Ex-t emailing me distressing things...do i tell current t?

[lostforgottensoul]

How does a T not schedule like this?

Like I tell his office that I want the 12th, 19th, 22nd (or whatever) at whatever time and if its avail I am sceduled. After the 22nd, I have no appointments and must make more before that day. I schedule a date, not a day. So its not every friday. Its whatever date and time I was put in for.

That's what I am not understanding. I make appointments on Mon or Tue but I don't have every Mon or Tue but rather whatever Mon/Tue I scheduled at the time I scheduled it. Unless he cancels it. Then I must make more appointments before the last date is here. Like any other Doctor.

I guess I am just not understanding how you schedule you appointments. Or how this "promised day" works.

 

[chaotic harmony]

I'd try replacing the word "promised" with "scheduled for".

Do you know for sure he didn't use the word promise? No, you don't. But I do. I wish you all would stop assuming that I am in the wrong and that it's MY thinking that is the problem.

I also don't see how I violated some guild line as I did not do any of the things listed but that's fine. I'm starting to see that it doesn't matter what I know to be true. You want to defend his actions and not see that possibly I am in the right.

The time IS MINE as PROMISED.

Thanks to everyone who didn't jump on the bandwagon to kick me while I'm down.

 

[chaotic harmony]

I guess I am just not understanding how you schedule you appointments. Or how this "promised day" works.

My appointments are scheduled every Tues & Fri at a specific time. They are days not dates. I don't understand why this is hard to understand. He scheduled me every Tuesday & Fri and it's permanent unless I need a different day for some reason. It's not just a "promised" day....it's on his schedule.

I can't even...I'm done. This is a simple situation of my time being given to someone else but you all seem to think I am the problem. That is not the case.

 

[joeylittle]

Do you know for sure he didn't use the word promise? No, you don't. But I do. I wish you all would stop assuming that I am in the wrong and that it's MY thinking that is the problem.

No, I don't - that was not my point.

My point was that it will be hard for you to manage your own pain around this if you continue to repeat that it was a promise. And if he used that word, I'd say that was a big error on his part.

People will disappoint us. I know you know this. And part of managing compromised mental health is having strategies for how to work with the events that are hardest for us to neutralize. Everyone has different ones.

So, whether he was the wrongest person on earth, or not - doesn't matter. You are struggling with the result of his action - the thoughts that have followed from it. Trying to disprove those thoughts (as some posts in this thread have done, this is really just basic CBT thought challenging) hasn't worked for you. It doesn't always work.

So, I'm suggesting that you try and just shift the emotional temperature around the word.

I'm suggesting that in an effort to help you find some relief.

That's all.

I have a lot of empathy for where you are right now. I've had a different set of highly upsetting struggles with my T (around crisis support) and it was awful for awhile. Something that helped me get through it - along with talking with him - was talking with myself about my own expectations, and trying to understand why it was so especially upsetting for me. Why I wasn't recovering from it, in other words.

 

[FauxLiz]

@chaotic harmony I understand what you are saying about having regularly scheduled sessions on Tuesdays and Fridays. I see my T 2x a week as well on Tuesdays and Thursdays. However, these appointments are only scheduled two months at a time and at the end of that time frame we have to revisit his schedule to see if those days and times continue to work for both of us. We have been working together for nearly three years and the day and time of our sessions have changed over time. When we started we met Wed evening and every other Saturday, life and employment changed for both of us (he was a solo practice now he owns/manages the practice as a group practice) Changes have occurred because of life situations for both of us, we transitioned to Tues. evening and alternating Friday and Saturdays and now most recently are doing Tues. and Thurs early mornings before traditional work hours.

I know that you had two days in writing as what you were scheduled for but it would be a good thing to sit down with your T and discuss what time frame he anticipated that to initially last for before a scheduling discussion was held. You might find that you both have different ideas of what the information you had in writing meant.

 

[lostforgottensoul]

you all seem to think I am the problem. That is not the case.

No, I don't think that. I was just trying to understand how the sessions are scheduled for you. That's all. Sorry if I gave that impression.

 

[chaotic harmony]

I know that you had two days in writing as what you were scheduled for but it would be a good thing to sit down with your T and discuss what time frame he anticipated that to initially last for before a scheduling discussion was held.

His exact words in writing: "I have your time blocked off for every Tuesday @ 2pm and every Friday @ 1pm (unless a holiday falls on those days, then we will reschedule for another day and time) indefinitely. You can count on me to be there, pinky promise!"

And then when I saw him next we symbolically linked pinkies (because I don't do touch quite yet.) and he looked at me and said "I promise, I will not do to you what [they] have done."

So I don't understand how I am in the wrong here by being upset at him for not being true to his word. I don't understand how my thinking is the problem. Not everything is cognitive distortion. Yes, I understand there MIGHT have been a miscommunication by me telling him it "was perfectly fine" that I only have one day last week because of the holiday. And I will ask about that next week. I also understand that days/times might need to change in the future, but he has told me those were my times indefinitely unless I needed to change days/times. It was my decision, my call. He promised he was not going anywhere unless something life altering happens. So yeah...

Thank you for understanding the regularly scheduled sessions. It helped a lot.

 

[scout86]

@lostforgottensoul it sounds like her sessions are scheduled the same way mine are. We have sort of a standing appointment for a day and time, until further notice. If either of us need to change it, we can and do. This method works well for both of us. He does his own scheduling and it gives him something specific to work around. Same for me. (Besides, we both are less likely to forget something if we don't change it.) If he's got something going on, he usually mentions it as we're walking out. Me too. The walk to the front door, which usually happens, is kind of the "see you next week or not" point. Because it's a habit to think of it then & we're more likely to remember. Neither of us remembers perfectly though. I only have one appointment a week, but it would bother me too, if all of a sudden I got written out of the schedule with no discussion.

 

[chaotic harmony]

@scout86 Thank you. Just...thank you. This is exactly how it works with us. He does his own scheduling and my times were blocked off every Tues & Fri. Thank you for understanding.

 

[Muttly]

No one is saying you are in the wrong. I am sorry it feels that way. And I understand why it feels that way.

What we are trying to do, is help give you an option for reframing your thinking so it is less painful. This isn't blame. This isn't you are wrong. As JoeyLittle says your T screwed up. He should not have promised. It's obliviously made a promise he couldn't keep. And promise was probably not an appropriate word. He runs a business.

I agree with you, he should have asked first before rescheduling. The thing is, we still don't know what's going on in his head. Did he come out of the conversation about 4th of July with some misunderstanding about Fridays. Why did he give away this two timeslots. Etc.

As far as not having an appointment on a week when something traumatic has happened, that has happened to me more than once. It sucks. It hurts. It can feel like abandonment. It can feel like there's no way you will make it through. I wonder if your previous T has created some false expectations (not sure that's the right word). And I have made it through. I did, during that time email my T and it hurt. My inclination, the first couple times it happened, feel like not because of the bad feelings I had about not having an appointment. That was counterproductive though and I realized that and reached out. And I made it through those super stressful times without having my T.

I did have a T, who regularly canceled. Who went on trips for weeks at a time. Who would forget to tell me he was going to be gone for 3 weeks or more until the last moment, etc. He also didn't want to set me up with another T during his absence. Then, at a time when I was in a big crisis, very grudgingly agreed to. And then never did. Ultimately I left him. My current T, once screwed up big time and didn't show up for a session. It was New Years Eve and she forgot about my appointment because it was the holiday and the client before me wasn't coming. Let me tell you, that hurt like hell. December is one big crisis month and that's back when I still had contact with my family so things were awful. She felt horrible and we built up trust, talked a lot about it, and it helped me learn Ts are human.

I would imagine that this is all so much worse because your current struggles are around a therapist who is very damaging to you. I imagine that anything your new therapist does that's not perfect is going to be frightening and confusing, especially since your old therapist said he would not help you.

What can we do to support you during this time?

 

[Suzetig]

I'm not saying your thinking is wrong - i get that this is painful for you, I was trying to get you to identify what you wanted him to do after he had booked someone else into your slot. You felt his response to you wasn't ok, I was asking what would have been a good enough response given that he couldn't give you what you wanted, which was your Friday appointment. Knowing what our second best is can help manage feelings of disappointment or give a clear base to work from when discussing what happened with him because you can tell him what you needed to help you cope.

Rightly or wrongly this situation carries more emotional impact for you than for him - because you need support in a way that he doesn't, and you've been let down. It may be that nothing he said or did short of cancelling the other person and giving you your session would have been good enough - which is ok if that's how you feel.

A therapist "pinkie promising" anything is inappropriate because things happen that they can't control which means they can't be there. He was wrong to do that. I suspect that if he had had a more realistic conversation with you about scheduling, you would have coped better with this change in schedule.

 

[chaotic harmony]

First, thank you very much for your reply. It made me feel less alone.

I wonder if your previous T has created some false expectations (not sure that's the right word).

I think this is correct. My first two Ts would always check in when something bad happened, or after a difficult session. I thought it was nice of my first T, but I didn't think too much of it because that was my first therapy experience. When my second T did this too I figured that it was just part of therapy...that's what all Ts do. My current T has never checked in. I thought it was strange but I never said anything to him. Then during this email attack by my second T she said: "I bet your male therapist won't care enough to check in with you after the 4th. He doesn't have the sensitivity that women do. You're going to start to resent his lack of caring and want to come back to me." So...I started thinking, "Is she right? He doesn't care, so is that why he's never checked in?" But I pretty quickly dismissed that thought because he's never shown me that he doesn't care. Then when I found out that he gave my time to someone else, it made me wonder again.

What can we do to support you during this time?

Thank you....I've never had anyone ask me that before (outside the therapy office). I just wanted to be heard. Then everything started to spiral because people were telling me that I should think differently and that is a huge trigger for me. This second T would tell me every time we met that my biggest problem was the way I thought. The people who abused me were not my problem, the torture I endured was not my problem, my injuries were not my problem (I'm on permanent disability due to my injuries)...my problem was the way I thought. My not being able to sleep was because I couldn't think positively about my abuse, it wasn't because of the nightmares, flashbacks or panic attacks. I understand that CBT therapists are trained to squash out the negative thoughts...but honestly her dismissing everything else and putting it all on me...it wasn't helpful. I still believe that my abusers should be held accountable. I just want someone to tell me, "Hey, I understand. Your thoughts aren't the problem, what happened sucked and it's on them." I hate that everything always falls back on me.

It may be that nothing he said or did short of cancelling the other person and giving you your session would have been good enough - which is ok if that's how you feel.

A therapist "pinkie promising" anything is inappropriate because things happen that they can't control which means they can't be there. He was wrong to do that. I suspect that if he had had a more realistic conversation with you about scheduling, you would have coped better with this change in schedule.

I absolutely thought that he should have owned his mistake and called the other person to reschedule. It was Tuesday and he would have given them plenty of notice, something I did not have. I've never been a selfish person before and I have been inconvenienced a lot and never said anything. I have always thought that everyone else is much more important than me. But at this point I think it's time for me to finally be a priority somewhere.

I don't think our scheduling was unrealistic at all. Tues & Fri. It's not complicated. There is nothing unrealistic about two appointments a week. Now if he had promised me, and I expected, 5 days a week - that is unrealistic.