Feeling Nervous And Let Down By T

[loui50]

I made a mistake in dosing my son's medication. He is fine, but i could have hurt him. It was a mistake, an accident. I don't handle making mistakes well. I get really anxious for days over simple mistakes, but this was a big one. So i emailed T about it. She has said i can email her any time and she would respond. In 8 months i have emailed twice, so i don't take it lightly to contact her out of session. It has been 4 days and no response. I feel really let down. I feel depressed and anxious. I feel like maybe i bothered her and i have made another mistake. I feel like a small child that has messed up. I expected her support and have not gotten it. She has never let me down. I really felt i could trust her. But i feel so let down. Am i being unreasonable.

 

[Beaglefan61]

Sometimes when hurting and afraid and trust issues are on the line, feeling as you as is every bit normal. I don't think you are being unreasonable if it is four days. If you are so careful with boundaries that you have only mailed a couple of times before this, then when you do you really need the support. Being so careful to have things go in a disappointing way can itself hurt. Perhaps the circumstance itself has gotten in the way and your therapist hasn't seen email. I am sorry that you are having to endure the uncertainty as that can really trigger some painful feelings. I hope you get a good response soon and that it will reassure you for why any delay.

 

[NightSky]

I am SO familiar with what you're feeling. I email mine about once a month, more recently with lots going on. But she is always telling me to email her. she very often takes several days to respond. In the beginning if I emailed and had to wait 3+ days or so for a response I questioned everything. I was sure she was mad. (No reason to believe that.) I was sure I had somehow crossed a boundary and she was going to drop me. I was sure she didn't want to interrupt her life to respond. Etc etc etc. but she has always either responded in time with some reason it took so long (she has been away before. She has not checked mail for a while. And sometimes she has said she was thinking about what to write or waiting for a chunk of time to respond well.. a couple times she was waiting for a chunk of time to respond and never got it so she never responded. And she realized it the next time we met.) or else sometimes she responds super quickly. There's no set pattern. but a year and a half of this has finally helped me to see that my fears are never remotely true. I go into appointments after emailing her feeling ashamed and nervous and I'll ask her if she was annoyed etc and she always says she's glad to hear from me and my emails help her understand me better. It took SO much of that repetition before I stopped having those thoughts after sending an email and not getting what I feel is a timely reply.
I told her in session once how I felt waiting for a response. I asked if she could just send one line to let me know she got it and I asked if it was ok for me to ask if she got it if two days went by. She agreed to that. She has sent me messages I never got that ended up in my junk folder. It happens. You just never know.
I would venture to say you have not made a mistake. You have not messed up. She is still there to support you. And your feelings of being let down would be good for you to discuss with her.

 

[loui50]

So i saw T today. She said she did not get my email until yesterday and that is why she didnt respond. I gmail that unreliable? I wasn't able to tell her how it made me feel. I just could not do it. But we talked about the content of the email and i feel better about that. But i still feel hurt that she didnt reply.

 

[mrsmegan]

I could have written this thread myself many, many times.

What you are feeling is okay. And it should also be okay for you to bring this to your therapist. To tell her, I was really hurt that it took you so long to get it. The situation is causing me to feel (insert emotion here) or think (insert thought pattern here). I find what is the most helpful is to keep it about me and my feelings and to do my absolute best to not project on him or assume his intentions. If I don't do this, then I usually end up apologizing for my feelings, feeling really stupid/ashamed, or being scared that T is going to punish me for having anything but positive thoughts about him. This is REALLY, REALLY hard for me - but I have been working on it and it has really helped my communication in areas where I feel hurt or let down by T, because it is about me and how I feel about it.