Clients setting their own boundaries?

Going back to my T in September I have come up with my own boundaries to help with my dependancy and attachment issues. (To help with keeping it at bay).

What I would like to know is if anyone here has their own boundaries with their T and what they are?

Also how did you put them across to T and what did they say/how did they react when you told them?

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I have just decided to take out of session contact off the table in my therapy, because since I have started developing parental transference towards him, I'm finding email between sessions causes more problems than it helps.
I told him today and he said if I prefer, I can talk to him about what I would like in a response from him, but I said I don't know what I want from him, and I think it's better if I make this boundary and don't contact him.
He just said okay.

Out of session contact (texting) is off the table for me completely too.

If I need any contact it will be done by email only and in working hours. Same for T...if she needs to contact me for appointment time/date changes then she can do so via email.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I 'tried' not to email because not getting responses was so triggering... (Obviously this doesn't include scheduling appointments etc). Since it wasn't a hard and fast rule though, I guess it wasn't very successful.

This is what I might struggle with as well, given that I'm setting the boundaries! Self control will play a big part I guess. And my T will have to reinforce them with me, how I'm not sure but together we will come up with a plan!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I don't tend to plan anything. That's not helpful for my therapy. Stuff just tends to happen as I do the work.

I've had conversations with t's about dual relationships, knowing too much about a t, and my own boundaries around contact. We discussed the prompting events for the conversations. If there is ever a point where the boundaries need to be revisited, we talk about it again. Current t and I need to revisit the out-of-session contact thing. I have a history of not reaching out until it was WAY past the emergency crisis point (sometimes never voluntarily reaching out for support at all). It allowed for a lot of falling apart. This time, she wants me to contact her about anything, even if I don't consider it a valid reason to bother her. I'm having trouble figuring out what is too trivial, vs what's appropriate. She hasn't taken issue with anything I text her about, but I don't always get a response, sometimes even when I really need one (generally, if I'm texting her, I need some sort of response because it's already taken a whole lot of agonizing over the decision to text in the first place). I was originally really resistant to bothering her outside of session, but she was hopeful it would avoid life-threatening crisis, so I agreed to try it... only now we are bumping into the things I was afraid of: that I would be bothering her with things I should know how to handle by now... so, anyway, considering revisiting that boundary.

Other boundaries I have around therapy involve trauma reactions to things, and not engaging in any treatment option that's more triggering than helpful (you'd be surprised how many professionals can argue the virtues of something even when there's evidence of individual difficulties with it. Dbt has been life-threatening for me 6 of the 7 times I attempted it. There's nothing they could say or do to have me try it again, yet even professionals who worked with me at the times I tanked because of dbt still insist it's an option to try again)...

Wow, I'v only used a workbook on DBT and found it helpful. I don't even see how it COULD be life threatening. But my T once did Jacobson's Relaxation thing with me. It involved tensing muscles, but it ALSO meant NOT speaking. I got TOTALLY triggered by it. Afterwards I discussed it with T and he said he had noticed I wasn't totally ok, but hadn't realised HOW upsetting I found it. Something about the 'not being allowed to speak' just THREW ME.

And I'm sure many people have no idea HOW a relaxation exercise could be problematic

Don't touch me.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

There have only been a few things I can remember specifically setting a boundary about with my therapists -- most boundaries come pretty naturally to me so they are generally not something I give much thought to. However, I absolutely put my foot down about relaxation exercises, mindfulness exercises, role-playing exercises. They are highly triggering for me for reasons we understand now after some exploration of what the issues were, and since we found other methods to accomplish the same goals, it worked out fine.

They don't get to touch me or interefere in my real life. No checking up or in on me. No advice. And I absolutely will never ever try cbt again.

Are you sure that's not a cognitive distortion? *ducks*

I don't think I could give up the touch. I like her hugs.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I was offered CBT just recently and I'm thinking about it. How come you won't try it again, if you don't mind sharing?

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I found it to be patronizing, condescending and it treated clients like they were idiots. It was actually harmful for me and made things much worse. There are some people here who have found it useful.

One concern for me as a trainee is that CBT is the most used modality in the NHS (our public health system) and most of the jobs I see require it as a primary modality. I believe this is primarily because it is seen as a quick fix in an underfunded system which wants people "fixed" in as few sessions as possible to save money.
I don't like CBT and I won't train in it. Therefore I am cutting off my chance of many jobs. But I agree with stopdog. My experience of it is presumptuous and infantalising. If it's useful for others that's great but it's not for me and not something I would endorse.

This is interesting because CBT is still quite a rarity in South Africa and there are only a few practitioners. My positive experience with it might reflect that difference.

I found the CBT and other behavioral skills I learned in therapy the real take-aways with me into life beyond therapy (and I neither felt treated like an idiot nor found the methods infantilizing, patronizing, or condescending). Isn't it nice that there are methods of variety to suit a variety of clients? I do think it is used poorly by poorly trained therapists too often, however. But in the hands of a truly experienced and skilled therapist with the ability to pull in CBT techniques along with a variety of other methods to best help a client . . . CBT techniques can be very helpful.

I agree that whatever works for someone is fine with me. I would not tell anyone else not to try it if it sounded useful. But I will never let another therapist inflict it upon me.

I guess I have another boundary I set, on myself: I don't ask them personal questions except "why did you become a therapist?" Which to me is more a professional question. I want things as impersonal as possible.

She once called me by a diminutive nickname to refer to my "inner child". I uncharacteristically halted the imagery exercise, and asked her to please never call me that because my family does it and I hate it. She's never done it since.

Don't ask me pointed questions about my present-day life or past stuff if I haven't specifically brought up that area to talk about.....in depth.

Current T seemed to get this pretty quickly.

Not sure though if I set up that boundary because of my fit (or rather, lack thereof) with her or it's just a natural boundary I have in therapy (I know I have it with most others in my life).

Somehow found myself relaxing it though (for some stuff at least) with a promising, potential new T and have been feeling pretty okay about it.

I entirely agree. I almost feel as though I have my own responsiblity too to maintain a professional relationship. The fact though that my therapist's and psychiatrists' have never provided me with anything other than their office phone numbers suggests they feel this way too. I'm not so sure I could communicate that way even were they to do so.

I suppose much of this stems from my distaste for texting in the firstplace.

I think CBT has definite benefits but also limitations.....for pure anxiety symptoms it helped me greatly. When I was really suffering mentally and physically from my sleep disorder, it was a joke to think that CBT would do a thing. i was suffering not from my outlook about my sleep disorder but the pure symptoms themselves. had mild friction with my husband and my psychiatrist on that initially because I wasn't doing my coping techniques, it took a while to drill into them the difference between my anxiety and my physical illness

I think we set boundaries all the time in all sorts of relationships, often without any kind of formal conversation.

I have friends around whom I just don't bring up/talk about certain topics, not because they ever said, "Hey, please don't talk about that and here's why," but because I'm sensitive enough to pick up on their cues...I make a joke about X, they don't laugh, I learn, 'Huh. I guess they don't find that topic very funny. Won't do that again.'

Same with my T. While I have outright said "I don't want to talk about/do that" before, a lot of it has been non-verbal. Sometimes a question or comment or gesture of his makes me cringe a little (often unconsciously) and he's sensitive enough to pick up on that and not do it again. Mostly.

Some of my boundaries:

-Respect the bubble of personal space. 3-4 foot no-man zone.
-No sudden movements. (Not real proud of this one, but there it is.)
-Don't initiate out-of-session contact for any reason other than scheduling. (I find it weird.)
-No physical grounding exercises. (They freak me out).

He's set boundaries, too, both explicitly and with non-verbal cues. I quickly learned, for instance, that there's a limit to how much profanity he'll tolerate.