WEEK SIX ESSAY
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Hi everyone, Susan talks about the 4 karmas and their maras in her podcast “Buddhism Beyond Belief”, recorded January 16 (episode 40).
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I don’t think I have any anecdotes about this particular experience, but I recall once asking someone to be my personal meditation instructor on an ongoing basis and being told “no, I’d rather be your friend.”
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Hi Andrew,
Your share has me really pondering if it would be possible for me to be a teacher and a friend. I think this is possible, but only if both teacher and student can dive completely and truly into the ‘contained space’ of teacher and student while the teaching / learning situation is taking place. If this is not something both can do, it may be difficult to prevent friendship elements from penetrating and disturbing the teacher / student space. When that happens, it may be distracting from the teaching and maybe even contaminating to the learning experience.
Keeping the space between student and teacher ‘sacred’ and ‘pure’ towards the learning, is something requiring a particular effort, mindfulness and awareness that have to be practiced for the combination with friendship to work, probably.
That said… maybe it was wise of the friend who wants to remain a friend.
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Oh yes! My career was spent in the classrooms of corporate America teaching communication skills and it was often difficult to keep ‘connected but separate’. Students often want to befriend the teacher and it can be very genuine and not intended to curry any favor yet still, you open yourself to criticism not to mention difficulty when you accept an invitation outside the classroom from someone and then realize you can’t honor another invitation! It was fairly easy to manage invitations from the corporate leader who hired me but complicated when they came from students. I crossed that line more than once and felt caught. On the flip side, it felt lonely to leave the offices of a client and spend the evening alone – very much like Susan’s essay, “I’m right here and also completely alone.”
In a bit of a different scenario, but filled with similar emotion, in 2018 I found myself as an event planner (not my wheelhouse) for a symposium on Race and Anti-racism in our city. It was a successful day and my stress was sky high up to that day and on that day. When it was over, I looked around and no one was there. I would have given “my front seat in hell” as my mother would say, for someone to invite me for a drink to debrief and share the day and there I was completely on my own. God did it feel separate. It was also the year following the death of my husband of 40+ years so it was even more poignant. There was no going home and sharing the feelings of the day. Damn that was hard and as you can tell, the feeling is still there.
Appreciated today’s session very much.
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Hi MaryBeth,
Thank you for referencing Susan’s essay. I’m looking forward to reading it!
I can relate to what you shared about no longer having someone to debrief important (and unimportant) experiences with, especially after having had that sweet experience for a significant period of time. I am working through some grief in this area. -
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Ooh, I can really relate to this feeling. After putting on a big event and the attendees have a great time and go off together to have a drink or dinner and there’s nothing to do but head home alone. These are the times it’d be really nice to have a colleague sharing the work so at least we could debrief together. Thank you for sharing this.
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I tend to be more remote as both student and teacher. I didn’t have healthy models of student/teacher or mentee/mentor relationships growing up. I have felt a sense of, “Why would this teacher be interested in connecting with me, personally?” A few teachers have leaned toward me a little more to bridge the gap, for whom I am very grateful.
Three years ago, I returned to school to refresh my career options. I noticed that I felt an increased desire to connect with my teachers, probably due to life experiences that had allowed my perceptions to shift regarding my place in the world. I took risks with vulnerability where I would not have in the past. It was a much better experience and I now have a professional lineage in which I feel actually known.
As far as being too friendly, what comes to mind is that I sometimes make too many jokes or engage in frivolous conversations with my clients at work. I wonder if this impacts my professional image in negative ways. I am maintaining curiosity about it, because I don’t want to return to being unnecessarily rigid and distant. I will practice awareness and follow the arc, making adjustments where appropriate.-
Natalie, I love the idea of finding more balance between being too friendly and too rigid at work. I so relate because I am also the type to make jokes or engage in frivolous conversation (I love the way you put this). I want to be able to not worry and just be myself at work, but I’ve learned there is definitely a place (and sometimes a need) for distance as well. However, I find that if I stifle my authentic self too much at work, I get burned out in a sense/feel disconnected. So I struggle with this too. I love the idea of remaining curious about it all – that is a very helpful frame I look forward to leaning into.
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This is a delicate balance indeed. I personally feel that most people in corporate America err on the side of being too cold and distant. It is for sure a safer bet, but there is something missing there, that if done properly can be so gratifying to everyone involved. I have had the opportunity to work outside the US and even in the US with people from other countries, and I personally like that warmth better in a work environment, but it needs to be kept professional (and of course, legal, showing no favoritisms, etc.). Anyway, all to say, that as you reach your balance, i hope you don’t lose your warmth, as I am sure it is very valuable by those working with you today.
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**Warning: discussion of death and suicide below**
The reading this week really hit me. It made me remember one of the most difficult moments in my teaching career when I had to balance my own wellbeing, that of my students, and a lot of boundaries. It was also an experience in which I felt incredibly alone.
We were a week or two into the COVID lockdown and I was trying to manage working as the director of a graduate program (in which I also taught) while also caring for a 3-month old infant and 3-year-old preschooler without daycare or any in-person “village” for support. Suffice to say, that situation was already difficult. But it was about to get so much worse.
I received a call from my dean to let me know that one of my students had been found dead in her apartment by the police and that the cause of death, which I was told I could not share with anyone, was suicide. I won’t go into the details of my own grief here, other than to acknowledge its presence.
Then came the flood of phone calls and emails from my students.
I quickly learned that there were stories, relationships, and tensions that I had not been aware of in my role as their teacher (good boundaries at work). But in this time of crisis, everything came pouring out. They wanted me to know what was going on, wanted me to give them answers for things that were unanswerable. Many of them wanted to know what had happened; how had their friend died. One student in particular confided in me that he was worried that his relationship with this student had caused her to take her life and he begged me to confirm or deny whether I knew what had happened. I felt strongly that I did not want to lie, so I could only repeat that there were many details I did not know (which was true) and that I could not share those that I did, even if I wanted to (which was also true).I have no training in counseling and I repeatedly told my students that they should seek counseling support from the counseling services at the school because I could not be their counselor. But as their teacher and their advisor, I also felt responsible for them. I felt like I needed to listen, so that is what I did, as much as I could manage in between caring for myself and my family. There were also moments that I had to say “no”. I could not take calls at all hours of the day and night. I could not be a crisis counselor when the school counseling office was overwhelmed with early-COVID crisis chaos. I do not think I handled this situation perfectly, but I did my best to “pacify” and be present when I could during an incredibly difficult time for my students, myself, and the world.
I’ve had many other experiences in which students have confided in me. When someone is struggling academically, they often come to me for support and want me to understand what is going on in their life that has caused them to miss class, to lose focus, and so on. Again, I think it is important that I listen. Most of the time I cannot solve their problems and I don’t try, but I can direct them to support resources and help them to navigate academic solutions when they cannot continue on their current path.
As both a teacher and a student, I have come to appreciate the importance of being clear about boundaries. It can be hard to tell someone “no”, and it can be hurtful to be told “no”, but it only becomes harder and more hurtful when the lines get blurry because the teacher hasn’t clearly communicated their boundaries to the student.
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Hi Stina,
I am moved by how much you have had to hold and how you have traversed these challenges, but (or and) what you said at the end of your essay about the importance of boundaries and how “it becomes harder and more hurtful when the lines get blurry” is the clearest way I can think of that one can help teachers deeply understand the importance of being careful in this way. -
This is so moving. My daughter attends university and has significant health problems. It is not just the understanding but also a felt sense of compassion from her professors that keep her going sometimes. That’s what I sensed in your essay – as honest as you could be, as compassionate as you could be, but with boundaries. Thank you.
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Dear Stina,
Your share has struck a familiar string, as I was also a university administrator, the president of the University of Aruba, when COVID hit. We had sooo many questions overflowing us and students and teachers getting in all kinds of serious troubles because of this. At the same time, our own daughters were studying abroad and were getting isolated in those foreign societies which were not well equipped to handle foreign students in a crisis situation. This situation confronted me and my wife, who is also a teacher, with challenges great and previously unknown. We tried to get our children to come home, but all flights to the island were cancelled and all physical contact with other countries were stopped. Meanwhile, we had to find ways to support teachers and students in a way to keep the study / learning process to proceed, as we did not know how long all of the quarantine and shelter in place policies were going to last.As such, both personal as professional aspects of relationships start to affect each other making it harder to keep the boundaries stable. They start to blur, as you describe in your essay. From the perspectives I’ve had to experience myself, I find reading your essay very helpful as they are enriching to mine.
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I’ve not experienced this in a formal classroom environment, yet in reltionship with people close to me, i.e. my son and a dear friend (since age 15)..an ongoing partnerrship and invitation of teaching/learning. Life-class, so to speak.
I’m thinking of the experience of preparing to sell my then-home in IL for the move to GA, all within four months (although seed-ideas were planted years prior) my heart’s aim was to arrive in GA, by end of October, which I arrived 10/23.
Anecdote & Insights:
What, at an unmindful glance, could’ve been received as not caring, or indifference (all of which are my skewed mental & emotional outlook at the time); and even though I had an inner response from that point of view, intuitively, I knew their response was from a place of trust, knowing I was spuritually grounded and that the answers, the insight I needed would be revealed within me, within my heart. That’s not to say it was easy to handle in the moment, however……That, in turn, caused me to reflect on that more deeply,engage in spiritual practice (meditation, contemplation, prayer, writing, communing it nature and being in like-minded community (sangha).. to remember, experince stabilize what my heart & soul already knew.
…Even in their at their initial, seeming-remote response, I received their verbal support, encouragement, encouraging songs & videos; as well as in-person support, love & thoughtfulness. It was a lesson in strengthening myself to rest in knowing that regardless of how it looked and looks at times, I had my part, my actions to take, and also Right Thinking which seemed to open the gate in ny mind to see and experience the “just right” dynamic if not too close, not too far.
This is still going on within me. Navigating, working with my mind via meditation and other spiritual practice, so “being with” comes from a state of mindfulness-awareness, sooner.❤️✨️
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Hi Cheryl, the power of intention is clear in yours of being in GA by end of October!
I feel happy for you…..-
Hi Cheryl,
I always very much look forward to your energy and perspective during class, and it’s been nice to get to know you a bit through your writing here, as well. I just want to tell you that: “Remember, Experience, Stabilize–Cheryl” is now written in my journal to keep as an ongoing reminder. Thank you for this gift. -
Hi Jersey. I see that I mistakenly typed my response to Susan, here.. lol (I think I did.)- So now, my response to you: Thank you so very much for your response. I too, smile & benefit from your presence, open heart & sharing in class. — How lovely for you to reflect.. & give back to me in clear, concise, nugget form.. what you received from my share.
I appreciate you doing that You’ve helped me see that clearly, too; I will note it in my journal too.😊 It’s another example of giving & receiving, being one. Thank you. ❤️✨️
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I have experience the connected-but-separate dynamic through much of my professional life. As a physical therapist, I often worked with patients with complex health and social circumstances. I specialized in working with geriatric patients, which often involved intensely emotional family dynamics, as my patients struggled with the fear of lost autonomy and family relationships shifted as children stepped into the caregiver role. I treated many patients in their homes, helping them gain or maintain the ability to function in their daily lives, and that setting often lends itself to deeper personal sharing and connection than clinicians experience in more institutional settings. Trust between provider and patient is essential for optimal health outcomes, and in situations where a patient was lonely and isolated or family function (or dysfunction) was impacting outcomes, it could be hard to maintain clear boundaries as a healthcare provider. It can be hard not to shift from caring about to taking care of when working with such lovely and vulnerable people. I depended on a network of other professionals, including physicians and social workers, to make help me connect vulnerable patients and their families with resources and avoid overstepping the limits of my expertise and role. Maintaining professional boundaries in some instances could be heartbreaking, but the rewards of the work far outweighed the difficulties.
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Thank you for your essay, Melanie. Your words made me think about my role as a hospice volunteer. In that role I take on many hats, but probably one of my favorites is being a “matched companion” – basically someone who just visits with and listens to a patient who is at a sort of “end of life” time (I’ve learned this can mean many things). However, one of the most difficult parts (to me) about this matched companionship is in the practice of remaining connected but separate. I always want to jump in to help, and sometimes I have to stop myself when I know a boundary may be crossed if I keep going. It is so difficult to maintain clear boundaries when “working with such lovely and vulnerable people”, to use your words which really hit home for me. Thank you for sharing!
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Melanie and Liana – we had staff from Hospice when my husband was living with ALS and we got close to several. Terry was in Hospice for a year and a half and the bond became very strong and important to both of us. It was a complete shock that the moment Terry died, all contact was dropped even to the point of not being able to meet up for coffee until about a year elapsed. I can certainly understand the need to make room for the next patient needs and I can understand the need to hold to boundaries. I have no idea how to build a bridge between these two polar opposites of compassionate care and the shock of being dropped from that care. Just a reflection. The work you both do is full of heart-expanding attention.
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Melanie, thank you for this thoughtful reflection on the complexities of patient care from the perspective of a healthcare provider. The “being with”, while also staying separate, is a unique challenge that presents itself alongside each patient/provider relationship. Having a background as a physician, I connect with so much of your experience. I agree that trust is paramount, and maintaining professional distance can be emotionally draining. Thank you for your words and your work!
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[This was a tough question for me to answer, because while I have a lot of thoughts about it, I don’t have anecdotes to share. And when I put my thoughts down, they looked too lecture-y. A lot of deleting and rewriting happened, and I’m deciding that this will have to be good enough.]
I haven’t had these experiences as a teacher or student, but as a therapist it’s something that I have to be consistently vigilant about. Usually I’m comfortably in the “not too tight, not too loose” stance. But sometimes I have the feeling that a client is somebody who, in other circumstances, would be a friend, and then I have to be careful to not slide into too friendly. And sometimes a client is somebody with whom I initially have trouble connecting, and then I have to be careful to not be too remote.
Too much friendliness sometimes manifests as too much self-disclosure. Judicious use of self-disclosure can be extremely valuable, but it’s a slippery slope. The trick is finding the middle ground, and it’s different for everyone. The most useful advice I’ve received is to know exactly why you’re offering it – is it useful for them, or is it for you?-
Wow! I loved your essay. Thank you for sharing a tiny bit of the inner workings of a therapist with me. I’m not sure why your essay feels so important, but I’ve read a lot of therapist memoirs over the past year, and I feel that the work that therapists do is important in spiritual transformation. I am so grateful to hear your very good internal question about who benefits from disclosure: it sounds so clear and sane. Thank you.
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I immediately thought I would focus my own essay on being a therapist as well. As a therapist, I’ve also had the thought about some clients – we would be good friends in different circumstances. It is a dance with always helpful self-disclosure in mind. I’ve also seen the field shift from zero self-disclosure to more relational type of therapy.
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I struggle with keeping that balance between too close and too distant, especially in my professional role as a leadership coach. Partly I chalk that up to being an Enneagram 4: 1×1 connection is my jam. Definitely your question around who benefits from something I’m thinking of sharing could help me make better decisions around self-disclosure.
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Rosie, your experience is very similar to mine–a blurry line sometimes between friendliness and too much self-disclosure. The advice you share reminds me of something I’ve heard Susan say–maybe with respect to giving the gift of dharma–that sharing your wisdom is only a gift if it is wanted/requested by the receiver. Thank you for sharing!
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As someone who started teaching very young, I wish I had come across this principle of remaining connected but separate sooner, as I think it would have been very helpful to me (and would be helpful for anyone in a teaching role, which we know is quite broad). However, as I have reflected on this week’s essay question, I am realizing that I have in a way experienced this concept throughout my teaching journey, without necessarily having the words to describe.
First, I can remember being a teaching assistant when I was in graduate school, helping with a doctorate in physical therapy anatomy class. The nature of this type of course was such that I was spending A LOT of time in the anatomy lab with these students. I was just about the same age as every student in that class, and they all wanted to be my friend. They would invite me to parties and such. Of course, I wanted to go, but I didn’t. I had the forethought to say no to “hanging out” outside of class (until the class was over, and I accepted their invitation to come to their end of class party, when I was no longer their teaching instructor). I attribute this first example to the fact that I had a “mentor” of sorts at the time – basically, a student who was a few years ahead of me in my graduate program and who I looked up to. When she had been a teaching assistant for the same class a few years prior, I had observed that she was in fact befriending her students and accepting their party invitations, and to me, this didn’t seem like the right way to go. I think I must have internalized this and it had an impact on my decision (not to be too friendly) when my turn to be a teaching assistant came around.
A few years later, as a young professor teaching the same kinds of anatomy-based, close-knit classes, I continued with this push and pull without really knowing I was playing with the notion of remaining connected but separate. I remember an example where I had to have a conversation with a student who I had been giving extra help to almost every day after class, and she still wasn’t grasping the material. After a few weeks of this, I had to have the difficult conversation that not everyone is cut out to be a physical therapist, and looking back I can almost feel the sense of wanting to help but needing to retain some sort of disconnectedness to carry out the conversation effectively – she ended up being very grateful I said what I said. A similar feeling comes to mind when I remember scolding a medical student in front of his small group of tablemates for disrespecting the body donor they were dissecting. I believe both of these examples would have been incredibly more difficult if I had been too friendly with these students, which would have been easy enough to do. It was incredibly difficult to be my students’ age, but I remember feeling a sense of pride in myself in those examples, that I remained connected but separate enough to be able to come across well in these situations.
Finally, I’d like to reflect on one more example. A small group of students once came to me during anatomy lab, saying they were having a terrible time memorizing all the names of the small holes in the skull. At first, I didn’t really know what to suggest, so I started with just listening to them and what they needed. After listening and reflecting on what they had said, I thought about my own experience and came up with an idea on the spot. They came back to me at the end of class and told me how much better they felt and how much my idea helped them. This response was so wonderful, and my knee-jerk reaction was to act friendly toward them, even befriend them, but I’m glad I resisted that urge. Instead of latching on to my impulse toward friendliness, I thanked them and later turned inward. Later that day, I reflected on the situation and on my own teaching technique, and that memory has stuck with me to this day. I believe I was practicing being connected but separate without even knowing it. And, the memory also reminded me of our teaching from the last class on emotions and how to deal with them when they come up during instruction. Listen deeply, contemplate how we feel and our own experience, let the two mix, and then respond based on what comes up, and trust yourself! I know this was long, so thanks for reading if you made it this far!-
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Hi Liana – this reminded me so much of my experience as a student teacher. It was definitely harder to keep those boundaries when I was younger and my students were much closer to me in age. Even now, I notice that I have a more familiar connection with some of my older students because the relationship with someone who is also an experienced professional feels closer to that of a colleague than a typical teacher/student.
Thank you for sharing this! -
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Remaining connected but separate is sometimes referred to in part of my world as “detach with love”. When I detach with love, I am not disconnecting. I am remaining connected and remembering that I end at the end of my nose. When I remember where I end and the other person begins, I have clarified my boundary and whose stuff I am responsible for: only my own. I have been practicing this for a while now, and I have to keep practicing it.
Here’s an anecdote about a teacher I found to be too remote: I used to be a member of sangha for many years. We regularly went on meditation retreats together, and it was both challenging and wonderful. I am usually self-sufficient, but one time during a retreat, I encountered a tsunami of emotions. During the non-silent periods of the retreat I asked for help, and it was ultimately suggested that I ask the senior teacher for her help. I asked if I could schedule some time with her and she offered me a time, and I met with her and shared a bit about what was bothering me and how I was feeling. She said nothing to me – she stayed absolutely silent. She looked angry or disgusted, but I’m not sure whether I was reading her affect correctly. Even if she had nothing to say to me , I would have appreciated a confirmation that she had heard me, or even a small gesture, such as a hand on my shoulder, to let me know she was there with me. To be honest, even though she was usually a warm person, her cold response to my emotional experience left me feeling like I was not good enough to be part of the sangha, and within a few months I bowed out of that sangha.
Here’s an anecdote about a teacher with whom I became too friendly: I had a teacher whose wise support and guidance had helped me so much, and I really loved her. I invited her on a trip with a large group of people sharing a beach house, and she came along. I loved having her there: she was a blessing to me. During that trip, she met and started dating my boyfriend’s friend, who was awful. He started sharing terrible details about this wonderful lady with my boyfriend, and the whole relationship got tangled up. My relationship with her started feeling too enmeshed. I ended the relationship with my great teacher, whose wise counsel still supports me to this day! It was a great loss. I ended the relationships with my boyfriend and his friend, too. I wish I had not invited her on that trip, and I learned that when objectivity is lost to over-familiarity, you can lose a great blessing that need to stay solidly in its correct space.
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Thank you for sharing your stories, Kat. They beautifully illustrate these 2 extremes. I am sorry for your loss on both accounts, as these are tricky, emotional circumstances many of us face. I have not had the kind of close experiences with teachers that you describe, though I have often wished for them. I wonder if I am keeping myself remote in order to avoid these kind of losses. I think you have been very brave to continue to open yourself to teachers and opportunities in spite of it all.
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Dear Kat,
Your experiences are both powerful examples of the variability of teacher – student relationship distance and the importance there of. I’ve learned so much simply by reading these and letting the words sink into my own consciousness. It is as if I’ve gained an important insight about the complexity of how this distance factor works through your experience. Thank you very much for sharing.
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During our studies here, I’ve come to think more deeply about the meaning of “container” and I am grateful for it. As I look back on my roles, both as teacher and being taught, I find I am looking back on the aspects of values, mission and commitment that framed the healthiest exchanges that I am now seeing as containers in which the work can happen with the connection that supports growth as well as providing the space of separation that promotes and safeguards students freedom. I’ve been lucky to have many good relationships with teachers and mentors who modeled the kind of boundaried connection that taught me what I wanted to aspire to.
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Hi, Lauren. I appreciate your sharing and the framing of ‘values, mission and commitment’ as the container(s) to establish and preserve the appropriate balance between being connected & caring, while remaining compassionately close-but-ajar.
I also recognize the value of intention as container, as well. I appreciate that your sharing has given me much richness for further contemplation, discovery, and integration. 😊✨️ -
Lauren, I’ve been turning over the idea of containers and how to establish them throughout the course. Your example of values, mission and commitment as a way to create a container really helps me to see a way to do that. And I just realized a time when I did do that intuitively, I just never thought of it that way when I look back on the memory.
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Dear Lauren,
Thanks for focusing on the container itself and some of the building blocks to establish that. Others have shared about that and I join them in gratitude for highlighting that aspect. What also stuck with me, is your reflection on how lucky you have been. It made me realize again how lucky I have also been to have an abundance of great teachers on my path through life. I may not cherish those great examples enough but thanks to your essay I’m right there in thankfulness with them.
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This is an interesting topic. I have not had what I would describe as an official teacher on the Buddhist path, beyond my teachers through reading and studying the dharma. As a young practitioner, I often longed for a person to fill this role. The closest I came to it was a senior teacher in my local sangha who offered to be a meditation instructor. That person was a kind of friend to begin with, so it was confusing to me how to relate in the role of student. I don’t know what her perspective was, but I found it to be uncomfortable in the following ways:
Too remote: After the initial invitation to be the student, I did not know how I was supposed to connect. There didn’t seem to be guidelines as to how often we would get together to talk about my practice, and I felt silly initiating this contact. I also felt judged whenever I mentioned my discomfort and blocks with the practice.
Too close: We had lunch a few times, which were most likely just friend lunches in her mind. But to me, the relationship was a strange mixture of friend/teacher, which I didn’t know how to navigate. In those meetings she shared personal anecdotes about her early experiences with her senior teacher. These stories crossed a line for me, and contained what seemed to me to be bad behavior and not the kind of example I would like to follow. To be honest they really turned me off to the idea of having a teacher at all.
So I guess the moral of the story is to have clear boundaries with potential students of my own. This is as important for the student as for the teacher. I wouldn’t offer a lot of personal anecdotes, unless they directly relate and seem helpful the student. I probably wouldn’t offer to teach meditation to a friend or family member. I would endeavor to create a strong container so the student feels cared about but not invited into a deeper friendship, which can cause confusion. I would also try to be aware of how telling them about my own experiences could negatively affect them, and try to set that aside so they could have their own experiences free of my baggage.
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Elizabeth, thank you for sharing, this is such a wise reflection of your experiences. Clear boundaries seems like such an important foundation for this relationship. I am also interested in this idea of the desire for a meditation or wisdom teacher that can afflict us. It seems that when we discover a taste of some wisdom or practice that feels like it will change our life, we become stricken by that strong desire for more and more, and for someone to guide us. I have also felt this desire to learn more and have a teacher, but feeling caution for making an inappropriate action, or some feeling that you can’t seek out that kind of relationship and that it only comes to you. I suppose one encouragement could be that in the end, we are the one going on the path/journey, so in some sense there is no external way to accelerate the rate of change and personal growth.
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What looks like a simple question feels really complex to me. My training as a therapist in the 1990s was to hardly ever self-disclose, to remain remote. The focus was always on the client and self-disclosure was seen as fulfilling your own needs instead of theirs. That stance has shifted over the last decades into a more relational stance – you self-disclose when you feel like it would help the client. And that has truly helped me as a client in particular more recently when I was trying out new behaviors in my marriage. I literally did not know how to do a particular thing my therapist was recommending and asked her to model it for me. And she shared how she did that in her marriage. This was much appreciated! What I’ve found is that when I do that as a therapist, some clients feel like they know me more and want to be more “friendly,” asking more personal questions. The vast majority don’t have my professional training around ethical boundaries so don’t know not to ask. It’s brought up conflicts in me before around my value of honesty but my greater value of protecting the client and remaining in a professional role which for me includes some distance but still warm with positive regard towards them.
I taught prenatal yoga for 20 years. Many students wanted to be friends or mom friends. There was one mom group I started attending and just didn’t feel comfortable being fully myself there – a signal that perhaps just the teacher role was appropriate for me. I also found that I had one idea of them in class and discovered an entirely new side to them outside of class that I didn’t necessarily want to know. I found I just wanted to be their teacher and not know they were parenting in a way that conflicted with my own values. I would rather maintain some distance in order to keep warmth towards them in the best possible way. In contrast to that, I lived on the same street as the owner of the yoga studio who was my own yoga teacher. I loved her personally but really did not like her teaching style as I experienced it as very remote and almost uncaring. We went through a few rocky times with this with me sometimes crying in class as yelling and critical instruction would elicit tears in me. This was very opposite to her out of the classroom personality. I know that it was based on the philosophy of the yoga system she was trained in but it just didn’t work for me and actually stopped me from going further into that particular system. Eventually, we stayed personal friends but I sought out a different yoga teacher.
Balance is hard to achieve. We have a deep need for connection as human beings. But I think it takes great self-awareness and awareness of what the student is seeking as well, acknowledging it and being aware of whether it’s appropriate for the circumstance.
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Elizabeth, what I hear you pointing to is the value of being in one’s role, whether that’s teacher/ student, therapist/client, etc. Then the boundaries are clear. And the boundaries get confused and blurry when the roles are shed, as you so clearly described.
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Hi Elizabeth,
What really jumped out at me in your essay was, “I would rather maintain some distance in order to keep warmth towards them in the best possible way.” I hadn’t thought before about the possibility for warmth being a sort of guiding force behind structuring relationships. Thank you for that aha! On a podcast yesterday I heard “don’t throw anyone out of your heart, but you can throw them out of your house!” (Sharon Salzberg quoting Sylvia Boorstein)
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Elizabeth, thank you for sharing. I really appreciate the way you outlined that distance can actually bring warmth through your examples/experiences. We think of distance as being cold, but I think it’s very meaningful the way you expressed that a certain respectful and healthy distance can bring a lot of warmth and safety to a relationship.
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As a long-time yoga student, I have admired and felt close to a lot of my teachers without actually having had any interaction with them outside of class. As a student, it is possible to feel connected to teachers through the way they teach, their genuineness and encouragement, their clarity and professionalism.
As a yoga teacher, I try to emulate the qualities that I admire in my teachers and I try to set very clear intentions and boundaries for my own behavior. I want students to connect with their yoga experience rather than necessarily to like me as the teacher. I try to model self-compassion and friendliness but I also try to give students a lot of space for their practice. When in doubt, I think it is better to err on the side of being too remote than being too friendly.
I have only ever taken and taught group classes and I wonder if the dynamics would be slightly different if the classes were one-on-one?
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Hi Vy–
Your statement about wanting students to connect with their yoga practice rather than you as the teacher is so wise! A friend of mine recently stopped attending a yoga class that she enjoyed, but felt uncomfortable because the instructor wanted to hang out with the students outside of class.
It seems to me that teaching one-on-one would make setting clear boundaries even more important because of the nature of the practice. (But I have nothing to base that on!)
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During my initial training as a therapist many, many years ago I had to learn about not getting overly involved with clients. I recall becoming very worried about my first few clients. Was I doing enough, was I helping, would I be able to help? I had met with a young woman who was quite depressed and I spent much of my weekend worrying and fretting about her. I shared this with my supervisor and she simply said, “you will have to learn to take better care of yourself.” At first I thought that this was harsh, but overtime I came to understand what this meant. I would be no good to anyone if I let their problems take over my life! Such an important lesson to learn. So now, many decades later, I certainly think about and even worry about my clients, but I never let their issues cause me to be distraught. Instead I trust that we will work together to find solutions, and if what I have to offer is not helpful to the client I will refer them elsewhere.
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Virginia, I had a similar experience when I was a brand new therapist. Something that helped was that, after seeing a client over whom I worried too much, I’d go walk a labyrinth. And that would remind me that I’m walking my path, and they’re walking their path. And I can’t walk their path for them, I can only walk mine. And where our paths intersect (in the therapy room) is where I can offer something.
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Hi Virginia,
As a former therapist, I really related to your essay. I often found myself bringing the troubles and traumas of my clients home with me. This, combined with a lack of self-care, led to burnout. Definitely a tough lesson to learn. I’m so glad you’ve been able to find the right balance in your work and personal life. Thank you for sharing!
Erin
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Rosie, your reflections about not being too tight or too loose resonant with me. We meet so many different kinds of people through therapy. Yes, some of them seem like they would probably would be good friends, while with others we really have to keep our boundaries tight. It’s all very interesting. I agree that use of self can be helpful, but we have to put thought into our purpose. Thanks for sharing!
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Melanie, I found your discussion about how to use boundaries with your geriatric patients interesting and heartwarming. It certainly has to be tricky to help people navigate the physical losses they experience. Families can make this more difficult at times, too. Sounds like you have found a calling in life that helps many with these issues. Thanks for sharing.
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I feel that I’ve been fortunate not to have any issues with teachers either being too friendly or remote, because my early days of practicing were so tenuous that I likely wouldn’t have stuck with it.
When I was teaching, I had an experience that made me focus on setting boundaries and expectations. In graduate school I taught Freshman Composition in a fairly large English Dept. All of us TAs used the same format and the same assignments. We wanted to encourage students to read each other’s work and see the value in their peers’ opinions, so they often worked in small groups.
One day I was summoned to the Department Head’s office; one of my students had gone straight to her to request that she not have to share her work in my class. I can’t remember the exact assignment but it was likely writing about a personal experience that changed their lives. She said that she wanted to write about her abusive father and painful childhood and that she just “knew she would get an A on it.” Like Liana, I was barely older than my students, and I really did not have the tools to respond to that—-I felt like I was going to be asked to assign a grade to her trauma. The Department Head left it up to me. (I like to think that now, decades later, this would have been handled differently.) I finally told my student that it would be unfair to the others in her group that they had to share their work and she didn’t so I suggested writing about something less personal, maybe a job or sports or a teacher who had made a difference to her? She wasn’t happy but complied. I felt guilty for being insensitive and unsympathetic, or so I thought at the time. Like I just wanted to take the easy way out. After that I tried to be as clear as possible about expectations and tried offered as many examples of possible topics as I could think of for their essays. Thankfully, the next semester’s class was purely research-based papers.
I look forward to more discussion about setting boundaries and being sensitive to others’ trauma. It sounds like there is a wealth of experience it this class!-
Hi Mary, I agree that it is tough when our job is to assess one thing (an essay or a presentation based on objective criteria) but at the same time this output is written by a human (we can still hope!) and all sorts of stories can leak out in the words produced or between the lines that we also have to learn to first process and then respond to.
Just as important as teachers needing to learn how to navigate new technology is needing to learn to deal with the increasing number of mental health issues that students (in my case generation Covid) are facing and will inevitably present.
It doesn’t sound as if your younger self “took the easy way out” at all, by the way. If they had, you wouldn’t have added it to your learning experience bank and be mentioning it here, is my guess.
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A few months ago I was very excited to finally start therapy, something that I had been wanting to do for a while. A friend connected me to a friend of hers, and this person eventually to one of her colleagues. I was looking forward to talking to a professional, but unfortunately this relationship didn’t last long. We met virtually a handful of times and communicated over text messages in between sessions to arrange meeting times and other logistics. During these communications she always felt unnecessarily distant. While this was not the deal breaker, feeling that distance did put me off. It seemed to me as if she didn’t trust herself to have a more natural communication – or at least one that matched how she approached the sessions. This is, of course, my very subjective opinion, but I did experience it as an obstacle.
I’m all for clear and strong boundaries and, as I write this, it becomes more obvious to me that there is probably internal work we have to do before we can have the clarity we need to know where those boundaries land, and why. Somewhat related to this, I have also found it helpful to listen to my gut when I feel I might be about to overshare something – typically at work – and then wait a day or so to see how I feel about having said too much. As I’ve gotten older, I trust that intuition completely, because I know it’s telling me something and that, if I ignore it, I’ll regret it the next day!
I can’t think of an experience of a teacher that got too close or too friendly, although I probably did experience that at some point. As a meditation teacher, I will definitely establish some explicit boundaries from day 1; not just to make sure everyone is on the same page, but also because it may make it easier to address discomforts or misunderstandings later on. Not being too distant or too close really feels like a dance, and ideally it’s more on the teacher’s hands to notice how the student-teacher relationship unfolds while at the same time being relaxed in who we are.
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Hi Ana, I really like your dance analogy. Very accurate, and I appreciate your points about developing self-knowledge and intuition to support the teacher’s role within the dance. Knowing it’s a line that shifts within relationship, and may not be a hard and fast one, it’s so important to be able to set appropriate boundaries at the outset, then sense how to navigate them going forward. Thanks!
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For the last several years I’ve facilitated an oral history project with women living at the intersection of HIV/AIDS and domestic violence. This project began after I inherited the letters of my friend who had lived and passed at that same intersection (I love you, Rosa). After conducting my first interview with a community member (in her living room!) the next day I got 8 calls from 8 women! I used Rosa’s letters to form each interview question and I think we all immediately felt like we were getting to make contact and reflect on story through these wise, sassy, brilliant words. I got very, very lucky that I got to carry her message–it’s reached over 400 people since.
To work as an oral historian is to offer an unconditional space of safety and trust, especially for hard-won truths. Because I entered this project as a friend of Rosa, I was gifted a space of friendship within this community. I never did any marketing. Every single interview came through word of mouth. Sharing parts of myself was important to facilitate conversation. And EVERY conversation quickly entered the realm of spirit. I’ve since been asked to conduct oral histories with unhoused communities, Latina survivors of domestic violence, and adult children living in estrangement. But it was one woman who helped me to understand my interview policy:
We really hit it off! We were talking for hours, way past my usual policy of “90 min max.” Then, she asked me: “the man I love proposed to me the day he found out he was impotent. Would you say yes?”
I knew, then, that I needed to articulate my theory, framework, and goals in a nanosecond. But this beautiful woman made that easy for me. I realized that there was not a right or wrong answer to this question: if she loved him, there would be a way to figure anything out. And, this interview did not call for my answer. My job was to create a space where it would be safe enough for her to access her heart and share it freely. Which is what I told her. “My money’s on you,” I said (I’ve since been told, that’s my trademark!) “if this is your love story, you will live it well and if it’s not, you can leave well.”
I’ve kept that close ever since.
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Jersey, thank you for doing this Good Work. As a gay man, I am grateful and reminded repeatedly, that there are so many more untold stories at the intersection of AIDS and Life. 🙏
I love “my money’s on you….” what a skillful, beautiful gift, a loving “boundaried response” that returns the empowerment, support and choice, gently and firmly right back to your client. Beautiful.
My beloved Stepdad, Tom, who was a physician and charming man, used to say “I know a ‘good line’ when I steal one.” (smile) I guess I do too. 🙏 You’re teaching me. Thank you.
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I think in the past I have leaned toward being too separate rather than too connected. Each teacher that you have is an opportunity to develop an interesting and meaningful connection, while upholding necessary, healthy, and safe boundaries.
I think in my experience in undergrad, I could have connected with more teachers and it would have been to my benefit. Just building rapport, going to office hours, building a few more of those connections. Maybe at the time I didn’t understand the value that those relationships could have beyond just receiving a lecture from someone. Of course, there are a lot of other interesting and meaningful things that go on in undergrad that aren’t teachers and classes. Maybe classes are 50% or less of the impact that an undergrad experience has. But now I wish I had connected more deeply with some of those teachers.
Otherwise, I have had almost entirely very healthy, very meaningful experiences of mentor and teacher relationships. Teachers who I connected with, while keeping healthy boundaries. Some who became friends as well as teachers. In that I feel lucky.
I had one very bad boss. But that person’s qualities don’t really apply to this question I think. -
I can only think of one teacher whose remoteness felt uncomfortable for me, but the impression has lasted. Psychology professor. Interaction had to be limited to the transactions around class material and assignments, and anything else seemed like an affront. I felt he didn’t see me as a complete person, I suppose.
Some of my teachers at university and in later school years come to mind in the friendly category. I had a great relationship with one of my art teachers, and once I was out of college and visited my old school we even discussed the possibility of a business project together. Another teacher had an annual field trip for the class to his home, where we would have a meal and consider our subject – sociology – from a different perspective. A few others invited groups of students or the class to their home for a cookout or similar. None of them strike me now as “too-friendly.”
On the other hand, I can think of one or two who did cross lines. One guy would join some among us for pub visits and the like. In the culture of my youth, many had, let’s say, a strong interest in pub life. I think in his case there was a sad history that led him to alcohol, and that became a social bridge to students. Another teacher at university seemed over-friendly in similar ways.
My wife completed a Masters in Social Work degree a few years ago, and had one course with a teacher who was not too-friendly, but boundaryless. She was grieving the loss of her brother who struggled with substance abuse, and was teaching a class on… substance abuse. At one point she presented each student with lego pieces that had belonged to her brother, and created a brief exercise around them. The impression this left was definitely uncomfortable.
In all these cases, I think the dividing line I see is quite clear, and exactly what was discussed in our class: when a teacher limits their own role in the student’s experience, but shows they care about that experience, it feels right. When they try to include themselves in the student’s experience, or make it too much about themselves, it can really disrupt things.
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I like this topic a lot, as it seems a skill that we are challenged, again and again, to answer for ourselves in our lives, relationships, and work (however one might define each of these). As an executive leadership and team coach, I encounter this regularly – how do I remain open, available, warm and engaged, while also keeping the clients’ outcome front and center? How do I bring myself fully (authenticity), and not lose myself (merge) or separate myself (disconnect) with my client? How do we do Good Work together?
I believe being wholly present and authentic is not only possible, but is necessary to be effective (here, in meditation instruction, but applicable in other arenas of our lives) and that it is through our relationship intelligence and awareness we can embody this. All 8 billion of us humans, Brené Brown offers, are seeking two things: connection and belonging. There are at least 80 billion ways of what connection and belonging might look like, and we don’t and couldn’t possibly know them all, or even necessarily know them for the person right in front of us. But, through our own sense of connection and belonging, to ourselves, to our practice, to the Buddha, the Dharma, and Sangha, and through connection with the person in front of us, we are able to be our natural, authentic, warm selves as teachers for others. Through our own sense of connection and belonging, we are able to “take our seat” and from that seat hold our own Basic Goodness, warmth and radiance, and to be available to the other, while not losing our seat.
I’ve had many experiences, “experiments” and teachers from my clients, and peer-coaches who have helped me develop this sense (smile). As a new coach 15 years ago, I met with a new client, and after following intake and credentialed guidelines, we had a very good coaching session. He was coachable, engaged, and we agreed to set up our next appointment. He would reach out to schedule a session. A day went by, and I didn’t hear from him. Then a couple of days, still no word. By day three I was checking the obituaries, and googling him online: had he had a car accident, had he died, did he actually hate the session and was calling my supervising coach, what catastrophe MUST have taken place that he had not called? Somehow, I had become too wrapped up in my own importance, and possible impact, with my client. I had lost sight of who the client was and whose “story” and life we were working with. In that sense, I had lost the thread. I caught myself (Day 4?) and realized I had absolutely no idea what might be going on in his life and why or why not he had not called to schedule our next session. I had lost my seat. I remember this story years later, and chuckle to myself, but not without remembering the lesson. As a coach, or meditation teacher I must be present in my role, and that being warm, skillful and available meant that we DID do Good Work together. We both felt and appreciated it. But, in losing my seat, and being unskillful (trying to take care of him) I risked losing my effectiveness. Whether he called back or not was wholly within his “role” and timing as client, not mine. There was no accident. No catastrophe. He was busy, or traveling, or with traveling with his kids. He called back the following week.
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I have two experiences with zen teachers in dokusan as a student. Oddly enough, one teacher was the student of the other teacher. Yet, there styles were quite different. One experience was the beauty of sitting in dokusan with a teacher who could attune, listen, maintain the container with warm heartedness and equanimity. I left with a full heart feeling nourished. The container was safe, boundaried and had a beginning, middle and end. Yet, the roles of teacher and student made it clear this was not a friendship. The experience was neither remote or too close. A gift.
The other experience was with a teacher who I did not experience as comfortable in his own skin. The subject matter I brought to the dokusan was serious and he was physically uncomfortable. He met out in the open space of the zen center with no container and no privacy. He kept a distance by responding to me with pithy remarks. Many signs of remoteness were in play. And the conversation ended with no beginning, middle, or end. I left feeling bewildered, surprised at the stance taken by the teacher and left with the feeling of nihilism we have touched on in class. The meeting left me with doubts about the benefits of Buddhist study. I worked those feelings out with no help from the teacher. Except seeing clearly teachers are just people. As Pema would say, “just like me.”-
Hi Susan,
You did a really nice job of relating the importance of healthy and balanced boundaries through your descriptions of experiences with two teachers in your essay. The first teacher you described was open, but the boundaries were clear. The second did not maintain good physical boundaries and was interpersonally remote (yikes!). I really liked how you described feeling contained by there being a “beginning, middle, and end” to your conversation with your first teacher and how the absence of that with the second teacher left you with doubts about the benefits of Buddhist study. Your essay conveyed the importance of considering both the physical space as well as interpersonal style. Thank you for your essay!
Erin
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I never had a desire to connect with the teachers when i was at school (30 years ago now!).
This whole session for me, took me back to a similar balance one needs to take as a supervisor, employee or even as peer.
I remember when I started my career I was able to make a lot of good friends with my peers (fresh out of college). They were a great source of comfort, and helped me not feel alone (as much) being in a new industry and new town. As i progressed, i started becoming someone else’s boss, which was interesting but not that difficult as I still had peers to relate to. The issue was when I found myself leading a small organization, so I was everyone’s boss, and my peers (leading other brands) were people I didn’t see often. I really felt alone in that situation. After much thought, I decided the only way to tackle that was to strengthen my relationships with my peers to find that warmth and vulnerability i was missing. In terms of my relationship with my direct reports, I kept it very professional, cordial but not particularly personal. It worked. Then in my next rotation, I had an amazing boss, who was able to really connect with her direct reports (me included), while keeping the relationship professional. It is hard to express (or even understand) what exactly she did to achieve this balance, I am still trying to figure it out. She could be very demanding in some circumstances and personal in others, but always being fair and straight. I guess, this might not be a good model for a teacher-student for mediation, unless its a very long term student, but i wonder if there are some elements of Sandra’s (that was my bosses name) energy that could be replicated and applied. Something i need to keep thinking about for sure. -
My initial response to this week’s essay question was. “Wow! I have a lot of competing thoughts and feelings about that!”
From a personal perspective, I did not grow up with healthy models of connection. I also came into this world with a propensity toward anxiety and shyness. This combination led to me being socially awkward in my early years. I had a hard time knowing how to connect with others and I was often filled with anxiety at the thought of speaking in front of or interacting with people I didn’t know or know well. I was a good student, but wasn’t comfortable speaking up in class.
I trained and practiced as a therapist in my 20s and 30s. At the time, I really liked the boundaries that were inherent in therapeutic relationships. I felt safe in knowing that I wasn’t going to be expected to talk about myself. I understood that I was in a very specific role with my clients and I was not their friend. However, their hardships weighed on me and this experience was underscored by the feeling that I wasn’t able to have an authentic reaction in response. I also wasn’t taking care of my needs outside of my work. I wasn’t replenishing my own cup. I don’t know that I ever found a good balance as a therapist because I burnt out in my mid-thirties and opted for a career change. I think most of the clients I worked with would have said I landed more on the side of being too remote rather than too friendly. People in my personal life probably would have said the same.
For the past fifteen years or so, I’ve been working on showing up more authentically and letting others get to know me. In my professional life, I’m working to be a little less remote while maintaining healthy boundaries. I know if I choose to teach meditation, I will need to ensure that I abide by “caring about, but not taking care of” credo. I will also need to ensure that I’m taking care of my own well-being outside of the student-teacher relationship so that I am able to continue to show up and hold my seat as teacher.
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I suppose the experience that comes to mind is a relationship with a former meditation teacher. I was one of seven women in a sangha with this teacher for about 7-8 years. We met 6-8 times a year for a whole day, sometimes a whole weekend. We even took a spiritual trip to Israel together (she was Israeli). I learned so much from her and from being in that sangha. But eventually it got messy. The best way I can explain it is that the teacher had a very strong (sometimes domineering) personality which could get in the way of her teaching. Yes, we had all committed to come together, but sometimes her expectations felt too controlling, and she was asking us to commit to more and more time, and it bled into “friendship” in that we helped with things like her daughter’s wedding rehearsal dinner (and there was money involved which is always tricky) and we complained to eachother privately. Finally, one woman felt personally attacked by the teacher and left the group in dramatic fashion, and that turned out to be the beginning of the end. It was time to move on, but I don’t regret being part of it. After that breakup is when I found the OHP.
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I’d like to try this essay again; I know I didn’t really answer the question before, it brought up so much too much for me to feel up to wrangling it into a coherent share. But when I read Rosie’s (thank you Rosie) excellent framing of this question through her psychotherapeutic lens and the reactions to it, it made me realize that I could/should risk the vulnerability to share some of my experiences as a therapist.
In my early therapist days, one of my learning experiences that taught me so much about the role of the use of self in therapy was when I attended a workshop on bias/stereotyping in couple issues. One of the presenters, a gay male therapist, talked about a current assumption that gay men tended to have multiple sexual partners. He spoke about initial development, how we began our relational histories with deep love for our parents and discussed the culturally typical encounter of a boy coming out to a cis father who likely might not understand how to relate to his son and may explicitly and/or implicitly push away from him, teaching the boy that he must divide sex and love, so love can survive, leaving the relationship to sex in a complicated and disconnected state. He then presented his work with a man who was experiencing this split and was experiencing sadness and a lack of fulfillment in his adult relationships and was flirting with the therapist and expressing erotic longings for him. This lovely boundaried therapist was able to embrace the longing by normalizing it and enjoying it with his patient in a framework where they very clearly discussed that this was a relationship where all feelings could be expressed and explored (to process and understand) but not ever a relationship that would develop into an active sexual/romantic relationship. It was through the safety in this relationship that this man was able to free himself of his early illusions about love and sex and begin to engage deeper connection with himself and others.
With my very first patient in my very first job, I was asked if I’d ever used heroin. Now I didn’t stand on ceremony withholding personal information, I knew it was important to understand, in dialog with the patient, the why of the asking and the answering (solicited and unsolicited) was okay in the service of the patient’s journey. If I had processed and was comfortable with the information, I would share, but I only really knew that and acted from it after I’d gained more experience. My immediate thoughts then were how can I “prove” I am a worthy therapist, but I paused, listened and looked at him and said, “you’re asking me if I can understand you?” I was rewarded by a big grin on his face, after which he would ask me various questions from time to time, then laugh and say “you’re not going to tell me are you?” and I would learn to shut up and wait while it led him to deeper questions about himself.
On another initial session, a new patient was talking about his experiences and looked up and asked, “have you ever been depressed?” and when I answered “of course!” he said “oh, good!” and then looked horrified and stumbled to explain it wasn’t that he wanted me to be depressed……and we shared our first belly laugh the was to become the beginning of our therapeutic alliance. -
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Too remote: I don’t think this happens too much in my everyday English teaching, but of course it is subjective. Once, a long time ago, a student described me as arrogant in anonymous feedback and this still smarts. I think it was because I was trying hard not to “impose my praise” on students. Anyway, this distancing approach clearly failed with this student and I don’t think is wholly compatible with my teaching style.
When I do my “mindful minutes” in my group classes at uni, I do notice that I often avoid eye-contact between closing the sit and getting up to get on with the lesson. This reflection makes me aware of some awkwardness there, causing some distance.
Language can be a barrier, too. In my yoga class, I generally don’t pick up on the small talk before we start, because Bavarian dialect can be impenetrable! I think “connected but separate” actually works quite well in this context, where the participants are concerned with their own practice, body and breath.
Too friendly: Certainly I used to have “too nice” levelled at me by English-teaching colleagues at university, as in “too soft” in terms of grading. I have got better at being a realistic, objective grader, but I can’t help but become fond of many students (who are training to become school teachers), some of whom I accompany for several years. I am genuinely interested in students’ lives, but do pick up on signals if there is no interest in sharing (my teenage daughter gives me practice there).
Ultimately, I think (and hope) the rapport works in my relationships with students and I know this is not a given. I am fortunate to have only rarely, and only as an observer, been exposed to abusive or toxic teacher-student relationships.
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Jo, it’s interesting to learn more about a setting where the teacher has many students – and all the dynamics that can bring. I’ve never taught to many people at once, so I tend to think of the student-teacher relationship as one-on-one. What came to mind as I read your response is that things will invariably land differently for different people, and even the best intentions can be received in ways we can’t control.
THanks for sharing about your experience!
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Remaining connected yet separate is an essential spoke in the teaching mandala. I have been a teacher for most of my adult life and, for much of it, a student as well. Living in both roles has taught me the necessary balance between compassion and clarity, kindness and integrity.
I have long reflected on the balance between the art and the science of teaching. I have taught Yoga, high school subjects, and for nearly two decades now in a Quaker school in Philadelphia. The last thing I want to do is distort the mandala. Without connection, students feel unseen. Without separation, the clarity of the role dissolves. The art of teaching lies in holding both at once. The science lies in keeping the content sacred—whether I am teaching phonics, addition strategies, map reading, or Yoga. The relationship supports the learning; it must not eclipse it.
Over the years, I have had many teachers. None crossed lines, and neither did I. Some were incredible mentors. I did extra work for them and may even have been a favorite. Yet even in close relationships, there was a clear understanding of role and responsibility. The warmth never compromised the structure. I felt cared for, and I felt guided.
My years as a Yoga practitioner deepened this understanding. My longtime teacher encouraged us to take classes with instructors we did not particularly like. Meet your practice head-on, she would say. Do not rely on personality. That discipline taught me that devotion belongs to the practice, not the person leading it. The teacher is a guide, not the center of gravity. The same is true in the school where I work.
In a close-knit Quaker community, boundaries require particular care. Colleagues’ children become your students; your child becomes your colleagues’ student. My now twenty-two-year-old daughter once sat in the classrooms of my professional peers. As a faculty parent, I was deliberate about maintaining boundaries. I trusted the teachers and revered the role. My daughter rose to that expectation. Respect was not about hierarchy; it was about honoring the community that makes learning possible.
This year, my partner teacher is also the parent of one of my students—a child who is struggling academically and behaviorally. In a less grounded setting, that overlap could blur lines. Instead, we are navigating it with clarity. When I am her child’s teacher, I hold that role fully. When she is my colleague, she holds hers. Our mutual respect—for each other as teachers, as parents, and as human beings—anchors us. We allow space for mistakes, extend grace, and stay focused on what matters: the children and the craft.
In our culture marked by political division and the persistent realities of racism and sexism, professional integrity matters even more. When the world feels unstable, classrooms must be steady. Students need adults who are warm but principled, relational but firm. The teacher’s role is neither to be a peer nor to retreat into aloof authority. It is to stand in compassionate firmness.
Remaining connected yet separate is not about rigidity. It is alignment. Teachers honor boundaries not to create distance, but to protect the sacredness of the work. Folx flourish when they feel both seen and guided, both valued and held accountable.
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Wow, Sandie, I got chills reading your essay and am going to reread it a couple more times. The words you used have such power and clarity — first, I resonate with guide and guidance, which imply walking alongside another, accompanying another on their journey. Also, alignment, which suggests the way teacher and student join into something larger than either of them, larger than all of us. And thank you for sharing about your current experience as a teacher of your partner teacher’s child, and the way you describe navigating that multidimensional situation with respect and grace.
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There is so much to this topic for me. I grew up with a single mother who was quite unskilled in giving love and nurturing, and who relied on shame and anger to control her kids. Staying remote and introverted has always been my way of protecting myself, even when I also desperately wanted to connect with others. Through therapy and recovery, I’ve discovered the terrifying joy of being vulnerable and authentically me, and the friendship and closeness I always needed.
As a new leadership coach, I wasn’t prepared for how much I would care about some of my clients, or for how much pain I felt about their suffering. And sometimes it was tough to keep healthy boundaries around self-disclosure and carrying those feelings into my personal life.
I see now that my training, personal values, code of ethics, and engagement agreements all help build a container for working with clients. And the practice of holding my seat in the student-teacher role also helps keep the container stable.
But I think I’ll always be learning more about how to ‘step in and step back’, because life is messy and unpredictable.
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The “terrifying joy of being vulnerable and authentically me” — wow, Djuna, your words cracked my heart open. You have come so far and become so open to it all, despite such difficult early and formative experience. I resonate with feeling so much care for the people I work with and being so compassionate to their suffering, and yet, somehow, and supported by the container, we can find a way to be with people, open to them and their experience, and let it flow through us in a nourishing and not debilitating way. Thank you!
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I have really taken to heart the guidance about this from our training sessions… Looking back at my notes: “We need to be deeply connected and also completely separate, as teachers. We need to be both intimate and distant. We need to care about everyone, and not take care of anyone.”
My first-half career comprised 20+ years in marketing research, on both the client and supplier/consultant sides of the business. I remember way back in my first job at Quaker Oats, my manager praised something I’d written up that included results but also some context and perspective on the particular technique. He said I was a good teacher — I guided the reader through the material to enable their understanding. Today (over 35 years later!), that memory feels good, smooth, like I invited, shared, described, offered, and then somehow let go. Like it’s up to me and I am responsible to a point and then I relinquish control (not as though I ever had it!!).
One of my phrases for the year a few years ago was Trust the Process, which is something that has certainly come up in our training too. We approach the teachings, dipping our toe into the flow, contemplate, practice, integrate. Then we are able to invite others to join us, prioritizing faithfulness to the teachings and process.
All of this sounds so clean and clear! And sometimes it is and sometimes not. For the past 15 years my work (by design) has shifted to being more personal — supporting and guiding others as they work on themselves, as an integrative health coach, yoga teacher, bodyworker, enneagram practitioner, life guide, and death doula. Everything I learn about and practice and experience becomes part of the “package” that I offer to others I work with, but selectively, of course, and shaped and limited by their situation and needs and interests, and their own boundaries too. It has been a stepwise and profound shift to move from offering/selling products & services outside of myself (completed research studies, consultation) to my initial health coaching and yoga and bodywork (six-month structured wellness program, yoga class, thai bodywork & craniosacral) to my current more organic and customized interaction with people wherein all of my “tools” come into play. It was also a meaningful shift (and perhaps more squishy) to decide not to charge money anymore, beginning at my birthday last August.
And sometimes relationships shift into new spaces. Sometimes this feels comfortable, and sometimes not. I’m remembering one woman named Emily, who approached me about health coaching about 10 years ago. We had coffee, talked about some of her issues, really hit it off, and she said, “How about if we become friends instead?” And we did. There are a couple of times when I worked with men in health coaching, and one particular one with thai bodywork, and it got uncomfortable because they wanted to be more friendly, and I definitely did not. Two more situations come to mind… I began coaching a woman named Christine about four years ago — she was really suffering with covid and adjacent health problems and had struggled with weight all throughout her life. We worked very closely on her relationship with food and with herself, her family relationships, work issues, etc. We had a very strong connection and also very clear roles — I was her coach. Yet at some point, maybe two years ago, we began to shift. Many of her issues had resolved or at least she had way more clarity, and we had become close. I’m sure I had shared more and she had asked more. At some point we decided to make our sessions more mutual, where we’d each share what was going on — I’d never considered the term “soul friend” before, but that’s what we are with each other. We’re not friends in the “hang out together” sense, but we meet weekly on zoom and are each nourished greatly by those conversations.
I think I’ve written enough for now, but thank you for the opportunity. I spend a lot of time and energy on the nature and quality of my relationships of all kinds and in all contexts, and I am encouraged and inspired to continue doing so, applying the experience I have learned over my life so far, and that we are learning together here in meditation teacher training.
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One of my earliest experiences was as a ballet student. My teachers tended to be quite remote. I am deeply grateful for the discipline and work ethic I developed during that time; however, there were also elements of trauma in that environment. When I was training, it was often considered acceptable for teachers to operate in ways that bordered on abusive—emotionally and sometimes physically. There was very little relational warmth or emotional attunement. While the structure created technical excellence, the lack of connection left its mark. Ballet culture has evolved over time, and many teachers today embody more balance, but during my formative years, distance was the norm.
Now, as a student of yoga, I have experienced the opposite extreme as well. I once had to step away from a yoga studio where the teachers became more like friends. The boundaries blurred, and the dynamic slowly became toxic and no longer healing or beneficial for me. The over-familiarity diminished the container of safety that a teacher-student relationship requires. At the same time, I have also studied with teachers who are more reserved and boundaried. Interestingly, I tend to be drawn to them—perhaps because that dynamic feels familiar from my ballet upbringing.
Recently, during our practice teaching, I felt this tension arise within myself. My practice student was visibly emotional at the beginning of the session. A part of me wanted to rescue, to process feelings, to offer comfort beyond the scope of the practice. I felt genuinely conflicted. Ultimately, I reminded myself that we were there to share meditation teachings. It was not my role to fix or rescue. Holding compassionate presence while maintaining appropriate boundaries felt like walking a fine line—but it also felt like the work.
Through these experiences, both as a student and as a teacher, I am beginning to understand that remaining connected yet separate is not about emotional distance. It is about clarity of role, steadiness of presence, and trust in the container of the practice itself.
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I can see that it is an important boundary. Since a big part of the assignment is to help the student discover things for themselves, someone too close (such as a friend) might do more guiding and joint-discovery than a teacher keeping more separation from the student.
I don’t recall having any first-hand experience bumping up against either side of this boundary. I do feel a strong sense of gratitude when I encounter my teachers, while continuing to respect the boundary.
If I had a teacher who was too separate, too distant, I would have difficulty making a healthy connection. Conversely, I have heard my teacher say that it would be a “danger sign” if your teacher advocated ignoring this boundary and getting too close.
Everything needs to be in balance!
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I have had similar experiences as a leader coaching and managing team members. Big part of my job is to guide and orient employees towards discovering their own strengths and weaknesses and using that understanding to navigate the workplace effectively. Much like the charter for a meditation teacher – I cannot “teach” people their own strengths and weaknesses – they must discover those on their own. As a coach and a leader, I create the space for inquiry and self-exploration and encourage them to dig deeper into their own potential and development. In this capacity, I have dealt with the dance of staying connected but separate from the employees to enable them to stay true to themselves vs “producing” answers, they think, I might prefer or something that can get them a promotion or a desired project assignment. In this dance, I also have to manage the fear of judgement or poor evaluation as people open to vulnerability of exposing their weaknesses so they can get the right support to develop those skills and competencies.
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Having spent most of my working life in teaching and learning roles, this is an intriguing question.
In those roles, I’ve experienced many times how becoming too close and being too separate as a teacher or a student can cloud the learning experience.
Becoming too close or friendly can cloud the judgment of both student and teacher to fantasize about a personal relationship with the other. I’ve had this happen in situations in which I teach windsurfing and teaching law. In these cases teaching usually takes place through a learning program, and during the duration of the program, a relationship is built. It is important to not be too remote, as trust and rapport can evoke commitment to the learning path and to the work needed to learn. This trust and rapport are built by interacting through approach. But approaching too close can lead to misreading signals, which can lead to blurring the lines between appropriate closeness and inappropriate intimacy.
I’ve had a PhD student who I was guiding quite intensively in both his writing as in his teaching roles think my closeness would mean I could not be in a position to criticize his work or attitude as an academic. When I did, he was genuinely surprised saying he thought we were friends. He eventually grew to become quite hostile in our relationship.
Another student thought that we were close enough she could suggest I could change her grades for non-academic favors.
As a student, particularly when I was younger, I also had my fantasies about being close to teachers. When I was a PhD student myself, I moved from Aruba to The Netherlands for the research I had to do. I became close to the professors who were guiding me. We eventually became friends and we still have personal friendships. At the same time I was also friendly with my direct teaching and PhD-student colleagues. Some colleagues found this risky and warned me to beware for complaints about my behavior. Which lead me understand that different cultures have very different landscapes of closeness and distance.
Staying too remote or distant can prevent building rapport and delays or prevents trust in the teachers intentions and commitment from arising with the student. This may feed resistance towards learning following instructions
Thinking about this essay question, I believe I usually may err towards being too friendly or close instead of remaining too separate. Recently I was approached by students who expressed relief to be able to attend classes I offer instead of my fellow teachers. When asked why they expressed that I am ‘nice’ because I really listen to their questions, am open to discuss alternative answers to their questions and seem to be genuinely interested in their learning, as opposed to some of my colleagues who are experienced as ‘too distant’ and ‘uninterested’ in their learning.
This leads me to believe that within the bandwidth between too separate and too friendly there is an optimal range which is just right for learning. In this range there is a genuine meeting of the minds of student and teacher and the magic of learning takes place with the least effort.
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Navigating the territory between too friendly or too remote has not come up for me much in the teacher/student setting. However, these themes have presented themselves for me in the context of patient care.
When I used to attend procedures in the operating rooms, it was important to walk a line that met the needs of the patient without leaning too far one way or the other. We are human beings interacting with other human beings, but it’s important to their care and well-being that we stay within the proper boundaries. The practice of a kind and caring bedside manner, balanced with medical professionalism, helps patients feel a sense of safety and trust. As an anesthesiologist, I would often be the last person the patient would see before going under general anesthesia. Sometimes in those moments, it was more important to show that I cared as a fellow human being, rather than just state medical facts. Even more than words, it was simply being with the patient, ensuring they were warm enough and physically comfortable, making eye contact to show I’m listening. At other times, and with other patients, I could sense that medical explanations were exactly what they needed to make sense of their situation in the moment. Ultimately, I needed to meet them where they were, responding as best I could, while still maintaining healthy boundaries.
I remember (long ago!) an attending physician telling all of us residents that we should always treat each patient as a member of our medical family, each one deserving the best medical care we could provide by our highest standards. I absolutely loved this phrase: “our medical family”. Somehow, those three words encapsulated the respect, kindness, and diligent medical care that form the basis of healthy outcomes and patient/provider relationships. -
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I had a meditation instructor in 2015 when I first started to really dive into my practice that I ultimately had to cut off because he kept wanting to spend time with me outside of the bounds of our MI relationship. He was knowledgeable when it came to the practice and gave quality instruction. Over time, he started doing me favors that I didn’t ask for and making vaguely inappropriate comments which eventually led to him asking me to go to dinner a few times. It wasn’t anything traumatizing, but it was uncomfortable and certainly left me second guessing the legitimacy of that particular branch of the lineage. In that sense, this MI’s interest in closeness did damage my perception of the teachings for a time.
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My student and teacher experiences have been mostly positive. There are two teachers who come to mind that grew after the classroom experience into life long, cherished mentors. I feel grateful for that positive experience. In these cases, I was a generation or two apart from my teachers and they saw something in me that needed encouragement and guidance. These guides were a gift in my life and I cherish them and the wisdom that they shared with me. I recognize that the affection may be mutual, but the separateness necessary. It is a delicate balance that in these cases was navigated expertly.
On the other hand, I have had teachers who were not positive examples. They stand out to me as good examples of how NOT to be. In these instances their lack of discretion for how they showed up in a classroom or teaching role left a very strong, negative impression on me. Upon reflection, I recognize the importance of the “connected but separate” point. There is a responsibility which I believe shouldn’t be taken lightly. When neglected, the experience for the student can be damaging and hurtful.
In my life over the past two decades, my roles have been mentor and employer. I believe that these two roles hold great responsibility and require a lot of care. This is where I most understand the importance of connectedness but separate. It’s a bit of a dance. The relationships are personal. We are a small team and we work closely together. There is love and respect in the relationships; especially as some of these relationships have grown from years to decades, but we are NOT friends. It can be very lonely because the purpose of the acquaintance is livelihood for those receiving a paycheck and/or professional growth. The team members/employees develop close friendships, but I am not included in those dynamics and I don’t expect to be. It requires careful boundaries and continued practice. I have learned to seek professional development for myself to aid in growing as a mentor and leader. It’s challenging at times, but also very rewarding.
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With regard to being remote or friendly, I have always walked a blurry line. In my most recent careers as a physical Therapist for 20 years and now a mental health Counsellor, It has been a very slippery slope to know just how much to open myself to others. My clients have most often expressed some interest in me & my life, as I share as a way to teach. I feel strongly that self-disclosure is at times relevant. This flies in the face of classic training on remaining ‘neutral.’ I have been taught to avoid “dual relationships”, but have in fact really enjoyed and seen mutual benefit from many, but not all of the ones that were ‘dual.’ I have some life-long friends I met during times of ‘Teaching’ or service. Now, what I will absolutely say is that these types of relationships have only been possible because I am a well boundaried person. I let people know how close they can come safely.
In the words of Prentiss Hemphill “a boundary is the safest distance from which I can love both of us.”
I will add, I have had experiences with Teachers of yoga and meditation, as well as in organized higher education – who have really broken the mold for being too self-important and imposing…those memories linger as wonderful lessons in how NOT to do the work of Teaching. It’s also oftentimes disappointing to see that even Teachers can be…a mess in their own humanity. Now I am more capable of extending grace around these mis-steps. -
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An acquaintance shared recently in a group about her perspective that when we incarnate in this life, we choose to experience both the gifts and drawbacks of separateness. We have the joy and freedom of making our own decisions, choosing our own path, and yet that separateness comes at a cost; in a worst-case scenario, we’re alone, helpless, left to our own devices. Whether my friend’s theory is true or not, I think she highlights on the constant tension of the individual vs. the collective. Do I want complete freedom with no accountability? Do I want complete dependence and enmeshment in a larger system or entity? Is there a healthy middle way?
I believe this can apply to the student-teacher relationship, and probably every relationship we have in this life. As humans, we’re constantly choosing whether or not to connect, and how closely. As a teacher, the connection might best be rather one-sided, with the teacher listening more than sharing, imparting received wisdom more than disclosing personal details. The attachment is stronger on the student’s side, with the student following and trusting the teacher much more than the reverse.
I’ve had experiences with teachers (bosses, too!) who tried to also wear the hat of friend, and it almost always became uncomfortable for one or both of us. Having a connection that has “fuzzy edges” and ambiguity rather than a clearly-defined relationship always caused confusion for me. I’m currently experiencing the awkwardness of working with a friend in a mentoring context (not meditation teaching) and it’s become very hard for me to fulfill the leadership role I need to do while also attempting to remain open as friends. She and I have only a couple more meetings planned where this will be the case, and I suddenly realize that I will be so relieved when we can revert to just friends again!
One factor that I recognize late-ish in life (I’m 48) is my particular style of neurodivergence that doesn’t always pick up on social and relationship cues that others sense intuitively. This means I need to pay extra attention to being straightforward myself as well as asking for clarification (maybe even when I don’t think I need it!).
As a student I would prefer to have a clear sense of where we each stand and to make explicit our expectations are of each other, and as a teacher I want to create that sense of clarity and safety with and for my students. I believe that relationship is best created by a level of professional distance that shows the student my open-hearted humanity (do people really want to learn from a robot?) and yet maintains a sense of authority and confidence in what I’m doing and teaching. I expect that finding the balance for myself, and with each student, will be a lifelong task.
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Remaining connected but separate is an important part of the teaching mandala. Many become either too remote or too “friendly”. Have you had such experiences as a student? A teacher? Please share an anecdote or two.
I deeply empathized with Susan’s experience shared in On Being a Teacher. When a tragic family event occurred, in conjunction with a retreat that she was leading, she decided to stay and hold the container of the retreat for her students. I am amazed and humbled by her personal account of that particular experience, and other experiences she shared of being “connected but separate” on retreat and as a Dharma teacher of pure intent. I am so glad that she shared this. On retreat and in classes, I have often thought about the experience of the teacher, not making it about them, holding space for the students, connected but separate, the most skilled can do this. I have not shared Susan’s experience akin to her example in the reading. However, I have been teaching yoga for 12 years, and I am familiar with creating and holding the container for my students to practice, form their own personal experience of the practice, getting out of the way as much as I can, and never intentionally making it about me, keeping separation between my personal life and our time together.
In my day-to-day job I lead a science program with several staff. We develop species distribution models, using data and math, to predict and map where many different kinds of animals are most-to-least likely live in the ocean in relationship with their environment that is changing all around them all the time. Our work is required by sustainable fisheries management law in the US and is practically applied to make decisions regarding sustainable ocean resource management. The model-based maps that cover all five large marine ecosystems off Alaska are also incredibly beautiful, they are our creations, our art. In leading this program and my team I think of myself as an orchestrator, the conductor, doing what I can to create conditions to help them do their work and feel successful based on the goals of our program and their own personal goals for work. I very much identify with Susan’s instruction of “caring by not taking care of”, it’s very much not about me and I also cannot take care of them. I am “blessed” with some amazing staff, who inspire me all the time. I am also at a more mature place on my own “leader journey”. When I was younger, earlier in my career, it was more about me and my personal goals, building and establishing the program, attracting the right people to come work with me, and advancing our program goals and IMPACT. Now, I am mostly concerned with supporting my staff, and keeping the program going together, as a team, and a lot of that is me getting out of the way and creating conditions for our team to be successful, and celebrating together along the way, giving the spotlight to them when at all possible.
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Yes, as a student I have experienced academic mentors who become too concerned with my inner experience, apart from concerning themselves with the quality of my work. It felt uncomfortable and like it was crossing an energetic barrier, so I removed myself from that mentorship. Thoughts of course arose like “Am I making this up?” “What is wrong with me?” “Would other people see me as a problem student if I left?” Those questions occasionally haunt me, but to a much much smaller extent.
I have also experienced academic advisors being what I perceived as quite open and vulnerable with their lives with me. However, in these instances it felt like the energetic boundaries were still firmly in place and that they were sharing from their heart after making a conscious, calculated decision to do so. It felt nice to be trusted with their vulnerability. And, with the desire to preserve the integrity of the student/teacher relationship, I was also cautious about not asking too many follow-up questions (if at all), not providing advice that was not asked of me, or belaboring the conversation—like letting a pin drop on the floor and carefully hearing the resonance of it’s impact on the ground.
With my most trusted academic (and spiritual) mentors I have definitely experienced vulnerability hangovers. Sometimes, depending on the season, I find my tears cannot be held back and I have be stuck bursting into a waterfall of emotional expression. With the best mentors, they have sat with me through the intensity but never tried to fix the situation. They provided a safe space for me to cry, offered a compassionate response, and patiently waited for me to compose myself. I am incredibly grateful for this teaching. When I find myself more in the teacher role, I hope to take the lessons of pain (from the uncomfortable encounters) and compassion (from the appropriate heart-centered mentorships) with me as I serve the role of a teacher to other students.
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