Does your T let you contact them while they're on vacation? (use this one!)

Part of the variation is that “vacation” can be a wide range of activity. A few days, a couple of weeks, several months. A stay-cation to just rest vs. a family holiday vs. a trip to another city vs. a trip abroad. If I’m on vacation and just sitting at home relaxing or doing my spring cleaning, I’ll probably pick up a few emails from students. But if I’m truly traveling, I don’t even open my work email. It has an automatic reply saying I am on vacation and will be back to work on whatever day. So, that makes for a variety of scenarios that create different plans of action for therapists (and a variety of responses here).

You, too, can perhaps put your work on hold during vacation if you so choose (or if you have essentially your own business and have the ability do so). It’s pretty common practice to set up an automatic reply of non-response until return for email. As far as texts, my therapist had a dedicated phone for business separate from his personal phone, so leaving the work phone off was an easy option. Many medical doctors work similarly or have all contacts go through an answering service to weed out the emergent from the non-emergent contacts. Perhaps therapists are better at and/or find it more necessary than most to hold a boundary between their work and their personal life. You say you wouldn’t text your therapist for fun or anything, but unless you only read about every 5th thread right here on PC, you are well aware there are clients who text regularly and have problems with maintaining a certain control over their texting and emailing habits. Thus, the need for perhaps firmer boundaries about that kind of contact, particularly when they are trying to just take some time off and decompress for a few weeks.

Yes, this is similar to what my T does. Even if he's just away for a long weekend, he'd let me know that he'd be checking emails as usual or else just in the mornings, etc. Or like this time, because he'd only be checking emails and not his phone, when he offered me the backup T's. He told me at one point, that if he were to go away for, say, a week, and not be reachable by clients, that he has to provide a backup T or it would be client abandonment. Which kind of surprised me, I guess based on some things I've read here (like T's going away for weeks but not offering up any sort of contact or backup).

That doesn't speak to my point but not sure if I was clear. I see people trying to set their Ts boundaries for the T but you'll have that here, right.

My T uses the same email for his work and personal (well, he technically has a work email, but he has those emails forwarded to his personal account). And he uses the same cell for work and personal--which is why he has the "texts for scheduling only" rule and doesn't really do phone calls unless scheduled or to assess a potential crisis. But with the email, unless he was going to not be checking any email at all--or be in a place without email access, like camping in the wilderness--he doesn't really have a way to avoid only his work-related email. (Well, I mean, I guess he could do something where emails from his clients go to certain folders rather than his inbox during the vacation, but that seems rather complicated.) But then he also chooses to have this setup--he could easily opt to just have a separate professional email that doesn't come to his personal email account.

And his policy/boundary where he charges for emails that take him longer than 15 minutes to reply to or if a client were to send a bunch of shorter emails in a small time frame, that serves as a deterrent for me. Like I really think about whether I want a longer response (to his credit, his longer responses are LONG, like 4 long paragraphs--even his short, free ones are a few sentences, sometimes more) or if I need to email at all. And I was someone who used to have issues with sending frequent and/or very long emails and/or texts to ex-T and ex-MC. They had no official boundaries/policies on emails (ex-T generally didn't reply and ex-MC sometimes did), and it ultimately led to conflicts with each of them. So it's better for me to have a T with firmer boundaries. And I think my T is better at keeping his personal and professional life separate, which is better for him both personally and as a T. Whereas I think ex-MC tried to be everything to everyone and spread himself too thin.

I always that your T had poor boundaries but that didn't have as much to do with his email policy as it did for his need to enmesh. He kept your patterns alive, even fed them.

About year five, I contacted (called) my T every day from around Xmas eve (not my holiday) and January 1. He was on staycation, if that matters. My spouse had just been diagnosed with a terminal illness, if that matters. Sometimes I called more than once/day and I don't think we talked for more than 10 or 15 minutes. Sometimes he had to wrap up the phone call earlier than I would have liked (like for xmas dinner) and he told me I could call later, and sometimes I did.

But that experience with my T gave me a chance to change how I asked for help from other people (so did my spouse's illness). I stopped worrying that I was "too much" or was asking too much by calling all the time and when he said I could call back later or call again, I took him at his word. I agree with the philosophy that the T can decide their own boundaries and clients don't have to censor themselves to protect the T's. My T has never shown me anything but a person who can deal with difficult things and take care of himself, with the help of his social support system.

Changing how I reached out for help was a very scary experience. It was scary to ask for things because they might be rejected, and sometimes they were. I needed to develop a little thicker skin and not see everything as a rejection of my personhood or my needs. It was usually just bad timing, whether with T or someone else. I think that people in my past have disappointed me mightily, not provided help for one reason or the other. Sometimes the "rejections" were done in mean ways, perhaps a kind of mocking that what?? You can't do that yourself?, like it was wrong to ask for help. I think even in my FOO, where there was simultaneously a lot of control over my activities with "strict" parents, there was a sense that asking for something directly insured you wouldn't get it, "if I know what you want I will deny it to you." That sets up a system where you try to get things without directly asking, or what some people think is "manipulation" but to me it seems more like an adaptation to a stated thing where it's not okay to have needs or to get your needs met.

I'm glad your T helped you through that and beyond Anne.

A T once helped me overcome asking for help too, by handling boundaries organically. I've wrote about that somewhere here and don't feel like explaining it all, but I remember being scared to text him. We explored why, and I thought it was unacceptable and intrusive, and well related to a lot about my past rather than him. He never said I could or couldn't but he had given me his cell phone number in the past. I was having panic attacks around texting him, and he had no 'rule' for my behavior, so I had to learn to navigate own boundaries and take the risk, confront my fears.

I ended up finally texting him and realized it wasn't such a scary thing to need him, and my panic attackes and distress around needing help started to dissolve all around me. I started accepting help in other areas of my life, most notably when people offered something, but if not, I no longer experienced guilt and shame around asking for things. Later, we laughed about it- the only one making a big deal about a text was me.

Both of the ones I hired completely over - acted whenever I would contact them for something. "Oh hurray -the client is reaching out - a breakthrough- that means we have bonded" sort of thing. Their hurrah response worked well to quell my doing it.

I never have had difficulty accepting offered help if I needed it. For me, the therapists just were not helpful.

I like the way you express this-- and that you can see the humor in a realization that the "big deal" is constructed from within. Sometimes I think I cheated myself out of feeling part of team with other people, especially my spouse, because I insisted for many years on doing things for myself. But as the cliche goes, you are not ready to do things differently until you are.

I can contact my T whenever I want, although he doesn't always respond super quick, but usually within 24 hours.

I was worried at first because I thought he might burn out from me / from his job if he was allowing unlimited contact. He kind of told me that not everyone has unlimited contact because not everyone needs it / is doing that kind of therapy, and also that I could leave him to be in charge of his own wellbeing and that he would be sure to tell me if he ever felt that the communication was too much. Now I don't need to contact him very often (maybe once every few weeks, and the last time he was on holiday I didn't need to contact him at all). But I find it reassuring and comforting to know that I have the option to contact him. I know I'm very lucky with this. I'm very grateful for my T.

Absolutely! Though I understated the experience....so will elaborate for anyone interested.

This was drawn out through in session work over 3 months, maybe even 6, where we explored my continual, overpowering urges to text my T. I learned from this I introjected? my mother's anger at needing her causing me to later disavow all my dependency needs.

During our work on this, I had annihilation anxiety and nightmares of monsters. Children who don't have mastery of language and do not have the capacity yet for complex emotions experience anger as monsters. Also when very young, identity is merged with the parent, so if my mother met me in my crib angry that I bothered her, then I may have experienced her anger as mine too (that shapes superego).

The fragmentation a child feels from the death instinct when that young can be later reexperienced as annihilation anxiety in the therapy-which feels like you are being destroyed, killed off. The fragmentation reoccurred repeatedly over months, then once we worked through this, I experienced structural change, my ego strengthened as it no longer fragmented. At the same time, I developed the separateness from my T, unlike when I was a young child and merged with my mother's anger/reaction.

If he had set boundary rules instead of being neutral, I don't think I would have ever changed (structurally) outside of behaviors. That's probably why I'm so interested in this topic.

But yeah, I learned to separate what was coming from him and what was coming from me, and the structural change. My ego no longer fragmented-a new, healthy pattern-but needing and feeling like dying was my pattern of relating.

Also - LT - this is an impressively detailed poll! Interesting topic. I also find it interesting that the most popular choice is 'they always allow contact' and the third most popular 'never'. I suppose both 'always' and 'never' are very clear and simple policies!

When I was in therapy the therapist always said to feel free to reach out via text when she was away (she didn’t use email. At least not for work). I never did text her when I knew she was away though because there wasn’t anything ever going on that could not wait a week. If I needed to talk with someone that bad I could always call the practice and speak to the boss T, but I don’t recall a time ever needing to do that.

You do seem like one of the poster children turned evangelist for that sort of therapy. I am always of the opinion that if something works for someone then have at it.

I know I do... A big part of it though is that so many people are harmed by therapists who hadn't done this type of therapy themselves. It's unrealistic to expect them to, but when people think it's their fault therapy went bad, I think it's the T not having had this therapy. And also triggered by false reality, like the JS attachment thing. A group of Ts not seeing they are playing into the client's patterns. Still trying to get past being affected by that, but it is part of my PTSD. Continual hypervigilace about it, moreso lately. Trying to get through. Thanks.

Didn't catch the 'evangelist' thing.

There's one person I was helping understand the therapy when people piled on saying the T was bad. Not sure if that's what your referring to but it seems to me more like counter-evanelism against the status quo.

Otherwise, I have a strong opinion that Ts need that type of therapy and if others want to consider that evangelism, then so be it.

That is not what I meant at all - but I am sure it doesn't matter.

Well it matters to me. I probably do need to chill out a little. Also coming here a lot lately to avoid dealing with something that is paralyzing me irl. I can only tolerate so much and there is a lot of uninvited stress in my life I can't escape at the moment. But maybe I'll try the Youper app.

I think youper is fun to say

I am reluctant to ask for contact with my T outside of session. However, she has offered to set up phone check-ins, for example around xmas when she is typically not seeing patients for 2 weeks. We've done text check-ins too, but she usually quickly turns those into a phone call. There's a lot lost in a text. She doesn't do email.

T did once take a 5 week family vacation, during which time she was unreachable. There's another therapist in the clinic who I'd done group therapy with before (at a different location). My T helped set things up so I could see this other T during that longer time. We didn't do much deep work, but it was helpful to have a weekly check-in.

There is nothing else fun to do in that frozen wasteland.

What?

......

The U. P. People from the U. P. (Upper Peninsula) of Michigan are called Youpers.

I have never asked. I'm too scared of the rejection. I intentionally do not email during down times though because I know T needs time away from work.... but its hard and it sucks.