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What are some signs that a therapist may have poor boundaries with their clients?

13.06.2025 00:56

What are some signs that a therapist may have poor boundaries with their clients?

Serious disappointment when the client cancels a session.

Sense of competition with persons who are important in the client’s life.

General Introduction to Boundaries from Panahi Counseling:

What’s the best way to get over someone you love?

Session-expressed curiosities about client details not relevant to the therapy.

Eager anticipation (or anxious anticipation) of the next session in ways that distract.

Struggling with fantasies of deeper connections with clients, whether sexual or parental or other intense or intimate relationships beyond psychotherapy.

When a black man and a white woman have a child, does the child become white? If a white man and a black woman have a child, does the child become black?

Routinely going over the time limit with certain patients, compromising the time for the next client.

Frequent phoning or texting of clients to “check up on them and make sure they’re OK.”

These items can happen fleetingly, briefly, in any therapy, but if they’re frequent, it’s definitely time for the therapist to get some good, solid supervision/consultation.

What do people aim for when they meditate, and how do they do it properly?

Obsessing about clients outside of work hours.

Disclosing feelings, fantasies, and experiences to the client in ways not related to the work the client is engaged in.

Off the top of my ancient head:

Why do US military soldiers/officers have a chest full of medal ribbons when they probably haven't been in a combat situation? Are the medals for attendance, good behaviour, or long service perhaps?

Failing to mention the client in supervision/consultation, out of fear the supervisor/consultant will advise return to ordinary healthy boundaries.