Do/did you feel/think the therapist heard you or did you feel held by the therapist?

Well, I called my therapists answering service to get a hold of him a few days ago for the first time.

I had to take my mom in to see a surgeon for her knee and she couldn't drive herself.
I was struggling at the time.
I wasn't able to see my therapist the previous week cause he called in sick.
I had a appointment with him Monday-the day I was suppose to take my mom in (unexpected appointment)
I was struggling and didn't know if I could go another week without support
So I called his answering service so I could ask if he had another appointment for that week so I could see him.I did say I was struggling
Otherwise I would have to decide to take my mom in or go to my mon appointment-I felt in between a rock and a hard place.
He responded by making me an appointment for Tues.
He never acknowledged that I was struggling (hey, you ok or anything)

So right now I am not feeling very heard.
It has been slow for us (Seen him 10 times) Having difficulty being open. Willing to go in and do so. Don't know how this is going to go though. When he called and left message on my answering machine last week that he was sick and cancelling my appointment, he asked me to call him and let him know if I was ok. Otherwise he would see me the following week. Feel free to call though. I didn't call back initially cause I was upset that I would have to go another week. Then I wasn't sure if I understood the message if he WANTED me to call him or not. Then after listening to the message multiple times, I realized he did want me to call but I didn't. He was sick, so I wasn't going to bother him and by the time I got to the place that I was willing to call and understood he wanted me to call, it was a moot point ( a few days later, then holiday) So I don't know if he's gonna be pissed at me for not calling and because of that and I have been slow to share things with him he might fire me. Probably not, but that is a fear I am having. Which ultimately, even if that were to happen, the end of the world would not happen. I would just move on. I hate this kind of **** though.

I thought I was heard by my ex therapist but then later on I would realize that some of the stuff I had told her about, she actually hadn't understood. She was clueless in a lot of areas (sexual orientation, finances) and she simply didn't get where I was coming from a lot of the time. The thing is, she would pretend she was hearing me ( "Yes I understand that must be difficult") but then I would realize later on "wait, she has no idea what I'm talking about". It's not that she didn't listen, it's that some of my experiences were so foreign to her that she couldn't comprehend them. So she would fake some understanding. As for "being held" the whole thing sounds exactly like some kind of religious stuff which is why I find it off-putting and creepy.

Sometimes I think T doesn't hear me, or at least not in the way I intend. Having lived what seems to me to be a pretty happy life, with normal family, he can't fathom my dark parts as much as he thinks he can.

I do feel held by him sometimes, but I crave more.

Ugh, that sounds hard. I know what it's like to feel like you have to dissect somebody else's words to see what they really mean because the consequences are dire if you aren't able to correctly read their mind. I have found with my T, though, that she wants me to take her at her word and to ask if I'm wondering whether there are other meanings than what she is saying (there pretty much never are). So if she were to cancel, she would say something like, "Please feel free to call if you want to touch base." So if I wanted to touch base, I would call (and I nearly always would want to). If I felt okay and/or didn't want to call for some reason, she would be okay with that too. She trusts my judgment and she always wants me to get what I need from her, even if what I need at that moment is space. If she was too sick to talk, she would probably encourage me to send an email and she would get back to me as soon as she could. Or I would leave a voicemail and she would call back when she was able. (That's our usual procedure anyway.) But if she said I can call, it would be okay to call.

This is kind of the stuff that trust is built on, so I would encourage you to tell your T what you posted here. Maybe just print it out or pull it up on your phone and read it. I wouldn't trust my T the way I do if I hadn't had these exact conversations with her (about outside contact specifically) over and over and over.

The one thing about Psych Central-Don't expect to get responses about anything. Even when you ask-sometimes you do, sometimes you don't. It's just the way it is. Move on honey, move on.

The woman I hired lied and said she did not have answers to my rather simple direct questions about therapy. She could only keep me from getting answers from her - I simply chose other resources (other therapists, their own ce classes,books, articles, auditing classes at the university where I teach, interviewing other faculty etc). The woman could not thwart me from getting information. Her attempts to make me submissive failed.

More often than not, I feel my T heard me and "held" me. My interpretation of "held" (not physically) is the T accepts "bad or unacceptable" feelings the client may project onto/into the T until the T can rework those feelings and return them to the client as a more acceptable feeling or emotion. I wish I could think of an example, but I can't. Too, this may be a totally different therapeutic action, but I think being held (not physically) does involve holding the client's feelings, which should feel much like the client is being "held" or accepted by the T.

Someone tell me if I'm way out in left field...and just leave me there.