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

Last Updated: 20.06.2025 01:36

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

Off the top of my ancient head:

General Introduction to Boundaries from Panahi Counseling:

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 is the most interesting question you can ask to get to know someone?

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

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

Serious disappointment when the client cancels a session.

What do you think of Hegseth calling The Atlantic journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, "a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who has made a profession of peddling hoaxes” after team Trump texted him their top-secret war plans on Yemen?

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

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

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

What is after school detention like in your school?

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

Obsessing about clients outside of work hours.

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

What is the best/cute/funny/playful chat/conversation between brother and sister?

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