Confused about situation with my therapist

I agree, it’s very unboundaried and I suspect because he’s in another country with lax guidelines and professionalism around therapeutic relationships. OP are you sure he’s a qualified psychotherapist or is he a counsellor? Some countries allow people to claim they are therapists without formal professional registration. I ask because he seems so chill and has not contained your relationship.

Personally I wouldn't be involved with therapy that wasn't on a regular schedule. The routine and predictability of sessions I've always found helpful (although occasional changes are of course fine too).

I do think it's unreasonable you would expect a reply over the weekend. If it was me I would have asked what the time was for Monday at the point the previous session was booked and if that didn't work leave it until Monday.

I have had a lot of childhood and DV trauma to unpick. My most recent therapist was absolutely amazing but insisted on time limited sessions (a few months). Partly due to stopping dependency but she also said it gives time to really fully reflect and consider progress. I was annoyed at the time as I felt the sessions ended before we had covered everything I wanted. But actually a year later I can absolutely see it's been the best thing. I can return if I want but so far I don't need to. I've realised that the coping skills and areas we worked on can be adapted to consider other issues we didn't work on. Perhaps taking a break would be something to consider?

It is the case, I work in the field. I would be violating nhs professional and therapeutic guidelines if I was to text my clients unless it was just an automated admin message to confirm or cancel an appointment. Anyway it’s not the point here, there is something off with the boundaries here, the OP’s emotions/ boundaries/ vulnerability have not been contained well.

I agree. You’ve got a big change ahead of you, so it makes sense to put your therapy to the side whilst you adjust and revisit it when you have the capacity to. Best of luck, OP x

Good luck with your journey OP. I hope it goes well. Focus your energy on that at the moment it sounds like a huge upheaval for you 💐

As you know, OP, a large part of psychotherapy is the dynamic between the patient and the therapist. I too needed a “perfect” therapist (abandonment issues, ptsd etc all stemming from inadequate/abusive parents) and needed my (older, female) therapist to be the safe reliable mother figure id never experienced. So when she (once) fucked up, saying something that showed she hadn’t understood what I meant, it felt like a major betrayal.

However -

it was actually a really good opportunity to work through- in a healthy, well boundaried way, with an expert- how to navigate a scenario / dynamic shift like that, that would inevitably come up again in my life outside of therapy. So although ir did change the tenor of my sessions with that therapist, I realize now it moved them into a new phase- a phase where I was preparing to take my “new” perspective/ psychological tools and awareness, and apply them.

Could this be a new stage of your therapy journey too?

@TerracottaWorrier that is quite an unusual way of contracting & many would say an unboundaried way of working. I think you need certainty & consistency & would personally as another PP mentioned raise how much of a concern it is for you & request a regular schedule on the same days per week & the same time moving forwards. I mean I’d feel anxious with this arrangement if it were my hairdresser let alone my therapy! He should be managing these boundaries & keeping the whole thing secure that’s his job. FWIW.

Is there a possibility that you've swung the other way. Not in being too sensitive but looking at situations with new and fresh eyes when you're just learning the ropes with these new eyes? How would you have felt both these circumstances before any therapy?

OP can I just what is your agreement re when & how you have your sessions? Are you given a fixed time every week for eg? Why do you have to wait until a certain day to know the time of your appointment? Also how comfortable are you with him offering weekend options? From the start have you had to change times & dates? Just curious as to the nature of the arrangement.

I think @TanginaBarrons makes some really valid points @TerracottaWorrier - would you be able to let him read this thread and then work through the issues with you?

The fact you want to mask how angry you feel and not tell him (although I agree with you, not go off on one, but allow him to know how deeply this has affected you) is probably really important for your ongoing therapeutic work with him. He doesn't have a crystal ball so unless you tell him, the importance of this may get overlooked in your upcoming move and his focus on supporting his mother.

There is a huge amount of transference going on for you here. I am a therapist and hope that I would recognise this and be working through it with you. Your expectations of the therapeutic relationship are inappropriate and clearly much work needs to be done. Whether he is the therapist to work through this with you, I don't know.

I would suggest you bring up all that you have written in this thread with him - if he is as well qualified and experienced as you say he should be able to decide how to go forward with you after this rupture but he does need to know how you feel. You certainly can't just go back to "business as usual".

Personally I think the most healing thing for you is to work through this with him. Your experience in the past I'm guessing it's that people who've let down haven't validated your rightful hurt feelings. I t sounds like your therapist is willing to take responsibility for letting you down.

Just another thought, I hate not having my therapy at set times and day. My newest therapist, he would schedule people into what I considered to be my a lot and it really bothered me. So I told him that it bothered me. And now I have it every week same time, with the understanding that should he need to change it to another long term slot that’s ok, but I don’t want chopping and changing.
Could you ask for a fixed slot?

Therapists have families, lives, and problems like everybody else. It's not helpful you going off on one at him.

This is a rupture and should he be a decent therapist, working through it could very well strengthen your relationship.
I’ve had extensive therapy for childhood and adult sexual trauma and abandonment.
My main therapist for the trauma, I was with 6 years. He’s human. He messed up a few times. He also had to learn what would really trigger and make allowances. And further more work on those triggers.

My suggestion would be to be completely honest. And work through it. Any therapist worth their salt, should welcome all feedback and should work through your issues as to why you’ve reacted how you have but also to repair his rupture in the relationship.. by being sure to communicate better about sessions going forward.

You don't know why he didn't. If he was in the middle of a emergency, maybe he sorted things with his clients out as soon as he could. He has refunded you now, so move on, and get another therapist. It is very clear you actually don't trust him, and that you feel betrayed because you really believe he couldn't be bother, instead of believing the most plausible explanation that it is that he wasn't able to until later due to an emergency. You are too emotionally involved with this therapist. It isn't healthy to feel like this because in an emergency he could not text you to rearrange an appointment.

in the UK you would never text your therapist, not in the NHS anyway, you’d be lucky to even get an email response, rescheduling should be done over the phone with number withheld. Conversation outside sessions should be brief/ minimal. You are over reacting OP and you are not treating this as a professional relationship.

It’s perfectly normal to phone, text and email a therapist in the UK, the NHS model isn’t relevant to private practice. While conversations outside of session may be limited, they need to be long and detailed enough to deal with the matter at hand.

A professional therapy relationship is quite different to any other in that it is both personal and professional. Depending on the type of therapy all the thoughts, dynamics and misgivings that are part and parcel of relationships show themselves. In the context of a therapeutic relationship the OP isn’t overreacting, she’s reacting in a way that is consistent for - which is what happens in therapy. It’s then the therapists job to work with that reaction to repair the relationship. Treating therapy like a GP appointment just doesn’t work, which is one of the problems with the NHS model.

Nothing useful to add regarding the therapist, but a massive WELL DONE for recognizing your feelings and the reasons for them, and working through them rather than acting immediately. That level of insight into yourself is really rare and shows how good a job you are doing in healing yourself! Onwards and upwards, and may 2025 and your new move be fabulous for you!!

And some unmumsnetty hugs, just in case you need some

I sometimes do online tuition sessions and I think my agency would be very annoyed if I cancelled a session without refunding or rescheduling. I also think the time to tell me he had a family emergency (if he wanted to) was when he cancelled on Thursday night, not when we had our session yesterday. And I think he should have replied to my message when he read it, even if it was just to tell me he would set up the session later.

In an ideal world he would have responded exactly as you describe however we don’t live in that world. He may not have been able to tell you about his mum when cancelling the meeting - he may have been upset and focussed on clearing his diary. It’s likely he checked his WhatsApp to check for anything urgent, but didn’t have capacity to respond to anything less urgent.

I remember needing to phone clients to cancel sessions at very short notice. It was all I could do to say I needed to reschedule, I couldn’t explain why because it was too immediate and I’m sure my clients found it difficult. I needed to do it because my client list is confidential so I couldn’t have someone else take care of it who might have been more on top of things. It’s very hard, and you need what you need but sometimes it’s just not possible to focus on your work practices when you’re dealing with a personal crisis.

That actually isn't the case. NHS therapy is very very different to private practice. Therapists in private practice deal with you directly, not through an office and its very normal to text regarding scheduling conflicts. Even in NHS therapy, I had my therapists number and could message him if I was stuck in traffic.

Many private therapists work from their homes and see clients in person there.

Any relationship dealing with people's emotions and mental health is going to be deeper and more emotionally fraught than what you would have with, say, a doctor or beautician.

Therapy relies on a strong bond between you and the therapist. Not so much for things like CBT, you can do that from a workbook but trauma therapy and attachment work is very different.

She is overreacting in a normal way for the stage of therapy she is at and her therapist appears to be perfectly capable of handling that. Boundaries are his job, not hers.

Edit: I also second the poster who says that female therapists are not automatically better for female clients. I've had 2 of each. Both the women were useless and judgemental and had no understanding of PTSD whatsoever.

One man was really kind and understanding but lacked experience to handle trauma and the other man has been the best accidental decision I ever made, even going out of his way to sign up for extra training specifically because he didn't know how best to help me.

Female to female isn't always the best choice.