T's Inconsistency

That's what I'm struggling to determine. That and is her inconsistent support and times worth the upset she causes me.

I can schedule appointments out with my T and Pdoc and if I had a preferable day and time that worked they would try to accommodate me. However, with school and childcare issues my schedule is never the same and each month I may need a completely different time. I don't expect them to accommodate me, but I know my pdocs office has asked patients to move their time up to squeeze me in once or twice. So perhaps as much as some people need structure, there are others who need the T's schedule to be somewhat flexible.

I just think that if a T says that they will schedule you a set time every week, then they shouldn't ask you to move it. I ask my T for an earlier appt to begin with and she said no because she already had regular clients in those time slots. So I agreed to the 4:30 which wound up being perfect with my mom's and fiance's schedule.

So she wasn't able to adjust for me, but I have to adjust for her?

And I know some of these clients who need my time slot are new clients. It's a teenager who needs a later appointment due to school. So my schedule gets switched for him/her. How is that fair? If she doesn't have time slots for new clients, then she does have them. If she wants to accommodate working clients ir clients who go to school maybe she should work later or on the weekends. She should be flexible herself and not expect her current clients to give up time slots.

And yes, her working clients did NOT have to give up their time slots. Again, how fair is that?

Is this the only day you can see your fiance?

Why are you so - ?? Idk what it is - afraid youre not going to get your fair share? Do you feel being adamant helps you achieve it? I dont know if its because we are talking about it thru posts, so you end up sounding more insistent than you really are? But when you say, how is that fair, that a new teenage client should be sent away with no appointment - then how does that balance with how many times per week you see your fiance? And that schedule is under your control, as to when you sleep or not. The teenager, not as much. Im kinda shocked you dont identify with her.

I dont mean to be harsh, but you keep seeing the glass as half empty. I hope you can start to see it as half full before she takes it away from you entirely. Im worried for you. Youre not seeing something you need to see. i dont care about you getting mad at me or us "disagreeing". There is a lot of wisdom in many of these posts (not just mine!!).

Correct.

Just because I disagree with your perception does not make me wrong. Just because you think this post is wise, doesn't make it wise. And your posts don't offer up validation or options like other posters do. My feelings are real and they do matter.

Remember, this is about support not who is right or wrong.

And it's insulting and mean to suggest my T will abandon me over my feelings about the matter. If you had any care in the world, you would not say such things to someone who not only suffers from fear of abandonment, but has recently gone through a traumatizing abandonment.

I dont say youre wrong. I ask you questions which i think would be helpful in working these issues out, which you decline to answer. Thats your choice. Thats my idea of supportive. Im sorry i cant help.

hankster has a point, actually - the questions she is asking you are the sort of questions your therapist will likely ask if/when you discuss this with her. I would pass over the idealness of your previous time as quickly as possible if you have that conversation.

Stop threatening me about my T.

What you fail to recognize is that my T and I have already had this conversation.

Please leave me alone if you have nothing supportive to add....or if all you want to do is scare me into thinking my T is going to abandon me. It's mean, rude, unsupportive, disrespectful, and cruel.

Addition: why should I care about my T's clients? Do you think they care about me? Is that my responsibility? No.

Hmmm. Maybe I should just give up my time slot so my T won't have to talk to me about my feelings and she can get a better client.

Unfortunately, sharing problems with the forum kind of makes one vulnerable to other people's opinions.

I somehow doubt that most of the people saying this is cool would actually be okay with their therapist if their therapist were to say 'I am going to inconvenience you so that someone else can be convenienced.'

Some people on this forum don't hold therapists to particularly high standards, and/or lack empathy for the sorts of problems you're dealing with. Maybe this would be a good time to practice that gnarly acceptance and not worry too much about what other people say.

This is really only between you and your therapist. Everyone else here is just background noise. (Including me.)

If I can throw in some DBT here?

Look, maybe the best thing to do is to check some facts. I know abandonment is a big deal. I know just the fear of abandonment is a big deal given what you've gone through.

I don't know what all the facts are in this situation but I think this would help ease the fear and help refocus on that situation at hand (I'm hoping the comment about giving up your slot was just written out of anger).

The question is... what do you want? A DBT skill that might be helpful here is to define your goal and then problem solve. What's your goal? Short and sweet, what do you want - something you can control? Do you want consistent therapy? Do you want to work with her despite her inconsistency?

That's going to shape your next steps.

Support, or the attempt of it, comes in many forms and not just those ideal to us.

I agree with you that attempts to support comes in many forms.
I think I disagree with you about it coming in forms not ideal. Just because someone attempts to be supportive, with good intentions and compassion, whether it is supportive (perha[s a little, perhaps a lot) can only be determinded by the person who receives the attempts at support.
I'm not sure how someone else can claim they were supportive if it wasn't received as supportive. If the person didn't feel supported. If they felt judged, unheard. The fact that they heard it that way doesn't determine the truth of what was said, just that it wasn't supportive

Thank you. You're right. I needed a reminder. I don't have to let other people's opinions have an effect on me. I came here to find some support and maybe some advice, and it's up to me to decide what is helpful and what is not.

I'm too sensitive about abandonment. I reacted because that is such a sore topic for me.

I'm good now. I'll try to stay balanced. Thank you again.

But not all replies are supportive. Who gets to define supportive anyways? If something isn't helpful, does it mean it was just because you intended it to be. If you say something that wasn't mean to be hurtful, but it hurts the person, is it still not hurtful?

Funny how when I say my Ts not being supportive in the way I see is supportive, everyone agrees or understands. But oh, if I say that about a member, then I'm the one in the wrong.

Can we get back to the topic now? This is off topic. If you want to debate what is and isn't supportive, or the definition, go make another thread. I will not respond to these posts anymore.

You can always throw in DBT!

I don’t know yet what I want to do. I want to talk to my T. Maybe this can be worked out? Maybe not. Still, I'm not going to just up and leave. She told me that even if I decide to terminate, she still wants to be my T until I find a new one. It's a safety precaution.

I also don't know what my goal is yet because I don’t know if my fiance is going to get that job. That job will change everything. And I have started looking at Ts in the new area we might move to. I found an interesting one already. She seems a little intense, but it might be a good thing.

I think if my fiance gets the job, I will stick it out with this T until we move. If he doesn't get the job, I will then have to decide if I want a new T. It's hard to decide when my T does have good qualities.

I'm sorry I don’t have answers yet. But I am trying my best to use wise mind, and not just react off of my emotions.

Scarlett, please forgive me if I'm speaking out of turn... but I wanted to respond to Hankster on this. Let me know if I'm way off-base.

Hankster, I think some of what comes across as "adamant" is really just Scarlett getting a frustrated with the turns that some of these threads take. Like, if I asked how to prepare spaghetti squash... and I got some recipes, but I also got some people asking me why I want to make spaghetti squash, telling me that it doesn't taste good and isn't healthy, and then people arguing about whether or not growing squash is good for the planet. If that happened to me, I can imagine becoming more adamant (and frustrated) as I tried to steer things back to my original, pressing question.

Hope that makes sense, that was my read of it. No offense aimed at either of you.

Scarlett - oh wow. For the record, I think it's nuts that your therapist re-arranges her schedule for new clients. That makes literally zero sense to me. I'm 100% with you, if you already have standing appointments, and a new person pops up who can ONLY come at times you're not free, then you either: *ask* people if they're able to change their times (not demand!), or you turn the person away.

I also don't understand how your new therapist doesn't seem to grasp the consistency issue? I know you said that you've talked to her, but I'm not sure I'm understanding her response. When you discuss it, do you feel like she's really getting it? Because, everything I've read indicates that consistency (and appointment times are definitely a part of this) are *super* important for some people. I've read stories about people who were completely unable to open up at all until they had a consistent time, because unconsciously, the week-to-week ambiguity felt like their T wasn't really there for them, or might disappear at any moment.

Again, I'm sorry that you're having to go through this. I really wish you weren't having to struggle with these things that are so basic. I know it's not intentional on your T's part, but it's almost like she's going out of her way to make it harder for you than it already is!

I hope you can work something out with your T, or manage to find one who can provide a better, more consistent experience for you...

I'm confused by the word adamant. You mean like insisting? Still confused if it's insisting.

Here's my ideal situation: T apologizes for upsetting me. She validates my feelings. She doesn't move my time again for another clients sake. And she consistently supports me the way she knows I want to be supported. The end.

What's done is done. My new appt time is 1:30pm. I'm not asking her to change it. I'm not even asking her to admit that she was wrong for doing this. I don’t expect her to make it up to me in some way. And like I said I want an apology for her hurting me; not for changing my schedule (though that would be nice too ).

If it seems like I'm fighting my T, I'm not. We have already talked about how this has hurt me last week. This week I'm hurting because on top of changing my schedule, she got sick and now I won't see her for a duration of 16days. That's really hard on me. All I wanted from her was a supportive email and she didn't give it to me. So in a sense, I already feel abandoned.

I will be talking to her this Friday, when I see her again. I will also be discussing this in group (group T already knows). Group T is the one who told me to practice radical acceptance with this. And I am.

So if I seem "adamant" here on the forums, it's just me venting and explaining. Nothing bad is happening. I'm fine. T's fine. All is well. I'm just hurt.

And that makes sense. Maybe this is just an area where you'll have to be a broken record with your T. It sounds like your short term goal is to work with her (until you have more information) and that you want a consistent time that works for your schedule. I don't think either of those is unreasonable although the latter might not be attainable (because we can be as skillful as we can be and the other person still remain as they are).

My advice would be to be assertive on what you need. If it's not convenient to change times, then when she presumes upon you, state it as so. Then remain a broken record about it. You can also push back on her with "This new time doesn't work for me. These are the times that do. Can you work this out?"

It might be helpful to look up the interpersonal skills in DBT and see if you can come up with a plan of action for the continuing conversation you're having with your T. DEAR MAN and FAST would probably be really useful here.

She might surprise you (or she might not). But worth a shot right?

I guess all of you who alluded to my T abandoning me are right. Congratulations. I guess I'm w/o another T.

She didn't abandon you oor reject you. This email is just saying you have power to decide.

There's nothing in that email that conveys abandonment at all. In fact, it sounds like a very normal response. My T would have sent me that kind of response too because I'm an adult who knows my own schedule and am capable of deciding what I want.

I agree, she is not abandoning you-she's just giving you the choice if you want to work this out with you. Go in and see her!

Then why did she write "It is also ok to take a week off if you need to decide whether or not I'm the right therapist for you." And why didn't she offer up any support or understanding about the inconsistency?

SP I would maybe take a deep breath. My old T said stuff like this, it's common. It's validating tthat you have the power and the right to choose. She also says she would be happy for you to work it out with her. Did you tell her yoou wanted to cancel or see a new T?