Okay, we're in therapy in the first place because we can't read boundaries well, don't understand what they are and when we've crossed other people's or they have crossed ours, etcetera. That's what we're trying to learn. I don't think the intent is to criticize or punish us for boundary crossing but to show us what's happening?

I don't think contracts and therapy frames are for trying to control us but rather to help keep us safe and "comfortable" so we aren't lost being all over the place from our own "flailing" (what my husband says I do when I get upset :-)

It's hard when a therapist starts with serious rules right away without any conversation to cushion them. My therapist, who I hadn't seen in 10 years, started off our "new" first session with, "I'm not an ambulance chaser." I've never done any SI, attempted suicide, been hospitalized, or even related other similar experiences so I felt offended, especially since she should have "known" me from therapy with me before and again, because it was the first session, I wanted to cause a problem before I got suspected of being a problem causer! But I soon realized she didn't remember 10 years ago (I thought I was so special that a therapist with hundreds of clients since me is going to remember every little detail about me and not include me in her default rules?) and the rule was "generic" not about me, personally. It was up there with "the session lasts 50 minutes." However, I reacted to the rule more intensely because I was personalizing it and responding to my own triggers, not the rule itself. Because the rule didn't apply to me, theoretically I should have just shrugged (as I would now) because it didn't apply to me! "Your mother wears combat boots" doesn't even make sense to most people, much less bother them. "I don't chase ambulances" wasn't about me at all but I tried to make it about me.

But one could argue that it was about me because I reacted to it. That's true. That I took it as an insult is about me and my thinking about the rest of the world because it was clearly not intended as an insult, it was a piece of information. Trying to control this person in front of me that I was thinking of contracting for therapy by attempting suicide would not work. That's good information to know.

My granddaughter is 3 and when she gets flustered and crying and acting out, her parents calmly ask her to "Use your words" and they stop and calm the situation down and take the time to help her do so, touching, holding, restraining her and reminding her that they can't understand and help her any other way unless she uses her words to tell them what hurts, what's wrong. They "stay" and are intensely there listening, to help when she gets the words out and help her get what she wants, etc. I wish I'd had my grandchildren when I was in therapy as I think that's a wonderful "picture" of what therapy was like for me.