Shortly after I started seeing Zooey, I told her about a therapist I had while hospitalized as a teenager. Her name was René and she was very nice for the most part. Two of the parts in our system (13 year old twins) are really into astrology and identify very strongly with the “dueling fish” that are associated with our zodiac sign, Pisces.
We were babbling on about this when suddenly we asked René when her birthday was so we could tell her cool stuff about her zodiac sign.
She immediately reacted in a very strong way and said,
“I’m not going to tell you that. You can’t ask me that. It’s very inappropriate!”
We were admittedly hurt and felt incredibly stupid/ashamed for asking in the first place.
That was our first real introduction to the idea of “therapeutic boundaries” and realizing that there are certain things you’re not allowed to know about certain people.
Zooey responded to this story by saying,
“Well that doesn’t seem fair. She got upset with you for violating a boundary that you didn’t even know existed…”
Huh. Imagine that.
I honestly can’t tell if Zooey is totally and completely lacking in self-awareness or just a plain old hypocrite.
Either way, remembering this specific interaction made my laugh/cry because as we all know, Zooey did the exact same thing.
Things I Learned In Therapy 