Am I misreading tone?

How odd, but in answer to your op, yes I think you’ve misread her tone. She sounds incredibly patient.

Most services require payment and it's up to you to remember. If she sets up an automated reminder service, she'll have an increased cost and then she'll have to put her fees up.

Therapists are for helping you become a functional, healthy human. Be one. Set your own reminder for anything you need to do and stop expecting the world to remind you to carry out your responsibilities.

Why should she have to remind you? Set a reminder for yourself. Paying her is your responsibility, not hers.

Let's suppose for a minute that someone could actually behave and think like this. Yes - you're misreading tone. Extraordinary attitude and thought process from you, OP.

Christ, I've never seen a poll so close to being a unanimous AIBU!

You have a phone OP. It has a calender function that you can add reminders to. It's your job to remember to pay your bills, not your therapists.

If she sent you a reminder in a few days and your banking issue is not resolved you have to go through this all again. If you take responsibility for your own difficulties then you set a reminder for yourself. If your account is sorted then you pay the deposit, if not you set another reminder for a couple of days later. Why should your therapist have to chase you repeatedly? She could just say you don't have an appointment booked until you pay the deposit.

Her tone is more than fine, it's very gentle considering she'll be paid late AND you asked her to remind her to pay her what you owe her. She's trodden a fine line of holding a very reasonable boundary while still sounding friendly.
Take accountability, set a reminder, don't infantasise yourself by asking her to act like a parent.

You sound very entitled! Set your own reminder

In all this time you could have just set a reminder on your phone.

The tone is deliberately softened and understanding of your situation and her boundary is utterly reasonable. You are fully capable of setting a reminder for yourself and you don't pay her for her PA services outside of sessions.

Set a reminder, pay the deposit, and in your session you should absolutely talk through your reaction to this. Did you feel rejected and hurt that she wouldn't do extra work to make sure your session happened (wanting her to chase you a bit)? Is this part of a pattern of avoiding responsibility or looking for others to take control when stressful things happen in life (like the bank issue)? Does being told no, however kindly, feel upsetting? There are a bunch of reasons why therapists maintaining healthy boundaries and clear, assertive communication is vital, and one of them is that it creates an opportunity for clients to experience someone doing that with us and process the feelings and impulses that come up.

Your therapist will have had many, many clients who don’t pay on time. This is an alternative to the more brutal, “can’t pay, can’t reserve my time” approach. I really don’t blame them. Self employed people need to be pretty robust or end up being shafted.

Your therapist's tone is absolutely fine. If anything, it's more than friendly with the addition of emojis to soften it even more. Just pop a calender reminder in your phone, as others have said, and you'll be fine. It's not their problem to chase you, and really is quite frustrating for a service provider to do so when it shouldn't be necessary. Hope you get sorted - it sounds like you want to continue your therapeutic relationship and it'd be a shame for this to come between it.

Jeez this is therapy fodder if I’ve ever seen it. Talk about it next time. Will probably be very revealing when you get work out the meaning behind your response to this!

YABU, her tone was fine and you can easily set a reminder for yourself.

This is trying to create a problem where there is none.

It's even more infuriating to me that you seem to not grasp that:

1. You should be accountable for making a payment for her service as easy as possible, not burdening her with it.

1. You are literally doubling her work. You want her to remind you and then check money has gone in rather than taking one action; checking money is in.

1. You can remember to prompt your clients but not yourself.

Is it possible that this lack of accountability and then defensiveness is something she is seeing in you during your sessions?

I’d feel awkward reminding someone to pay again, especially if I didn’t know if their bank issues were resolved.
What if they weren’t?
Would you then have to get back to her and ask her to remind you yet again…

You’ll know when the issues are fixed. Much better you decide when to pay.

This actually makes you sound quite rude.
Your service is so unimportant to me that I will forget. However I am an important client so you need to remember.

The onus is on the customer to pay.

This is so odd - we all think you are being unreasonable but you are holding your line buckle & thong

What everyone else says. It's likely not to be the only payment you'll need to resend, and it's your responsibility to keep track and sort it out. No doubt people will remind you once payments are late, but you could make a list to pre-empt this.

Remind yourself! Adults asking others to remind them to do something (in a personal or professional setting) is very annoying. We are all swimming around in a river of life admin and things to do, we don’t need anybody else’s.

If you forget - that’s on you. It’s a YOU problem. Why on earth would you ask her to take responsibility, she’s not your mother!

239 people so far think you are being unreasonable. The tone read fine to me and it’s your responsibility to pay. Not sure what the therapy is for but pushing the responsibility back on you can only be a good thing.

You’re reading something into nothing - it will have taken you significantly more time writing about this on mumsnet than it would have done to set a reminder or even to speak to the bank and get the issue resolved and payment made

When you're able to pay her again, you should make a point of discussing this with your therapist.

It really grinds my gears when someone asks me to remind them to do something. Err no….. remind yourself.

You’re being a baby.