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

13.06.2025 07:39

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

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

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.

What are the easiest stores for shoplifting?

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

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

General Introduction to Boundaries from Panahi Counseling:

What are some great short jokes?

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.

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.

Did your siblings abuse you growing up? Not your parents, specifically your siblings, or other children in the household you were raised with.

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

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

Off the top of my ancient head:

Why do flat-earth conspiracy theorists believe that photos from space, including those of satellites, are fake?

Serious disappointment when the client cancels a session.