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Emailing T between sessions

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The only boundaries I’m seeing crossed are you trying to decide what SHE is “allowed” to offer or do. That’s her side of the street. Not yours. Your side is whether or not you want to email her, AND to email her within the format offered (not therapy, not expecting a response, practicing organizing your thoughts & expressing needs/wants.)

You may not want to. You may want to, then learn more about yourself & what you need/want, and change your mind. (You’re allowed to change your mind). You may want to, and continue wanting to, and get a lot out of it. You may want to, continue wanting to, get a lot out of it, and she alters the format offered, and you no longer want to. <<< And many many other possibilities/combos on your side of the street.

Your side of the street is all about you. What you want, what you’re okay with, how you’d like to do things. Her side is hers, and hers to decide and manage.
Thanks @Friday , you're right. She told me a similar thing yesterday (that I should be careful not to assume what someone else's responses are and to allow them their space to say what they need to).
I have to trust that she has offered because she has thought all this through and I just have to worry about me.
 
Thanks @Friday , you're right. She told me a similar thing yesterday (that I should be careful not to assume what someone else's responses are and to allow them their space to say what they need to).
I have to trust that she has offered because she has thought all this through and I just have to worry about me.
I just wanted to let you know that I worry about the same things and have the same thoughts. And that my therapist's response has always been very similar to the one you got.

?
 
Ooooo I just sent the email.
Ahhhhh!

I thought I would send it now as I have spent all day thinking about it and it's getting silly the amount I am obsessing about it. I'm just going to keep re-editing it and thinking about it until I send it (or not). And I can't spend days going over and over this. So now it is sent.

The final version has my view on the conversation I had with my partner, and how that has helped. And that I'm struggling with sending this email, but trying to accept it is ok as she suggested it.

Oh my.
All this for an email.
 
Thanks @Ireusa , nice to know I'm not the only one! I hope that communication is working for you.
Wohooo! You sent it!

Communicating through e-mail always gives me anxiety, but she has validated both the need and made it seem reasonable for me to send her an e-mail weekly, so even though it stresses me, I let myself do it once a week lol. It has been useful.

Do something nice for yourself!
 
Wohooo! You sent it!

Communicating through e-mail always gives me anxiety, but she has validated both the need and made it seem reasonable for me to send her an e-mail weekly, so even though it stresses me, I let myself do it once a week lol. It has been useful.

Do something nice for yourself!
Thanks! ?

I get that (the anxiety but allowing yourself to do it anyway). And glad it has been useful for you. I'm hoping it will be helpful to me to, as I get she is trying to help me learn to express myself.

My partner has gone to get a take away so will celebrate the 'sending of the email'!
 
She sent a lovely email in response. I wasn't expecting her to respond until after the weekend (although I don't know her working hours as she is a private practicing therapist).
She is so kind.
I'm still struggling with the boundary issue, but I feel ok about talking that through with her.

***Sorry I wanted to say a big thank you to you all for listening to me and giving me helpful advice and helping me to break it down and get a different perspective.
So thank you!
 
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My therapist encouraged me to write emails between sessions. I struggled with loss of words and focus in sessions, so emails was a way of letting her know what was going on inside. She would often respond, and most times she would reply to the contents of the email. We did this for about a year, but I never got comfortable with it/therapy. If I were to go back to therapy I am not sure I would choose to accept the use of emails between sessions. One thing I would need to be much better at would be communicating about what to expect. Initially I tried to find a template of sorts of how/when she would respond - as both the wait and the receiving/reading of the actual reply unsettled me. For example I would have felt better (I think) knowing that she would not respond when out of work hours - but she did. Her trying to engage with the contents of the emails was not good for me I think. I appreciate the effort - as verbal communication in the sessions was almost non-existing - but it somehow almost always seemed to leave me feeling misunderstood or invalidated. And the discrepancy between how I presented in writing and how I presented in session made me feel crazy and stupid. I also had a couple of really raw un-edited and fragmented emails met with no response, which felt very invalidating.
So I think it's great that you take all these aspects into consideration from the beginning. And I hope you bring up all of your concerns and questions with your therapist, even if they seem insignificant or silly to you. Communicating via email can seem such a simple thing, but oh dear; the complexity of all the aspects and the impact they can have.
 
Hi @knuckles , I totally get what you're saying and I can imagine I might be much the same. And your last sentence resonates so much: an email, something so simple that we send hundreds of , causes all this stress.

I will talk to her and see how it goes. It's hard to know whether it just isn't for me or if it will get better for me.
 
Hi,
Today my T said I could email her between sessions to let her know how I am and how a conversation I want to have with my partner went. She said it wouldn't be therapy by email but for me to practice expressing myself and my needs. She will respond by simply acknowledging the email.

I am feeling both excited by this (I get more of her attention and time - whoo!) And also incredibly nervous and on edge (I like the boundary of the 50 minute session and i'm scared that by emailing in-between sessions it will be bluring the boundary and become something else and then she will dump me and i'll be left to deal with this trauma on my own).

Reading lots of these threads, it looks like in the US it seems fairly common for communication outside the session? Is it common in the UK? (I'm in the UK).

The week before last, T and I emailed each other as she said she would email me a brief note of the session as I spend a lot of the time disassociating and forgetting. She said this wasn't something she normally did.

So I'm worried I'm pushing boundaries and we're doing things she doesn't normally do. And this feeds into my view of sex, and my boundaries (or lack of), and all sorts of things.

Writing this, I realise I need to talk to T about all this, even if I am too embarrassed to.

What do you think about emailing and boundaries with your T?
My T discouraged me from doing such with I shouldn’t, it’s not good etc. I am very much a why kind person tho I never asked her ‘why’. I’m also a research junkie and accidentally came upon the why: it becomes part of your medical records, reports etc. While I’ve stopped sending emails, I do blur those lines by sending text as hypotheticals which - at least in my mind- is less revealing of personal info. My T tolerates this but my desire to reach out in the moment is often intense, want and need to be understood/heard. I sometimes will write a text, screen shot it and if still on my mind, I share at next session. Helps to some degree.
 
I'm in U.S. and I don't email between sessions. If an emergency, I call. Need the voice to voice contact. So does T, he says. I make a list of topics I want to discuss in the next session beforehand. Bullet points and prioritized. Well, you know about plans!!

We have exchanged emails twice. Both times to clearly lay out steps he was required or would take in certain situations.

But if your T asks you to email the results of a situation, you are not taking advantage.
 
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