[OliviaC]

Does your t take e-mails? I ask because my pdoc who used to be my therapist also, allowed e-mails and would answer me back. I used to e-mail her after sessions sometimes when I had trouble talking to her face. It was easier and I could express myself in an e-mail.

Well now I have a different t whom I like quite a lot but she won't take e-mail. She said to call her between sessions if I need to but it's not the same, if you know what I mean.

Now my pdoc doesn't want e-mails either, because she answers back every time "I have read that and please call me if you want to discuss (fill in blank) before I see you next". My pdoc and psychologist both work in the same place and can't help wonder if they just decided together that it's too much bother to answer an e-mail. I would sometimes e-mail my pdoc once or twice a week. Oh what is wrong with me? I am expecting too much of them. Now I am rambling.......but why do some accept e-mails and others don't? My current t says she wants me to call her also if I need to between sessions. Should I call them? They both said phone calls not e-mail. :-(

My T used to take e-mails but has stopped because she is concerned about personal information getting out on the internet and into the wrong hands.

[sidony]

My therapist didn't list an email address on his business card, so I never asked him for one. Although I'm much better at writing than talking I figured it was better for me to call him since I'm always anxious about phone calls (social anxiety thing I guess). I get the impression that's what he prefers. If he took email I'd be tempted to write too much.

Sidony

[sunrise]

Olivia, no my therapist does not accept e-mails. He has an answering machine available if I need to call, and then he will phone me back later that day. I have only called him once to talk, not counting when I had to call to make or cancel an appointment. The time I called him to talk, our conversation lasted exactly 1 minute and 19 seconds, according to my cell phone. I am actually glad my T doesn't allow e-mails, because I think I might be tempted to use it instead of learning to express my deepest thoughts outloud with him in session.

My guess as to why my T doesn't allow e-mails (besides the above) is it sucks up too much of his time. You pay for 50 minutes of his time with your fee, not for extra time for him to spend reading and responding to your e-mails. I hope that doesn't sound too harsh, but I can totally relate to this. At work I spend way too much time writing and answering e-mails instead of doing "real work."

[WinterRose]

My psychiatrist takes emails but does not respond. My therapist started taking them after she found out I wrote him. Sometimes my therapist will respond with a good for you or a hang in there, but she also worries about privacy. So if I send the email that's ok because it's my choice about privacy - but not for her. My psychiatrist is too busy to respond, but does read them. He says to call, too.

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I am actually glad my T doesn't allow e-mails, because I think I might be tempted to use it instead of learning to express my deepest thoughts outloud with him in session.

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My problem with the above is that I'm a slow to respond. It usually takes a little time for something to sink in before I have a reaction to it. Although, I agree it would behoove me to learn to express deeper things in session and not hide behind the words. Guess I should have a second session a few hours after the first, huh?

[sunrise]

WinterRose, I'm actually the same way as you. I'm slow to respond in session. I go home and write about the session in my journal and process the events and what was said. Then I come back to the next session with all sorts of things to say.

[Sunshine31]

Well I guess my experience with my T is not the norm because I can email him anytime and he answers each and every one of them. He actually encourages me to email him and call him if I need him whether it be for support or to send him my writings. I do a lot of writings about our sessions or things that have come up or been triggered for me and he said it is so helpful for him to have my writings so that he can understand where I am coming from and some of my distorted thinking. I too don't always express myself well in person so knowing that I can email him anytime between sessions helps.

I also know that I can pretty much get in contact with him anytime of day or night because he uses email with most of his clients in between sessions as his hours of work are odd and therefore encourages email. Sometimes it is just a "hang in there" or "good for you" and other times it is so much more in depth and to me it makes me feel like he is more of a human being who actually cares about me. I have had other T and Pdocs who have not even said to call them in between or if I did call they wouldn't call me back so this type of support is great for me.

[WinterRose]

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sunrise said:
WinterRose, I'm actually the same way as you. I'm slow to respond in session. I go home and write about the session in my journal and process the events and what was said. Then I come back to the next session with all sorts of things to say.

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I usually forget by the next session - two weeks (or four with the psychiatrist) is soo long. And all the emotion goes out of it - I get detached. Do you bring your journal with you?

[jbug]

I would love to be able to email my T. I have even told him he needs to open a hotmail account just so I can email him. He laughed and said no you can call me. I would like to be able to email him after hours so that I can do that instead of having to call the after hours people cuz most of them have their heads up their you know what's. I have never had a T that let me email them they have always told me to call. Except one he told me if I had anything to tell him between sessions to write it and mail it not to call unless it was to cancel an appointment.

Jbug

my t said something last time about how he would sort out his email accounts and that we could email each other over his break. he said a couple of other things... i think he has been reading about email therapy and has come around to the idea. i guess different therapists feel differently about it. some probably aren't all that computer competent (in which case typing might well be a time consuming exercise). others probably aren't used to communicating in that way (and they feel more comfortable over the phone). i much prefer emailing to talking over the phone though. i hope it works out okay for him too. i guess there is the security issue too. hard to find the appropriate balance between being careful and being paranoid.

i've been wondering whether gmail chat could be used or if that would be a bad idea... not sure.

[Sunshine31]

The security issues that you are all referring to is confusing me....are you talking about others in your T's family say being able to read your emails or something along that line?

Just curious and unsure.....??

Well... Hard to strike the balance between paranoia and a wise degree of caution...

Yeah, I wouldn't send him anything personal to an address where other members of his family had access to the account.

I wouldn't send him anything personal from an address where my employers etc have access to the account either. I know that people have lost their jobs because of their employers reading their outgoing / incoming mail (therapy sessions).

I'm not sure about encryption and the like... I don't really understand what all that is about.

I think it is about how easy / hard it is to intercept someones mail.

I'd also want to know what t is planning on doing with the conversations. Merge them together to make a book? Print them out on paper and put them in his filing cabnet? Agree never to show anybody else without my permission (and accept that they would have to do so if ordered by a judge or whatever too)

[Sunshine31]

Okay I understand now.

I can tell you that I email a lot with my T and before we started it was agreed that I would not email from my work, I would use my home computer only, it would go to his personal email address which only he has access to and he ensured me is password protected. I also asked him to confirm with me in writing what that he would not show my writings or emails to anyone and if he prints them that they are to become part of my file only and our communications are still protected by patient/doctor privilege.

Trust me, before I sent that first email I had all my basis covered and now I feel safe with sending him emails.

I just wanted others to know what I have done to ease my own mind with regard to the security issue.

[sunrise]

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WinterRose said:
I usually forget by the next session - two weeks (or four with the psychiatrist) is soo long. And all the emotion goes out of it - I get detached. Do you bring your journal with you?

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WinterRose (pretty name), my sessions are usually weekly, and I use my journal to help remind me of my thoughts so forgetting is not a problem. Maybe detachment is a little bit. But what I speak about in session leads to novel stuff, so time to experience that fresh. No, I don't bring my journal to sessions with me. It's not like I want to read from it or anything. And I definitely don't want T to read from it. If it seems like I will have problems remembering something I want to say, I just make a few notes on a post it and review it before I go into the session. I don't want to seem "scripted." My notes are really just a prompt or memory jog, and I never take them out during session.

[Talulah]

Well, my t initiated the email by recommeding it after i was struggling to determine what topic we should talk about in session. She suggested I email her if I felt like it in between session (which then was 2 weeks) and she would pick up my "clues" and decide for me what we were to talk about since I hated that choice.

She was very cautious to tell me that this will in no way "replace" our therapy and should not deter me from seeing her in person, which I think she feared at first. She also said that whatever i said in email was gonna be brought up in session......

I went to town with this. I process a day or two after therapy so I get the happiness or the high or the upsetedness afterward and found email to be a great tool in explaining where my head is at away from therapy. I am a good verbal expressor but also articulate in writing so I took to this.

She likens it to having hours of therapy away from her, which for me is good because I'm thinking and compartmentalizing and getting the thoughts out of my head. She then feels like she understands me better.

Not sure if I like it as much as before. I am not concerned with the privacy as nobody who'd read it on her end would know me anyway. On my end, no security issues. She prints them all off, deletes the masil and puts the copy in my file. I see she has written notes on them sometimes.

She doesn't correspond to me unless it's something like, read this book, or are we still on for tuesday or something like that. She has sent a hang in there, and an "I'm not going anywhere" which I reread and I like.

I send freaking novels now and I bet she wishes she never recommended it, lol, really they can get to 3 or 4 pages......too much to ever bring up in one session. I told her I was sorry they were so long but she said, if she wished to not receive them she would tell me. She also likes very much how expressive I can be with my writing and my emotions.

[sidony]

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sunrise said:
,,,my sessions are usually weekly, and I use my journal to help remind me of my thoughts so forgetting is not a problem. Maybe detachment is a little bit. But what I speak about in session leads to novel stuff, so time to experience that fresh. No, I don't bring my journal to sessions with me. It's not like I want to read from it or anything. And I definitely don't want T to read from it. If it seems like I will have problems remembering something I want to say, I just make a few notes on a post it and review it before I go into the session. I don't want to seem "scripted." My notes are really just a prompt or memory jog, and I never take them out during session.

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I do the same thing! When I leave therapy, I write in an online journal for a while (a private one that's open just to me). A week later I review what I've written during the week just before I leave for my next session. It gives me a chance to respond to all that stuff that I was originally too slow to respond to and leads to some good communication.

Sidony

[WinterRose]

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Talulah said:
She prints them all off, deletes the masil and puts the copy in my file.

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lol - I keep all my emails and if they were printed they'd be 180+ pages long.

[Talulah]

I keep mine too winter! I have them all, but I know she deletes hers from me.

[Perna]

"Free" and/or online only (as opposed to ISP) e-mail accounts are not all that secure, especially the very large, free ones like hotmail, gmail, etc. I would not e-mail using those, only a paid/ISP account of some sort. There are lots of inexpensive ISP's that, even if you don't use them to connect with, are more secure and dedicated to security and not "targeted" by people who hack into hotmail/gmail, etc. Get an account with someone like http://www.isp.com (under $10). I use my account with http://www.arczip.com; I don't use any account which comes with my cable provider as the cable providers have a harder time with security from "within" (they're on a network and other people on your network/using your cable service for their ISP can hack in easily).

My T didn't have e-mail and I wouldn't use e-mail as the whole face-to-face thing is important to therapy, I think. Having to make some difficult "effort" to call or learn to contain, I agreed with but I wrote actual letters every week or more often, between sessions, I mailed to my T for 5-6 years. I finally realized I was taking away from relating to my therapist one-on-one, the purpose of therapy and put a "ban" on my writing to her for a few weeks to see what that would be like and it was hard/horrible :-) But what I gained from it was much better and I started improving much much faster afterwards.

[Zen888]

E-mails to T are inappropriate. Face-to-face communication is most therapeutic. You might consider talking with your T as to why you prefer e-mails and what you are avoiding by bring your concerns...etc to the next session. Ask for T to help you to develop healthy coping mechanisms between sessions. I suggest you reach out to your support system of friends, family, and a support group.

[Perna]

Pilatus, I think it depends on the therapist/doctor and client/patient? I've done cyber/e-mail therapy before and gotten a lot of benefit. E-mail can be a wonderful support while we learn and/or develop additional coping and support systems.

[OliviaC]

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Pilatus said:
E-mails to T are inappropriate. Face-to-face communication is most therapeutic. You might consider talking with your T as to why you prefer e-mails and what you are avoiding by bring your concerns...etc to the next session. Ask for T to help you to develop healthy coping mechanisms between sessions. I suggest you reach out to your support system of friends, family, and a support group.

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You see my pdoc who was my therapist until recently, always took my emails and answered them. Now she has had a baby and is back from leave of absence and also promoted to medical director of the clinic. All of a sudden she responds with "have read this, if you need to discuss anything before our next visit, please call me" a stock answer now to anything I bring up in e-mail; so I get the message: "don't send me e-mails".

It was a connection to me that was important; see I have very bad social anxiety especially with this pdoc. My psychologist is easier to talk with but I still express myself better and think better with the e-mails. So sorry, Pilatus but I respectfully disagree with you on this. I rarely send more than a couple sentences and never more than 1 or 2 between sessions.

We are all different. Maybe you have an amazing ability to communicate face to face, I don't. I am full of shame and yes we are exploring this (my psychologist and I) but in the meantime I feel sort of lost at sea when the pdoc lets me know by one answer fits all responses to me. I am hurt. Sorry I guess it is a big weakness with me.

[sunrise]

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Pilatus said:
E-mails to T are inappropriate.

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I think it's up to the individual therapist to decide on his/her own boundaries. My T doesn't allow e-mails and I accept his boundary on this. From reading this thread, it sounds like some other T's allow and even encourage e-mails from clients. I respect the ability of T's to set their own boundaries. I don't think it's one size fits all.

[wanttoheal]

I'm so thankful to have daily email contact with T. It helps me to know that she is still her so that during session, I spend less time trying to figure out if she is still the same person and we can focus more on things we need to. I am unable to talk on the phone; it's more than a lack of desire so phone calls don't work for me. I agree that it's an individual client/T relationship thing and what works for some may not work for others.

My T doesn't have a computer in the office. Well, it's not an office, it's a room. I got to a center for psychoanalysis. Even though it's a center, it's not like the therapists work in conjunction with one another. The offices aren't even their permanent ones. I have T in the same room each week, but if I go on a different day during the week, it might be a different room. The Ts don't personally decorate the rooms or anything because it's not their own. Emailing has never even come up. I am glad that there is no emailing. Knowing me, it would get completely out of control to the point where his computer would blow up once he turned it on. I express myself through writing and poetry-- so if I was able to write to him, chances are it would take forever to write that first email-- but after that, it would just get crazy. It would just give me another thing to worry about and obsess over. I have a hard enough time calling him if things get really bad. I don't need another method of communication to stress out over.

I often bring my journal with me to T. Sometimes I just hold it in my lap, I don't even open it up. I believe it helps to channel things in my unconscious, things that have gone into the book through free association that I don't even remember I put in there.

I told him that I might give him "homework" and give him some of my writing to read when I am nowhere near him, lol. We try to use my poetry as a part of therapy, but so far I've only been able to read a very minimal amount of my work to him.