Concern and Trust

This is written a year on from the pregnancy.

The pregnancy was emotionally and physically demanding. The nausea and exhaustion was on a level that I had not experienced in my previous pregnancy.

There was increased concern from my Psychologist that I had been seeing just before my ectopic pregnancy the previous year. One session I was very depressed and hopeless about my pregnancy. My despondency was a red flag for my Psychologist and she called my husband without warning me that she was going to do this. After the session with her, my husband who was working at home, came to see me in the bedroom. The bedroom was where I situated myself for most of the day when I was not working and my son was at school. He admitted that the Psychologist had been in touch, which made me livid. How could she break confidentiality and on what grounds? She could have at least contacted me before ringing my husband and told me that she was planning to do this! I contacted my Psychologist a week later with the below email:

I have taken some time to reflect on you contacting my husband on Wednesday after having said that I didn’t want you to speak with him. I hope you can understand how hurt and angry I felt. In some ways I now feel a difficulty in being able to trust you. This makes it hard for me because I viewed our sessions as a place where I could be honest without fear of being told to take medication or threatened with sectioning. As you know, I completely understand your professional duty but I do wonder whether it could have been done differently. Although my initial reaction was to not want to see you again, I don’t think it’s fair I stop sessions with you at least without the opportunity to meet again and discuss all this. Please let me know your thoughts.

She responded with an empathic email and invited me to see her again to see if we could rebuild the trust. The session when I did see her was a good opportunity to share my disappointment in her and the trust being broken. She accepted she probably didn’t handle the situation well and took it as a learning experience. I was happy to accept this and move on.