The Basics of Professional Boundaries: Five Questions to Ask Yourself

Boundaries (cc by SMS Chauhan)

Most articles on counseling and helping techniques focus on what you should do. Articles on boundary issues, however, need to focus on what you shouldn’t do. In helping, “boundaries” is the term for setting limits on the sort of relationship you have with the person you are helping. 

A lot of bad things can happen when boundaries get violated. People (both the helper and the helped person) get emotionally or even physically hurt. Professionals can lose their jobs and even their professional licenses. Whole organizations can be taken down if boundary issues remain a problem over time. Having boundary issues can greatly affect a helper’s professional reputation.

The first thing any helper should do in a situation where boundaries are an issue is to ask him or herself these important questions:

1) What is my role in this situation? If I have a personal relationship with the person asking for help, I need to provide a referral to another helper, as the “dual relationship” of helper and friend or family member has a lot of possibilities for abuse. If I am the person who checks them in, I need to refer all requests for counseling to someone who is trained to do it. If I am a supervisor and the helped person is repeatedly bypassing their direct care staff, I need to refer them back to that staff member. 

2) Am I sharing personal information for my benefit or for the benefit of the person I’m helping? The world of the helper has changed dramatically in the last twenty years. Prior to that, the rule was very simple. Never share personal information for any reason, period. Now, study after study has provided evidence that sharing information about yourself can significantly help the engagement process (building trust), so the water has gotten significantly muddier. Sharing personal information should be used carefully and consciously. Think carefully before sharing. If it will not benefit the person you are helping, don’t share it. If it provides a good role model, an example of getting through a similar situation, or a bit of encouragement, it is probably fine. 

3) Are my emotions clouding the issue with the person I am helping? This can happen for several reasons. Sometimes we develop a strong liking or dislike for a person we are helping. Sometimes the person we help reminds us strongly of ourselves or someone we have a strong emotional reaction to. Any time that our emotions cloud our judgment about a person we’re helping, we need to step back, and if at all possible, refer them to someone else. The potential for saying or doing something that harms the person while ‘under the influence’ of a strong emotion is high.

4) Are the other person’s emotions clouding the issue with me? If you are setting off strong (positive or negative) emotions in the person you are helping, you might want to consider passing them to someone else, particularly if the person you are helping is expressing strong romantic, sexual, or aggressive feelings toward you. Short lived, less intense emotions are not generally a problem, and you will develop or have developed skills to deflect this sort of thing. Stronger emotions, however, especially with strong sexual or aggressive content, can greatly harm the helping relationship as well as be a threat to your personal safety.

5) If in doubt, don’t. It’s really that simple. If you’re not sure whether you should say hi to someone you only know as their helper when you’re out with your family, don’t. If you’re not sure whether accepting an invite to be Facebook friends would cross a line, don’t. (social media is another article, though). If you’re not sure whether sharing an anecdote about yourself would be helpful, don’t.

Boundaries are a complicated issue, and a lot of helpers run into trouble with them. This article is only intended as a brief introduction to the subject. Just Helping People will follow up with more articles about boundaries in the weeks, months, and years to come.

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