I have had mostly positive experiences with outside contact. However, my current T does not encourage it. She hasn't told me not to contact her, but she only rarely mentions I can contact her, or asks me to contact her. She doesn't do email. It's really only contact if I'm in crisis. However, I still say it's positive, because the contact we do have is helpful. I sometimes wish I could send her an email. I wouldn't need her to respond to it, but it would be helpful if I could send it. Without the ability to email, I usually don't have the motivation to write and even when I do, I no longer want to share by the next session. That's my only complaint, really.

My longtime T was similar, only she reminded me I could contact her much more often. I didn't feel like it was necessarily only for crisis purposes.

Overall, I think the ability to have outside contact in crisis is an essential part of therapy. I would not see a therapist who had a rigid boundary that only allowed scheduling contact. Outside of crisis is not essential, and depending on the person can either be a nice bonus and really helpful to the therapeutic process, or can foster dependence and interfere with the therapeutic process. It just depends. I haven't noticed any posts where therapists arbitrarily changed boundaries around contact. There have been times when therapists have handled situations badly when asking clients to cut back on outside contact, but I can't recall any posts where there wasn't a reason the therapist was changing boundaries. I understand your anxiety about this. I think that instead of "avoiding contact at all costs," you can avoid this outcome by just being mindful of the frequency of contact. It sounds like you're utilizing other resources first, so that's great. As long as you don't start contacting her willy nilly just because you can, I think you'll be fine. And for the record, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to be aware of drawing on the resources of others. I'm not saying you should be scared or anxious to ask for help, just that you should aim to not draw on this resource so frequently that it becomes depleted - for your own benefit.