To find this therapist flakey

[Chickenandeggz]

Sooo last year I found a therapist. Trauma specialist. Not cheap. We cruise along nicely and then she cancels an apt at very short notice due to illness. Fair enough these things happen. She the cancels 2 further sessions at very short notice due to WiFi issues at the rental she is holidaying at. She books me in for the following week, don't receive zoom link so contact her and she says there are still internet issues and can't do the session that evening so she books me in for new year. I email her that day as, again, no zoom link. I've heard NOTHING.

The gripe I have is this can be quite triggering for trauma survivors so it's not ok, I have become fairly robust so not too upset! What is annoying me though is the work we have been doing is now lost, all those weeks lead no where. Obviously I've paid the sessions I've had but not the ones I haven't had but I still don't think that it's fair because I've been left high and dry and out of pocket. Obviously I wouldn't have commited the time and money if we weren't going to finish what we started. These are not ad-hoc counselling sessions they are an approach which is built up over weeks and months.

I’m a therapist. Short notice illness - fair enough. Not ideal but it happens. Once I’ve had to cancel online sessions due to a power cut at home. That’s a risk of doing online therapy, you are at the mercy of the tech.

I personally wouldn’t be doing client sessions while on holiday firstly because my holiday time is holiday, not work. Occasionally I’ve had to do emergency supervision, and I’ve done the odd bit of CPD, but I wouldn’t see clients. Plus if you are in a holiday rental you don’t know how good the connection is. Or how good the soundproofing is. But that’s my choice. I am autistic, as are most of my clients, and I wouldn’t like that lack of predictability. I have once or twice done sessions when I’ve been away on a business trip and been, say, in a hotel, but I’ve had reasonable confidence in the wifi and privacy. And have been open with clients about being in a different location and contracted beforehand about how we might handle poor connectivity issues and what it might be like if there is a problem.

I’m guessing here that the therapist might have tried to minimise the impact of their holiday and tried to avoid a lengthy absence/gap, so there were likely good intentions there, but that hasn’t worked out. I would be speaking with her about the impact of the short notice cancellations on you and on the work, and see how she responds, if she apologises sincerely and wants to understand the impact on you without defensiveness, and says she plans to do things differently next time, it might be that this was a genuine mistake - she intended to try to make sure her clients didn’t miss out and she didn’t foresee the potential pitfalls. But if she responds a bit more like “c’est la vie”, is defensive or tries to make out you’re being unreasonable, then that’s much more of a red flag. And if she says she has future trips planned and plans to do the same thing, then as a client you need to think about whether or not that will feel ok for you.

Trained counsellor here. Good points made by previous poster, but I think you shouldn't need to explain to a therapist the impact this has on you. It's plainly obvious. By all means try, but it really is crap of her, and I would be questioning her abilities on this alone. I've actually had a vaguely similar situation, and changed therapists on that issue, but although I had invested time and cash, I wasn't as deep into it are you. I'm sorry this has happened

Yeah I did email her to ask about the session two weeks ago and never heard back. Find that odd. Was worried at first but now I've had space I put it down to flakiness!

ooof, yeah so if I am getting this right you booked a session for a day that was two weeks ago and she didn’t send you a link or acknowledge it had been missed? I think initially I misread your post and i thought you’d booked the new year session and that was yet to happen. That’s not good AT ALL. I have executive dysfunction issues but I have a diary, reminders, etc. I don’t use zoom for client sessions either because of the whole need to remember to send links thing as I know I’d get in trouble with that! As a therapist you have to have the right systems in place, it wouldn’t be acceptable to not show up for a f2f client so it’s not acceptable to do it for an online client either.

Flaky or something is going on for her, either way, that’s not good practice. If something is going on and she’s not fit to work she needs to let you know, talk to you about your options for other support, etc.