The Boundaried Therapist: Sustaining Yourself in the Counselling Profession

by Nicole Perry

Set boundaries to sustain yourself and your counselling practice


Setting healthy boundaries. It’s a central theme in many counselling sessions, yet something that therapists often struggle to do for themselves. In a profession that is motivated by a desire to help others and relieve suffering, the pressure is always there for therapists to put others’ needs before their own.


For registered psychologist Nicole Perry, the conversation around therapists’ own needs is conspicuously missing. When these needs are not addressed, therapists are left vulnerable to potential career- and life-altering outcomes like burnout and vicarious trauma. It’s time to think about boundaries that contemplate the therapist in a wholistic way, addressing not only their professional responsibilities, but their limits, needs, and values.


Taking a somatic and feminist approach, Nicole leads readers down a self-reflective path to practical boundaries that nurture them as people first, therapists boundaries that are essential for building and sustaining a long and vibrant career in counselling.

Genres: Psychology

150 pages, Paperback

Published July 15, 2024

Reviews

[Jay Michaud · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good book for practitioners who haven’t had to think about things like capacity, spending a lot of time sitting with hard stories, or ethics in the world of capitalism yet. The author surveys a wide range of content about these things and distills them down to their most basic parts well, which is probably helpful for folks earlier on in their learning journeys. It’s a shorter and easier read with a decent flow. If you are a practitioner who lives in more than one intersection of marginalization, you likely already have a fundamental felt sense of these concepts. If you’ve read something like this already, this book would be a good recommendation for those in your life who need it.

[Maggie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really appreciated the feminist and trauma informed lens through which this book was written. As a counsellor myself, I appreciated seeing my fears, challenges, and needs regarding boundaries reflected in this book. It's taken a lot of practice to see boundaries at client-care and I will take the language and exercises from this book with me into the future.