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ChickenNoodleSoup
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Default Oct 11, 2020 at 06:56 AM
 
Bit late to the party, didn't find time until now.
But I really wanted to point out one thing:
I think no matter what therapist you find, it's always going to be the case that the relationship on some levels changes and is not always the same. This is true for therapists and for all other people in your life.

It's quite normal for people to change their boundaries sometimes. While I do think your T maybe was a bit too accommodating of what you want, I'd say it would surprise me if there are a lot of Ts that never budge on any of their boundaries.

If I take my T as an example, while most of his boundaries are pretty consistent, some have changed for a while and then gone back as well. One time he responded to a text of mine on his day off - something he claims to almost never do. Another time he mentioned something his daughter is struggling with, while being normally pretty clear about the fact that he doesn't share such things with clients, up until then I didn't even know whether he had a daughter or a son. He has also told me that early on he didn't want to give me two sessions a week (apart from emergency ones) due to being scared I'd get too dependent, but when he realized I really needed it, he offered it without me even asking.

Relationships aren't a strict set of rules that always stays the same. Sometimes the boundaries need to change for a while. The same goes for example for trust, sometimes you trust somebody more, sometimes less. I'm not surprised your T changed some things due to Covid. Lots of people need more support than usual right now and that's what he's there for. And not charging them for every email is considerate, given that lots of people are losing their jobs. But it's also pretty normal for these things to go away again once the issue at hand is resolved. When I didn't need two sessions a week anymore, we agreed to stop and they went away. My T only ever responded once on his day off, and so on...

I do agree that your T is maybe not very good at helping you deal with that side of relationships. He tends to give in or take things away, but he doesn't help you deal with the how you feel about it, it seems. But I think it's important to understand that with other Ts, they might be better with helping you deal with it, but it's still going to happen to some degree.
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Thanks for this!
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