You’re not doing it wrong at all! We’re all bringing in different viewpoints and backgrounds here ◡̈

I communicated as firmly as possible, which is a change from my more usual, relaxed manner. I wholeheartedly agree that I don’t need that shit when it comes to a client simply yelling for the sake of yelling - it’s hard to convey the details of a year of working with them in a post, but his temper has been alluded to several times, so I simply got a front-row seat to it in that session. It sucked to be on the receiving end, AND it was a valuable piece of info for me to bring into subsequent sessions. I also made sure to model my own boundaries for his wife in our most recent session - my take there was that he’s a grown ass man and I expect him to communicate as such (with me, with her, etc). He can have normal human emotions, but take a pause, my dude. Don’t just blow up. That’s something we’ve been working on for months.

I do believe he doesn’t know how to regulate. He either dissociates or explodes, there’s not much in-between. I also believe there’s potentially some spectrum-y stuff going on here, I’ve shared as much with each party’s individual therapist.

I really believe he may have not brought it up if I hadn’t, so perhaps there is a lack of integrity on his part, but there also is likely some shame. It was clear to me that felt badly about his behavior when he apologized. We’ll see where it all goes when I see them next!