Dear Prudence,
My therapist recently launched an Instagram account to promote his practice. He’s good at what he does—I am almost done with a year of EMDR which has dramatically improved my complex PTSD—but the social media is chaotic. Think, “Forgot which client I am seeing at 9 a.m.—let’s see who shows up!” He also just came back from parental leave for his first kid, so he has become less reliable. To which I am sympathetic—babies get sick! —but he’s canceled multiple times or had to move our sessions virtual. Which happened at the same time that he issued a new cancellation policy for his clients “because as a small business owner” he needs to “protect his income.” No problem with that, but he’s the flake right now! How do I bring this up? Or do I just let it go since I’m almost done with therapy?
—Therapist is Chaotic on Main
Dear Chaotic on Main,
My first reaction to this is that it would be really hard to trust the expertise and guidance of someone who you think is chaotic, unreliable, and unfair. Imagine your therapist gives you some tough feedback on an issue you’re dealing with. Are you going to receive it from the perspective of a trained professional or think “You don’t even have the judgment to keep your flakiness off the internet!” But I wasn’t 100 percent sure, so I reached out to Lori Gottlieb, who writes the Atlantic’s Dear Therapist column (and co-hosts the Dear Therapists podcast). She is, of course, a real therapist. So I trusted her perspective. Here’s what she had to say:
Therapy is a relationship and there are two issues that are interfering with this relationship right now. The great thing about therapy is that you bring things up that happen in this relationship because practicing doing this, even if it feels awkward, helps you do that with people out in the world. And I see two issues:
1. The cancellations. You can say something like, “I know you just had a baby and that there are times you’ll need to reschedule or move to virtual. I understand if this happens occasionally, but I need more consistency with my therapy. Do you think this is going to continue to happen with this frequency? If so, I might want to find a situation where I have more consistency.” The point is that either he gets his childcare situation to work for his practice (and I get this; I was once a new mom with a practice), or if not, she might want something more consistent. Her other point about his cancellation policy, though—completely unrelated to his canceling. His policy is standard and reasonable for therapists. I wouldn’t muddy her communication with that.
2. The more concerning issue is what he posted on social media! WOW. That feels not just unprofessional and cringey but indicates a lack of respect for his clients and the work we as therapists do. If you can’t remember who you’re seeing at any given hour, you shouldn’t be practicing. Clients want to be “held in mind”—not randomly appearing with no forethought given to them. We think about our clients between sessions, before sessions, after sessions—that post is disrespectful in terms of how he views his work and his relationships with his clients who come to him at their most vulnerable. I might say, “I noticed you started posting on social media, and I’m curious about some of your posts. For instance, you posted X. What were you trying to say with that post? It made me feel like you don’t care about your clients and I’m guessing that’s not what you intended.” If he says, “You’re right, I shouldn’t have posted that. I was trying to be funny but I see how that came across and I won’t post that kind of content again,” then I’d stay. Therapists are human, and this one instance of bad judgment—if he learns from it and takes responsibility for it—might not be a dealbreaker. But if he’s dismissive: “Oh, I was just being funny, it’s social media” I, personally, would not stay with that therapist and I would be open with him about that and explain (nicely) why I wasn’t comfortable staying. “We just have different ideas about the therapeutic relationship and while I very much appreciate the work we’ve done, at this point I’d just feel more comfortable working with someone else.”
With that in mind, if you want to give him a chance to redeem himself, go for it. But just remember that his conduct made another therapist say “WOW” and you should definitely not feel weird about being turned off.
Give Prudie a Hand in “We’re Prudence”
Sometimes even Prudence needs a little help. This week’s tricky situation is below. Submit your comments about how to approach the situation here to Jenée, and then look back for the final answer here on Friday.
Dear Prudence,
I am a former drinker, almost 20 years sober, and weekly family gatherings can be challenging for me. This is not because I want to drink but rather because my family members often drink too much, then drive home. Last week, after seeing my 87-year-old mother consume 3-to-4 glasses of wine, I asked her if she’d like me to drive her home.
Even when sober, she’s a bit unsteady, so I thought it would be wise. My sister, however, thought I was being ridiculous and judgmental. I pointed out that it was prudent, given the law and consequences. When my mother said it was her choice and she felt fine, I said, “It’s more about whether you’re over the limit, and you’ve had three glasses in two hours; so it’s possible.” But I was gang-shamed into letting it drop.
A few weeks later, when my sister and her boyfriend invited my 23-year-old son to go wine-tasting with them, I offered to be their designated driver. My sister was immediately suspicious, and we got into it again; I said that to go wine-tasting, drinking multiple glasses with little to no food for several hours, and then to drive would be irresponsible. I was outnumbered again; even my own son felt I’d crossed a line, by insinuating that my sister and her boyfriend were possibly being irresponsible. The most annoying part of this is that my sister was a non-drinker just a year ago, before she started dating this guy—whose brother died of cirrhosis, as did our father. At this point, I’ve been asked by my mother, sister, and even my son not to mention drinking and driving at family gatherings because it’s too contentious. My preference at this point is to stop attending family gatherings.
—Crossing the Line While Sober
Dear Prudence,
Our office is in an obscure part of an office park, isn’t close to any restaurants, and has no cafeteria. Unless you bring your lunch, you are left with one crappy vending machine. I came up with an office “pantry.” Essentially, a basket of fruits, granola bars, and other non-perishables with a money jar to repay it. Everyone will drop some money in or take a turn bringing food in. We worked on the honor system. It worked for about nine months, until we got the new hires—then the basket would be cleared out in a day. Everyone was upset and no one admitted to it until our supervisor checked the cameras. The two new hires, “Jane and Joan,” would come in mid-shift and clean out the basket into their huge purses. When confronted, they got selfish and claimed it was “free” and they had kids at home. So yeah, they feel they can lie, steal, and screw over their coworkers because they have kids.
Since the food pantry wasn’t official, there is nothing to be done. It went away. My resentment isn’t. I have a hard time interacting with Joan and Jane, especially if they need help or want to “borrow” my office supplies. I find myself counting when they don’t return my pens or thinking they should have taken notes during training rather than bothering me. How do I move forward now? I have been locking the big boxes of energy bars in my desk in case someone misses packing their lunch (or I do). If Jane or Joan comes up asking for one, I might snap at them.
—No System for Honor
Dear No System,
The pantry was a really nice idea, but it didn’t work out. And that’s okay. Let’s put this in perspective: Your primary purpose when you go to your office in the middle of nowhere is to do your job and, in return for that, receive money. Everything else (ensuring your colleagues aren’t stuck eating vending machine Fritos; encouraging adherence to the snack basket honor system; policing the behavior of new hires) is secondary—and quite possibly a distraction. When the extra stuff you take on begins to drain your energy and attention, leading you to silently seethe over borrowed pens and imagine how you might lash out if an apple thief asks for an energy bar, it’s gone too far. Maybe this was a lesson about how taking on unnecessary projects whose success depends upon people you don’t know adhering to your rules can go wrong. So before you do something else—like organizing a monthly conference room birthday celebration or spearheading a Valentine’s Day bake-off—ask yourself “How mad will I be if people don’t do this the way I want them to?” If the answer is anything more than “a tiny bit,” stand down. Because, again, you’re there to work, and you simply don’t need the added stress.
That said, you have a wonderful instinct to problem-solve and make sure members of your community are doing okay, and you don’t have to ignore or suppress that. Just redirect it outside the workplace. You sound like a great candidate to help out with (or start!) a community pantry in your neighborhood, for example. Or to fundraise for necessities for families in need, or asylum-seekers looking to start new lives here.
Finally, one thought that might make you feel less outraged: It seems pretty safe to say that any person who is going to violate the honor code to clean out the entire pantry the way Jane and Joan really are in need of some extra food. I’m not saying what they did was okay, but maybe the same generous, empathetic part of you that was concerned about your coworkers not having adequate lunch options could feel good about their kids getting some snacks that they wouldn’t have otherwise had.
Get Even More Advice From the Dear Prudence Podcast
Dear Prudence,
I have three adult nieces. I struggled to stay connected to them since my sister died five years ago. I call, I text, I try to keep up with them on social media, but only “Annie” makes any real effort to stay connected to me. Her sisters will ignore me until it comes to spending money on them and their children. I know they have very busy lives, but a quick photo or text to say thank you or see the kids enjoying their toys doesn’t feel that much of an ask. I decided to cut back on the spending and just send Christmas cards instead of the usual gifts. This greatly upset my other two nieces and they called to complain about me ruining Christmas for their kids since they were having money troubles. Only Annie was gracious about it. Going forward I am only wanting to exchange gifts with Annie and put her alone in my will. I don’t want to cause any hard feelings among the girls, but I am tired of being taken advantage of here. What should I tell Annie?
—Only Aunt
Dear Only Aunt,
There are some things that I would simply not believe happened in real life if I didn’t repeatedly hear about them in letters to this column. “One relative calls another relative to file a complaint about inadequate money or gifts when they weren’t actually owed any money or gifts at all” is among them. Just completely out of control. I mean at this point, all social norms, all rules of etiquette, and all obligations are out the window. You don’t have to say anything to Annie. She will continue to get her gifts, and at the end of your life she can choose whether or not to share with her sisters that she received an inheritance.
But here’s where I’m going to read a bit into your letter and answer a question you didn’t ask: I’m wondering if you’re focused on what you should tell Annie because part of you is hoping she might share with her sisters that they were cut off as punishment for their failure to be warm and grateful toward you. And I’m wondering if some part of you is hoping that and that news might change their behavior. Is it possible that what you really want is not to change your will and your budget for next year’s Christmas shopping, but to have a closer relationship with these women? Now I completely get that after their wildly inappropriate phone calls, you may not want anything to do with them anymore. That’s fair. But I’m interested in the feeling you had before that, when you were hoping for life updates or thank-you texts and not receiving them. I’m guessing you may have been a bit lonely, or maybe you were yearning for a connection to your sister through her kids. And I want to take another look at the moment when, instead of telling them that you would love to have some quality time, or a monthly opportunity to see videos of the children, or a phone date where you could share memories of their mom, you decided to pull back on material things. That was totally your right, but you may have missed an opportunity to get what you actually desire, which is a deeper relationship.
When you think about your interactions with family members going forward, remember that money and gifts don’t buy intimacy, time, and attention. And you are more than what your bank account and estate can provide. If you want to be closer to someone, tell them you want to be closer. Because while changing your spending might make you feel like you’re giving them what they deserve, it may not ultimately lead to the life you want.
More Advice From Slate
A couple weeks ago I accidentally walked in on my daughter and her boyfriend, and he was wearing the Mrs. Claus costume. I haven’t told my wife because she would freak, but I have talked to my daughter. I’m not upset with her being active—she is 17 now—but I am losing sleep thinking about this. What can I do?
