About once a month, someone contacts me to make an appointment for a friend or relative. I no longer respond to these calls, because I don't have time. The fact is I don't take third party referrals, because I know the person won't show up if someone else makes the appointment.
I've pondered whether the person making the call really believes that their relative, friend or significant other will attend an appointment made by someone else. It's occurred to me these individuals making the calls may just want to be able to tell themselves that they tried to help. A better way to help someone is to tell the person what your limits are. If you find someone's behavior to be intolerable, the best thing for you to do is to stop tolerating it. Doing work for them that they could do themselves, such as making a psychotherapy appointment, does not help. If someone won't make a phone call to set up an appointment for treatment, that person definitely is not going to actually go to such an appointment. Going to therapy is a lot harder than making an appointment for therapy.
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