What are some signs that a therapist may have poor boundaries with their clients?

Last Updated: 02.07.2025 00:00

What are some signs that a therapist may have poor boundaries with their clients?

Serious disappointment when the client cancels a session.

Eager anticipation (or anxious anticipation) of the next session in ways that distract.

Obsessing about clients outside of work hours.

Time (physics): Who started counting our current time or is it just "set" by some scientific measure?

Sense of competition with persons who are important in the client’s life.

Disclosing feelings, fantasies, and experiences to the client in ways not related to the work the client is engaged in.

These items can happen fleetingly, briefly, in any therapy, but if they’re frequent, it’s definitely time for the therapist to get some good, solid supervision/consultation.

My friend asked my crush and he said my crush hates me but not in a rude way. What does that mean?

Off the top of my ancient head:

Failing to mention the client in supervision/consultation, out of fear the supervisor/consultant will advise return to ordinary healthy boundaries.

Frequent phoning or texting of clients to “check up on them and make sure they’re OK.”

My waist finally looks like how it did before I had kids but I didn’t lose weight. Why am I still 15 lbs from my starting weight?

General Introduction to Boundaries from Panahi Counseling:

Session-expressed curiosities about client details not relevant to the therapy.

Struggling with fantasies of deeper connections with clients, whether sexual or parental or other intense or intimate relationships beyond psychotherapy.

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Routinely going over the time limit with certain patients, compromising the time for the next client.