11.1 Introduction to Professional Boundaries

Counselors can expect to regularly encounter boundary-related questions and dilemmas when working with clients (Brown, 2008). Counseling requires people to build relationships, which inherently introduces ethical responsibilities and complexities involved in working with people. A counselor’s goal is to curate a safe space for therapeutic work. Part of doing so is sharing explicit boundaries, defined as foundational rules, norms, expectations, limits, and roles that create and maintain the therapeutic relationship. They foster a sense of safety, trust, and belief that the counselor’s primary intent is the client’s welfare (Barnett, 2007). Some examples of boundaries counselors may set with their clients include time, place, touch, self-disclosure, and money (Barnett, 2007). Counselors must reflect on their skills, responsibilities, and identity and remain internally curious regarding struggles to communicate and hold their boundaries with others. Counselors clearly state their boundaries as part of ongoing informed consent and hold them firmly over time. In doing so, they clarify a complex and somewhat ambiguous therapeutic relationship, define each person’s role, set expectations, and maintain their ethical responsibilities (Barnett, 2007; Schank, 1997). The overarching intent of clear boundaries is to build trust and promote counseling work (Brown, 2008). In doing so, counselors model boundary setting with the people they serve for their therapeutic benefit.

Setting and maintaining clear boundaries with clients is connected to counseling virtue ethics, and counselors should consider these as part of ethical decision-making. Autonomy is an ethical principle defined as the “client’s power to choose their own direction and the counselor’s responsibility to advance this behavior” (Moleski, 2005, pg. 4). Clear boundaries enforce the idea that the client has personal power and acts as their person in the counseling relationship. Further, nonmaleficence is an ethical principle defined as the “responsibility of professionals to avoid behaviors or practices that cause harm or have the potential to cause harm to clients” (Moleski, 2005, pg.4). Counselors create and maintain boundaries to communicate parameters and a framework for services to avoid potential sources of harm for clients.