A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother. So when I emailed my therapist to wish her a wonderful holiday, it came out as “you’ve abandoned me, yet again.”

It’s not the first time during my battle with depression and anxiety that I’ve fired an odd, angry shot in the form of an email, not just to my therapist but to others as well. So I’ve put a rule in place. Twenty four hours before replying to anyone’s email if I feel it has a heavy, emotional content. That takes the immediate sting out of the situation. An email sent straight away is a completely different one a day later.

I hurt my therapist with my email. I have email privileges with her, not email rights. She said later to me in session, with firm eye contact and in her usual quiet, respectful and dignified tone that I “had achieved what I’d set out to achieve.” Those words wrapped around me and stung like a spineless jellyfish, but were far more effective than screaming and accusing ones.

Her deceptively simple sentence made me think, reflect, process and revise.

Email in haste, repent at leisure.

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    Last reviewed: 24 Apr 2009