Posted by mair on January 26, 2004, at 15:11:46
In reply to needing a hug, being refused part II (long), posted by metalflipflop on January 25, 2004, at 22:14:51
I'd like to second what some of the other posters said about the phone calls. This doesn't make sense if you haven't been crossing her invisible boundaries.
When I started with my T, she never spoke to me at all about phone calls. I inferred that she really didn't want people calling. The subject came up after I had been seeing her for over a year and was in very bad shape. She made some offhand remark like "you have my home number, don't you" and was a little nonplussed I think when she found out that I had concluded that I shouldn't ever call her regardless of circumstances. It took us several sessions to work through the phone issue, largely due to my enormous reluctance to ever bother her at home. She ultimately established a policy with me that I could call whenever I felt like talking with her at all. But it's pretty obvious to me that she has this policy with me because she knows I would never abuse it.
My speculation is that she never said anything about phone calling when we first started meeting because she didn't want to encourage me to call her if I was going to be the kind of patient who called alot anyway. So maybe Ts tailor the policy to the patient.
That's all well and good, but I think they have to be careful about the message being conveyed. If my T had come out when we first met and said what your therapist said, I might have stayed with her, but I sure as hell wouldn't ever call and I'd probably resent her a little for establishing an unnecessary boundary. If she suddenly announced a new rule in the same manner your T did, I'd be as blown away as you seem to be, particularly since there doesn't appear to be a real context for the change.
Mair
poster:mair
thread:305455
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040123/msgs/305680.html