Too Close or Too Far: Setting Best Boundaries With Clients
Overview
Too Close or Too Far: Setting Best Boundaries With Clients focuses on expanding the practice, knowledge, and skills of mental health professionals who work in homeless outreach services in Los Angeles County. Each session will include didactic training on the concepts, theory, and research related to interpersonal boundaries in client-outreach worker relationships, followed by vignette-based activities and facilitated discussion.
The didactic portion will begin with an overview of key terms related to interpersonal closeness in therapeutic work, including boundaries, boundary clarification, boundary-setting, transference, countertransference, empathy, and autonomy, with an emphasis on building self-reflection skills around these concepts. The trainers will explore with participants how to recognize when boundary clarification is needed, as well as how to consider the implications of client-provider power dynamics, culture, bias, and professional background/training in their experiences and management of boundaries with clients.
Additionally, this training will employ a trauma informed lens to help providers best understand how past experiences may shape their clients’ approach to boundaries as well as their own (Levenson, 2017). Participants will be taught to reflect on internal and interpersonal client experiences, utilizing concepts such as the neglect-overprotect continuum and moral distress (Marsh & Kelley, 2018; Mänttäri-van der Kuip, 2019). Trainers will also guide participants in identifying personal values and characteristics that impact their experiences of setting boundaries with clients. Finally, provider wellbeing will be discussed, with a review of strategies to prevent burnout, including radical acceptance and eliciting or providing quality supervision (Begic et al., 2019; Linehan, 2015).
The vignette-based activities and discussion will focus on the types of common boundary situations that can come up in work with unsheltered individuals: safety, attraction/friendship, financial, time, and physical, including themes of avoidance, over-identification, sexualized transference, and countertransference. Participants will be encouraged to apply concepts from the didactic portion of each day’s training to the vignettes, including identifying boundary-setting skills for each scenario.
Learning objectives
- Define key terms related to interpersonal closeness in therapeutic work including boundaries, boundary clarification, boundary-setting, transference, counter-transference, empathy, and autonomy
- Identify 4 types of common boundary situations (e.g., avoidance, over-identification, sexualized transference, and counter-transference) that can come up in work with individuals who are unsheltered
- Identify 3 ways to recognize that boundary clarification is needed within work with individuals who are unsheltered
- Define 2 features of each of the 2 extremes of the neglect-overprotect continuum
- Using 2 examples, name why, when, and how to seek consultation when boundary clarification is needed
- Using 2 examples, name why, when, and how to practice boundary-setting skills in work with individuals who are unsheltered
- Name 3 personal values or personal characteristics that impact the individual’s experience of boundary-setting in their work with individuals who are unsheltered
- Explain 2 ways in which boundary setting practices may affect a professional’s risk and experience of burnout
- Describe 3 practices of radical acceptance that can be used during a process of boundary clarification, either alone or with other professionals
- Apply the concepts of trauma informed care and culture-based counter-transference in boundary management with clients and during self-reflective practice