How often is your therapist late?

My T is usually late about 5 minutes, I don't mind as I know she is a busy woman.
I do have a read until she comes to get me.

For years I was his first evening appointment. He was always 5 minutes late and I waited for him outside the building. Because I was paying a reduced fee, I was sure he just didn't care enough to show up in time, but was too afraid to ask, since I thought I wasn't entitled to, paying so little. One day I found the courage to tell him and he reassured me that he is always late with his first appointment. That was kind of reassuring, but not entirely. Because his appointments are 45 minutes long and with no interval in between, I would get really annoyed hearing the bell ring and having his next patient waiting in the waiting room. Luckily, I am not anymore his first appointment, so it's better!

Hope you can talk things through with your T, because I know how frustrating this situation can be.

Usually when my T is late it is because she has went over the appointment time with a client and is running behind. It's roughly 5-15 minutes of waiting but she doesn't deprive me of my full session so I don't mind.

No break between clients?! How is it possible? I'd guess that then every client loses 1-2 minutes but also T has no time to "switch" from one to another person, make notes etc... But maybe it works

My T has been late twice but for max 5 min Once it was due to the previous client and once because she scheduled an appointment with me at 9 am (her first slot) and she came 9:05, said that the train was late and that she always schedules her first appointments for 9:15 in case of late train but she had forgotten to tell me - she apologized few times in both cases.

But my previous T... The worst/funniest thing happened twice, when I came to the waiting room and there was another person sitting... When T finished the previous session and came out, he became pale... The second person also was supposed to see him... He apologized me and said (or maybe ask but it was obvious that I had to agree) that first he'll see another person because it's only for 5-10 min... As he is also a pdoc, he is seeing also clients of other Ts in his clinic but only for 5-10 minutes so he does it between his regular clients... Twice he forgot about seeing them during the break, that's why there was an overlap... I was okay with it, but felt sorry for these other clients that he forgot about them...

I couldn't vote in this one as there are too many different ones I could have answered! My T did once not turn up to a session. He wasn't in that day and all his other clients had been called, except me. That was annoying but it has never happened since.

He also used to be at least 15mins late quite frequently. I'm his first appointment of the day and he was always getting stuck in traffic.

After a while he shifted the time by 15 mins so he would have more chance of getting there on time, now it's pretty rare that he is late but then again I'm normally about 5mins late so who knows lol

My ex therapist was almost always at least 15 minutes late and frequently 30 minutes late. Sometimes even an hour late. It was pretty stressful for me. My new therapist might run five to ten minutes late.

Madame T was late only once in all the time I knew her.
Mr T was never late, but I saw him for only a year.

Rarely ever on time, usually 6-13 minutes late for 5 + years of 4x/ week psychoanalysis.

I think she did on purpose. Drove me nuts.

My T is never late. He sometimes warns me if he thinks he could be due to traffic but he's über cautious with it and never has been. He once left a course half an hour early to make sure he was on time for me.

Regular lateness would be a deal breaker for me.

I am the one that runs late.....always....T has never been late & is always waiting for me to get there.....

Seems like there is always something that my dogs do to get me distracted or deal with a mess right before I'm ready to leave for anything.....it's like they know I'm trying to go somewhere & they don't want me to leave.

Mostly I get there right on time.....but sometimes I'm up to 5 minutes late. I have actually never had a T who hasn't been on time even when I had special sunday afternoon sessions with the T I had in Calif....he was always there when I got there.

Sometimes I know that emergencies do come up for them in dealing with patients in the hospital or other issues....but mostly it's THEIR JOB....so they are expected to be there on time when others are depending on their timely being there.

Unlike my engineering job where I could pretty much come & go as necessary as long as the job got done or I was there to interface when necessary....a lot different than having clients that depend on the time being accurate.

LOL, yes that's funny! I guess my T, at 73, is both a workaholic and has the experience not to 'need' a break between sessions? Don't know. At first, I found it strange, but now it doesn't bother me.. Oh, and he NEVER takes notes, but remembers everything

All Ts need a break between sessions in my opinion, for their sake and yours. Plus a break stops clients running into each other.

He's been late a few times. Once about 2 hours late after forgetting to write the session in his calendar. Another time about 30 mins when he was reading his daughter a bedtime story.

I tend to be a little obsessive when it comes to time, and so I also find it a little difficult when T is late. I know that she has multiple jobs, as well as kids and their activities, so she is not at her office all day. However, there have been a few times when I arrive to the office before she does and I am never more than a couple of minutes early, 5 at most. This does temporarily bug me, but what I think is nice is that T is a bit of a clock watcher too. Not in the way that she focuses on the clock throughout our hour, but in the sense that she makes sure that if she's five minutes late, I get the five minutes added at the end of the session as long as that fits into my schedule. In addition, she is always really great about letting me finish up my thoughts or activities before we leave which sometimes takes us over our allotted time. I remember one day we were on the floor playing and talking when suddenly we both looked up and realized that we were almost fifteen minutes over our time slot She laughed and said she got lost in me, which I thought was really nice.

My therapist has never been late. I dunno if I could respect a therapist that is always or frequently late to sessions.

my therapist is always 5 - 10 mins late and it drives me nuts

Though I did have a therapist I used to go to who was very irresponsible, and was at LEAST 15 mins late to EACH appointment. One tim she was 20 minutes late and I just about had it. I never saw her again. So disrespectful to make a client wait for 20 minutes, when I'm her first client of the day.

I have only had two T's. The first one ran 10-15 minutes late almost every single time. The current one also runs 10-15 minutes late. It is always because T goes over with the client before me. I do get my full time and appreciate that, BUT it's annoying and, even after all this time, I always start second guessing myself "did T forget? did I come at the wrong time? and such. I kinda thought all T's run late, but this survey is showing not so!

I find it strange that people consider 1 or 2 minutes late. I would still class that as on time. Theres usually a certain amount of grace

This is "my" appointment type as well. I am scheduled every Wednesday at 9:30 AM. My therapist does have one appt before me and I may have waited an extra five minutes once. It's neither here nor there an extra few minutes.

To the OP, IMHO if a therapist is regularly going "over" maybe suggest they consider scheduling their appts farther apart.

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I love this poll and all the responses.
T is almost never late - Only a couple of times in several years and both times he went out of his way to make sure I was informed and that we "processed" his lateness. T always wants to analyze the crap out of any tardiness whether it's his or mine. I do see the value in that sometimes but, occasionally, life happens.
Traffic happens. And flat tires. T denies it when I point out that he's always looking for hidden, ulterior motives to my lateness yet dismisses his own as understandable, unavoidable inconveniences of everyday life.

So, when I was late because my tire blew out on the way, it was really because I was mad at him. When T is late, sometimes his car is just his car

My T/Pdoc used to be 30-45 minutes late every session, when I saw her during the day and 15-20 minutes late if I was her first client of the day. I got fed with waiting in front of the building and never schedule 10 am sessions anymore. I also when she's that late, there's someone in the waiting room for most of my session and I hate that as I feel rushed to get out of there.
I never really addressed it with her as I just see it as part of her personality and on mondays when we're waiting as a group we joke about it and make bets about how long she will be.

I wonder though if some clients complained about it as for the past 2-3 months she's never been more than 10 minutes late and I noticed she includes little breaks between clients. Maybe she realized she had to change something.

I once worked with a T who was consistently very late (between 1/4 hour to an hour every session). It was often easy to forgive (perhaps too easy to forgive) because she also gave far more time than was ever paid for (ie: a 3 hour session instead of 1/2 an hour).
She was an unethical therapist in more ways than one, but that is a very hard thing to see when you are the client that she devotes her time to. I know there were complaints about her but I don't know if her license was ever revoked or not.

my T is always exactly 5 min late so I know she does it on purpose. she use to always be on time but then it was always late so my sessions are 40 min long . although sometimes she will go over for 5 min.

Not in therapy when it's important for the T to be present, available and ready for the session.