Posted by seldomseen on January 28, 2009, at 19:28:09
In reply to You don't need to call me back, posted by Dinah on January 28, 2009, at 17:38:54
Yeah, this directly relates to my therapy visit today as well.
My therapist is not good over the phone. Although he never failed to call me back when I did call, I've stopped calling because it just doesn't work for me. He sounds rushed, and defensive and not like himself at all. It usually makes the situation worse.
The infamous "suck it up" comment was made by him - you guessed it - over the phone.
So I was describing my crash over the weekend and he indicated surprise over the fact that I didn't call him.
To which I replied - "oh, I'm sure that would have made your day - to have a suicidal patient call on a saturday morning, and besides, what could you have done?" He stammered around a bit, didn't say much of anything consequential.
He did manage to say that he wasn't concerned that I would commit suicide (you know I really can't - my pets would eat me I'm sure, and then, after they devoured my corpse, who would take care of them?), but his primary concern was how badly I felt and he wanted to know. And I did feel plenty bad. I think he also felt bad that I would choose not to include him on the badness, until 5 days later, during regular business hours, at a time when I knew I would have his full attention.
Hmmm.... I think my therapist realized he wants me to want to call him too, but when faced with the reality of it, maybe *not* so hot about the actually calling. In fact, by the end of the session he was gesturing towards his phone indicating that a voice mail reaching out after business hours would be okay too.
Ah therapy.
Seldom.
poster:seldomseen
thread:876855
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20090109/msgs/876878.html