I don't tend to take my anger out on people. Generally, if I am so angry that I want to lash out, it really isn't about that person, it is about my own stuff; therefore, it would seem wrong of me to take my own stuff out on another person, even a therapist. And when my anger really is because of something someone has directly done or said to me, I am a talker not a fighter. It's just not my nature to yell at people, call them names, attack their character, etc. Right or wrong. That's who I am.

However, my therapist would have had no problem with me discussing problems in our therapy or relationship so long as it was a conversation, not an attack. We had many such conversations which were productive and resulted in positive outcomes for my therapy. I think because he was so open to those kinds of frank discussions, problems about my therapy never rose to the level of serious conflict or rupture.

My therapist would have had no problem with me expressing anger about a situation, about my therapy, about him, about my history, about my emotions, about other people not in the room, but he would have drawn the line at speaking to him in a way that would be deliberately and intentionally hurtful and/or abusive. He has a boundary that he does not accept abuse -- a boundary I fully agree with and it serves well as a model for my own boundaries. I learned a great deal about healthy, proactive boundaries from him. If I had deliberately been abusive toward him, he would have stopped me, expressed his boundary without anger - simply as a matter of fact --, and would have insisted we talk about why I was lashing out and what was really going on there. I think knowing that the conversation was welcomed, inevitable, and not judged negatively helped me be able to express my feelings in the form of true dialogue and in the spirit of resolution.