I realize I'm coming into this thread quite late... but as an almost-doctor (55 days until graduation, not that I'm counting), I think that some boundaries (especially with respect to the non-reciprocal nature of the therapeutic relationship) make sense.

My patients get mostly naked and I touch their faces, push on their bellies, examine their genitals. They don't do the same to me because that's not the purpose of the encounter. It's not that I am perfectly healthy and don't need to see a doctor myself--I have a body subject to change and disease just like everyone else. But I spent four years of college and four years of med school learning about human bodies and what can go wrong with them; in order to maximize my ability to understand and heal sickness and pain, I have to listen to and look at and touch their bodies (and ask them questions about how their pain feels and when it happens and things like that, not to mention the awkward stuff like who they have sex with and what kind of sex they have with them). It would be weird for my patients to examine me back, because that's not what their expertise is (plus, during an appointment I am being paid to help them; talking about my crap on their time is a waste of their time/money). I'm not saying they're dumb or lacking in knowledge about bodies/science--that's not it at all. But the typical lawyer, brick-layer, barista doesn't know as much as I do about bodies and what goes wrong with them (just like I still have to ask my dad to help me file my taxes, haven't the foggiest idea how to build a wall, and can barely make a cup of coffee without burning something).

And when patients ask me stuff about myself like where I'm from or what I like to do in my free time, I don't mind telling them. But I don't usually disclose about my own health problems (including my severe, often-debilitating depression) for a few reasons: first off, it's exhausting to get all up in your own vulnerability all day long. Also, patients are NOT bound to laws about confidentiality--while I can (and should) get sued for telling the grocery store clerk that Barry the produce guy has the clap, Barry could write about my depression on the front page of the NYT and I would have no recourse. And there are other risks about revealing myself to my patients--maybe if they learn about my depression they will be worried that I am incompetent/weak, or will neglect to bring up sad/difficult things for fear of upsetting me. (I know it's a cliche, but I've learned the hard way that at least a bit of distance is required for objectivity.) Furthermore, while I want to have good relationships with my patients, I don't want to get too close because I just don't have the emotional energy to take phone calls at three in the morning about their rash or whatever. (Some docs are "concierge doctors," and are able to do this, but they have tens of patients instead of hundreds, and they are paid waaaaaay more per patient.) I wish I could provide such wonderful wraparound services, but if I did this for all of my patients, I would not have enough time to sleep (or would see so few patients that the hospital would fire me for being I sufficiently productive).

This unbalancing of the relationship doesn't mean that I feel superior to my patients--I don't. I likely know more than they do about how Western medicine diagnoses and treats disease, but they know more about themselves and about whatever it is that they're expert in (law, brick-laying, scrumptious-coffee-making, parenting, etc.) It also does not prevent me from loving them, especially when I've known them for a long time or been with them during an especially difficult time. Granted, it is a different kind of love than what I feel for my parents or SO or friends... but my parent-love is very different from my SO-love too, and that doesn't mean that one of them is somehow superior. Just different, due to the fact that they have different roles in my life.

I do not intend to invalidate your experience BudFox, because boundaries can be extremely difficult to navogate, and when therapists mis-handle things it can be excruciating. (To me it can feel like gaslighting, or like "why didn't you just tell me up front that this therapy crap has a weird effing set of boundaries because I did not see that coming and now I feel ashamed/needy/crazy?!!?") This often isn't as hard for physicians because people are used to the doctor-patient thing where one person gets naked and the other doesn't (and many of us have been going to doctors since we were kids, or are at least used to seeing doctors on TV). But therapy is harder... certainly because it is more emotionally intimate, maybe also because therapy sort of feels like just two people talking (which is something we all do all the time, and are used to certain patterns and assumptions of reciprocity), even though it tries/claims to be more than that.

I'm sorry you're hurting, BudFox