[QUOTE=sweetvalley12;4808235]. . .

This is private practice. He went and sat in his living room

I have been in therapy with him for over 2 years. QUOTE]

How your therapist handled this was really clumsy and shaming. I'm guessing from the first sentence in one of your posts that your therapist has his "office" in his home. Perhaps he was feeling invaded when you arrive at his home office early for your appointments. That does NOT, however, give him the right to handle the situation in the way he did! He should have had a calm, clear conversation with you at his first meeting with you (NOT two years into therapy!) about his boundaries around arrival times. Some therapist purposefully schedule their clients 15, 30 to 60 minutes apart to protect the privacy of the clients. A therapist who takes the risk of having his/her office in his home, takes the chance of his client arriving early and hanging around their house (sitting outside in a car, standing on the street corner, walking up and down the street ect.) until his/her appointment time. That can be uncomfortable for the therapist, neighbors and other clients. That's why it is critical that the therapist have the conversation with the client about what is appropriate for arrival times. It's not okay for him to coldly tell you that you're too early (when he's never told what his time frame arrival time is in the first place) and it's even worse that he tells you to take you money and go home! He might have thought he was being "nice" or "caring" when he told you to call if you arrived early so he could let you in during cold or stormy days, but that was him blurring his boundaries and making the situation confusing and unclear. Not you fault. He handled this very very poorly!

One of the reasons therapist "home offices" don't work is because of this issue. If the therapist has his/her office in a professional office building, there is usually a waiting room so clients, who arrive early, have a place to privately and quietly sit until their appointment OR there are other business's around that the client can visit OR there is a large parking lot that the person can sit in until their session time (I always bring a book and if I arrive early, I sit in the car until five minutes before my appointment. I arrive about 1 to 2 minutes before my session time). Personally, I think your therapist owes you a big apology and he needs to have a coherent and clear conversation about what his boundaries are about client arrival times.