Struggling With Boundaries

I agree. I do feel bitter that she allowed this because in the end, it is their responsibility to do everything possible to avoid unhealthy attachment and codependency.
I'm not sure if you're asking me if she has involved me with her personal issues or if that was a rhetorical question? Like maybe she is doing this to fill her own void?
She's been helping me through major crisis all year long. There has been so much help and so much of her time that was not paid for.
And now I'm not going to have insurance until next month and she offered to see me no charge until then. (And I go twice a week. She even has to stay way later than she would like to accommodate my work schedule)
So it does help to think in the context of "you can't buy friendship" but at the same time all of the boundary crossing really hasn't been paid for. She has even went out to eat with me after a session and paid for me.

This situation is super painful and tricky!

Thanks for the support.

-Hope

Hmmm this is a hard one to advise on and really i think you need to speak to her to find out what her treatment plan is for you.

Because if you have an attachment disorder, then supporting you and teaching you how to become attached appropriately is important work and it does require a far more involved approach than traditional therapy relationships would allow for. So the boundaries will be more flexible for you. So maybe she isn't doing anything wrong.

Are you worried that the amount of time she is spending with you will burn her out?

This is so difficult for you and it is not as easy as just moving in because there are many complication here, you are attached to her which is perhaps the most difficult thing to walk away of. Also you are healing but also being harmed unintentionally by a well meaning and kind therapist.
The question is I suppose is this keeping you stuck in this space or is it helping you with your relationships in real life and is she your only support still?
Has transference ever been brought up by either of you?

Thank you for the empathetic words. They are so needed right now! I, as well as my partner, have noticed that therapy really has changed my relationships this year. It has been a slow process but there are such major changes in how I interact and what I share with people. I am also able to open up more about my feelings and what is going on in my head and with my life, with people (like friends and family) I would have never opened up to before. I was usually really closed off.
We discussed transference only one time in our relationship. There was a moment where I got angry with her and sort of snapped (which is out of character for me) and she thought I was transferring anger I had towards my mom onto her. She triggered something. After that happened she immediately jumped to "it's ok if you want to see someone different" and was eager to give me referrals? That was only about 3 months after beginning to see her. I guess I'm afraid she'll do that to me again. It will hurt more to hear that now because of the intensity therapy has reached.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

If I get this wrong, I apologize. I can only relate to the details mentioned and comparing to my own experiences.
I have/had a lot of attachment issues in my life: over-attached, under-attached, sometimes both. It's like you want it so bad, but it's really not what you need.

My best advice is this: if your T really cares about you, your health, your goals...then she will be more than happy to work with you on your attachment too. I know the fear and the risk behind being that open. But at some point we have to take risks for ourselves. T's are our "doctors". We are their "patients". If you want a legitimate friendship with your T, the relationship will have to move outside the "zones" of professional, and it has to be mutual. Otherwise, if you want her to be your T, she needs to understand that.
I have recently had to open up to my T about issues I have in our own relationship. It's scary. My situation was actually opposite of yours, and I need my T to take down some boundaries (but there were more complicated issues mixed in with it). In the end, I'm glad I talked to her. We are back on the same page.

Just weigh everything out. Go through the possible pro's and con's of each decision. Then try to make a decision. If you still can't, then it's best to talk to your T anyways. That is her job whether or not it deals with her, whether or not she has her own attachment issues, and whether or not you're paying her.

It's a tough situation. I wish you the best of luck!

I hear you feeling uncomfortable, but like Asia Blue, I wonder if you could explain the actual harm that has been done? I do not see where you have been harmed in this relationship.

I wanted to share a different perspective, that allowing attachment can be a very healing experience. Some therapists do recognize and encourage it knowing that certain clients can benefit from the reparative experience of finally expressing their neediness and not being rejected or forced into strict boundaries of only one 50 minute session per week. Extra, even frequent contact in and of itself is not necessarily negative, certainly not for all clients. In psychoanalysis, for example, clients are encouraged to have sessions three times a week.

Personally, I've seen tremendous benefits and progress with my current therapist who encourages in-between session contact. Yes, it is agitating sometimes to deal with the intensity level of such therapy, but very rewarding, and the attachment does lessen over time if the relationship is strong and the therapy effective, but how much time can vary, again, as each of us has unique needs.

I too would be interested in the details of the harm that you are referring too? How has the therapeutic relationship impinged upon your other relationships, and life in general?

I have old attachment injuries. Deep and crazy-making at times. My therapist has taken an approach that allows in between session contact, whenever I like, and she responds when she is able. That has been magic for me - done me the world of good to slowly, painstakingly, start believing on an instinctual level that someone is actually steadfastly emotionally available to me in an appropriate way. She is also seeing me for no fee at the moment. Words can't describe how much I appreciate this.

I think appropriate boundaries differ in each different client-therapist relationship. Is it worth considering that your anxiety around your boundaries may be a defense? Perhaps you can't quite believe yet that you have a relationship this precious, and so are looking for holes in it and 'proof' it is not what it seems?

Please do forgive me if I'm way off the mark - I'm in no way saying this is true for you and your situation, just playing devil's avocado

I actually understand the pain this kind of attachment can foster, and I question the helpfulness of it if something in the relationship doesn't change. I think the goal is the generalize the attachment with your T to other people in your life, but I don't see how that can realistically happen. I have a hard time understanding how you can attach so intensely with someone when it is in the confines of a therapeutic or "professional" relationship (for lack of a better term).

I had this with my child psychiatrist who I saw from age 12 to 22. I never felt fully attached with my own mom. There was no emotion there. So she became a mother figure to me, teaching me about makeup, talking to me about friends and boys. I was very attached. I didn't even contact her between session, but she would see me on demand if needed.

When she left the state for a new job after I graduated from college, I was devastated. I called her office for an appointment and they told me she was gone. I never had a closure session with her felt abandoned. Her secretary assured me that she had gone over this with me but that it is common for patients to forget these details. She also said it was normal for me to be upset. I didn't forget the details, I was sure of that, we just never talked about her leaving.

So in the end, I just felt hurt again, and abandoned. She helped me through different incidents in my childhood and teens but the relationshop did nothing to help with building future attachments with other people. This I really had to learn on my own. I really never wanted to get involved with another psychiatrist or therapist again. I did see some but never bonded again until now, many years later. Even now I worry about the stregnth of the bond and dependence and wonder how helpful it really is to patients?

I am struggling with boundary issues myself, I am still debating if I should mention that at my Intake on Monday.

To the original poster, I wanted to suggest a few things to you.

If you are feeling that there are not enough boundaries or they aren't clear, I'd suggest:

1. That you ask your therapist for clearer boundaries(ex. contact between sessions). If she doesn't provide clearer boundaries, ask her to explain the rationale for having such open boundaries.
2. Decide for yourself what you think you need and come up with a plan of action (eg. Do you want to cut out texting for any random reason? Perhaps you can limit yourself to a specific number of texts a week and then scale it back to only texting for appointment scheduling.)
   
   I have actually been in the process of trying this. I have texted less often in the past couple weeks. I usually don't call her, unless I really need to. She's the one who calls me when she is concerned about a text. At times if she can't get a hold of me, she will text my partner and ask if anything happened. Thank you for the advice.
   

Hi,

This sounds like a really hard situation. Not that you shouldn't bring this up with your T, but have you considered consulting another T as an objective, professional sounding board? Even just for a single consultation? That way you wouldn't be giving up your attachment to your T, but you would have another T that could process this with you. Not that you can't do it here. Of course, you are welcome to do that, too. Good luck.

I have basically the same issue. It's gotten better though because I haven't seen her in almost two weeks. I was seeing her for probably like 3 hours a day five days a week for 9 weeks. Not all of it was individual I should add. But even still, that is a LOT of contact and boundaries were blurred.

T and I set very strict rules on outside contact. It is for emergencies or scheduling only. However, if T is worrying too much about me being in my abusive parents house and wants a quick update, she may just shoot me a "are you still breathing" email. She never responds to me when I email her unless she wants to just say a line of general support.

T said she doesn't actually believe that me feeling like she is my mom is bad. She thinks I need to experience being mothered and that's why she plays the role with me. She also is naturally maternal to me. The problem arises when I start asking for more than she can give. She says no mother can fill the shoes I want her to and when she lays down that boundary, I feel rejected.

So I'm not the best person to answer this, but do you think you could try discussing with her having no outside contact unless it is a crisis? That might help.

Also, T is a part of your life. Just because I can't be a part of my T's personal life doesn't mean she isn't part of mine. I know a lot of you will passionately disagree with this, but if I am actively working on accepting/learning how to keep healthy boundaries with people, what is so wrong with me literally thinking my T is my mother? "Because she isn't actually your mother". So? My biological mother didn't even start to fill the role. How am I supposed to know what the role even looks like? T does fill parts of it. I want to tell her when I do things right, she comforts me when I'm sad, she helps me take care of myself. I just need to work on accepting that no one, not even if my biological mother completely changed, can totally play the role I want her to. No one can actually be there 24/7 whenever I need her.

No, I did, ask if she was including you, in her personal stuff. To point out, the dependency, without the reciprocation.

I am confused, about therapists, that take on so much of their patients/clients personal lives. It seems like a 'savior' effect. Something, T's really need to have resolved, before entering the field, imo. It blurs the lines, in ways, because it's not helping, in the long run. Your being aware of this dependency and trying to resolve it, is therapeutic, but would that healing work, be better off with a different T?

The big answering post is so helpful, altho i get confused as to who said what! But thats because im waiting to go into t. See, i understand what it MEANS if my bff says happy new year, but not my t. I think!

It means exactly what it means: "Happy New Year". There's nothing encrypted about it. It is just a well-wish from someone who cares about you.

-Hope

Totally unrelated to this thread, but I just realized why your signature seemed so familiar. I love that song

Do you mean "hopelessly devoted to you"? Or is this another generation gap?

You mean the Olivia Newton John song? That's my jam too! I love Grease lol


I was referring to the line from the Florence and the Machine's song in Hope's signature, but I am also a newbie to this forum and still have no idea how to use this forum properly so I might be wrong. So please bear with me! LOL

Yeah i'm old!! But i think that was fine, using the forum that way. I'm a bit of a buttinski.