No out of session contact

I agree about the idea of a therapist allowing something. I do not think of it like any professional allows me to do anything. I would not continue to see a therapist who spoke in such terms. On the other hand I do understand about professional boundaries (like a dentist or attorney or whatever) and know that if any client becomes too annoying to anyone they hire, the person hired may decide to quit representing them.

But I also know I am not available to clients or students 24 hours a day and I do make determinations about when to call back.
If a client is calling me at home or at all hours of the night, I talk to them about it and if it continues, I tell them to find another attorney (the small client base I still have are criminal defendants and people who have been diagnosed with some mental disease or defect - our statutory terms - and they are often quite anxious/confused/angry etc and call repeated numbers of times during a day and through the night. I can easily get 15 calls in a row overnight from a person who has just been placed on an involuntary mental health hold).
With students I do not always answer emails right away. There is a tendency on the part of some students to hit a snag and email right off the bat - so I have found if I wait a few hours or until the next day - they have resolved the problem on their own and moved on. (I do tell them right up front my email policies).

I would not contact either to assist if there was an actual and immediate emergency. First, one of them already has a message about if there is an emergency, to go to the ER. Second, they probably would not get back in time for any emergency to not have already been taken care of by me. I might contact if I thought reporting about the emergency would help me in any way. If there is a super big deal going on, I call and see if there is an appointment I can make. One of the ones I see works during the first part of the week and the other during the second, so I would choose the one that fit in with the part of the week I was in when the situation arose.

I really wish that I could do that with my Therapists right now.

My T offered out of session contact almost immediately, but I didn't take him up on it for several months - maybe even up to a year?

I could if I wanted to but never felt like it- I never contact him apart from scheduling texts/mails. But really, I go twice a week, so there's no need to do so.

No outside contact at all with my T unless i am going thru a bad patch and then i'm put on a "crisis plan" where outside contact is permitted via email,text,calls etc until i am feeling stable again and then it's back to no contact in between sessions. It's actually a good system, i feel safe in the knowledge that she'll be there for me if i need it but i get to practice dealing with things myself all other times.

I had a T who allowed contact anytime, any place and it wasn't good for me. It definitely fostered an unhealthy dependance on her.

Mine tells me to reach out anytime if I need to, but never gave me guidelines as to what warrants contact. Most of my emails are not responded to, but if warranted he brings it up in session when I get there next.

I kind of figure if I am ever sitting on a rooftop contemplating a jump, I might consider calling him then.

I have two Ts and I answered no. Simply because I have never contacted either of them outside of session. My personal t is not allowed to have contact with clients per the hospital policy. My ED t has different rules within the ED program. I've always felt funny about contacting her outside of session- even though she has told me that I am allowed to. Just don't feel as if I should or that I'm truly allowed to. I'd rather contact my personal t instead.

My T only permits contact out of session for scheduling purposes only or to request/schedule an "emergency" session. I do not have his cell phone or personal email address, only his office number, website email.

I use to be able to email my t when I first started seeing her. Now I can't contact her out of session. It is really hard between sessions now.

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I have a number where i can call the clinic manager but not T

T really only says Hello to me. Then we walk into the room in silence and I hand her the money. Then it's up to me to initiate the chat usually. Then she says ok we'll pick it up again next week. That's all the contact we have. Sometimes I wish she would talk to me a bit more before and after sessions.

I just wanted to ask if you are sure about your therapists' beliefs and policies about this. I guess you probably are since in some of your other posts on this thread it kind of sounded like he has talked about it a lot. In this post, if he only mentioned boundaries, I wondered if he might consider them to be flexible.

Anyway, if you are sure he doesn't allow any out of session contact then I agree with you, it would seem a little cold or patronizing. I've known of therapists who worked in agencies where no contact was the rule, so I can imagine it would seem like a norm to some therapists. Like you, I haven't ever seriously wanted to contact my t outside of session. But it makes me feel better when they offer it, at least a little. A couple of t's said after the first meeting that I should call them if I needed. Even though I didn't know them enough to feel very comfortable doing so, and I assumed there could quickly be some boundaries discussed if I did call them, it made me feel slightly more comfortable that they offered. Another t included condolences or other sentences besides just scheduling issues in her texts a few times, which also makes me feel more like she cares.

So I think it's too bad your therapist may be a little cold in this respect, but if you like him otherwise and find him to be caring enough in session, and you don't think you'll need to contact him out of session, then maybe it's an okay trade off. Would you talk to him about how you feel about it?

I would hate hate hate if I didn't have the option to contact T. I've gone weeks without communicating with her between sessions but when I have a need, it is really important that I'm invited to either call or text her. I can't imagine not having access to her when I need it.

Learning, good questions and thanks! And I love that you've had Ts who've offered out of session contact per se, no strings attached - and while you might not have felt comfortable enough with them initially, as you say, the offer itself means something positive.

Unfortunately I have spoken with T about this - several times - his way of explaining it is that during the hour we are together, he is totally there for me, in his words 'anything goes', but the trade off for that willingness to be totally present and accept whatever I bring in (anger included - which is important to me) is his keeping the rest of his life quite separate from therapy. I do get that and hope that in the long run making do with the one (miserable not enough hardly conducive to attaching lol) hour a week will be therapeutic in its own way.

He certainly is worth staying with, and I suppose he's good (compared to the umpteen previous Ts I've seen) precisely because he has this sort of boundary? I am working subtlely on getting a second weekly session, but I think I'm on a hiding to nothing there too .

I also hear your very good suggestion of talking to him about my feelings about this, that's sort of on my 'list of difficult things I ought to but don't want to bring up in therapy'. Opens up big cans of worms

Skyblue, I know I'd feel like you do here, but as I don't have that option, I need to find a way to live with it and get the most from therapy despite really wanting that.

Thanks everyone for your comments on this thread, it's been really helpful and very interesting

My T encourages email between sessions if I need to, but he responds only enough to say "thanks for the email" because he prefers to leave all the discussion for his office. I have emailed my T twice, both times to disclose something I wanted to discuss but couldn't find the strength in person. Email has allowed me to become much closer to my T than if I didn't have it. I'm thankful he allows it.

I didn't understand the answer choices, so I guessed mine should be changed from "depends on the circumstances" to "yes" as I have permission and ability to contact our leave a message at any time, I just choose not to unless it's something that cannot wait. About 2 weeks ago I called a few times hoping just to leave a message but she had picked up.
If there's something that I want to let her know but don't need to talk about before the next session, then I write in my blog and just leave a message asking her to check it before our next session.
I'm sure if I became overly needy or crossed any lines, she would tell me. She also does not check her vm when not in the office, but the organization has a crisis line that I can call if I really needed to talk to someone in the moment. I have not yet called that number.

IMHO, contact with my doc/therapist outside of my appointments is inappropriate.

Edited to add that contacting my doc's/therapist's assistant for meds or for a crisis is okay.

I likened emailing T to a toddler needing to follow 'mother' in every room she went in.
T said she's resilient and my emails and needs won't destroy her. It was important for me to experience that.
Over the yrs my email contact lessoned.

I get a in touch with my therapist if my bipolar gets hard to manage. High or low. It was at her request that I get a hold of her. I try to make sure it is very important before I call. Sometimes I leave it too long.

I can contact my T as needed, but I reserve it for times I really cannot personally work through something and I'm in crisis. I suspect if I abused phone calls, he'd let me know. He has excellent boundaries.

Only phone contact if I need hospitalization but thats only if I get ahold of her monday, wednesday, friday when she's w/o a client. She has email but anything that I e-mail is put in my file and she doesn't really care for bulky files. So I can leave her notes if I'm in the area but other than that nothing.

My therapist encourages me to write her anytime I want or "need" to, though I don't personally see it as a need but it helps to not feel alone so much and overwhelmed as I work through symptoms, memories, day to day stressors. It has definitely helped my therapy progress faster, the ability to contact her frequently, but she charges for email sessions, so sometimes I feel nickeled and dimed for the extra contact, though I certainly don't blame her for charging! I respect her time, I just wish I'd win the lottery already.

However, she will not charge me for brief check ins, a paragraph or two, it's just I usually end up writing in depth.

I agree that contacting a T outside of session is inappropriate in most circumstances. Allowing clients this open door contact fosters dependence and that is the opposite of what T is supposed to do. It is also not fair to the T since they too have a right to a private life and need to decompress just like we do. Think of how many clients they have and what their lives and emotional states would be like to be on call so much. It's not cold, it's setting boundaries that are healthy for you and them.

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Okay, there are some assumptions here: let me say first, some clients may be too dependent to the point where it may harm their development, but some of us aren't used to being nearly dependent enough, and having someone trustworthy to foster a good understanding and experience of necessary human interdependence is quite healing.

Second, therapists are responsible for giving themselves enough time to decompress and enjoy their private lives. They are grown-ups, skilled at taking care of themselves (with good therapists, anyway), and I trust mine to set healthy boundaries for herself- it's not my job to worry about those. She has been in practice 20 years... if she can not have a healthy therapeutic relationship by this point, r'uh roh.

Finally, not all therapists have tons of clients either or have to be on-call to allow between session contact. Just because I can reach out to my therapist does not mean she is waiting 24/7 by the computer or phone for my call, haha!

I'm allowed to call and he'll call back that day, but he doesn't use email for confidentiality. Last week was the one week since I started seeing him in August that he's been calling me a few times during the week to see how I was doing after I had a crisis.

I can be in touch anytime. It is great - but not in the way I would have assumed. I find that being allowed to contact her whenever means I work far harder at my therapy than if I was able to shove it all into a little box and trot it out once a week.

I don't know. I guess it's like I know what a stonkingly huge opportunity it is, to have this decent person truly trying to help me and be there for me as much as she can - so then when I feel myself detaching and wanting to pull away to the far side of **** and shut down on ALL interpersonal relationships...then I get the little voice reasoning with me that that would be very foolish, and to reach out and nip the withdrawal in the bud. So, that's why in between session contact is a pretty vital component of my therapy, right now anyway. Maybe once my attachment issues chill the **** out and I stop trying to run away I won't need it so much.