Those of you who have therapy, do you text your therapist in between sessions?

9 comments

1. If they are offering you therapy, then keep it to something within their professional vocation.

2. No, I usually wait until I next see them however, I have only seen one therapist so others may be different. If she has said you can text her during the week then go for it

3. Do you have a job? How would you feel if, while you were trying to do your job for one person, a different person was trying to get service too, and not expecting to pay for it?

   I would not expect to get any response unless I’d previously agreed some sort of scheme with expected response times and costs etc.

   It’d be a massive risk for them if there were people who weren’t mentally stable expecting an instant response to their text message asking for help.

   (A friend of mine was literally suicidal when a bloke she fancied didn’t respond to messages. “Maybe he’s got a flat battery or dropped his phone down the loo or ….”. Too late, she’d already tried to overdose…)

4. I’ve been seeing my headman for just over three years . Wouldn’t feel comfortable texting him in-between unless I was in desperate need of a session. Feels like it’d be crossing a boundary. Wouldn’t know what to say . Maybe next time you have a session ask her to clarify what she meant ?

5. No, because I don’t tend to need to. However, if you feel like this about texting then please ask her in session about the boundaries and expectations, so you feel comfortable reaching out to her.

6. I wouldn’t do that. My (NHS) therapist has never said that I could contact him between sessions, and I wouldn’t do it anyway. If I’m having a rough time, I work through it on my own and then tell him about it during our next session.

7. I think you need to ask them exactly what they mean by that… That sounds pretty fucking weird.

8. Not a therapist but similar – I say this to my clients and lots of them do. I am clear about my boundaries – they can message anytime, if I’m not available my phone is on aeroplane mode or do not disturb, and I’ll get back to them when I can. If they just want to note something so we can discuss it at their next session they start their message with ‘For info:’

   Most clients reach out when they are having a difficult day, big emotions, need help dealing with a situation etc

9. Having bounced around mental health services for a few years now, I’ve noticed that therapists who work in multiple buildings are far more breezy about handing out the number for their work mobile – I expect they’re just very used to it? Especially after lockdowns.

   But I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to anyone who wasn’t happy to say “email me during the week if you want to”

   She might just mean “if things are going badly you can reach out to me” or she might be genuinely interested to know what *you* would consider important/ interesting enough to contact them about – most texts I’ve sent have been along the lines of “made the bus but just remembered I meant to tell you about XXX, can we talk about it next week?” but with my current therapist I got such an overwhelmingly positive reaction to a photo of a duckpond (after struggling to leave the house) now it feels appropriate to give her some glimpses of positive things and not just the doom and gloom that is me after an hour-long commute just as the schools turn out.

   I suppose she might also might just be saying it because she got used to saying it during lockdown and now it comes out without thinking – humans are weird creatures of habit and therapists are no different

   I think it might be worthwhile to tell her your thoughts/ questions. The long hard slow lesson that I’m finally starting to accept is that speculation only gets you so far and sometimes it’s better just to ask 🙃