Emailing T even though she doesn't like me to email her

I am...it's not bothering me a ridiculous amount (yet). I'm doing some schoolwork and distracting myself with other stuff. So yay for me.

Maybe write her a letter telling her about the email you were.going to send her. Include the email note amd have her read it after session as you have important issues to talk with her about during this session. Then she can read it when she gets a chance and you therefore have not crossed her boundary.

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It sounds to me like your t's big issue is she doesn't have a lot of extra time, and you're pretty extroverted and good at communicating, so you're good at articulating a lot of good reasons why you could use extra time outside of your 50 minutes. Most people might not be able to articulate it, even if they had similar reasons. I don't know if I remember right, but has it been twice within a month that you've needed to ask? I don't think there's anything wrong with needing it or getting it from somewhere, but since your t said she can't provide it, I'd be nervous about pushing her to deal with too many of your issues at once. It seems like you wanted to keep the email long because you want to process a lot of details about the topic. It would be good to be able to process them, as well as to process what happened with your mother, but sometimes you just have to decide, unfortunately.

Hopefully I'm wrong and your t will be a little flexible, but it might be good to be prepared to decide to let go of one of the issues for now if you have to, and if it's possible for you to do so without any major immediate consequences. In your email, you said you might not be able to hold on to the issue until your next session, and I wasn't sure what you meant. I wasn't sure what you thought would happen. Maybe you meant you'd forget what you needed to say, or maybe you meant you'd have some other problems, but it seems like you're able to function okay.

Since you did email, I hope your t responds well, and I don't imagine she'll be terribly upset. I hope you won't feel terribly upset if she repeats her boundaries to you though. She could always just suggest that you deal with things like that in session, or wait until you have time to deal with them in the future.

On the topic of boundaries, here's an idea. If you do spend time on it in your next session, or if it comes up again in the future, do you think it would help if you substituted a question for this sentence?
"I have a need for you to be more mindful of the way you respond to me re. your boundaries." Maybe something like- "It would feel better to me if you could phrase it especially gently when you tell me about your boundaries. I don't think you mean to chastise me, but I'm not totally sure. Do you remember whether you were annoyed/upset with me when I asked for an extra session? [If so, there's another thing to discuss, but we're expecting she says no.] Would you be willing to phrase it gently when you tell me your boundaries, since I feel very sensitive about that?" I'm sure you could put this better in your own more natural words, but I hope that just asking it as questions might be more likely to get you the response you want.

T told me on Tuesday she would call/email me re. a phone check in once she had checked her schedule at work. I assumed "once she checked her schedule at work" meant yesterday, since she is usually prompt about these things.

Fast forward to today: nothing. And it's mildly irritating. I know it's probably because she's taking some time to process and figure out how to respond to the email I sent her, but it would really annoy me if she didn't follow through with what she said she would do just because I sent her that email.

I said I wasn't going to worry about this, and I'm not...well, not much. It is simply mildly irritating. I can deal with it. Just needed to vent.

Geez. Your T bothers me.

I was thinking about her commitment level, and the fact that she only operates her private practice one day a week makes me think she doesn't have a very high commitment to it. It might go near the bottom of her priority list, and she might not want to invest extra time into it. Which is unfortunate to her clients, since they get the short end of the time stick.

Her private practice is where she makes her real money. She has a full-time job with a provincially funded agency. I'm assuming that's why she has her private practice for the equivalent of one day a week (Tuesday evenings and Wednesday mornings), although she used to work Sundays too, but cut back to just Tuesdays and Wednesdays in January.

I think it's not about her; it's about me. She is usually super prompt at returning calls/emails, usually on her lunch break or before she starts work, and she's done phone sessions on her lunch break or in the evening before. I think she's just cutting back on her level of engagement with me because a phone session once in awhile is okay, but more than two or three times in the space of a couple of months is probably pushing it for her and she doesn't want me to be reliant on her.

But I am annoyed that she said she would get back to me about her availability and hasn't yet. When she told me last week she would email me about scheduling, she emailed me the next day on her lunch break; that level of promptness is pretty standard for her. A couple weeks ago when I asked her for a referral for a friend, she emailed me the next morning before she got into work, which I was pleasantly surprised by, since she told me she would email me over the next week rather than explicitly the next day.

So this is out of character for her, so it's probably me. There's nothing wrong with it if she's taking some time to figure out how to respond, but if she doesn't get back to me at all I will be annoyed.

She might have actually forgotten that she told me she would get back to me about a phone session - highly improbable since that's never happened before, but possible...I don't think she would ignore me on purpose. Or at least I hope she wouldn't.

Most T's don't purposely ignore their clients if they previously promised to do something for them.

Maybe she's feeling burnt out trying to handle a full time job, her family, and her practice. Maybe that's why she's pulled back on her practice and on her availability. It would be tough to be answering emails during lunch and handling crises in the evenings.

I know. She told me that's why she cut back on her hours and that's why she's getting stricter about out of session contact, which is fine because she's a person and has lots of responsibilities that are not me. Which is why I don't blame her for having super strict boundaries, because if every single one of her clients was calling/emailing between sessions, she would literally have no time to deal with anything else. I get that...

But this week she also told me she would do something and didn't do it, and she usually does things she told me she would do in a really timely manner, and she hasn't, and it's making me mildly anxious.

Her lack of response would be bothersome to me, too. I think that's justified.

And it's unfortunate that she's feeling burnt out because it ends up taking away from her energy and availability to her clients.

My intention here is not to get on your case in an unnecessarily harsh way, but I'm having some difficulty understanding why you think it's okay to email your T (or anyone) when they have asked you not to.

I don't see your emailing your T as a "mistake." I see it as a very deliberate, planned intentionally committed action, not intended to hurt her of course or perhaps even violate her boundary, but simply to get what you want. You posted your email here, revised it, and revised it again. You chose to send it consciously, after quite a bit of thought. How is that a "mistake?"

I really don't understand how doing something that someone asked you not to do-- and I don't think T's are any exception to this-- should engender a reaction from the other person that is anything but "upset." Of course someone is going to be upset if you did something you were asked not to do. To me it seems that the critical issue is that you need to be able to accept responsibility for what you've done and not expects others to give you a free pass because you're in such need.

You're not entitled to do what you want and then have people tell you that it's okay. If you want to violate someone's boundary-- which, personally, I would do anything to avoid doing, because I'm a CSA survivor-- you should at least expect to take your "lumps" for it. Otherwise, you're just pushing the problem off on her, as in the problem is that she gets upset, not that you violated her boundaries.

This is such a dysfunctional way to behave in interpersonal relationships. If you want to have healthy relationships, in or out of T, you need to respect others' boundaries. Or, when you violate them, you need to take accountability for that, and not make it about your need to have them not be upset about that. But most importantly, don't deliberately push at people's boundaries because you think your own needs are more important than what they are willing to offer you.

I think you need to look critically at your thinking around this issue, and how distorted it is. If you need a T who emails you outside of sessions, then go look for it. Don't try to force it on one who isn't willing though. That is just, well, wrong.

See, I would say it's unfortunate that she's feeling burnt out because she's a person, with a life, who got married a few months ago and is probably having difficulty finding enough time/energy to devote to her wife as well as to her clients, which is an unfortunate situation for anyone to be in.

And I agree, that is also unfortunate. But you can't sacrifice your own needs because of it.

I suspect she will come down hard on this boundary violation--and you may not be very happy with it at all. This IS all about you and why you would do such a thing... that is a topic for therapy and may take the time you needed to discuss what you felt was so important that you had to break that agreement.

You aren't the only patient she has...how long does it take to read one short email, much more a long one...and then to do what with it? She would just bring it back to session, maybe have you read out loud anyway so you can discuss it... so you've wasted time in addition to breaking a boundary. Plus she isn't being paid to read emails, is she? That's her personal time if she reads it...maybe taken from her family or her recharging time she needs to be able to work with patients all day.

Yes, imo, the topic will be why you felt you had to break that agreement, and how you're going to handle your contact issues in the future. (((hugs))) It's a tough one to learn, but you need to realize that therapy is WORK and part of that work is learning to sit with your feelings, writing them out for T yes but taking them with you to discuss in session.

Good wishes on this one hon.