"Give me four week's notice if you decide to leave"

[THIS IS A HYPOTHETICAL SITUATION BASED ON PAST EXPERIENCE. I'M NOT LEAVING AT THE MOMENT]

Excuse my frankness, but this is a bloody stupid rule.

The patient thinks: "If I could bear to see you for four more weeks, I wouldn't be leaving!"

And if the therapist says, "It's bad for you to leave suddenly," the patient thinks, "What the **** do you know? If I trusted your judgement I wouldn't be leaving."

And if the therapist says, "You promised me four more weeks," the patient thinks, "That was before you deliberately humiliated me. Do you advise battered wives to go back to their husbands?"

And so the sad fact is, many patients leave without any kind of explanation.

Instead, let the therapist say, "Please, see me just ONCE more to tell me WHY you are leaving and so we can talk about where you might go next. If you are going to kill me, consider this a last request."

And maybe the patient might think, "OK, I've won the battle. She accepts I'm going. I guess it wouldn't cost me anything to tell her what a ***** she is."

So does your T have a four week rule? I can understand a T suggesting to a long term client that having time for "closure" would be good; but having it as a rule? I wouldn't be going to someone who had that

I am not sure I want to pay her just to tell her she is a jerk. I don't think they care if clients think they are at fault. I think they just put some label on the client indicating the client was at fault, take the money and go back to the rest of their day.

If the T offers you 4 free sessions, then great. Otherwise, it is up to you, the client, to decide how many sessions you will devote to closure because you hold the purse strings.

Wow...
Um... If it's a long term client I ask for one session to wrap up and get closure.

I had a T that I saw once, to see if she'd work with me. I disclosed my DID and she was all for working with me. She brings me in the next week to be like "Hey, how is it going?" And when I started to answer, she interrupted me and was like "I'm sorry, lets not get the cart before the horse, I'm not comfortable working with you". I completely SHUT DOWN like then why the **** did you bring me here? And then she CHARGED ME for a WHOLE session when we met for 15 minutes and all she did is 'break up with me'!!!

Whhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat

that's awful stormy!

ugh that's horrible stormy imagine if you'd then had to pay for a further four

if they were part of rules, they should be

When I entered into my unwritten contract with T and she also mentioned that I give her 4wks notice, it scared me. It was the first time someone was putting trust in me! She was giving me regular time slots for the unforesable future and would also need time to fill those times if I left. It felt a huge pressure because I had gone through life throwing the blame around for all my feelings and here qas someone giving me trust.

My T also said to me in the very beginning that whenever I'll want to close, I'll have to do three last sessions. Yes, exactly like a three weeks notice... when she said it time ago she talked about working with feelings, the need of a proper closure and so on, but the more I think about it the more it looks like.. well, just a money question.

Anyway, if I'd ever be so uncomfortable to the point of leaving, I think that I would pay for the three sessions and just not going at all... I don't see the point in seeing any more times somebody who hurted me/or who dismissed me. I would just pay what I promised and stop.

But since it's a verbal contract, I don't think you are forced to go or even pay if you don't want to. It's all up to you...

I guess if the T required 4 weeks notice and I didn't want to go to 4 more sessions, I would give notice and do just one last session, but I would cancel my appointments for the next 3 weeks, then do the last session a month after I gave notice. That way I would fulfill the "4 weeks notice" requirement but only have to pay for one last session. Also it would provide a cooling off period and time for the client to think about it in case they wanted to change their mind. I don't know if these Ts think money grows on trees or what. If the client wants to do 4 closure sessions, then great, but it seems inappropriate to require everyone to cough up money for 4 sessions if they want a briefer closure.

What is closure?

Yeah, a concept invented in the 1980's when everybody still had the time, energy and money for those last sessions to talk stuff out. You get closure when you are so tired of talking about something, it hurts more to talk any more about it, than the original incident ever did. Generally accepted now that closure is no longer a valid concept. I might be a little cynical. Stop paying your T bill, and they will find closure PDQ.

Yeah, a concept invented in the 1980's when everybody still had the time, energy and money for those last sessions to talk stuff out. You get closure when you are so tired of talking about something, it hurts more to talk any more about it, than the original incident ever did. Generally accepted now that closure is no longer a valid concept. I might be a little cynical. Stop paying your T bill, and they will find closure PDQ (pretty darn quick).

My T has never mentioned any 'rules' about leaving (or anything else?!) I've been seeing her a few months now, and she has always ended the session by asking "would you like to meet next week?" The choice is always mine (of course I always say yes!) No one can force you to pay X amount per hour for another 4 weeks if it's not working for you, surely? Would you go to a hairdressers, be unsatisfied with your style, but turn up and pay for another 4 appointments?

There seems to be a consensus here: you all agree with me!

I don't see any therapists posting here. I felt sure they would have something to say about it.

A therapist is still a customer service job. You - as the customer - get to decide if you are satisfied with the service which has been provided. A lot of jobs don't require 4 weeks notice if you choose to quit, so the idea of someone you are paying demanding that much just seems weird to me.

I don't think it is something they can enforce. But for me I do understand that my T keeps that slot open for me every week and in 20 months has only not been available for 2 sessions (not sure when he takes a holiday). His fee is his wages and in some ways I acknowledge that it is only fair to give notice so that T's are aware of the impact on their monthly salary (not sure how easy it is for them to get clients).

Also I also acknowledge that for me, my feelings can really cloud my judgement. I can get really messy in my head and sometimes it takes me a while to process things and see things more clearly. So for me the other benefit of giving notice is to protect me from jeopardising my progress through acting impulsively and just quitting in response to a triggered feeling.

I also know in my case, I have actually got a little worse since starting to see T - all sorts of old unhelpful coping mechanisms got triggered. I think this is because I have released some of those demons that live in my head, who previously I had managed to lock up. So again for me, I think to just quit now may leave me more vulnerable than before - I would see an extra 4 sessions as being used to make sure I have some other coping strategies in place and also to ensure I have self awareness / insight and knowledge of where I go next.

Somewhere underneath all this, there is also a deep respect for T (although I don't feel at all close to him right now) - and if I put myself in T's place, I wonder how it would be for someone who I had started to know deeply and maybe care about to just walk.

All of this would of course be negated if I knew that my reaction to T was in response to real justification and not just because T had touched some of my buttons.

That is very mature. But when the patient is angry and hurt and has lost hope, he might not be feeling very mature.