Four tips for creating proper boundaries for yourself

As a counsellor, setting boundaries can be challenging. Some days, your schedule will go to plan, and other days you will feel like you are working in the accident and emergency room of a hospital.

Not knowing what is going to happen next can be exciting – and exhausting. Your own mental health and self-care is important to prevent you from reaching burnout. And, when you find effective strategies for yourself, you can also teach them to the staff and students around you.

1. Structure your time

Set a timetable that gives you time for planning, and don’t be afraid to close your door for a few minutes on the days that chaos arrives and you are reaching your maximum capacity. There is no shame in this.

Present to students (and staff), the way you want your timetable to be structured. I suggest that you have ways for students to set appointments with you, and that the link to book them is easily accessible.

We use Appointlet, and put the link on our Google Classroom and in our email signatures. Appointments can be set for 15, 20 and 30 minutes, depending on what the student needs. Additionally, having set hours for drop-in sessions can be beneficial.

Of course, you are going to have the serious cases that turn up and disrupt your schedule, so be transparent about that if you have to rearrange a session. Students can be very understanding when you let them know that a crisis or safeguarding case has come up, and that you are sorry you could not be there for them at the scheduled time.

2. Differentiate between counselling and pastoral issues

It is important that you don’t let your school drag you into discipline issues. This will potentially put a strain on your relationships with students. A student with whom you have been involved as part of the disciplinary process is less likely to come to you to discuss their problems.

Being clear about your boundaries from the start is essential. Sometimes senior leaders will try to pull you in directions that will be detrimental to the counsellor-student relationship. Advocate for yourself, your profession and your role.

3. Take care of your own mental health

Taking care of your own mental health is essential. This can involve your own individual counselling, of course, but could also include any mindfulness techniques that work for you. These might be breathing and meditation, or anxiety-reduction strategies such as engaging your senses by identifying things you can see, hear or touch.

Having a wide variety of mindful strategies that you practise yourself and teach to staff and students will help take the pressure off you when, for example, a student is having a panic attack. If you have taught anxiety-grounding strategies in student workshops or one-to-ones, you have passed on the skills they will need to handle these situations.

4. Follow your own advice

As professionals, we tell people that it is OK to not be OK and to need help. Remember that yourself. Learn to close the door in your mind on cases and people so that you are not carrying from one session to the next the difficulties shared by the last student. It is unfair on the student in front of you if you are not truly present.

It is also unfair to yourself and your loved ones if you are not truly present in life beyond work. Close the door in your mind on work at the end of the day so that you can maintain the ability to function effectively and don’t suffer burnout.

Self-care, advocacy, organisation, mindful strategies and the ability to ask for help are all essential to success in your role. And, by learning to set your own boundaries, you are helping to foster that same skill in students, too.