Logo

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

Last Updated: 23.06.2025 07:07

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

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

Serious disappointment when the client cancels a session.

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

Enhanced Box Score: Nationals 2, Cubs 0 – June 4, 2025 - Bleacher Nation

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

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

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

Can someone fall in love with a person they have never met in person, but only through thoughts and imagination?

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

Obsessing about clients outside of work hours.

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

Do people of NYC drive around Central Park all the time? Is there any subway tunnel to cross the park quickly? Is it annoying for people and does it cause traffic?

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.

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

General Introduction to Boundaries from Panahi Counseling:

First quantum-mechanical model of quasicrystals reveals why they exist - Phys.org

Off the top of my ancient head: