T on purpose

I see all these posts about peoples therapists not responding to emails , texts and phone calls.. What do you Guys write about? I don't even have my therapists email and I don't have the ability to text her. I have only called once. Being so dependent on your therapist cannot be healthy...unless there is a therapy that specifically requires this.

Sure it can be healthy. Depending on a helping professional for help can be a very healing experience, as it has been for me. We don't all fit into the 50 minutes once a week mold, and many therapists are open to some between-session contact.

There are many types of therapy where more frequent contact is seen as useful, like DBT, or many issues where more frequent contact can be extra-helpful, such as doing intensive trauma work. Traditional psychoanalysis was set up to occur at least three times per week for example.

In my therapy, I pay for email sessions as well as live ones and have seen tremendous improvement in problem behaviors I had as well as doing trauma work and in many other ways too.

My T was inconsistent in replying to my emails. It was very hurtful.

For a while, I thought he was purposefully not replying as sort of a "grand gesture of caring"... but the reality was that he either forgot about my email, or wasn't able to reply because he was too busy with other clients or his personal life. Unintentionally on his part, I had to face the painful truth that T meant the world to me, but I was just a small part of his. It was helpful in the long run

I want to thank you for this post because it may be the most helpful thing I've ever read on here. You've helped me make sense of something I've been wrangling with - thank you!

This question comes up all the time here. I never confronted my therapists about this and don't know if they do or not. If he does insignificant manipulations here and there to benefit me, I'm ok with that because I trust him. But I probably wouldn't want to know.

Now that i'm revisiting this topic though, I wonder if this relates to the provide nurturance, withhold nurturance scenerios I described in one of my recent threads "he drives me crazy sometimes"? Oh well...I'm dealing with too many negative feelings lately to think about that right now. At the same time, reading posts here helps me avoid focusing too much on those same negative emotions..

Well, this is a lot different than making someone purposely sad or mad or whatever. It's a pretty good article.

Sailing between support and insight in therapy | Reidbord's Reflections

And people wonder why I consider those therapist people to be wily sick ****ing bastards.

Yes absolutely.
I spot it from time to time. Cant get myself to respond though as I am meek as god knows what.
I also fear been let go too much. Cant get to grip with it yet.

I joked with her that she did. I had a rough weekend after a Friday session and I said something about her triggering me on purpose. But it wasn't true at all, I knew that, like I said just joking.

I personally think that most skilled, well-trained therapists do not purposely manipulate their clients feelings/emotions in the way you mentioned, but like all relationships, mistakes, missed opportunities and miscommunications are made over the course of time and are part of good therapy. A good and skilled therapist won't overlook or brush these situations aside; she will want to talk about them and process them you. I think that dealing with the feelings that arise over the typical "mistakes" that happen in therapy are part of the healing. For me, it's been an opportunity to feel the sting of being hurt by someone I care about, having the chance to actually speak frankly of what that person did that hurt me, have that person keenly listen (and I mean listen rather than interrupt or concentrate on how they're going to respond), to have that person understand that hurt on a deep and personal level, to validate that hurt AND most importantly, apologize for hurting me and meaning it! That situation has been so healing for me and has helped me to return that gift to other people I interact with outside of therapy.

One poster mentioned that his/her therapist admitted to canceling an appointment on purpose in order to push her client into confronting and dealing her feelings around an appointment being cancelled (abandonment). If a client has issues with abandonment, I don't think there needs to be any manipulation; the feelings will rise up without this type of technique. I have to admit that this kind of manipulation is not something I would be happy to hear (And I wanted to say to the poster of this comment that I am sincerely not trying to attack or dump on your therapist--I realize that many people would be fine with this type of technique). The reason it bothers me is that I view it as a true manipulation. I've found that there are enough "real" in-session mistakes and miscommunications to be a teaching moment. I have a hard time with knowing that people I care about would purposefully do something that causes distress--no matter how mild in order to elicit feelings in me.