My T is great, except for when he....

Does your T have an achilles heel? Something he/she is especially bad at in therapy?

Well, I think you all know how much I love my T. He is just the greatest and has been so helpful and healing to me.

But if there is one thing he is bad at, it is the phone! I rarely call him, and when I do, it is usually for very businesslike reasons--rescheduling, etc. More often than not, he does not return my call. It makes me feel rejected and anxious, like he doesn't like me anymore. Most recently, at my session Monday, he wanted, very strongly, for me to set up a couples session for me and my husband, because we are having a problem that is really affecting our forward progress. He said for me to call him or email him to set up an appointment if my H agreed. So on Wednesday, I emailed him with the news that H had agreed to come for a session, and could we talk about his availability for a session? This is most easily done by phone so I asked him to call me and was very flexible on the time. Now, it is 4 days later. Has T called me? No, of course not. This effing couples session was his effing idea. He told me we need to have this before our next legal meeting so we can function. And can he be bothered to call to set up an appointment? No. If I call him, he is always in session, so it doesn't make sense for me to call him on this as then we just do phone tag. Why doesn't he call me?

This is his achilles heel: returning phone calls. I mean, sheesh, the whole thing was his idea!

Does your T have an achilles heel?

yea. i've emailed her before in disress, and she rarely answers. and when she does, she says that she'll try to call me later. but never does. i wait all day and have my phone glued to me and she doesn't call. it's so hard, because IN session shes the most wonderful person ever. inbetween, its hard to think she really cares.

Sunny, have you ever directly asked him about this?

My T sort of sucks at leaving phone messages. He has left a couple that have been really empathic and wonderful, but most of the time, his messages can be pretty bland. I told him this. "Leaving voicemails isn't exactly your strong point, hmmmm?" Those couple great ones that he left actually make the situation worse because then I end up comparing all of the other voicemails to those-- why can't he always leave a message like that??

I think my T had some anxiety and sometimes had trouble being "in charge". She admitted as much once when she forgot her keys to the office and I had to find us somewhere else to meet in the area. I knew the area better but it was neither of our areas, I'd just explored more. She confessed she thought she should have done the leading rather than asking me to. I saw a couple of hesitancies like that occasionally. It endeared her to me a bit, made me feel more competent.

Sunrise, you said, "If I call him, he is always in session" so maybe he's too busy/over-extended which is why he doesn't call back? You might want to try just giving him a couple of times you and your husband will be available and telling him to call you back by X time/day with his choice. Do the planning backwards so he has to call and straighten it out, if nothing else.

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Perna said:
"If I call him, he is always in session. . ." could be some of why he doesn't call back, he's over-extended/too busy?

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">He has 10 minutes between sessions to call or email. That is what he uses that time for.

But thanks for the suggestion, yes, I will contact him again, by email, with more scheduling info and see if I get a response. I just get tired of it and feeling this way. I will not be surprised if he ignores this message too.

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Sunny, have you ever directly asked him about this?

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">No, in general, my solution has been to just not call him, then I don't have to go through this. But he told me to call him this time, so I thought it would be different. I will know better in the future. I feel I should have known better this time, but I trusted him when he told me to contact him. Slow learner.

spells my name wrong on my prescription.

I sometimes email my psychiatrist, but he only really responds if I've told him I left an email. I'm not sure how often your psychiatrist/therapist checks his email, but he may not check it as often as you would hope.

As for "My T(psychiatrist actually) is great except when he..." talks too much. I don't tend to stop him as much as I should. I hate interrupting people in general. His talking gets me off the hook of having to talk. It's not great because I don't say what I need to say.

Well, I'm sure he does but at this moment I'm wearing my rose colored glasses so I can't see it.

Can you leave T very detailed messages and then ask him to leave you a detailed message back? Sort of like an extended conversation? This sometimes works for me.

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Gravity said:
spells my name wrong on my prescription.

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I can see that would be aggravating. But hey, at least he knows your name. Two weeks ago I was at my session, and my T asked me, what is your last name again? I told it to him with no affect at all, and was proud of myself for that. Honestly, I've been seeing the guy for 13 months, and he still doesn't know my name?

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ihope4life said:
I'm not sure how often your psychiatrist/therapist checks his email, but he may not check it as often as you would hope.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">My therapist probably checks his email about 20 times a day, sometimes during session.

Well, I did email T again a couple of hours ago to try to schedule once again. I was a little pissed because a few hours prior he copied me on an email to someone else, and wrote toward the end of the email, as an aside, "hi sunny." Why can't he be bothered to answer my own emails if he can do that?

OK, just me venting and blowing off steam. I am way overreacting to this, I know. I think I have so many things to be pissed about in my life right now, that I am transferring that feeling onto the lack of email response from T. I hate that.

doesn't listen properly.

thinks i'm doing something for x reason instead of looking for the grain of wisdom in what i'm saying...

tries to get me to talk about something that HE finds more meaningful (thus undermining what it is that i find important).

i think that he is working on this and getting better with it, though.

most of the time... we have a good connection and i really like him and find that he is quite empathetic and soothing and kind. so i'm able to tolerate these little breakdowns in attunement.

he was also pretty bad with saying he would email me and then not emailing me. actually... he is pretty bad with emails in general (with responding). or if he responds they are fairly bland one liners like 'i hear what you are saying lets talk about this on friday'. not very verbal via email. sigh. tried to get him to change but i figure i can accept that since he is so accepting of me (mostly).

My T emailed me 5 hours after my second email, and then another time after that. So I did hear back about the scheduling. We set up an appointment for today. Doom. Last couples session was awful, but I feel numb about this. I don't even care anymore. Too much stuff is happening and I feel pummeled. Hard to take a break from being pounded to do therapy.

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sunrise said:
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Gravity said:
spells my name wrong on my prescription.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">
I can see that would be aggravating. But hey, at least he knows your name. Two weeks ago I was at my session, and my T asked me, what is your last name again? I told it to him with no affect at all, and was proud of myself for that. Honestly, I've been seeing the guy for 13 months, and he still doesn't know my name?

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Sunrise, that is funny, but so NOT funny. Geeze! I feel for ya.

yesssss my old T.... She's fine in session, but when i arrived there she'd just say "hi kiya" - totally flat, monotone, and no eye contact. or sometimes just "go on up" - no eye contact. So i'd hate being there and felt unloved, unwanted. Then session would start and she'd be totally focused on me. but the greeting always threw me off. Like i'm not really a person until we "start".

My T has client after client. I think she has around seven people a day. I see her walk out to the waiting room as I return to the same room and watch her get another client. This makes it hard for her to do things like phone messages or remember things. I had my birthday in January of this year and my T didn't even remember until I told her. I told her that I am terrible at face recognition and this interferes with my ability to make freinds and fit in at places. Does she remember? No. What is here thoughts on this? She says that she thinks its anxiety. I think to myself "Why do I have trouble understanding movies that have a lot of characters? If it is anxiety, then it shouldn't show up in this situation. But it does." Later I present to her information about the concept of "faceblindness" that she had never heard of. Does she look it up on-line? Nope. I did at least an hours worth of research to share with her and my support group and she doesn't even look in to it. Also related to the fact that she doesn't have much time for progress notes and paper work, she has annoyed me some with that. One time she started writing in my file and I wanted to take the file a way from her to make her look at me. I also joked to myself about climbing under the file to try to make eye contact with her. Another time, she pulled a sticker from somewhere and stuck it somewhere else in the file. I couldn't hold a conversation with her while she did that. One time, she left someone else's progress note sitting out on her desk. I sat off to the side of the desk instead of on the couch and kept glancing at it. I wanted to read it. I mean I'm studying addiction counseling and I would have loved to see how she writes progress notes but I couldn't because it was private to that client. However, it ruined our conversation because it distracted me which made it so that I couldn't remember much of what we said. My T's lips get dry all the time. I will be talking to her and this tongue just comes out. It distracts from the conversation until she gets her water or chapstick. As you might be able to guess, I have known her for two years which is long enough to have quite a list. But, she is ssssoooo sweet for the most part.

I just remember one time when I was telling T that the phone msg. he left me really sucked and was completely unempathic. Then I sorta felt bad so I was like, "Well, it really wasn't that bad. I mean, it was okay. You said what you needed to say." And then T said, "No-- that message was really lame!"

lol

We all know what my T does so I can't be helpful other than to say 'I'm sorry sunny'...

Some outside of session communications:

So Monday my T called me unbidden to tell me he might be a few minutes late to our couples session. That call really helped me because I was on my way to the session and feeling extremely nervous (impending doom) and hearing T's voice on the phone calmed me, like hey, it's my T, he is gonna take care of this couples session and it will be all right.

Then today I had my individual session and had to email him afterwards about something I forgot to do in session. And he emailed me back within an hour.

These little things count for so much.

Sunrise,
I'm glad that you worked it out and feel better now

I usually see my T near the end of the day. Since day 1 he has stifled at least a few yawns in session. LOL He MUST be tired -- it can't possibly be that I am boring in any way. Well, . . .