To my darling, dearest readers...even the ones who hate me and send your angry letters straight to the editor with specific instructions to fire me as a Binah columnist...I love you all. You make my life exciting and varied and keep me on my toes!

The flood of emails in response to my column “Therapize me, Therapize me not: when teachers and mentors betray us” validated the purpose of the column. Thank you teachers who acknowledged the need to know more about boundaries with students. Thank you students, mentees (is that a word?), and clients who sharing your painful betrayals—or perceived betrayals by your teachers, mentors, and therapists and having the courage to explore the meaning of those experiences. Thank you parents who brought my attention to a forgotten (by me!) aspect of these relationships that exclude the parent sometimes on purpose, sometimes inadvertently; but not always wisely.

And thank you to those who want to be a good and loyal friend but realize something troubling about their relationships and want to understand how to keep them healthy—how to keep themselves healthy—but without hurting anyone in the process.

Many of you want to know more. How to protect yourself from violating boundaries as the mentor, how to keep from falling into these types of relationships as the student or friend. Some of you want to know why it keeps happening to you to begin with. Why do these students gravitate to me? Why do I gravitate to teachers and older friends? And some of you want to know if therapists can mess up too, or even why their therapists acted just as terribly as the volunteer.

I need to think about all these questions. And I owe you good answers to your tough questions. So give me some time and I will respond.

In the meantime, thank you to all my clients who read the column and said they liked it. Whew.

(originally published in Binah Magazine)

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Browse through my previously published articles on my former blog Therapy Thinks and Thoughts at frumtherapist.com/profile/MindyBlumenfeldLCSW

Read current articles in my bi-weekly column THERAPY: A SNEAK PEEK INSIDE in Binah Magazine, available on newsstands every Monday.