Lived Experience Forum

[saltandpepper]

1. No

2. No

3. No

4. Yes

@Pato Never said the words that he cares but has expressed concern, tells me to stay in one piece etc and always reminds me to call if I need to

He is also open to me asking him personal questions, but he doesn't offer up his life stories unless prompted

Strictly professional, I respect and appreciate those boundaries

I think it's important to have those boundaries in place so there's no confusion about being in a therapists office vs being at a mates place

[chibam]

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@Pato wrote:

Does your psychologist...

1) tell you that they care about you? Mine does.

2) hug you? Mine doesn't. 

3) self disclose their mental health challenges to build bonds and peer work? Mine does. 

4) let you call them outside of appointments? mine doesn't. 

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1. I think she did, but I wouldn't have (and still don't) believe her if she ever did. It was implied, at least.

2. Nope! (Thank god!)

3. No.

4. Never tried, but I doubt it. I never even had a direct number for her, only the clinic. She made me send her daily emails, but I know that she didn't read all of them.

[TheVorticon]

1) tell you that they care about you? Not really. I had a really hard time with this and they totally bungled it at the start. But sometimes I can think that maybe they care about me slightly more than a piece of garbage.

2) hug you? No, thankfully.

3) self disclose their mental health challenges to build bonds and peer work? No. They share some small things about their life but usually if they're talking about something challenging it's in relation to things they've helped other clients with.

4) let you call them outside of appointments? Ehhhhh. They allow emails but don't respond with any regularity, and would sometimes allow a call if things are difficult but sometimes wouldn't respond if I asked for one. Therefore I've put up a boundary on my side that none of that's happening because the inconsistency is way too triggering with respect to question 1.

[wellwellwellnez]

3) One particular one, yes. At first it was comforting, after a while it started blurring the clinical lines. Got to a point where I wasn't sure who was helping who.

Comparitively with another practitioner, I got an inkling of this person's religion through our discourse. I started asking about their faith to confirm my curiosity and inform my connection. Surprisingly this person drew such a beautiful clinical line and said it doesn't matter what their faith was, but if I wanted to use my faith to work through my process, then that's the faith they would use to relate to me. Not everyone can do that. I was pretty impressed.