My curiosity and urges are making me waste my time

To some extent you're right. When I'm busy I have no time to do my research/googling. I have no time to answer all these posts but they are all so thoughtful I want to! Being exhausted takes away my obsessions!

I know your viewpoint so I'm answering for all your posts. You're probably right, and I do want to respect my T but it's like the emailing. I keep doing it when I need to. I don't need to hold T's hand. I chose when I could that up. If T will talk with me about the reasons and not shut me down like last session maybe I won't do it. But she not forbid me to try to look him up. That is weird. She said go ahead! So someone was right in saying it's about what she will volunteer, but she can't stop me from doing what I want online. I don't know, Chris. I'm conflicted about it.

Thanks. I don't know what I'm looking for. Maybe closeness to T. I don't like to be shut out. I honestly am not sure. I don't like when people withhold information from me. I don't think my parents did that. I don't know where it comes from!

Maybe. Thank you.

Her not sharing gives you an opportunity to work through this. If you are able to explore this fully, maybe you will find relief.

Caught up in a cycle of guilt in thinking if this in terms of a boundary is a barrier to working through.

My chlldhood.lead me to.feel alienated a lot, so this is in issue in my therapy too. Just manifests differently.

I don't see any reason to tell your T you googled her. I think it's perfectly healthy to be curious and to look people up online. I would think about why you'd want your T to know and what you'd want from the conversation (if there was one) before deciding to say anything.

Good advice. Thank you.

Thank you. I know I'm repeating a pattern of wanting to know what people don't tell me. I have confessed to my T in the past. True that I don't like hurting her.

Yes, I want to research what people don't want to tell. I don't want to feel left out. I want to be part of their lives.

I've already tested her and she's still here. I
don't think that applies here. Could be, though. Idk.

Farther along you say my brother didn't respect my boundaries. True! But you say my Mom liked him best. Not true! My parents loved both of us equally, at least that's how I felt.

Luce, I love my T and would like to do that. She would be proud of me! But right now I still have this compulsion to find the answer, solve the riddle, find the information. Not sure which part of me will win.

He's a T so I'd be interested in him, not just his picture. But that's because he is involved with T. I did some research but it was inconclusive. It made me feel a little better NOT to have found him. Not sure why.

Which part do you want to win?
There are many ways of asking the same question.
Which part do you want to allow to win?
Which part do you want to lose?
Which part makes the ultimate decision?
Not all questions will generate the same answer, I am guessing.

rainbow, early on in my therapy, I had the compulsion to find the information, to know stuff. What got me to stop was realizing what I was risking and that risk was significantly greater than what I was getting by my searches. I put a sign on my monitor to remind me risk >>> reward. Every time I thought about doing the act, I would look at the sign. Over time I started to trust t more and the compulsion lessoned. It did not go completely away, I took it moment by moment, day by day - just like an addict. (and yes, I did something worse than googling t or t's husband).

What are your risks here - not just with your t, but with yourself? Are they worth losing? Do you see her "go ahead" as some type of challenge? You know, she might have given you false info (not knowing everything you know about him).

Compulsions are hard to deal with and I'm never certain if denying them is the better way to deal with them or giving into them and then trying to figure out why they happened once they are not clawing at your back.

Just because a T (or anyone else) doesn't state something is a boundary, doesn't mean it's not. You can't plan ahead for every circumstance that comes up in life.

I think Rainbow's T does accept her, but from all the posts that have been written, she sure does cross boundaries a lot.

And you CAN control the compulsions. You are CHOOSING not to.

If your T wanted you to know about her boyfriend, she would have told you.

I don't see the OP as crossing boundaries. Certainly not about looking someone up or trying to do so on the internet. Unless you are sitting in their driveway or following them around with intent to do harm - then just take a breath and consider it usual curiousness that one is trying to satisfy. Particularly since OP said her therapist even told her to go ahead.
Looking someone up - anyone- for whatever reason- on the internet - a perfectly legal and harmless activity is not breaching anyone's reasonable boundaries. For a therapist to try and forbid such activity - would be like a therapist telling someone not to drink coke because the therapist doesn't like it.

Of course not, we are not idiots here. But if its a socially accepted and safe activity that people do in their own homes, for example then yes, they do need to make it clear.

Thats not supposed to be taken literally and without context. Someone who is a stranger might not have to state "dont hug me" boundary to a group at a business meeting, but a family member in a group of hugging family members might have to state it verbally and explicitly to the group who has that custom.

Her T actually told her to go ahead and google her husband. Everyone here keep saying its the therapist boundary when its everyones boundary but the therapist's. How is that being respectful to her now?

Anyway, im responding because i think it was me who wrote that, and this interpretation distorted the meaning of my post.

And if this was a therapists boundary-clients are not permitted to drink coke if they want her to be their therapist-then yes, a therapist would indeed have to explicitly state that is her boundary.

That sounds like a rationalization to excuse your behavior. You stated that your curiosity and urges are making you do this, sounds more like you are looking for excuses than being invested in changing the behavior that you are seeking therapy for.

Not everything is a boundary-even if a therapist does not like something. And just because a client does it, does not make it a boundary crossing.

I dont disagree with you, but if the therapist stated she didnt feel comfortable working with someone who googled her husband, then it would be a boundary.

A related point in my other posts was that her therapist never even mentioned googling, so how can everyone keep saying boundaries were being disrespected here-boundaries that never even existed.

How can a boundary be disrespected/ crossed/violated if it didnt even exist, whether direcrly stated or not. There was no argument.

Rainbow, I've searched information about a T...whatever i could find.
I think I did it for many reasons...to find if i could relate to her and wondering if she could relate to me. There seemed to be such a wide social and economic chasm between the two of us.

I wanted to know who she was. I wanted to know if she seemed respected by her colleagues. I wanted to know her values. I wanted to know many more things..

I understand this may make many of you cringe:

Once, she mailed something to me- accidentally using her home address as the return address. I drove by her house not knowing what I was looking for. I told her soon after-I was trying to understand my attachment. We talked about it. I was honest.

I told her part of the reason I wanted to know about her home and life...it was like I had found my "real" mother ....wouldn't you want to know all about her? So, I could see where she lived but, like an illegitimate child, knowing I wasn't allowed to "knock on her door."
It's kind of a sad feeling.

That's the time to **** with their heads. Push a boundary that's not really a legit boundary. Probably they'd end up thinking 'But why is this client trying to push this boundary, I have to figure this out in session!?!'. Use it to get into their heads cause it's pretty clear that you're not getting into their pants atleast not into a good 90% of them. Isn't it the therapist's duty to say terminate with a client they're not comfortable working with? I'm not comfortable my therapist being my therapist instead of friend or lover but I have to tolerate that.

When I was a senior in high school, I had what I now realize was strong paternal transference for one of my teachers, who was also like a mentor to me (that story ended badly, but not going into it here). His address was listed in the phone book (I'm kinda old!), and I'd sometimes take a back way home when I was out and drive along a street where I could see his house (not literally driving past his house on his street, but I could see it). It gave me some comfort to see a light on and his car in the driveway. (I never told him about this.)

I told my T about about this recently in relation to the Googling, and she didn't seem to understand why I found it comforting to see that he was home. I said because it showed he still existed. I feel the same way now sometimes if I'm going to see T and MC's office door is closed, meaning he's there (they leave their doors open and lights out if they're not in). Or the same if I'm going to see MC and T's door is closed. I'm not sure that T understood that either. I did mention that I also find it comforting to sit in my car in the parking lot outside the office, but I assured her that I only did that for a few minutes like right after an appointment. Although I've been tempted to just sit in the parking lot for comfort a few times when I didn't have an appointment, it felt like that would have been crossing a line--at least in T's eyes--even though it's a public place.