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     What is a boundary exactly?    It is a border that divides and keeps separate, such as between countries.  It can be a limit that maintains our own space for our protection and security.  It can be something that keeps us unique and apart in our minds or those of other people.   It can be a point at which one thing or person ends and another begins.  It can be a frontier we must cross in order to find or allow ourselves new opportunities and adventures. It can be a margin or periphery that makes us feel safe but also that might restrict us in a way that keeps us from reaching something or someone, or from moving and growing beyond where we are presently.

   Over time, I have done a lot of thinking about boundaries.  In my  former role as an adoption case worker/agency director and as a life coach now, boundaries have been important.  Professional service providers must not  become enmeshed in the client’s problems and needs.  If this happens, it hinders our objectivity and doesn’t enable us to see the client’s issues clearly or to be able to help them in the best possible manner. 

     Still, I have struggled with boundaries at times.  I have had too many encounters in my life with distant professionals who had the training, knowledge base and experience to perform their jobs, but who lacked empathy and ability to be authentic and connected to their clients because they either didn’t have a natural talent for what they were doing, or because it simply felt too risky.  I believe  it is the ability to be a little bit vulnerable and real and to share pertinent and helpful experiences and stories with our clients that really builds trust. I believe doing this enables us to get through to people in a way not easily achieved, or even possible if we always maintain our perfect boundaries.  

     I see boundaries as both necessary and useful, and also as destructive at times.  I believe that helping professionals must always be aware of their own issues, limitations and hot buttons, but  cannot be successful at assisting clients in reaching their goals or resolving their problems if they hold ourselves at arm’s length and are rigid about the boundaries they erect.   There needs to be a certain amount of spontaneity and constant awareness of the ebb, flow and dynamics of the interactions with clients. When we share something about our own lives and personal perspective, it must feel appropriate and natural in the context of the relationship and what is happening at the moment in which we find ourselves.  I think it is important then, to go for it, rather than to worry too much about crossing lines and to lose a potentially genuine and possitive moment of teaching/learning and of connection.  At the same time, we are always mindful of the reasons for the sharing and that the client’s agenda remains paramount.  I have seen multiple times how warmth and a little vulnerability can do so much more than presenting ourselves strictly as experts  or authorities who are on a different plain than the people we want to help.

     I have been through a lot in life.  I would not have chosen many of my personal challenges but I recognize the strengths and skills I have gained through coping with what life has dealt me.  I feel a good deal of pride in my ability to be able to use my trials and triumphs as well as my acquired knowledge to help others move from pain to purpose and possibility, from sorrow to survival and on to success.  Those are not just buzz words to me but embody the core message of my work.  Most client choose to work with me because of the person I am, the way I approach life and work (my style) and how I can help them with what needs improving or changing in their worlds.  Of course, who I am and how I approach life has been greatly influenced by what I have moved through in the past and conquered or survived. I am a survivor and more, so when clients want the benefit of my experiences, it takes care to know what and when to share, when it is going to be useful to them and when it is my ego taking over and inserting itself where it doesn’t belong.  There are times when I must help my clients learn to set boundaries in their own lives and other times when I must help them figure out how to tear apart the internal or external barriers they have erected that keep them from what they want to achieve and feel.

     Long before I founded an adoption agency, long before I became a professional coach, I was a writer and a poet.  As a poet, I have also examined what boundaries mean to me.   To me, poetry exists for the purpose of crossing boundaries.  All of us experience similar emotions. These transcend  age, race and culture though our emotions may be contained within cultural norms or expectations,  but as human beings, we have the same basic concerns and sensations.   We all feel love, pain, wonder, desperation, fear, hope, grief,  joy, anger, etc.  We may have great differences in our external lives, but what is in the heart is the same. Poetry gives expression to the human condition and helps us get in touch with ourselves and the world around us.  It eliminates barriers and unites us when we open ourselves up to feeling a bit of what the poet felt and intended, even if we do not fully understand everything about the poem. We read and write poetry to do this. When we write and when we read, we enter an inner world where ideas and emotions stream from the universe and into us.  We, the poets take risks by baring our souls first to ourselves and then to the world.  It is not always easy to do and is sometimes a response to an urgency we feel, or a compulsion to bring something from the inner world out in the open.  We cannot be good poets, it seems to me, if we concern ourselves too much with boundaries that we feel we  must not breech or are afraid to cross.

     If you think about various boundaries you have or have had, were   these  purposeful ones that were put in place for good reasons?  Have you used boundaries to establish healthy limits for yourself in situations where the needs of others threatened to encroach on your functioning in a negative manner?  Have you ever set up boundaries to protect yourself or others?  Have you ever used boundaries as an excuse for keeping others at arm’s length or to keep you from developing a deeper connection to someone?  Under what circumstances have you felt comfortable crossing the boundaries that were already in place?  What do you believe was accomplished (or what growth took place) for you when you did that, and/or for the other people involved?  Do your thoughts about boundaries change when you imagine yourself in different situations?  What barriers or boundaries do you think exist in your life now that you would like to take a shot at dismantling?