Setting Emotional Boundaries from Work to Life
Anthony R. Quintiliani, Ph.D., LADC
Sometimes setting emotional boundaries from the psychotherapy room to your life outside of work can be a difficult thing to do. Shifting from 
“experience near empathy” (Kohut), “unconditional positive regard” (Rogers), “hovering attention” (Freud), “the holding environment” in “intersubjective space” (Winnicott), and compassionate awareness to emotional distancing, separation, and dispassion is no easy task. In more in-depth clinical interactions, the process of projective identification between therapist and client may drain your emotional resources; sometimes being “as if” you were the experiencer of your client’s pain and suffering can take a serious toll on your own emotional resources. At time the therapist’s own emotional life lacks the quality of connection experienced in the therapy session. Success in setting emotional boundaries is a very important self-care skill. It may determine your success, failure, joy, or misery in the clinical work you do. It will definitely prevent most case of “burn out.”
Therapists may wish to complete a brief self-care assessment at the end of each emotionally demanding day. Some things to check are as follows:
- Are you taking care of your own physical, psychological, spiritual, and emotional needs?
- Are you using mindfulness, self-compassion, clinical supervision, or journaling to get to know how you are doing?
- Are you valuing yourself enough regarding self-rewards, positive self-talk, cognitive and behavioral restructuring?
- Are you giving yourself time to experience some form of creativity?
- What about your spiritual self?
- Do you spend quality time in nature, among the awe of it all?
- Are you involved in the type of quality relationship you desire?
- Be sure to act on your own behalf if you find problems in the above areas.
Another very powerful process is to develop improving self-compassion for yourself, often blurring the inner boundaries of your own emotional life experience and the clinical work you do. Therapists are, in the end, only people with a set of specific 
helping skills. We suffer just like other people do. Hopefully, our training and experience have given us a bit of a positive edge here. Here are some things you may wish to consider to improve your own level of self-compassion.
- Using mindful awareness, observe the level and intensity of your self-criticism.
- Let go of personal resistance to being real, being your true self.
- Get out of your head! Get out of the past!
- Do loving kindness meditation often.
- Recognize your own difficult emotions (shame, anger, revenge, trying to control others, etc.), and simply be with them as a sacred part of who you are and be real about it. Use emotion regulation to improve things.
- Practice much more self-appreciation.
- Do not dwell on the pain and suffering of your past. All that stuff probably made you a stronger person.
- Welcome and LOVE all of you, with special attention to the sacred quality of your own life suffering.
- When you experience or re-experience anxiety, depression, addictive behaviors, or trauma – hold an open, soft heart for it. Then make changes to improve your life experience.
- Always get help when you need it, and do your best not to dwell on what you have little control over.
- Be certain too make changes to improve self-compassion regarding any problem areas above.
Fo more information refer to Norcross, J. C. and VandenBos, G. R. (2018). Leaving it at the Office: A Guide to Psychotherapist Self-Care. New York: Guilford. Neff, K. and Germer, C. (2018). The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook: A Proven Way to Accept Yourself, Build Inner Strength, and Thrive. New York: Guilford.
Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC
From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont and the Home of The Monkton Sangha
Author of Mindful Happiness
New Edition of Mindful Happiness in Production…Coming soon!
meditations below are presented to expand the use of interoceptive processes in therapy practice. They are presented in very brief form, so slow down the work when using these in your therapy practice. Rather than repeating the introductory process, I will note it here. Be sure to use it in each meditation.
may be sexual, physical, or emotional. This form of abuse is so destructive because the child has no cognitive/executive/verbal ways to understand and respond to the experience. The long-term bio-psycho-social-spiritual effects of PVT are quite difficult to treat effectively. One reason for this is that some therapist are determined to utilize their favorite approaches (mainly forms of pure talk-therapy and psychodynamic holding) despite the limited effectiveness that these forms of therapy results in. Still worse for the client is generic talk therapy, often a mixture of various talk-therapy components but no actual evidence-based method of helping. Remember it is our obligation to Do No Harm and to use therapeutic interventions beyond alliance that are effective. There may be moral if not ethical implications here.
outcomes. In the interest of research, of course other therapies have been found to be effective with trauma. To mention a few, these are EMDR, DBT, PET, and, Briere’s self-trauma therapy with slow, complete exposure work. MBSR and ACT may be helpful regarding emotional dysregulation in traumatic re-experiencing and self-empowerment. Of course effective attachment therapy with very specific object relations correctives is also helpful.
add more details to this process in future posts.
recovery is concerned. I also believe that WE ALL are in some form of recovery process (depression, anxiety, addictions, trauma, eating problems, grief and loss, chronic physical illness or injury, etc.). This may not be the BIG-R Recovery process, but it is recovery process as a deep-seated, self-oriented process of hope, health, and happiness. Hope this information is helpful tip you.
“Sacred Seeing.” Lectio Divina follows specific steps as a process: lectio or reading a passage; Meditatio or meditating on the passage or image; Oratio or praying (I add – in your own way); Contemplatio or contemplation on it; and, Actio or action based on your new insights. Modified below.