't mean you have to change Ts. I wonder if your T has asked for help for you. I know she's sometimes suggested a different kind of therapy. It doesn't mean she or you failed. It just means a different approach might help.

I hope you can discuss this all with your T, honestly and openly. No matter how many times you've discussed it before, it still bothers you, so it needs to get discussed again, IMO. Don't cancel your session, if you're thinking of doing that. Go in and tell your T what you're thinking about in this thread.

I think Sunrise had so many good suggestions.

talking to T.-- about her work model vs yours is what matters-- not so much what others on here believe. (no offense to anyone here)

I agree with Sunrise on this too. If T.s purposely AVOIDED our triggers then "growth" would less likely to be achieved. But- with that said-- T. hitting triggers really suck!

I wonder why you so wanted your T. to explain the attachement issue in an email, instead of searching and finding info on your own and then waiting and bringing it up again in the next session....
like was mentioned-- there is a plethora of info out there on the net these days, so it's not like one has only T. to which info can be had. ...

just something to ponder....

fins

This is a good question. Peaches, did you really ask the question to get the answers to the attachment question, or did you ask as a means to maintain contact after your session was over? It sounds to me like you want to keep her engaged with you (and giving you attention) and you end up getting hurt because the patterns of your childhood are repeated when she does not respond the way you wanted. I really think your t is doing the right thing in not responding to your emails the way you want every time, and it's your job to learn that she still cares about you, and you are still important even when you don't get what you want.

I think that Fins and Tay are on to something here. I don't think that whatever your T does will be enough because she isn't the issue. It seems that you are trying to treat this wound from childhood with symptom relievers like aspirin when what you really need is a cure. Having your T respond to you in a very certain way will do nothing for your healing, it is only symptom relief. IMO I think that you need to heal this core issue by going after it. Living our lives depending on others to respond to us in a certain way all the time is not good.

Peaches

I wonder if you were sending the e-mail as a way to connect with T, rather than to have a question answered, and your disappointment is a result of that lack of connection?

Treehouse,

I think I wanted both things: an answer to my question and a feeling of connection. If she had answered my question, i would have felt both. But instead, i didn't get either one.

I know that my T really IS super super busy and honestly doesn't have a lot of time to e-mail. And sometimes I really really really want to connect with him between sessions. I want to know he's there, and I want him to remember that I'm here. If I check in with myself and I really am just wanting to connect, I send an e-mail that says "I just want to connect and make sure you're still there". And he'll e-mail back and say "I'm still here". And the connection is there, and it helps.

I wonder what my t would say if i emailed and said "I just want to know that you're there and still care." That is so risky to me!! If she were to answer, "I don't have time to reply to your concern," it would hurt me far more than if i had just asked her a general question. Then again, maybe she would give me a short reassuring reply. The thing is, i know she cares, but there's a part of me that is always scared that she will change her mind, and the caring will disappear! So in a way, i have to keep checking to see if the caring is still there. I know that doesn't probably make much sense.

If I ask my T something complicated (like early in therapy, asking if I had PTSD), T will say that we can make space to talk about it in session. Usually questions like that lead to more questions and I know that T would rather sit with me and take the time that is necessary to really give me a good answer.

Yeah, i understand that some questions take some time to answer, and maybe this was one of them.

It seems like in the past when T hasn't replied, you have told her that you would at least like a response that says "I don't have time to reply right now, but I did get your e-mail". It seems like she heard you and she is giving that to you.

Yes, she is at least responding to let me know she got the email. I need to try to be glad for that. I think i just feel so deeply unimportant at my core. It's like a part of me can't truly believe my t cares about me, like it's too good to be true. So i am always afraid and waiting for it to disappear like morning mist under the summer sun.

I really really understand the urge to e-mail T. I've learned over time that it helps if I think it through....how will I feel after I send it, how will I feel if he can't reply, etc. Sometimes that helps me realize that all I really *need* in that moment is connection and I ask for that.

That's good advice, Tree, to think it through and ask myself what my motive really is. And also, how i will feel if i put myself out there and don't get the reply i'm hoping for. Sometimes, when i am feeling that awful urgency to email my t, if i can get my mind on something else long enough, the strong urges subside and i realize i can wait after all.

How did your session go? Was T able to answer your question??


The session was OK, but i was angry the whole hour, which is very unlike me. Not just angry at my t (although that was a part of it), but just angry in general at how hard therapy is! I was feeling mad because in therapy, we're encouraged to speak our mind and express our needs, but if those needs can't be met, then why even let ourselves feel the need in the first place (which is very painful)? Why not just disconnect and numb out our feelings so we don't have to deal with them?

I was also mad because in therapy, we are encouraged to address and confront our pain about the past. But if the past can't be changed anyway, then isn't it best to just stuff it and go on with life, trying not to think of it? Why dredge it all up and feel the agony, if there is no solution?

My mom is an A+, No. 1 denier of negative feelings, and although i know on some level that it is not emotionally healthy, she is always upbeat and happy. Yeah, in a way she's not living in reality, but she's happy! Then there i am, trying to honestly confront my pain inside and find my real self and express my feelings, and it feels truly awful! Last week, i just kept thinking how my mom has it better, and i just wanted to cut off all my needy feelings and my pain about my childhood and my attachment problems and just go back to being clueless.

The problem is, I can't stuff it down like i used to, the dam burst a few years ago and all this internal angst came pouring out!! But i don't want it anymore! I just don't know if i want to deal with this pain inside. It's too much! It feels so painful and so strong, and if i let myself really feel it, it's overwhelming. And nobody is going to come to my rescue. Yeah, t will be sitting there with me, but the pain will be in me, and I'm the one who will have to fix it and save myself. I just don't think i can do it. Sometimes i think that the relationship with my t can help me, that she can help soothe the agony. But at times like this, with the email thing, i realize that when i try to get too close to her, i run into walls. I'm too scared to confront all my pain on my own.

My therapist expects for me to bring up the topics I need to discuss in each of our sessions. She would not choose the topic. As clients we NEED to take responsibility for how our sessions run. Your insight on this thread has been well stated. Thanks.

The needs will be met in the long term, not the short term.

Who said therapy is to change the past? Therapy is to process the past and get your feelings out that you have been storing.

I am familiar with my mom's fantasy world and I know that she isn't better off. I have seen her come in contact with a bit of her pain. She is lonely in there.

This is probably what it all comes down to. You are on one side of the divide and you aren't sure if you want to jump in so you are wrestling with all of your "symptom relievers".

OK, I think there must be something seriously wrong with my head. I went to see my t today and she was so nice and accepting, and told me she was absolutely "from the bottom of my heart" not trying to push me away. She said she just plain was too busy that day, and that is all there is to the story.

She also thinks that rather than her distancing, i am the one that is finding a way to distance from her because i somehow need that to feel safe. (Meaning that, i get scared when i feel too good or close to her, and then suddenly i am upset with her about something.) I don't know if that is true or not. I mean, i never consciously say, "Wow, i felt so connected to t today and got some of my pain out -- but WAIT!!! Getting close to t is dangerous and will only end up with me being hurt badly!!! Better find a reason not to trust!!) I never say that. But i know that i do have a pattern of sabotaging things whenever I let myself have a need met, and then fear rears it's ugly head. Then i seem to find a reason to not get close or trust, like thinking she is being mean to me witih the email and pushing me away, which makes me take 10 steps backward. So I tell myself, "Now don't trust or get close again, because see, when you do, she ends up hurting you!"

I also seem to sabotage myself when we get too close to my trauma pain. I do not have a good ability to tolerate emotional pain and have pushed it away so long in my life that when i let it start to come up, it scares the crap out of me!! It sounds stupid, but i think i am very scared of myself. I am scared to look inside and see what hurts. So when things get too scary in therapy or too painful, then again, all of a sudden it seems like i am upset with my t for some reason. I swear 100 times over that it doesn't feel like I'm the one sabotaging things. It keeps feeling 100% so totally that my t just keeps saying or doing things to make me feel rejected. But could it be that i am doing that? Could it be that i get so scared of feeling attached or of facing my pain that i keep diverting things by finding something to get mad at t about??

I dunno.

I keep seeing rejection everywhere, but then talk to t and find out it is not happening. Why can't i learn from that? It is like all i can see in front of my face is her rejecting me. And when i feel rejected, i can swear up and down that it is exactly what is happening!! So i feel all the terrible horrible pain, until i find out that it is just not true.

How come when t says she is too busy right now and can't reply, it is like the whole world is coming down on me, and i can't think straight?

I feel so weird. It's like i can't trust my perceptions. And that alone is scary because if i can't trust myself to know in situations what is reallyl going on, then i will have to always have somebody to check in with and help me see reality??

My t asked me yesterday, "Do you think there is any benefit to learning to trust somebody with your feelings? Do you think there is any value in finding out that you can attach to somebody and have that feel safe and good?" She also asked me how long we have been meeting together (too long to say without embarrassment, years). She reminded me how she has always been there week after week at my session, just like she says she will. I told her that i know this, but what is weird is that it doesn't feel like we've been working together that long! It's like i can't comprehend on some level the continuity of the relationship. It's like i'm stuck in the testing phase, which should come early in therapy.

I guess in some ways, no matter how nice and accepting she is to me, there's a part of me that is convinced that somehow, somewhere, in some way she is going to screw me over, and like a detective i am alert and ready to pounce on anything that looks rejecting and say, SEE?! I TOLD YOU!! My t says she doesn't know of any other way she can prove to me that she is not rejecting me. I don't know either. Sometimes i feel that i have just been screwed over by people in my life so many times that my ability to trust is broken beyond repair. Now i see meanness and rejection everywhere, even in my t who has been so helpful, consistent, and caring for so long.

How do i stop this pattern of distrust and sabotage?

Maybe i am taking all the pain and anger i have for all the people who have hurt and betrayed me in my life and putting it onto t.

Hi Suratji,

I know. You're right. I need to think about what my t needs, and not just what i need. I don't mean to be inconsiderate of her and her time. It's the discomfort i get where i feel like i need a connection that often drives me to email her. If i could just get rid of that feeling! Or if i could find a way to just ride through the urgency of the needy feeling without acting on it.

Hi Fuzzybear,

Thank you so much for the hugs and support!!

Hi Rainbow,

I know you understand the "email dilemma!" What i have to do is change my expectations, as well as work hard to cope with my urgent, uncomfortable, anxious feelings that drive me to email my t. It's going to be a real fight! I have always needed email to keep a feeling of connection with her. But maybe it is time for me to learn how to "hold onto" the connection without constant reminders via email that she is there and still cares.

No, you won't always have to check in with someone to see reality. You can eventually reach a point where you'll be able to trust your own perceptions because you can change the pattern of viewing other people's behavior as rejecting.
I went through exactly what you're going through. I was completely convinced that my T was the one putting distance between us and it took years for me to recognize that it wasn't him; it was me. There were lots of little steps along the way, lots of trying and failing, but the one thing that helped me the most was that I eventually realized that I could feel very close to him without needing him to "prove" how much he cared about me. And, I could feel very close to him without needing him to feel exactly the same way about me. People in relationships don't need to feel exactly the same way about each other in order for the relationship to be healthy and fulfilling. When it finally became enough for me to know that he cared about me, he enjoyed working with me despite the rage I often felt toward him for not doing what I thought he should do to help me, and he was committed to helping me heal, I could let go of the rage and neediness that was always directed toward him, and I am beginning to find ways to meet those needs in the real world. I feel very close to him and I guess it's a form of "love" in a limited way because I only really know him as my therapist, but I also know he doesn't have the same intensity of feelings for me. And that's ok now; I've learned that together we have made our relationship very fulfilling and rewarding in its proper context. As he continues to encourage me to "go out into the world" we enjoy my successes together, because we did it together. And that's awesome, because it's something I never had when I was a child.
Yes, I have to work at it in the real world but I don't react to other people the same way anymore when they disappoint me. I don't feel immediately rejected or unwanted if someone doesn't respond as quickly as I wanted them to. It's not easy, but you can definitely change your perceptions and expectations. And then you'll be a whole lot happier in relationships.

If you are talking about a relationship with another person you will always need the other person's feedback to figure out what is going on.

This very well could be happening.

You are being triggered? Or it is transference?

Work on your deep issues.

And about sabotage, if you are doing this it will be totally subconscious.

Hi Rainbow,

I'm sorry that your t had to make a boundary for you about email, but now that you know what to expect (1 email per week), at least it doesn't keep you guessing or wondering if she's going to respond or not!! My biggest goal right now is not to email my t. If i do break down and email her, then I'm not going to ask any questions in my email that would require a response. Or I'll tell her outright that i'm not expecting a reply. I don't know how else to handle it. I have to let go of my expectation that she's always going to respond.

Suratji,

Yes, the time period of "waiting" is intense for me, and if it goes on for 2-3 days, it just feels very bad. So i need to eliminate the expectation of getting a reply at all. Maybe if i need to email, i can get used to just being able to say quickly how I'm feeling and then let it go at that.

Hi Treehouse,

Yes, I think you are right. This is my t's boundary, and it is not going to change. If she is too busy to reply, she is going to simply tell me that. And i will have to accept it. After seeing her this week and talking about it again, i'm pretty sure that she is not doing it to be mean or push me away. But she must feel that she simply cannot respond to all my messages. I wish i didn't feel pushed away, i still do. But i guess those are my own bad feelings that i need to learn to cope with. Like you said, somehow i need to keep the triggered feelings that i get of feeling unimportant separate from the reality of what's going on and realize that even though it feels 100% rejecting when my t says she's too busy, it's not truly a rejection of me. It's easier to understand this now, after the triggering is over and i can think better. But to understand it while in the throes of being triggered, it is almost impossible to see clearly what is happening.

Tayquincy,

Yes, i plan to take matters into my own hands and stop emailing, which will prevent the triggering. If i do decide to email, i will not ask a question that requires a reply.

Peaches, I'm sorry if you've already answered this question in the thread but did you request your T to respond right away? My T tells me that if I want her to return my phone calls, I must specifically request it. And when I do request, she complies... but sometimes it will still take 2 or 3 days.

Maybe she doesn't know the urgency you feel. But, then again, was the question an urgent question?

Squiggle,

It's good that you have been able to just come out and tell your t what you want/need. I've done that too (like you, i want a response). But sometimes, my t just can't accommodate me. It hurts because of the way it triggers me. But my t is really good, so i have to just get used to this boundary.

I'm not sure if my emailing would be considered excessive or not? It must be too excessive for my t if she can't reply to them all. I usually send about 2 emails per week, and they are fairly short (1 paragraph or less). I used to send her much longer emails, and she would always reply to them. But i know she's gotten busier at work the last year or so. I was hoping that by making my emails shorter, it would be easier for her and she would still reply to them all. But i guess not. She has replied to most of them though.

Peaches, I found that trying to stop emailing my T didn't resolve the underlying problem, which is that I felt rejected and ignored by almost everyone who didn't respond to an email. I chose to try to work the issues through with my T so that I could understand why I felt so rejected and so that I could learn to become less sensitive and less reactive when someone didn't respond to me. It was very hard to work it through but it was extremely helpful for 2 reasons. One is that I am now on the board of directors for a non-profit organization and there are 18 or 19 other board members plus the agency staff, and we all use email to communicate and distribute memos and information packets and reports. There are lots of times when I would have quickly felt unwanted or rejected if I hadn't worked through the email issue with my T, because the truth is that people get busy, they overlook things, they forget -- there can be SO many reasons why someone doesn't meet our need for a response and probably 95% of the time it has nothing to do with us!
The other reason why I'm glad I worked it through is that I've been surprised by my own new reaction when I do get a response from my T. By not demanding or expecting my T to respond just because I want him to, I'm no longer agonizing over it when he doesn't respond, and when he does, it's more like a pleasant surprise that I enjoy and appreciate. I wasn't expecting that to happen so it's been a bonus!

Right now I think my T is "too busy" to reply...

Hi Squiggle,

I'm glad you can always get a response if you want one. It's hard to accept that sometimes if my t's busy, she just won't address my concerns. But i guess there's nothing i can do about it. This past week, I haven't sent a single email. I don't feel happy about it though. I guess I'm happy that i'm not bugging my t. But i feel rather cut off from her, more distant.

Hi Rainbow,

My guess is that my t doesn't want me to expect so much from her. I interpret it is an indirect way of pushing me away somewhat, although my t says she isn't doing that. If she would have typed me a short 1-sentence reply to my concern, rather than a 1-sentence statement that she was too busy, then i would have felt much better. But because she chose to respond the way she did (knowing very well how triggering it is for me when she does that), I can't help feeling that she wanted to send me a message that she can't be there for me the way i want her to be.

Two sessions ago, as i was leaving her office, I asked her what she wanted me to work on, and she said "Just know that I'm there for you." And then immediately added, "But not every minute of the day." It made me feel bad because I don't feel like i expect her to respond to me "every minute of the day." But she must think i do, or that is her experience of me emailing her.

She has always let me email before and always responded. I don't know why she decided to change things this past year. It has felt pretty awful, since it has been combined with her taking alot more time off and me having to miss more sessions this past year too. We're already halfway through the year, and I've had to miss 6 sessions. Overall, i'm just noticing how she's not able to be there for me the way she used to, and i feel really sad.

Like i said, i haven't sent her ANY emails this past week. Last week, all i sent her was about 3 lines saying how i felt really sad about it, but i would accept that she can't always reply to me. So i guess i'm already on the road to not sending emails to her. But i just feel resigned or defeated somehow. I don't know why.