Should I call my therapist or should he call me?

It would be really unusual for a T to use a personal number for work. Even if he does (improbable) he has the option of turning off his phone or screening his calls if it's not a good time. You don't have to worry about him. You cannot interrupt anything that he doesn't want you to interrupt.

Basic boundaries at their most very basic: it's ALWAYS ok to call or email for scheduling issues. Otherwise how would you ever make, change or cancel an appointment?

Cut and paste the little template from me or mastodon into an email for him and send. I promise it's okay.

No, I think it's hard, too. For instance, when I had just started seeing my T, he sent me a txt message about a scheduling issue. Some time later, when I had tried to leave messages on his broken answering machine, he said "But you have my mobile phone number, I know I have txted you. Why don't you use that number to message me?" I was all , because to me, that was a boundary thing, contacting him on his mobile phone rather than his office landline, and I would never have done that if he hadn't explicitly said it was ok.

It's best to just ask what's ok, I think. But if he has an email address on his website you can definitely use that to write him about scheduling.

Oh, and what Favorite Jeans said.

Good luck with your exam! *lyckospark*

Ok, I did it. I emailed him. I wrote the following (translation's a bit weird):

"Hi,

This is Neutrino.

Hope you've had a good vacation. I remember you told me you'd be back at the office today and since we agreed on getting in touch with each other to book a new appointment I thought I'd email you to see when you've got time. What day would suit you?

Thank you,

Neutrino"

I hope that was good enough. I guess the ball is in his court now. Thanks for helping me out with this. I know contacting your therapist is a seemingly simple thing to do but I think it's very difficult. Anyway, it's done now. That's good.

Oh and thank you, Mastodon, for wishing me good luck. I'll need it. Exams make me anxious.

Nice job! You did great. It was scary and figured it out.

Thank you.

nice work! I hope you hear back shortly.

Well done

Seriously, thank you all. It's really nice to get such great support. I really appreciate it (probably more than you think). I probably wouldn't have contacted him today if it wasn't for you.

Well done, I hope you hear from him soon

I get it - I totally hate talking on the phone.

Great job! I totally get it, I hate talking on the phone...I tend to write scripts and then pray I get voicemail. Yes, for most people, making a phone call or contacting someone to schedule an appointment is easy, but for those of us with anxiety, it's like climbing Mt. Everest.

Hey neutrino, this whole thread motivAted me to make a call that I've been DREADING for weeks. I figured to be fair to you I should actually take my own advice! My hands were shaking and if I hadn't been in a somewhat public place I would have cried after hanging up but... I did it and I'm glad it's done! So thanks!

I'm a bit too late to jump in and say "Call him!", but I'm glad you found a way to reach out. I remember a time when that was one of the bravest and scariest things for me to do. And I just wanted to say that I used to have extreme anxiety about calling anyone when I first began therapy. In fact, I'd never call anyone at all, ever.

I didn't have a G.P when I first started therapy and none of them were taking on new patients, and one of the very first things my therapist asked me to do was make a call (to follow up a letter she'd written to a G.P). I sat with the phone in my hand for about three hours, terrified and obsessively going over every possible negative, slightly negative, and even just a teeny tiny bit negative scenario before making call. The call turned out to be easy (and as I found out at my next appointment, it was because my therapist had decided it was such a big ask and she called and had me accepted as a patient first).

Anyway, what I just wanted to say that these days I pick up the phone without much of a second thought. Though for me, there is still a little bit of anxiety about reaching out to a therapist by phone or any other way. But it really is possible to change those types of anxieties in a big way if you push yourself.

I'm not sure why talking on the phone scares me so much. I don't even like talking on the phone with people I know. I guess I find it difficult to know exactly when it's my turn to talk and when calling people I don't really know (my therapist for example) I just get really anxious and fear that I'll forget what I'm supposed to say or that the words won't come out right. I usually write things down before calling someone but that doesn't really work out a lot of the time because as soon as someone asks me something that I can't answer with my "script" I get a bit stressed out.

Oh and well done, Favorite Jeans! I'm happy this thread motivated you to make that call. Maybe next time I'll be brave, like you, and call my therapist instead of emailing him (though emailing is better than nothing).

I think you did the right thing by reaching out. I just found that I really identified with what you were going through when you were considering making the phone call, all of the what ifs and I shoulds. From your posts, it seemed like there were so many things you were saying to yourself that fed into that anxiety. I don't mean that as a criticism at all, I just recognise how hard it is to reach out when those things that you're telling yourself are what you believe.

I find that now, looking back, those things I said to myself, back when I was in that moment of anxiety, were really important.

I hope you have an answer soon if you don't yet. A month long break can feel like such a long time, I find.

Well, my therapist just replied and suggested a time for next week. Had to turn it down since I have a mandatory lecture I need to attend at university that time. I'm starting a new class tomorrow and I worry it'll be difficult finding times when both my therapist and I are available. Sometimes I really don't know how I'm supposed to study and be in therapy at the same time.

EDIT: Ok, we found an early morning session that works for us both. Not until the 12th though.

Sorry, that sounds stressful. Could you email your therapist with the times you will likely be free, or aren't you sure of when that is yet? I've just started a couple of uni courses as well. In some ways I'm lucky that I can take so many by distance through my uni, but distance works out to be quite hard in other ways.

When I turned down the time my therapist suggested he asked what times next week that work for me. I suggested a few times and he picked the one on Thursday. Hopefully I'll know more about what times I can do coming weeks after the class has actually started tomorrow. It just scares me a little bit that I haven't been in therapy for a month (which has been tough), that it's another week and a bit until I get to see my therapist and then it'll soon be time for Christmas break and I'll have to handle things completely on my own again.

I'm sorry, I don't mean to complain. This just worries me and I just wanted to tell someone. Hope that's ok.

EDIT: May I ask what you're studying by the way?

That's a really understandable worry. I'm having to scale back because I can't afford weekly sessions, then I'll have a three week Christmas break and then maybe one session before another three week/four week break, I think. I'm not looking forward to that at all.

My major is in psychology, which I really love. We don't have many courses to choose from in our current summer semester (most students don't study during the summer semester here), so I'm currently taking a philosophy course and a medical anthropology course. How about you?

I understand you're not looking forward to the breaks. Just thinking about the coming break makes me very worried.

Anyway, psychology sounds nice. I like psychology. It's interesting. Have you read any books you like that someone who's not studying psychology but still thinks it very interesting (like me) could read? Are all your classes by distance/online or are you taking classes at the university as well?

I'm studying/majoring in biomedicine. Had the final exam in my biochemistry class today and the class that starts tomorrow is a class in anatomy, which I'm looking forward to.

My university is spread out over the country and most of the papers in my major can only be taken internally in other parts of the country, so I'm mostly distance. I started off with only internal papers though (and I find it hard to keep up the same motivation with everything by distance). Hmm, I'm not sure about a good book to recommend as I've mostly stuck with text books, and the psych ones are honestly all pretty easy to dip into. I don't have a science background at all, but I've just finished a biological psychology course...and I'm trying not to think too much about the exam result which are just about due.

I guess at least studying is a little bit distracting during the therapy breaks. Funnily enough, my therapist often disappears around exam time. What are our therapist thinking, taking multiple weeks off just before or just after the Christmas break!

Okay, cool. Good luck on the exam!

No idea. But they deserve breaks too I guess.