Send Your Replies to Michael F.F.

Hi Michael,

I used to email my therapist all of the time. It is very therapeutic, but my therapist would print out my emails and we would discuss it if it was important to me. I used to keep a journal using Microsoft Word and I would send some pages to her.

I think you should go on sharing with your therapist. I know it helped me just writing it down and sending it off. During treatment I would think of things I wanted to share with my therapist. Keeping a journal is good too. I hope this helped.

Mary G.

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Dear Michael,

Interesting that you bring this up as it's been something I've wondered about too. My last therapist was a workaholic, so he
wouldn't have much extra time. And, while I did have his email address, I only wrote when something really major happened (like some
major insight), and he also had the stance of not writing back. I did page him a lot though. I email my psychiatrist, but not that often and
he writes me back right away. This is mainly for updates, but sometimes there are important things I have to say. I collaborate
with my current therapist (who is relatively new to me) in a really helpful way. So, I share with you how I do it. It's a level above
email.

For the past 7 months I have kept an electronic journal, password protected on one of my websites with access only given to my
therapist. She agrees to follow it and, yes, it cuts down on the amount of fill in time we need to have with each other. And also, as
you say, it gets things off your chest and frees you up. Since she reads my journal, there has been much more healing taking place. And
it's more consistent with my inner landscape. For years, I presented to my last therapist in a certain way every week (or twice a week) for
an hour. With my journal, it's clear that things are much more complicated than that. Now that all that gets put out there, there's
a huge opportunity for work to be done. Trust gets built up in a major way.

Now, I know that not everyone has website space which would allow them to do what I do with my therapist. But there are options. Google
blogger is probably the easiest. Start a blog, go to the Settings | Permissions tab. Change to select "Only readers I choose". Your
readers will, I think, need to have a Google account.

So, yes, being able to communicate electronically with my therapist is not only helpful, but has become necessary for my healing.

Namaste,

Paul T.

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Dear Michael,

I occasionally send emails to my current therapist, but this is a long-distance, sporadic therapy which we conduct over the phone. I know that's unusual in itself, but it's worked for me for several years. Mostly I use email to fill him in on what's happening and whether I need to have a session.

When I was in "real therapy" face to face, many years ago, email didn't exist. But I would write letters to my therapist(s). What I noticed was that the letters often let off enough steam inside me that the topics I covered in them weren't interesting to me anymore when I finally came in for the session. I don't know if they were written by different "parts" and that other parts showed up for treatment, or what. Maybe I just decided to dodge the issues I previously raised. Regardless, communicating outside of session has been a great source of inner relief for me --like a safety valve. And I am able to look at what I've written and digest it. But for me, I'm not sure it did much in the actual therapy itself. Instead it seemed to help me understand myself...more like journal writing...and it helped me believe that someone else wiser than I cared about my situation and was willing to "listen".

So--for me it is/was useful.

I'm curious what others will say about this, too.
Good luck!

Lynn W.