1. Professional Boundaries:
Steps to Creating and Maintaining Strong and
Effective Relationships
Urban Services YMCA
Professional Training
Dave Barry, LMFT

2. Welcome!
■ Dave Barry
❑ Marriage and Family
Therapist
❑ Former School Safety
Advocate
- Where We Are Going
❑ Personal Approach to
Boundaries
❑ Supporting Vision
❑ Supporting Goals

3. 3

4. Personal Perception of Boundaries
■ What comes to mind when you think of boundaries?
■ How have you personally benefited from the assistance
of boundaries? Negatively impacted?
■ What is an example of a professional boundary you
encounter? Have to hold?

6. Professional Boundaries
■ Clearly established limits that allow for safe
connections between service providers and
their clients
■ A clear understanding of the limits and
responsibilities of your role as a service
provider

7. Boundaries: Caring Vs. Carrying
■ The framework within which the worker-client
relationship occurs.
■ A sense of personal identity and self definition
that has consistency and cohesion over time.
■ This remains constant regardless of emotional
ups and downs or external pressures.

9. The Importance of Boundaries
■ Role modeling to the
client healthy
communication and
professional
relationships
■ Avoiding burn-out
■ Avoiding the “rescuer”
role

10. Setting Boundaries to Support Vision
■ The 5 Words Exercise
■ List 5 words that best
describe the core of what
you do in your position.
■ Core Vision
❑ Attention
❑ Empathy
❑ Containment
❑ Choice
❑ Restoration

11. Potential for Blurred Boundaries
■ Self disclosure
■ Giving or receiving significant gifts
■ Becoming friends
■ Physical contact
■ Social Media
■ Over-identification with client’s issues
■ Dual or overlapping relationships

12. Self-Reflection When Considering
Boundaries
■ Is this in my client’s best interest?
■ Whose needs are being served?
■ How would I feel telling a colleague about this?
■ How would this be viewed by the client’s family or
significant other?
■ Does the client mean something ‘special’ to me?
■ Am I taking advantage of the client?
■ Does this action benefit me rather than the client?

13. Challenges of Upholding Boundaries
■ The Wise
■ The Unwise
■ The Wicked
■ Wise: Acknowledge instruction and
adjust to it
■ Unwise: Resist instruction
❑ Address the pattern
❑ Learn to communicate: “I want to learn how
to talk to you so to help you produce”
▪ “What will we do if nothing changes?”
■ Wicked: Those who seek to destroy
truth/instruction
❑ Law enforcement, lawyers

14. Boundaries Supporting Professional Goals
■ 6 x 6 Card
❑ 6 influential tasks in 6
weeks
■ You can sprint for 6
weeks, not 6 months
■ Energy Bursts scheduled
to complete tasks
“100 Miles Wide and an Inch Deep”

15. Group Discussion
■ What are the boundary issues?
■ What are the potential responses?
❑ Pros/Cons to each potential response?

16. Group Discussion
■ You and a client have similar tastes and interests.
After a year of therapy, you and the client terminate
the professional relationship. The client expresses
gratitude at her progress, sadness at the ending of
the relationship, and hope that the two of you can
become friends now that therapy has ended.

17. Group Discussion
■ A client, who is a mother of three school age
children, is facing the breakup of her marriage. She
is very concerned about how her children will
respond, what steps she can take to minimize the
disruption to their lives, and how she will manage
financially with the reduced income. The social
worker relates her own experience of divorce and the
parenting issues which followed.

18. Group Discussion
■ You and your family are attending a Giants game.
As you are walking to the stadium a client recognizes
you and offers for you to join her tailgate party. The
client also notices that your tickets are in the same
area of the stadium as hers.

19. Group Discussion
■ You have a client who is an independent artist and
he brings you a gift of his artwork. The client gathers
the materials for his art from salvage around town.