My ongoing therapy dilemma

[David Baxter PhD]

Personally, I think given how casual he is about these things you should take a more assertive approach.

Tell him what you want specifically - date and time - and leave it to him to tell you if he can't make that and offer an alternative.

"ideally next week or the week after" is too vague and leaves the impression that you're in no hurry. That may be one of the (poor) reasons he's not replying to your emails in a timely manner.

 

[gooblax]

Makes sense but doesn't feel very ok to do/say.
I asked for Thurs. Should give him time to read the email on Tues, check his calendar, and say yes/no.
Assertiveness was one of the things I had already identified as needing to work on. But it's not like it's an emergency. I can survive without talking to him, it seems stupid to be having such a problem with it. Nothing was urgent when I was much more emotionally volatile, so it certainly doesn't count as urgent now.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Makes sense but doesn't feel very ok to do/say.
I asked for Thurs. Should give him time to read the email on Tues, check his calendar, and say yes/no.
Assertiveness was one of the things I had already identified as needing to work on. But it's not like it's an emergency. I can survive without talking to him, it seems stupid to be having such a problem with it. Nothing was urgent when I was much more emotionally volatile, so it certainly doesn't count as urgent now.

Better.

But it is urgent to you. That's enough. And by now, he should know that.

 

[gooblax]

I don't know how to judge if it's urgent to me though. Yes some of the time I'm stressed and crying about it, but in the interim times I can relax about it to a bit of a dull dissatisfaction as long as I don't think much about it.

 

[Daniel E.]

If I had to evaluate the degree of necessity of each appointment, I would be more stressed than usual.

At least here, people also make appointments tentatively (cancel them later if they change their mind or something comes up).

 

[David Baxter PhD]

I don't know how to judge if it's urgent to me though. Yes some of the time I'm stressed and crying about it, but in the interim times I can relax about it to a bit of a dull dissatisfaction as long as I don't think much about it.

To me, that says it's most definitely urgent.

 

[gooblax]

He replied yesterday afternoon. Apologised for the slow reply cause he's been doing training stuff. It really wasn't slower than most other times so I dunno there - seems more like a reaction to "if we're unable to resolve this it will have to be my last session." I didn't want to say that because it feels like making a threat but it was true and maybe the only way left for me to communicate how serious of a thing it is for me.
So he is offering the option of having a routine slot. That will be better than this adhoc stuff that's been driving me bananas.
Also suggested Wednesday rather than Thursday, so my date guessing-game played out predictably.

Now (of course, because why would this possibly be simple?!) I feel like avoiding responding to the email, or setting the interval for the routine slot, or dealing with any of it. :facepalm:
I'm going to try and respond today and get it over with.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

My recommendation is take the recurring appointment slot and contact him to cancel if you need to, but with any cancellation (1) give him lots of notice, and (2) make sure you state clearly that you will see him at the next scheduled appointment.

 

[gooblax]

Good points about cancellations. I should probably discuss schedules over Xmas/New Years at the same time since that's almost upon us.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Yes. Good point.

Speaking of such, do you celebrate Halloween in Australia?

 

[gooblax]

Speaking of such, do you celebrate Halloween in Australia?

Depends who you ask:

My parents' generation and older - "NO! It's un-Australian!"
My generation if they don't have kids - "Sure Halloween dressup party whooooooooooooo"
My generation if they do have kids - "What neighbourhoods are participating in Halloween this year? Let's deliver a flyer to make sure everyone who is prepared to give out Halloween lollies put a decoration on their mailbox so that we know which houses to go to and which ones to skip. Oh, and we'd better drive two suburbs over because that neighbourhood is doing Halloween."

Edit: Probably why my therapist couldn't do Thursday - might have to take his kid trick-or-treating in a nearby suburb.

 

[gooblax]

We've set the next two sessions up til Xmas. I might try and reschedule the last one in December to get there in person, which I mentioned to him and will let him know when I decide what I'm doing.

This session we spent most of the time talking about relationship stuff. I find it a lot easier to talk to him about concrete things like how to communicate in my relationships... rather than talking about what I think and feel.
He does have good ideas on how to navigate relationship communication so I've appreciated getting those kinds of suggestions / strategies from him.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Excellent. Well done, @gooblax!

 

[Daniel E.]

Celebrate with a Vegemite latte

 

[gooblax]

Vegemite lattes aside, I'm back again trying not to get caught up in "I should cancel" thoughts.
I imagined what it might be like to have an in-person session which has made the thoughts more compelling (given that I've booked my Xmas holiday flights based on having an in-person session next month, I'm going to have to work on imagining it with less freeze-up-ness).

I am better at working on stuff with him that isn't emotionally painful. Discussions about relationship stuff that relate to things that are difficult but not painful go ok whereas the others don't. Maybe that's all he can help me work on. So maybe it makes sense to have the 2 sessions to get a few more strategies then be done with it. End of year tends to be a time of reflecting on progress so I'll propose we go through my original goals and see what happens.

 

[gooblax]

I'm super unprepared for the session this week. The topic that might be useful to discuss is going to be difficult, and it might not even be a good idea so I haven't figured out if I want to prepare to discuss it. Or just discuss why I won't discuss it.

I also have still been using one of my therapist's poorly considered statements as a way to make myself feel bad whenever I decide that it's warranted, and it's the kind of statement that makes it offputting to talk to him about anything 'emotional'... As if I needed that to be more offputting. At least I told him I'd be using it this way.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

You're nervous/anxious about it. But you can do this.

 

[gooblax]

Yeah I am. And I know it will only be worse if I don't prepare at least a prompt dot point for when he asks what I'd like to talk about. It's hard enough to start up a topic when it's an easy one.

 

[gooblax]

I wrote the dot point but it turned into a page of dot points, so now it's too long to use effectively as a thought prompt.
Lucky for me, I made myself sad while writing it so saying it is going to suck.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

You don't have to deal with them all in one session, of course.

Why did it make you sad? or what made you said?