Boundaries in Human Relationships: How to be Separate and Connected is written by Anne Linden. With her vast knowledge of psychotherapy along with neuro linguistic programming, she talks us through the importance of boundaries, how we can set them and the benefits of doing so.

As well as describing what boundaries are, Anne also talks about the effects of having no boundaries, when we merge completely with another persons thoughts and feelings as though they were our own, and when we put up walls to block emotion. These different perspectives are talked about throughout the book, which gives a comprehensive view of the different topics discussed.

This book increases our awareness of walls and boundaries, showing us how both are useful in various situations and contexts. It helps us to understand that sometimes it can be a good thing to lose our boundaries- (e.g. when watching a film or reading a book) or to put up a wall when dealing with trauma.

We learn about the natural development of boundaries and how childhood influences our boundary settings as adults. This book may help parents to understand how important it is to set boundaries for their children. Using real life examples, Anne illustrates complex ideas and concepts, helping the information to sink in.  There is an interesting example of how parents can lose boundaries:  a 10 year old girl has thoughts of wanting to beat up her brother as he is always calling her names and won't let her go to the park. When the child expresses this to her parents they punish her for thinking such a thing. Anne describes how parents can lose their boundaries when they behave as though the child acted on her thoughts. This means that they have missed the opportunity to explain to her that her brother needs his own space, and although she was having these thoughts it was wrong to do anything to her brother. Explaining the difference between thoughts and behavior to a child helps to set boundaries.

Due to the importance of setting boundaries in therapy, this book highlights some of the issues clinicians come across and offers some useful ideas on how to get through these issues. Chapter nine talks about our identity and how there is a thin line between wanting to help our patients and needing to help them due to basing our identity only on our jobs. She asks the question: as therapists are we helping the patient for their benefit or for our own?"  Anne describes a situation of a patient who is not improving. A therapist may start to feel low about this. If our sense of self is based on making our patient feel better rather than accepting that we can only do so much for them, then we have lost our boundaries. In order to overcome this Anne describes 'fair witness',  a state that we can develop to restore balance.

When we are setting boundaries or have a lack of them we can experience various emotions. I liked the way Anne classifies emotions into "inappropriate" and "appropriate" rather than right or wrong. It helps us realise that our emotions are important messages. Rather than ignore or deny emotions we need to see them as a message. If we feel low it may be a sign that we need to change something about our life, or a feeling of inadequacy may be giving us the message that there is an opportunity to learn.

To help us understand the information, Anne sets many practical exercises ranging from written tasks, meditation and ways to become more aware of our physical sensations. I particularly liked the exercise in chapter six: noting similarities and differences in situations. Anne explains that if we only ever focus on all the differences between us and someone else then it can be difficult to form a close relationship as there is no connection. We can end up putting up a wall. Similarly, if we only focus on how we are the same as someone, we are losing our boundaries. We may become too similar to someone else and could feel threatened by change.

The ideas and concepts explained in this book are very complex and analytical at times. I found that when I applied my own examples to her ideas it made it easier to understand. However those without psychological knowledge and awareness may struggle to do this, or may not be able to understand certain sections of this book. This is a difficult book to read alone and people may benefit more from discussing some of the ideas with a friend or even progressing further with counseling. It is best to progress through this book gradually, as some paragraphs need to be read more than once to fully grasp the information.

There are lots of practical exercises recommended in the book and to get the most out of this text a lot of time and motivation will be required. For someone new to this subject this book may be too overwhelming. It is best suited to those who already have some background knowledge but are looking for a richer and more in depth understanding.

Although this book is challenging at certain points, I found it very interesting. "Boundaries in Human Relationships" gives us more understanding about our personality, our identity and self esteem and how our childhood can be useful to look back to when we are trying to understand boundaries as adults. This book really made me think and analyze myself and has given me a new awareness in this area as well as some useful ideas and skills to apply to my life.

© 2009 Katie Tattershaw

Katie Tattershaw is a Graduate Mental Health Worker in the UK working in primary care running Self Help Clinics and groups helping people learn coping strategies for anxiety, depression and stress.

Keywords: relationships