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Originally Posted by DP_2017
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I guess what you said also makes sense, because if I was allowed to still talk, I would be bugging him a lot.... and maybe that is ok in a few years but for now, we both need time to see if this is really a thing or not. If it is, great, if not, that's ok too. (well it doesn't seem that way now but in 2 years I'm sure I will be ok with it not being a thing)
I am sure there are plenty of "bad" stories with this, heck I have read them on here but there has to be good ones too? Right? Therapists and clients are humans after all, so therefore, sometimes, good things come in unexpected ways sometimes.
The thing is, also about your attention and support etc, OMG I'd love to be able to actually support him... I don't care so much about that for me, I'm used to not having it and I LOATHE attention so I'd be happy to not have that. I told him, all the sessions we did out of office felt more natural for me, because I felt we could just be... two people talking and laughing and just being in public, I didn't feel like he was sitting there looking at me and wanting me to say certain things, which is why I hated office sessions. (just wanted to point that out cuz I'm odd and seriously therapy was so awful for me in THAT sense, I only kept going to talk to him because we had so much fun together )
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Your feelings about your therapist are stronger and indicate that you have hopes of close friendship rather than a boundaried professional therapy/client relationship. Those kinds of feelings and expectations are the "poster child" reasons for why that distance is needed post-therapy.
I never lost contact with any of my therapists, but I also never expected them to be close friends with me (and they never presented themselves that way during therapy such as the thousands of text messages you mentioned earlier -- that's not very boundaried). I didn't have strong transference issues going on. I had no desire for them to continue to work with me as a therapist. We had professionally boundaried interactions while I was in therapy, and the contact post-therapy was infrequent and still somewhat boundaried.
While friendly and personal, I had no expectation such as what you seem to be saying of "supporting" my old therapists or being out in public like friends. You speak of knowing you'd continue to bug him if you had the ability to contact him. He knows that, and that is why he put the firm boundary in place. Another client, a different client, might not have the propensity/need for that kind of contact and he might feel more comfortable with occasional contact with that other client because he knows it won't become an issue for that other client. In your case, he knows continued contact will be fraught with complications and further expectations.