Most of us recognize and respect boundaries in our day to day life. We don’t stand too close to other individuals in a line, we don’t call a friend in the middle of the night unless there’s an emergency and we don’t walk in on someone when they’re in the bathroom. These types of social boundaries exist to make us feel comfortable with other people.
In therapy, boundaries exist to protect the therapeutic experience. Some of these are obvious. The boundary violation we hear about the most often is therapists having sexual contact with clients (patients). However, there are other boundaries that, when violated in the therapeutic relationship, are also extremely damaging.
