CLIENT-THERAPIST BOUNDARIES

A good therapeutic relationship is a close relationship between you and me, where I assist you in you making significant positive changes in your life. It will be necessary for both of us to agree the appropriate boundaries before any sessions begin. These boundaries will protect us both, particularly from a legal perspective and they cover the psychological, emotional and physical space between you and me.

When you have a session with me, I will:

Make it absolutely clear who is the therapist (me), and who is the client (you) and I will ask you to agree that this is the case. I will also ask you to state if you are a therapist posing as a client.
Use the ethical counselling principle, of doing no harm to you the client.
Make it my responsibility to protect you from psychological harm, while I am being of service to you.
Be sensitive to the imbalance of power between the two roles of the therapist (me) and the client (you) and the impact this may have on both of us.
Be supportive, no matter what the issues are being discussed.
Keep your well-being as the primary focus of the relationship.
Provide consistency, predictability and security for each therapy session, offering the same time and in a place where confidentiality can be assured. If a time or day needs to be changed, this will be agreed by us both as soon as this situation arises.
Ensure that sessions are held in a relaxed and calm environment, with no distractions, where the focus is only on you as the client.
Avoid overlapping or engaging in multiple types of relationships with clients, for example, student/teacher or supervisee/supervisor relationships will not co-exist with the client/therapist relationship.
Appropriately and ethically manage any physical attraction between therapist (me) and client (you), if it occurs, rather than being acted upon.
Avoid giving, receiving or exchanging gifts during the therapy relationship.
Manage the end of therapy in an appropriate way and ensure formal boundaries are maintained once the therapeutic relationship has concluded and/or briefly stopped for whatever reason.
Ask you when we may need to agree that some boundaries may need to be crossed, for example, when I may have a self-disclosure, which I believe may be useful to the therapeutic relationship.
Tell you that I will be writing up confidential notes during and after each session.
Promote client autonomy, so that you will be independent from me between sessions. This will help you to make your own decisions and support your general confidence and well-being.
Give you an outline of rough times of the day when or if it is necessary for you to phone me between appointments should an emergency arise.
Make significant reference to the psychological processes of transference and counter-transference. Transference refers to the feelings and thoughts you, the client, may have for me and counter-transference refers to the feelings and thoughts I, the therapist, may have towards you, the client. Transference can also refer to the on-going effects of two people interacting with each other.
Make it clear that there are 3 situations in which I am allowed to break confidentiality legally. One, is if you threaten to harm yourself, two, if you threaten to harm another and three, if I am ordered by a court to supply information.
Make it clear that if you feel your boundaries have been violated, you will be made aware of the legal processes you can take. If I feel my boundaries have been violated, I will tell you I will seek advice from my supervisors, which may lead to me referring you on to another therapist.
Advise you that the sessions will not be recorded.

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