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 
It sucks when someone talks the talk but doesn’t walk the walk. Sigh. Yay, twinnies!
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Agreed.
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Well, I’m a slight confused here, but, I think I’ve missed a lot of the twists and turns– like, maybe I’d have to rewind back to the beginning to really understand the whole mess.
I hope that doesn’t sound unsupportive. Thinking back 30 years over different psychologists, therapists, med nurses, case managers and the like… it just gets to be a blur, and I don’t recall any experiences I had that were similar. The vast majority of them, I didn’t connect with to any appreciable degree. Only a rare few did I even really trust.
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Hi Jak. I’m essentially just pointing out that when I told Zooey that a previous therapist had scolded my for crossing a therapeutic boundary that I didn’t even know existed, she was supportive and felt that it was the wrong way for this therapist to react to me. However, less than a year later, she then proceeded to get upset with me for crossing a boundary that I didn’t even know was in place. I’ve been in & out of therapy for 12 years and yes, most of them were mediocre. Finding a good therapist seems like a rarity.
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Ah, I gotcha now. And yes… finding a really good therapist does seem like a rarity. I’d say it’s worse in community mental health to a certain extent, if only by dint that it took months for the psychiatrist to have time to see me.
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Oh I totally agree. I actually lost my psychiatrist because the clinic he works in would not allow me to be seen without insurance- even though I said I would just pay out of pocket. So now I’m without one of my meds while I search for someone new. This time I’m going private practice. But that is a luxury I didn’t have for most of my life. It has been hell trying to get access to mental health providers over the years because I was unemployed and had government insurance. It is unacceptable.
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Gosh, I know when everyone’s birthday is – my psych, CPN etc. I can’t see why that’s inappropriate
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Me either, to be honest
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René needed a slap. Oh man. How do even half of these people get to graduate to work in these fields?
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Excellent question!
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Ha! Isn’t it amazing how much someone’s perspective can change when they are defending their own bad behavior?
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Yup!
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