New Year, New Boundaries?

People are often surprised that therapists struggle with setting and holding boundaries. After all, boundaries are the bread and butter of the work that we do. Therapists adhere to a strict set of ethical and behavioural boundaries. Therapists set boundaries all the time with the people they’re seeing around things like times they meet, where, how long for, what happens if things go wrong and so on. Therapists are also often required to set boundaries using an approach known as empathic confrontation – this can come up when clients are late for sessions, aren’t paying on time or if the therapist has spotted unhelpful thoughts and behaviours going on in the client’s life. This can be a tricky business!

There’s a really interesting history to the concept of boundaries which Lily Scherlis explored in July 2023. Boundaries – the invisible “circles” we place around ourselves to indicate to others what is and isn’t OK for us – can be linked to the rise of neo-liberalism and its property logic with boundaries being compared to the fences that surround a house and garden. Scherlis writes:

“Boundaries make dependence look like misplaced possessiveness. To survive and thrive, we are encouraged to unhook from one another, sealing ourselves off as individual cells rising the ranks of society: your time and energy are something you own and lease out to others. Having good boundaries is enforcing the terms of your lease, and abiding by the leases of others. Having bad boundaries is demanding squatters’ rights.”

However, in the systemically unruly world we live in we must have limits even if this runs the risk of “over-running intimacy with alienation”. Nedra Tawwab offers a definition of boundaries in her book “Set Boundaries, Find Peace” that helps us to hold some of the inherent tensions of saying “No” to systems that continually want us to say “Yes”. She writes:

“Boundaries are expectations and needs that help you feel safe and comfortable in your relationships. Expectations in relationships help you stay mentally and emotionally well. Learning when to say “No” and when to say “Yes” is also an essential part of feeling comfortable when interacting with others.” (P.5)

Signs that we need to firm up our boundaries include:

• Neglecting self-care;

• Feeling overwhelmed;

• Feeling resentful towards others;

• Avoiding calls, emails, messages or people in general;

• Feeling like you’re giving everything out and getting nothing back from others;

• Feeling burnt out;

• Fantasising about walking away from everything and disappearing completely;

• No time for yourself.

Tawwab suggests that there are three types of boundary:

Porous Boundaries – this is where oversharing, overinvolvement, people pleasing, and dependency resides – our fear of being rejected by others leads to us putting up with mistreatment from others or never fully stating what we need.

Rigid Boundaries – this is where self-protective distancing strategies show up – never sharing info, cutting people out the minute they do something wrong, enforcing strict rules without any exceptions.

Healthy Boundaries – “when your past doesn’t show up in your present interactions” (p.11). This is where it’s possible to say (and hear) no without personalising it. It rests on being clear about your values, trusting your own opinion, and also being able to express this to other people.

Setting boundaries involves communicating your needs and then taking action to reinforce the boundary. It may also involve learning assertiveness skills. I often say that setting boundaries with others is an act of generosity because you only give what you can, which means you then have the capacity to give to more people over a longer period.

Boundaries also allow others to grow because it makes people more aware of their actions and offers them a chance to change. Perhaps most importantly setting and keeping boundaries creates a sense of safety for you and for others.

Jennifer Mullan in her paradigm busting book “Decolonizing Therapy” widens the lens of boundary setting to consider energetic boundaries and their relationship with the collective, community and individual. She writes:

“when we do not trust ourselves, or if we have a history of deep trauma experiences, we may have a hard time maintaining our own truth…” (p.298)

Mullan links this to burn out, stress, exhaustion and overwork and argues that energetic boundaries can be breached when we merge or get overwhelmed by the feelings of others and then lose touch with our own sense of self.

A further step outwards (and inwards) is the way that White Supremacy or Colonization is interwoven with boundary setting to create a form of structural gaslighting.

Mullan writes that for Black and Indigenous People of Colour (BIPOC) there is heightened responsibility both for betterment of the community of origin, but also for absorbing the anxiety of white people, which leads to minimizing one’s own needs while increasing anxiety about taking up too much space.

White people can unconsciously take up too much space or expect others (usually BIPOC people) to soothe us or carry out emotional labour when distressed or assume that boundaries can be set with ease and should be set in the same ways we set them. In other words, boundary setting bumps up against the various privileges we do or don’t have. When you consider issues such as sexism and misogyny, homo and transphobia, ableism, neurodivergence and classism too, it makes sense why so many of us struggle with boundaries; we are having to unlearn a lot of stuff that’s inside us. Including cultural assumptions about what a boundary is, along with our right to state and assert our boundaries too.

Mullan offers some interesting exercises to consider your own boundaries:

• Feel the 360-degree space around you and notice what happens when you feel the space itself by extending your awareness of it.

• Create a physical boundary for yourself using rope or material and notice what happens when you bring the boundary nearer and further away. How do different boundaries make you feel?

• Experiment with “pushing” the thing that is too close outside of your boundary. You can do this by closing your eyes, placing your palms in front of your chest, palms facing outwards and then pushing out with the hands as you breathe out.

Nedra Tawwab also offers a number of strategies to deal with pushback from others when we try to set boundaries and I will take a look at these in next month’s blog.

If you recognise some of yourself in what I’ve been writing about and feel that it might be time to work on your own boundaries with others, feel free to contact us at Rhizome Practice to discuss how we might be able to help.