First session with new Therapist 2.0

What are you trying to make progress on in therapy?

What feelings do you have about boundaries. Do they make you fearful that the therapist doesn't care about you? Are you angry to not have more of them? What emotions does this stir up that you keep focusing on it?

A variety of things (such as issues with a friend of mine as well as family members) but I want a Therapist who I can trust to be able to discuss those things.

is returning to the first T (the recent one you saw once) you saw an option if you decide they were better than this one as far as being closer to meeting your needs relating to boundaries?

My therapist and I have talked about how I don't make much progress when I'm busy trying to rationalize, busy talking facts instead of feelings, opinions instead of emotions.

I'm wondering, since this is a longstanding topic for you, what feelings are underneath it? Because before you felt mad at a previous therapist about it, it was already a central topic for you it seems.

Are you feeling angry, sad, scared when you think about boundaries and wanting them to change? What emotionally do you get from this?

Possibly especially since she is the assistant director.

I guess I feel sort of assertive in that I believe that my opinion on boundaries is the correct one and there is nothing that anyone can say to change it.

that's good as a backup then if you find you can't work with new therapist 2.0

But why does it matter?

What do boundaries mean to you?

Does it hurt if they won't meet you?
Are you angry that you can't control them?
Are you scared you don't mean anything to the therapist if they wouldn't visit with you in person?

Or is it some other feeling, some other fear or anger...

either that or meet with the person who did my intake (she seemed like an OK match).

So maybe you already do this, but why dont you just go to more intimate gatherings and meet more people? Also, this boundary thing might be a difference between religious and non-religious therapists. maybe you would do better with a religious therapist from your church. Instead of trying to squeeze a square peg into a round hole, so to speak.

Or as scorpiosis asks, what doesnt fit, that you are trying to make fit, into your worldview or whatever. What is it that you just cannot accept? The ONE thing.

I guess boundaries help me think that I can have a good relationship and I can be a 3-dimensional human being should our paths cross. I just think that if we (as unlikely as it might be) happen to meet outside of Therapy and I can't have the contact that I want I may just decide to stop seeing her all-together which would destroy the Therapy relationship, in other words Therapists think that it is good to limit their conversations with a client should they see them outside of Therapy in order to preserve the Therapy relationship but I think that with me it is the complete opposite.

So, are you afraid they don't like you, and if they "proved it" by not meeting you in a friendly way outside therapy, you would feel rejected? Are you afraid of what they really think of you?

Or something else?

I guess what I was trying to say is that at the religious gathering that I have been to I didn't really see any boundaries with anyone and I think that everyone else there saw it the exact same way.

But to dig a little deeper I have also gone to other Christian gatherings (concerts and other things) near where I live and I don't think that they are intimate gatherings (i.e. not secluded enough among other things), so if I was to see my Therapist there I would still see her as my Therapist a little bit but I would say that the line is very light given the circumstances at hand.

I would say that I agree with this.

I wouldn't want to meet my T's outside of practice. I used to think I wanted to. But after seeing a past T (a very good one) at the shops last year, I hadn't seen her for 6 years, I actually felt awkward because of all the stuff she knew about me and I didn't know about her.
So I'm happy to keep my T in his office and keep it as a safe place to dump all my drama. Doesn't stop me from fantasizing (who wouldn't want to be married to the person who has treated you the best?) but I know it's just a fantasy.

I did have a T from a church for a while. She was good, but I knew too much about her and she knew too much about me. It meant I worried about her for a while, when it was supposed to be a place for me to deal with my ****, not anyone else's.

And what's with the asterisks when I type some words? Does this place have a really low tolerance for swearing of any kind? Can't even say damn?

Are there it is, seems like damn is the strongest word I can use here. You Americans are funny, you have guns and violence but you don't like swearing lol

That could very well be the case with me, I am sort of in the same boat that I claim many Therapists are in when it comes to intimate type gatherings, that I have never seen my Therapist anywhere outside of Therapy and until that does happen I really don't know how I will react as well.

When I was at a concert a few months back I saw someone who I thought may have been a former Therapist of mine but after looking at her for a minute or too I determined that it wasn't her.

I know... damn stupid, isn't it?

I have seen my GP outside of the office a few times, but that's different, everyone has a GP, a hairdresser, etc. He probably wouldn't introduce himself as my doctor (to respect my privacy) although I am free to say, 'hey, this is my wonderful GP!' and he might get a few more referrals lol

Can I say one thing?
I'm deaf. I don't know if you know if the deaf community is a very small world. So there are very tight ethics with our interpreters.
If I already knew X before she became an interpreter, she can still be my friend and I can still go to her place as a friend. However, if I met Y after she qualified as an interpreter, and interpreted for me somewhere quite confidential (medical or legal), it's not ethical to date or socialise outside of that relationship. It's to protect the client.
Because it's such a small world, we do run into each other in intimate social gatherings (weddings, birthday parties, funerals, baby showers, etc.) we do chat, but I do not say where the interpreter interpreted for me, and they are not allowed to say if they interpreted for me, or where. This code of conduct and ethics is to protect us deaf people as clients and our privacy. The reason we run into interpreters is they may have close family or grew up with deaf people in the deaf community, or have deaf parents.
So they have to pass a rigorous program to qualify, and there is a board of ethics we can complain to and have their qualifications revoked if they cross boundaries.

So in that context, I am used to running into people who know confidential things about me, but I feel safe that they are bound by ethics not to say anything. I understand the boundaries re social interactions.
if I saw my T in a restaurant, I'd probably give him a tiny wave and ignore him the rest of the night. I have seen a past T in the shops, we've given each other a tiny smile but kept walking.
Same with my GP and interpreters. I acknowledge them, but don't approach them or socialise with them.

I think leah and hankster bring up some great points and pose some questions worth thinking about. You seem to be approaching this situation-- of the unlikely scenario of encountering a T at an intimate gathering-- as black and white, right or wrong-- as something analytical instead of something emotional. In therapy, it's really helpful to think about how you feel and why you have such strong reactions to certain things. Usually, that means there is something deeper there that needs to be explored.

You said that one reason you are in therapy is because of problems with your friends and family. What problems are those? Do you feel isolated or rejected by them? Do you struggle with boundaries with them? Do you feel like they just don't understand you? Are you lonely and looking for T to fill some of that human connection that is missing? It might be helpful to take a step back from the issue of boundaries with T and think about whether any of these same issues come up in your RL relationships. For instance, do you find that you get into arguments about who is right and who is wrong with your friends? Do you find it difficult to walk away from an argument or agree to disagree? If you can get more insight into your feelings and emotional responses, you might be able to understand your relationships a little better and start making some improvements. After all, the reason you are seeking out a therapist is so that she can help you improve your real life-- not so she can become a part of it or substitute for it. Really, she's there to help you figure out how you can be happier in your every day life and make the changes that you wish to make.

I'll say one thing about the boundaries with T topic-- and then I'll leave it alone because, honestly, I don't think it's the point. I think the bigger issue is what seems to be a sense of loneliness or a fear of rejection that is causing you to want to connect with T outside of therapy, or a refusal to accept that others have different opinions than you and that's okay; we don't always have to agree. That said, what it seems like might be missing in your hypothetical scenario about running into T is your ability to consider the situation from T's point of view and take HER interests into account. You only seem to be concerned with what you want-- you want to talk to and connect with her if you see her at an intimate gathering. And, you want her to want the same thing. You think she SHOULD want to connect with you if she sees you there. But what if she doesn't want that? Can you allow for the possibility that she could be a great and caring therapist who likes you as a client, and still want to keep her professional and private lives separate? As someone who works with students all day, I can say that I spend the majority of my time working for them, putting their interests ahead of my own, and caring about them and their education. I like them and I see them as individuals, not just faces and not just my job. However, it can be very tiring to spend your day putting yourself aside so that you can be there for other people-- clients or students. As long as my students are there, I feel "on guard." That's how I can do my best job for them. So, when I have the opportunity to go somewhere fun with my friends, or with a date, or with a family member-- I want to let my guard down, NOT think about work, and just relax. I do see students out and about fairly frequently and I will say hello, but every time it happens it takes me out of relaxation mode and puts me into "work/on guard" mode. In between the time you posted your initial thread and now, I also happened to run into a former student at Pride, at a lesbian venue. It's not quite the kind of intimate gathering that you were talking about, but it was a place where was feeling "communal" and boundaries were pretty relaxed. However, seeing my student there immediately made me feel "on guard"-- which is not how I wanted to feel at Pride. I like my student, but I just don't want to celebrate Pride with her. I want to keep my private life private, and I want to enjoy Pride with the friends I came with, who I don't get to spend enough time with. I said "hello" to my student, and then I asked my friends if we could move on to a different venue, across the street, so that I could have the good time I wanted to have, where I could just be a "person" and not someone's "professor." The whole thing is that it had nothing to do with my student; it was all about me. I wanted to have my Sunday to myself, to enjoy with my friends. Monday through Friday gets to be about my students; my weekends get to be about me. It's only by having my weekends to myself (where I get to do what I want!) that I am able to be there for my students and put them first when I'm teaching them, meeting with them during office hours, and grading their papers. If I never got to recharge my batteries or have a private life, I couldn't do my job. I would just be too burdened all the time by my students' needs, questions, e-mails, etc. I would suspect that a lot of therapists feel similarly. When you are in their office, YOU get to be the priority. YOUR needs come first. But, if you run into them outside of the office, your needs don't come first anymore. That is their free time. They get to chose how they want to spend it. If they want that private time for themselves, don't they get to make that choice? It's not a reflection on you or an indication of how committed they are to you as a client. It's just that their free time gets to be about them. They get to take care of their own needs, and they may very well need to disengage from anything and anyone that they associate with work in order to feel relaxed. By taking good care of their own needs, they are then able to take care of you in session when it is "your" time.

I think it's very telling that you seem to view boundaries as being defined externally, rather than based upon internal desires, beliefs, morality, and preferences. That somehow the external can over ride/replace the internal in these determinations.

So in your thinking, the "rules" and conditions of a meeting determine how those involved should relate to each other. But just because people affiliate at any sort of gathering--even within a congregation where we'd assume the members are closer in their beliefs than would be true randomly--doesn't mean they share identical views about anything, including boundaries. The degree to which they will modify their behavior (set boundaries) is based upon internal consideration of morality, ethics, beliefs, and preferences.

Perhaps one of your therapy issues is that you don't experience such considerations as internally determined?