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

10.06.2025 01:37

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

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

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

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

For those who were actually old enough to have experienced the 1970s and not for those who were born in the 70s. What were the pros and cons of that era?

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

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.

Obsessing about clients outside of work hours.

Are you afraid of being alone?

General Introduction to Boundaries from Panahi Counseling:

Off the top of my ancient head:

Serious disappointment when the client cancels a session.

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

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

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

Were the 1980s as uptight and prudish as movies and TV shows make them out to be? When I think of 80s culture, I think about a very "icky" judgmental yuppie status quo time period.

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