Scheduling Changes (Again)

My schedule is shifting. Again.

My third (and final!) clinical affiliation starts on the 21st and will last for 8 weeks total, Monday to Friday, 9-5pm at a local hospital.

The whole hospital setting is activating and I have plenty of fears and anxiety about that, but I can’t even go there yet. I just need to feel relatively calm for a week or so before I actively tackle those emotions.

But this also means I will have to shift sessions around again. I told my therapist my schedule as soon as I heard from my clinical director. She was okay with it and said she would start moving things around in her schedule to make room for me.

On Monday, she mentioned it and said we should try to talk about it soon. So for Wednesday’s session, I went in with the intent to talk about two things:

1. Scheduling
2. Money

The scheduling conversation was uncomfortable, but I pushed through it. She proposed two options since she doesn’t think she’ll be able to give me three separate sessions per week during the coveted “post-workday” hours.

She still wants me to have three hours of therapy each week, however, so she suggested we either have a regular 60 minute session on Mondays and a double session on Wednesdays -or- we could do 90 minute sessions on each day.

I really don’t know which I prefer.

Neither, to be completely honest. I really like our Monday/Wednesday/Friday sessions now because there’s such an nice rhythm to it and I never have to go very long without seeing her. Since Fridays won’t be available anymore, that means I will have to go FIVE days without contact.

Not cool.

I told her I would give the double session  a try next week and that we could keep talking about this each session until we figured it out. I’m not sure if the Wednesday double session would work since I’ll have class for five of those eight weeks. Which means I’d have to go to clinic, school, and then therapy.

Therapy is on the way home from clinic and school is closer to home so that will just make for a super exhausting day of trekking all over the City. Then I’ll have to get up Thursday morning and face the first of five days without contact with my therapist. So I suppose I’m wondering if it’s wise to plan a two-hour session on my busiest day of the week and then have nothing again until Monday.

There has to be a better solution.

Somewhere in my brain I am pondering the possibility of a planned phone call or even a planned email exchange. I know she won’t go for email and it doesn’t sound like she has weekday availability that matches mine outside of what we’re already planning.

Which means I’d have to ask for phone contact on weekends.

Yikes.

I don’t know if I can ask for that. But I also know it will be profoundly challenging for me to go so long without connecting to her.

Maybe I can just tell her that and see if she offers a solution. Then again, maybe I could ask for what I need, even if that puts me at risk of feeling rejection and abandonment.

Ugh. This sucks.