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

Last Updated: 01.07.2025 03:20

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

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

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

Obsessing about clients outside of work hours.

How can someone effectively handle a targeted individual?

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

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

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

Have you ever secretly watched someone while they were doing something private?

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

Serious disappointment when the client cancels a session.

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.

If my heart stopped beating, would I have enough energy to walk out into the other room 20 ft away before I passed out and died?

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

General Introduction to Boundaries from Panahi Counseling:

Off the top of my ancient head:

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