Is My Therapist Nuts?

Reader’s Question

IS MY THERAPIST NUTS?? I have been seeing my therapist regularly for a year and I believe we get along quite well, as we seem to have some things in common. Recently, during our sessions my therapist has confessed the following to me:

• He is not happily married and there are “divisions” in his marriage but he will never leave his wife.
• His wife hates his job as a Therapist.
• He had a year long emotional affair with a close female friend which involved kissing and some intimacy but he ended it when the lady fell madly in love with him.
• He appears to have a number of female friends whom he talks to and then tells me about this.
• Sometimes he is warm towards me and once said “your husband is a very lucky man” but then told me that he doesn’t flirt because he has a special connection to his wife!
• One week he tells me he is going to meet his secret friend again, the next she cancelled their (secret) meeting.
• I told him be up front, tell your wife the truth and she’ll understand if it is just an innocent “friendship”. He refused, saying “it is not right for her to know.”

What the hell is going on with him? Why is he saying all these things?

Our Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

Your therapist is having significant problems with professional boundaries. He is engaging in excessive and inappropriate self-disclosure to the point that he should:

1. recognize his boundary violations,
2. seek professional supervision related to these issues, and
3. refer you to another therapist.

He has not only violated boundaries, but he has turned many of your sessions into discussions of his issues and personal problems. He is also guilty of sexualizing many of these discussions, including making sexualized comments toward you. This is a problem with your therapist — not with you.

Therapists have a personal life outside the office and sometimes those lives are in turmoil. When the therapist brings his/her personal problems into your session, they are actually increasing your stress level as well as not providing the professional services required. In severe cases, the therapist is considered to be “impaired” and no longer capable of providing the level of professional services required by his/her license.

The fact that these issues have surfaced recently suggest that your therapist is undergoing increased personal difficulties that are now intruding into his professional practice. You have several options including:

1. confront him with the loss of professional boundaries and request no further discussion of his personal life or difficulties,
2. request a transfer to another therapist, or
3. seek another therapist and cancel further appointments.

You also have the option of filing a complaint with his licensing board. In my experience, some therapists totally lose their professional boundaries which will require significant actions to protect their clients. Other therapists gradually lose their direction and stray off course and into boundary violations due to their personal difficulties. For those who are straying off course, an assertive reminder is often very valuable, bringing their behavior to their attention. If that isn’t successful, then your therapist may qualify as “professionally impaired” making it necessary that your seek another therapist immediately.

In this situation, it’s important to remember that the therapist’s behavior is the issue. You didn’t cause this situation. While your therapist is not “nuts”, he is showing some professional impairment by making his personal problems and private life a priority in your sessions.