A Brief Introduction to Boundaries

It took some brainstorming to pinpoint exactly what it is we do at PAX Therapy and Family Services.  What does therapy with us help achieve?  What gets better?  After a sit down with our therapists, and looking at what our clients have come in with and what they say upon leaving- PAX helps people get better boundaries.

Better boundaries?  What does THAT mean?

It means we have mastered the art of saying No when we want to say No and YES when we want to say Yes.  We’ve mastered helping you achieve a place of successfully putting boundaries that help you heal- not that cut people off. But how do better boundaries help my anxiety or my depression?

Depression, Anxiety and Boundaries?

What if we told you a secret… depression, anxiety, and trauma tend to be rooted in experiences totally unrelated to your current life. It is usually rooted in events or circumstances that have caused a significant amount of stress, or have caused a particular coping skill to be used.  BUT those skills are no longer useful, and are causing a problem.  

What happens when we have “bad boundaries”?

Well, when we  have too few boundaries we tend to have struggling relationships, we are overworked, overextended, exhausted, and aren’t effectively saying no or giving consequences to people when they violate our boundaries.  A lot of times too loose of boundaries are a result of abuse- physical, emotional, or sexual abuse/assault.  The abuse could have happened as a child or as an adult, but the experiences caused a shift in how to navigate the space around your body.

When we have too many or too rigid of boundaries we are off putting, we experience loneliness, we put people off, no one is ever good enough, etc etc.  Too rigid of boundaries comes from the same place too loose of boundaries comes from.  Sometimes, it comes with the additional belief that YOU can do it all by yourself.  You need no one.  So you keep everyone out.

How do you make it better?

That’s complicated and depends on a lot of factors.  At PAX each of our therapists specialize in working with certain groups that are experiencing things in the MOMENT.  For example, a new mom feels exhausted, overburdened, and alone.  Kim, our maternal mental health therapist, will help her identify areas that are struggling and overtime naturally develop boundaries that she didn’t get a chance to develop growing up.  Boundaries that she didn’t know that she was allowed to set.

So how do you connect with us at PAX?  Well, check our about page out- www.paxtherapy.com/about-our-therapists/