"Giving permission" is part of the language of the specific school that my therapist and I were trained in, and I understand it and think it is useful when the therapeutic relationship is good and the client understands / welcomes the therapist's permission as coming from a sort of parental or authority figure, giving healthy messages instead of unhealthy ones the client may have. With that particular meaning, permissions in therapy are important for me. However, my therapist has never explicitly said to me: "I give you permission to do X" which I may or may not find intrusive. He has on rare occasion said things like "you have permission to ..." "you can do X" etc. which I prefer, because it's someone I trust reinforcing something I want to do.

I don't react well to "allow" and "not allow". To me, these sound more powerful, too powerful for a therapeutic relationship. I associate these words with boundaries but I react much better to boundaries stated from equal to equal - e.g. "I need you not to do X so we can work together" rather than "you are not allowed to do X". I feel like no one, therapist or relative or anyone else, has any right to allow or not allow anything in what regards my personal life choices which don't affect others, and I expect everyone (therapist included) to respect that private space I have, just like I respect theirs.