Anxiety - consultation cancelled due to kids noise

[Kardelen]

So my husband has severe anxiety. He found this private company that offer help relieve symptoms. It’s very expensive but w e thought we would try just incase it helps as nothing else seems to be helping.

unfortunately my husband was struggling with setting up the teams meeting so I was trying to help and kids were in the room.

as soon as it was set up I tried taking the kids out the room but the consultant said she can’t continue like this with the children, and for him to go somewhere private.

we live in flat… so when they continued with the consultation my daughter started to cry in another room so I was trying my best to calm her down.
but the doctor said she can’t continue and ended the phone call.

i don’t know ifs just me but I feel really annoyed? As not everyone lives in a house and can go somewhere private?

especially if they are dealing with anxious people, should they not be a bit more lenient?

Kindly OP, is English a 2nd language for you? I suspect some of the confusion from other posters is the way you have phrased things when you actually meant something else.

Did the counsellors T&C's have any info about ensuring the session was quiet and private before starting? What is their policy on cancelling a session due to DH being in an unsuitable environment? The noise might have stopped, but maybe your DH was looking distressed or distracted on the call trying to find you- hence cancelling it? I would have thought the therapist would have explained though.

I WFH and have noise cancelling headphones. I'm amazed how much they block things out things such as my dog barking or the door bell.

You can only go forward from this and plan the next session appropriately. Wishing you all the best xxx

I had low cost counselling from a local charity. They insisted I had to be at home where I was likely to be disturbed by family who I was talking about, and would not let me be out in a local green space where I had a small chance of being disturbed by passers-by.
I do think counsellors should be more understanding.

Sorry but your answer is a bit melodramatic. Of course we don't know what you are going through, you only gave us so much information. Do you think anyone is a mind reader? Plus, even though you are going through some stuff, this has nothing to do with the initial question you asked. You were given advice that the set up is not right, take that on the chin and be more organised next time or you will be out of pocket again. Practical, no non-sense advice. Also, your husband should be in there on his own, he needs to face his anxiety and trust the consultant knows what he is doing, unless he has learning disabilities he is an adult and should have the freedom of talking freely. What if some of his anxiety is related to you? He probably wouldn't say this in front of you from fear of not offending you but is important for the consultant to know all his stressors to help him find strategies to cope with his anxiety no matter where is coming from. I hope it makes sense. And don't feel so attacked, no one attacked you, they just questioned the situation itself. Take the advice, good luck to you and your husband.

What do you mean by tried taking the kids out the room?

This is an important point. The patient and their family often think the intake/evaluation needs the “truth” or an exact accounting but really they just need time and soace with the patient to see how they function (or don’t function). OP and her dh have a seriously co dependent relationship in which he basically can’t function without her. Would he be catatonic in a session alone? If so he needs to be hospitalized. That level of anxiety can’t be handled in a small flat with toddler and baby. OP can’t fix what ails him. And being forced by his collapse to intercede or sit with him even during a private session is putting a band aid on a sucking chest wound.

Presumably it's also meant to be private, perhaps he might need to talk about your relationship and it would be hard to be candid with you in the room, apart from the noisy kids.

was ‘D’H wearing a head set with a good directional microphone, the kind used in busy and noisy contacts centres. It would t help with you being involved but it would mean that the session would not be interrupted by background noise.

another important step IMO would be have a transcription or recording of the session rather than replying you to remember.

you are being asked to do too much in this scenario. Support husband and manage the children. At some point t , something has to give if the therapy is to continue. Good luck

Some of the posts on this thread are nuts OP.

There is no way I would have considered that having kids in the other room, even if they did sometimes cry, would mean someone else would be unable to have a video consultation in the other room.

And with sick children it isn't you and them that should be leaving the home to make the consultation environment perfect.

What did your DH think about the noise? Was he able to understand the therapist? Did he think her closing things down was reasonable? Or did it seem like an excuse to him?

She wasn't in the fucking room.

In this context, it's all about him, not you.

For next time, arrange to take the children out and leave him with a notepad of things he doesn't want to forget to bring up or wants to remember.

It's not good for anybody to have somebody else supervising their confidential therapy, as it means they can't speak freely and the therapist is unable to ascertain their patient is safe and able to engage fully/consent to treatment.

Take the kids outside. Wear coats.

Record the meeting. Problems solved.

No it’s not odd for her to have ended the call if there’s kids screaming the background. How can you expect to have a serious conversation in that environment.

But she wanted to be in the fucking room but she couldn’t be in the fucking room because the children were being noisy in the fucking room so she took them to the living room.

Thanks for explaining, I see what you mean. Hopefully your input will be more helpful to the OP than the judgemental pile-on 😟

Her husband wanted her there.

And the children are ill and it's freezing outside to boot. Where is she supposed to take ill children?

Wtf is everyone smoking. OP was trying to help. The consultant could have asked for her to leave or to arrange for the kids to be silent before saying it wouldn't work.

Maybe it would have been more productive to have rearranged the appointment knowing that the children would be home and be in need of mum.
Though ultimately it doesn't sound like they would have been old enough to leave alone in another room anyway. We kids are older and if I told them I needed to take an important phone call and not to disturb me then I would be able to leave them watching TV/on a games console for the duration.
Toddlers are unpredictable and even on a good day if they were well I don't see they would have sat with mum and dad and been quiet (plus as others have said I am not sure a therapy session would be appropriate for them to be listening to).

In that case you must rearrange the appointment.

I think you and your DH got it wrong OP, but I can see why and I get it. When you are in the midst of something, you make choices that you wouldn’t make in a perfect world. If both of you had your heads in the right place, you would have realised that your plan wasn’t realistic and wouldn’t have expected a professional to bend their boundaries for you.

You got a decision wrong. This doesn’t make you bad people, especially if you have a lot going on. Apologise to the therapist and say that you now understand that DH needs a private space for the appointment and will stick to that from now on.

In the meantime, can your DH get help from his GP to help his therapy? It’s really important that he engages with it, but some people need additional support such as medication to help them attend sessions. You can probably also find resources about what to expect on the therapist’s website or via mental health organisations. Work through this together to help your DH prepare and then make yourself scarce on the day, or suggest DH finds a private space, even if this means the car in a quiet spot.

Good luck - the main thing is to keep going.

ETA - I can see that some people have suggested recording the session or making a transcript. This is likely to be outside the terms of the session. Therapy needs to be completely confidential, even from you.

Ah OP, this sounds stressful all round. You must be carrying a lot, trying to care for the children and manage everything while your husband is obviously quite unwell.
I think next time, you do need to take the children out, and he just needs to push through. It's okay if he feels anxious with you gone during the meeting, that's what they are trained to help him with. He can't expect you to support him and also manage children keeping a toddler quiet. It's too much on you.

This is exactly what I was thinking. The husband is supposedly so anxious that he can't even remember things correctly without his wife in the room? And he requested she stays with him whilst having to leave two sick children in the other room? Yet the whole tone of OP's post doesn't sound like she's fed up of dealing with a man-child who can't even sit through an online session alone. How does a person like this pull his weight on an everyday basis in a tiny home with two children? Why is OP only angry at the therapist rather than expecting a grown adult man to manage his own therapy session alone?

It actually sounds like OP is treating the husband like a third, very young, child which is a pretty bizarre family dynamic to have. She's advocating and talking about him like a child with SEN and putting the blame on the therapist alone.

With all respect, a single weekly (or biweekly) session of online therapy is nowhere close to what is needed for someone to recover from such severe anxiety as described. If the husband needs help setting up Teams and cannot even remember things without his wife present, then he needs inpatient treatment or a lengthy break somewhere that takes him completely away from his life for a while.

No, OP's husband could have re-arranged the appointment, but that was not OP's responsibility or right unless he's given her power over his medical affairs.

OP is taking a ridiculous amount of dragging on this thread, and that's not right.

I'm in agreement with @User7854653 - except that I see every step on a personal 'journey' as a step towards the destination. For this couple, the first step has taught them they have to participate appropriately in the treatment. A lot of people think of therapy as something delivered to you. You sign up, you pay, the practitioner provides a service, you feel better.

Psychotherapy isn't entertainment. The client does the work and, if it's any good, the work is quite hard. The therapist is a guide. Nobody's going to guide you through the weird recesses of your own mind if they have no confidence in your ability to stay safe while focusing intently. The first session (or two) is usually about establishing this safe, focused space and exploring expectations.

In this case, the mismatch between the therapeutic space and the client's environment was dramatic. If the client chooses to address this and resume step one in more appropriate circumstances, all good. He and OP will have learned something valuable about the process.

However, I suspect she's flounced out of her thread due to perceived lack of soothing noises. For both their sakes I hope they will proceed to the next session - but if he's looking to be soothed while family life rackets around him, he won't be having his anxiety addressed.

Her dh wanted her to be, because he refuses to be left alone.
Even though this necessitated two sick and grumpy kids also being in the room 🤔
None of them have the first clue how to navigate this, it’s appalling.

OP said he wanted her there because he gets anxious alone in the flat and because he forgets things, but she was in the room with him at the start because he was struggling to set up the tech for the meeting. But once it was up and running she left with the kids.

Do you feel good belittling a person who is clearly struggling?
and it is does not dose if you want to feel cruel, petty judgment