It's uncomfortable when they set the boundaries either too tight or too loose. One therapist came to my house, to make suggestions on my non-existant decorating style. Just the baby was home. I didn't think about it being odd, but it felt weird at the time, and I just felt uneasy. After I had quit I heard he lost his license for having an affair with a client. Eek. Three out of eight of my therapists have had licenses revoked for that reason at some time. That's scary. All of those three had some signs of not having good boundaries. One was just obviously so busy all the time, and showed it. I never felt like he cared about me at all, or even listened to me. I was sure he was preoccupied with everything else. Another had been friends with my husband before I started seeing him for therapy, and continued to socialize with us (which I liked, until later he decided it was inappropriate and cut it off abruptly - that hurt).

Boundaries can be too rigid too. A VR counselor, who worked with my husband, used boundaries as an excuse not to do things that he didn't want to do. He tried to deny me services because he worked with my husband. He also stopped supporting my business efforts. And he overstepped boundaries sometimes by lecturing me about therapy issues when that was not his place. He tried to make me feel bad about cutting (in general, not a specific instance - I didn't ever bring it up with him).

Boundaries are tricky, and so important. I'm working with a client who needs to work on boundaries. It's sary because I know that I have lots of boundary issues myself. I have to set clear boundaries with her. She hinted that she wanted my cell phone number. I gave her a card with the office phone numbers, which doesn' thave my personal contact info. She asked for a hug. She had worked hard in the session, and I was on the way out, and I gave her a hug. We were withing sight of other people. I give hugs to my developmentally disabled clients sometimes, but tell them no until a relationship is developed. Sometimes they want too many hugs and I tell them no hugs at work. Some have argued for a hug as they are leaving at the end of the day, and I'm usually okay with that, but I make sure it's in sight of someone.

In residential treatment there was no physical contact with the clients, because there had been cases of false accusations of abuse. That was still too rigid, and was starting to loosen up a little after I had worked there for a year.

My current T does well with boundaries, but even she has made some mistakes. We started out with e-mail therapy, and switched to f2f only. I wish that we could still have email conversations too. She has responded to my emails sometimes, but eventually she says it has to stop. At first she just said no more email, but I still wrote to her sometimes. Eventually she clarified that I can email her, and she will read it, but she won't write back. I don't like it, but at least it's a clear boundary and enforceable.

It's easier to take when a firm boundary is set and then relaxed a little when appropriate, than to feel like I'm losing something when boundaries get tightened up down the road.