Couch 249: The Self Care Couch

You weren't just a paycheck, Artie. L cared.

I say this, and am struggling a bit with Dr. T billing me just now... As in, the Ivy Pay text just came through on my phone, so he is literally billing me at this moment, as I'm sitting here feeling really sad. So, I get it, Artie.

I don't consider just a job to be an insult. I would be horrified it they did it out of some other reason. I would particularly hate it to be a favor on their part -that creeps me out.
I just believe that distilled down - that is all it is just another job-a not particularly difficult or taxing job to be sure but a job - they are not unique or special outside of the job and the people who hire them are not particularly unique or special. No one is to my view of life. I love my pets and they are the world to me -but to everyone else - objectively -they are just regular non-special dogs and cats. It is not a bad thing.

unpopular opinion…

maybe we should quit focusing so much on the therapist, and focus on ourselves. we could save ourselves a lot of time and money if we quit playing and just did the work. then, we wouldn’t need to feel special or get mad when the therapist doesn’t say or do as we want them to. the whole point of therapy is to learn new behaviors and ways of dealing with issues. manipulation has got to go.

I mean, in my case, the reactions *are* part of the work. I can talk and work through the reactions there in ways that may not be so successful in my outside life. And then apply what I've learned to other situations. As in, I can practice being direct with my T about things he says/does that bother me, which makes me more able to do that in my marriage or with my parents.

And much of this for me ties back to childhood wounds/unmet needs, so reactions to things my T does help me understand more about that. And, ultimately, the goal is for me to be able to support myself, but it's a journey.

I don’t recall ever wanting to be special to a therapist.

I do recall wanting the time I paid for me to be mine, e.g., not texting a client who left their glasses during session. Even now I chastise Visa for looking at her computer screen when I am talking. She’s pretty much stopped.

But then the desire probably has something to do with why people are in therapy in the first place.

I'm glad Visa took some notice, ATAT.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I finally worked up the wherewithal to ask R to put her phone on silent during our sessions.

gosh, y’all are brutal about the glasses. i hope none of you accidentally leave something important behind. it couldn’t have taken more that a few seconds for him to let that person know where they were. what of it had been someone’s wallet? or what if it was your wallet?

Yeah that is totally do unto others. That rule is NOT suspended in ts office! The humanity! So saith una!

Its not like youre on everest, fighting for every breath.

would that we were all as perfect as you think we should be. If we were, though why would we even BE in therapy in the first place?

I wasn't "playing". I was never "playing". I worked hard. Any manipulation on my part I see only in retrospect and it was NOT intentional. Yes, your post triggered the hell out of me.

Sorry.

I never shouuld have logged back in.

The point was the therapist is ****ing PAID to have their focus on the client 100%.

Yeah, I'm done here.

i’m not sure why you’re having a fit. just looking at things from a different perspective.

also, i said ‘we’ in my other post. i was including myself. i’ve been with my t for almost 10 years. i get all of the feelings surrounding therapy.

Don't leave, Artie...

Just because people have different opinions doesn't mean it's an attack on someone else. Have your different opinion -it's OK. You don't have to leave just because you don't agree. That does seem to be the knee-jerk reaction every time though – do you know why? It's not like you have to tell me or even that you have to stay but every time someone disagrees you stomp off -which is sort of what it sounds sound like happened with the therapist. I mean obviously if that's how you want to do it that's fine but it isn't necessary. We can all get along and still have different opinions

I can understand forgetting your glasses.
I can understand seeing them late in a session.
I can understand contacting the client in question.
I can't understand doing this during the session. If the client relies on the glasses so much that it can't be done another day, they'll be on their way back anyways. It's their fault they lost it. I know it doesn't take long to contact people, but it's rude to interrupt your conversation for other contact like that. And if I pay you for your time, even more so, I agree with Artie

My problem with the glasses is 1) he doesn’t seem to have asked lt’s permission before texting; 2) the texting seems to have taken awhile; and 3) sessions are what, 45 minutes? And they had 20 minutes left per Lt. He couldn’t wait?

Say the client had missed their own glasses during that time and come back. They’d be in the waiting room till lt’s session ended. Why couldn’t the text wait too?

I’m actually a bigger fan of Dr T than most of the Couch (yeah, low bar). Much of what upsets Lt about him would not bother me. This would, unless he asked permission to text.

Then demand your extra minute or whatever it took to email or text the other person and go on. Or go back and fight with the therapist and tell them how they failed you and how rotten they are. They get paid either way

I'm not a fan of any of them but I don't see this is being particularly egregious to me. But if it is that egregious to you, go tell them they suck and fight with them. I mean from the outside -at least one observation -is it isn't the fact that they texted or even that you lost a minute or two – it's that it erupted the illusion that for that period of time you're the only person that exists for the therapist - which I'm not saying if that's something that you care about isn't going to be a jarring experience -But try yelling about it in the minute that it happens. See how it goes and see how the therapist responds. It might not be how you want it or you might be able to come to an agreement that the therapist won't text in the middle of your appointments

It was more that it took him out of the session. We were discussing something important, and he lost focus. And we had to figure out where we were and get back on track. I was paying for that time...and it's not the first time something similar has happened recently.

It wouldn't have been as bad if he'd noticed them right at the start. We were in the middle of important stuff.

So, OK, I'm getting my annual screening mammogram tomorrow (over 40 in U.S., family cancer history). If I was in the mammogram machine, standing awkwardly as you have to do, and the radiologist was suddenly like, "Oh, hey, someone left their glasses, let me take these to the front desk," that would bother me, too.

as someone who drives almost an hour and a half to see my t, i would be beyond grateful if my t let me know i had left something behind asap. all i gave was a different perspective.

Sure—but I would also hope the therapist would ask their current client’s permission before texting. Common professional courtesy to both clients.

Ours are not mutually exclusive points of view.

Maybe this is just not a thing for me because there were times when I had to take a phone call during an appointment – if a judge was calling me for example or the clerks office with a court appointed case that they wanted to know if I could take and if I didn't answer they would move on down to the next person on the list. Sometimes I needed the money from the jobs so I would interrupt the appointment and say hey look it's a judge I need to take this OK and they say OK. Once or twice the woman had to do something and she would say she had to do it I'd be like OK and then we would go on

Yes, this is a good point, that he could have asked me. I mean, I'd likely have said yes. However, had we been in the middle of, say, working through a rupture, I might have asked him to wait. Or if we'd had less time left. Or if I were really emotional in that moment.

I think part of it was his "ohh nooo" about the glasses. Like he was already mentally out of the session at that point. So, I mean, may as well text then.

Let me take psychotherapy out of it. We used to get private speech therapy for our daughter. I also would have been bothered had the speech-language pathologist had stopped paying attention to our daughter to contact another client during our paid time.

How would you handle that – wouldn't you talk to them first and say hey please don't do that or at least give us the full-time that someone is paying for? I mean I've been at dentist appointments where they've had to be interrupted for a minute or two – but that isn't the thing that unhinges me. They usually say excuse me or something and I understand that things come up . I get that it does bother other people- I'm just saying that there's a range of how people respond And I think the first step is letting them know that you are someone that doesn't like that. Honestly it really doesn't change things for me other than that I would be probably more polite to a speech pathologist than I ever would be to a therapist