I have been thinking a lot about this article that xoxo posted:

http://jppr.psychiatryonline.o...content/full/8/4/292

I wonder if anyone read it? I have been struggling with the first scenario, the one where the client wants to join the T's church. As I read through it, it hurt me so much to see that the therapist made it about poor Sam and all this stuff Sam (I think that was his name) has to work through.

I was thinking today about the T and his sense that the church "belonged" to him. And that he had no problem whatsoever saying, "this is mine and you can't have it". And poor Sam, who had been victimized and abandoned throughout his life has to work through HIS feelings, whilst the therapist gets to keep "his" church as if it was all Sam's problem.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this that might make me feel better?

I was thinking that there are just people who feel more entitled to carve out their boundaries, their territory, if you will, regardless of their "true" ownership. And there are others (me) who are less likely to do this.

Any thoughts?

I guess that's not quite how I read it. I read it as the T knowing that the church was not his to exclude anyone from, but also deciding that he could not treat someone who was also attending his church. To me this is kind of like saying you can't treat a friend or coworker, in that the therapist just wasn't comfortable with the overlap in roles and thought that it would negatively impact his ability to be effective in treating the person. That doesn't mean that every T would have the same feelings about it.

Alpaca,

That's interesting. So you don't see it as that the T feels some sense of "ownership" of the church?

Not really, but I can't say if I went back to read it again if I might have a different take on it.

Alpaca,

You don't see any power issues there? JW. I usually have my own slanted view of things.

Liese

The whole scenerio reminds me that the therapeutic relationship is real. It also reminds me that you can have both good feelings and bad feelings about those you care about.

I think the therapist's decision serves 2 purposes (aside from the benefit that was described): maintaining a workable, sound relationship and modeling boundaries and self-care.

The therapist would have felt resentful if she (he?) didn't hold her boundary; it would taint the relationship. I don't think it's a 'right or wrong' type of situation. I know my therapist's modeling of boundaries has been very helpful to me.

Maybe an example would show you where I'm coming from? I was dating someone when in college full-time. Well, being a single mom, and working, my time and energy was limited. He wanted more of me than I could possibly give. I was keeping a distance and didn't want to invest as much as he in our relationship. I wanted to date casually. I liked him very much, and he was growing very attached to me. I told him I just couldn't give more. Yet he wanted more and more. I finally had to break up with him because his expectations and what he wanted was incompatible with what I wanted, my expectations. I liked him very much and we were very compatible. If I would have done what he wanted, i am certain i would have been resentful; it would have harmed me AND our relationship. Do you see how if I would have said 'yes', how it would have harmed both of us? Part of breaking up with him was to free him because I cared about him. I did not want to lead him on about where our relationship was going. So even though there was loss involved, it was a win-win situation. Does that help at all?

The other concept on my mind is where you can like and dislike aspects of another person you care about, and that it is ok. And that it is ok if the one you care about dislikes certain things about you. My therapist self-discloses in this department, he tells me some things that irritate him about a family member or friend, and likewise, things they dislike about him. And that being open about those aspects fosters intimacy.

Like my son and I. There are some things that irritate one another. We talk about it in the open, and strengthens our relationship. We have come to joke about these differences.

Accepting that others might not like everything about you leads to self-acceptance. And you may have talked about this before. I think it's really important to accept the good and bad about ourselves (subjective good-bad of course-whether it be our view or our therapists or close relationships). I am starting to believe it's ok to be me-good and bad, whether someone doesn't like aspects of me or not.

Not thinking of you in particular here, but this may be indirectly related to the scenerio-IMO, a patient must eventually face the negative aspects of self in order to accept the whole self (i.e, me-being clingy might push others away). Many trauma survivors 'split off' negative aspects of themselves. It's imperative to work through these issues too, and not only present/bring to awareness the positive aspects of ourselves. They must be integrated; if the negative parts remain unconscious, they manifest in our relationships in complex ways. We have to accept our humanness-everyone has positive and negative aspects; strengths and weaknesses; good aspects and faults...And a patient can't truly experience a strong sense of Self unless he lets the negative arise in consciousness-otherwise, he is distorting his views about himself and others. By distorting the views, such as wanting to believe [trait x] isn't a shortcoming that is part of his uniqueness, one is actually rejecting the Self. An aspect of self-hate. Actually, this is probably more indirectly related to that scenerio, but it just came out like this.

Hope that helps. Hang in there!

Hi XOXO,

Thanks for your view of things. It certainly helps to try to see it from another person's point of view.

For me the difference here though is that the church is open to anyone and Sam wanted to join the church before he knew it was the therapists church. He wanted to join the church to expand his community involvement.

I think this is where I am having the problem.

We do have to share things in life. We don't have to share our time, our money, our homes, our bodies, maybe our spouses but we have to share the roads and anything else that's open to the public.

I can see how the therapist would have felt intruded upon but I don't think it's his boundary to draw, although he felt it was his boundary to draw.

Does that make sense to you? Sam didn't have a problem with them joining the same church. The therapist had the problem. IMO, the therapist should have sought supervision.

????? What am I missing?

quote:

we have to share the roads and anything else that's open to the public."

I agree with you Liese.

The thing I don't like about how boundaries are handled in therapy is I see the purpose of the boundaries is to help & protect the patient. I don't think its right for the T to get upset if a patient wants to go to "his church" if the patient thinks that church is a good fit for him.

I think its too territorial of the T.

It could be true that Laura and I are not good with boundaries.

It's also bothering me is that the therapeutic relationship already has a power imbalance in favor of the therapist and here the therapist is asserting his power over the patient.

The whole scenario to me seems like an enactment of Sam's past.

Not only that, I can't tell you how many times I've been in a club or something and someone joined that I was really uncomfortable with and wish they hadn't joined but I had to get over it. I didn't "own" it.

That being said, I could totally identify with Sam and feeling rage and betrayal. I'm wondering how it all worked out. If he came out of it any healthier.

XOXO, I'm not looking to be right here. I'd love to hear your thoughts some more.

I guess it comes down to that I'm probably looking at it from a moralistic viewpoint and the reality is, right or wrong, it was the therapist's boundary. Sam could have hit up against any other boundary but just happened to hit up against this one.

Outside of therapy I don't really have any "boundary issues". I also don't have them with my current T. He doesn't trigger me the way these women did. My therapist kicking me out of therapy was 8 years ago and 12 years ago. Me seeing a photo of them embracing was a month ago though.

I don't think I'd have the same issues with them today that I had then. I think part of it was I was at a sensitive age btwn 17 & 21 years old when I met them. I didn't go to grad school for psychoanalysis so I didn't really get the meaning behind it all and didn't trust it and wanted assurance that they cared about me was a lot of where it derived from.

This forum has given me a lot of perspective on what happened. I had never met anyone who was in love with their "therapist" before that I could relate.

I also didn't fully understand why I had felt so abandoned given I've never been materially abandoned.

My father was abusive and my needs were neglected etc.. so I was emotionally abandoned.

I also find it interesting that the author finds it protective of the therapist when the therapist didn't let the cross-dresser come to sessions in drag but doesn't seem to find this church example as protective of the therapist.

I'm not sure I see the difference there??????

I know Laura, I was just commenting on the fact that you and I saw the same side of the coin. I wasn't making a personal statement about you. I'm sorry if it came across that way.

Liese

A lot of therapist go into because they have major unresolved issues and I am afraid of their hidden demons in the room and trusting.

I see where you are coming from.

It's just that I don't think it's right or wrong; but I do see it as rejecting and unfair. In my view, it wasn't that the patient had/didn't have the right to join a community church, it just seems like the therapist would not have been able to work with the patient had the patient joined the church...even though the therapist was rejecting.

It is, in a way, like the dating relationship i explained. We could have kept the relationship only if he adjusted HIS boundary. I could not adjust mine. So we couldn't have the relationship at all, because he couldn't adjust his boundary. There just was no middle ground. If he would have chose to keep our relationship casual, we would have been able to keep the relationship.

In the church example, it's not fair, but the only way the therapist could continue to work with him.

I could see this boundary occur in other scenerios. A patient decides to buy the house next door to his therapist. The therapist has no right to bar the patient from buying the house, but the therapist might not feel comfortable working with the patient any longer. The patient has to make a choice between buying that house and ending the relationship, or not buying that house and keeping the relationship. It's just life.

Or a patient, unknowingly, starting dating the daughter of the therapist-soon found out, it's his daughter! I brought this up because I thought through this, having once fantasized about dating one of my therapist's sons...and became part of his family that way...hehe.

I don't know the answer, Liese. My therapist has gone to patient weddings and other 'controversial' things as he saw would be helpful and not harmful, but each person, and each person's situation, is different.