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Originally Posted by Yellowbuggy
HEALTHY BOUNDARIES ARE NOT SET FOR US BY OTHERS.
My T set a boundary that he does not allow email communication between sessions. This was communicated to me in the beginning of our work and has never been a problem. I see this as a healthy boundary, even though it was set for me by another who was setting a boundary for himself. What am I missing?
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The way i see it, since you asked for another viewpoint-the boundary is not 'set for you'. That is his boundary. It's up to you to decide if you want him to impose his will on you and how you will react. Likewise, you can set a boundary with him to not email you for scheduling changes, and instead text you or call you.
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Sometimes my T sets boundaries that cause me to feel emotionally hurt. By not allowing email communication between sessions, for example, I may feel uncared for. By ending sessions at exactly 50 min I may feel like nothing more than a number to him, which hurts. In this sense, these boundaries are hurtful - but I don't think they're unhealthy. Is this what you meant by hurtful?
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If you were disclosing trauma and you were in the middle of a sentence at the exact ending of the session, being rigid and inflexible would be cutting you off in mid sentence to end the session at the exact time. Unless there was a fire in the building, cutting you off like that in mid-sentence is acting like an a s s hole, not implementing good boundaries. Flexible and reasonable would be allowing 10-20 seconds for you to end your thought. A person with healthy boundaries would make exceptions here and there.
On the other side of things, people pleasing-a therapist might fear upsetting someone or being rejected by a client quitting and let them go on past the end of session rather than help wrap things up. Then the clients afterwards might start to get upset; a client quits and the therapist blames that client quitting on the client rather than himself for letting it go on. It ends up being destructive and causing resentment, when meanwhile, the therapist did nothing about it and let it go on all that time...until something happened, then blamed the other person who was oblivious to the time and kept talking. This is how things seem to play out here at times.
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In this sense I think it's hard to define a boundary as healthy or unhealthy by the reaction the individual will have to it. Does that make sense? I think I may be overthinking this...
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Yes, it makes sense. It's obviously not math or an exact science, but I think when you have a healthy sense of self these things aren't confusing, and interpersonal skill/good judgment around these things comes naturally.