Is this you?

You want to be generous and kind, yet find that you are giving yourself away. Or perhaps you want to be closer to others and find yourself feeling distant and disconnected regardless of your hope to be close. Or perhaps you find yourself hanging out for toxic interactions wishing you could rely on yourself to set a boundary.

What is it all about?

Learning to set boundaries with yourself and others helps you create a life that is balanced and nourishing. From the framework and consciousness of Mindful Compassionate Dialogue (MCD), a life giving boundary means having clarity about what meets needs and what doesn’t relative to incoming contact and expression – physical, verbal, emotional, mental, & energetic. In sum, it means discerning the level of connectedness you would like in any given interaction and the needs you would like to meet. Such clarity allows you to consciously welcome more contact and/or expression or consciously shift the level of contact and/or expression.

How it works

Wise Heart Workshop Portland Boundaries.jpg

We will begin the day with five minutes of guided meditation. Throughout the particular concepts and skills will be presented. There will be an opportunity for questions or requests. Then you will practice skills in a short structured exercise in either pairs or a small group or within the whole group. Exercises can be modified to give you more or less challenge depending on your learning edge. You may also engage in role plays. There will be an opportunity for debrief and questions after each exercise.

You will receive a detailed handout as a part of the workshop.

Topics for the Day

Introduction to Boundaries

An essential part of setting boundaries is being aware of and honoring your own needs. The series will begin with exercises to teach you how to stay grounded in yourself in difficult interactions.

You will also learn about six different types of boundaries and work with examples for each. In structured exercises you will have an opportunity to study how you set boundaries and organize priorities. Specifically you will have an opportunity to notice how you may have systematically excluded certain needs from being met while others are tended to regularly.

Evaluating Boundaries

You will learn tools to evaluate the boundary that will best meet your needs and the needs of others in a variety of relationships such as with yourself, work, school, family, friends, and intimate partnership. You will then practice ways to set the boundaries you want in those relationships.

Boundaries and Power

You will study power dynamics in experiential exercises. You will have the opportunity to study how you engage in power over or power under and make distinctions about how to maintain equitable power (power with) in personal relationships, hiearchies at work, and in community.

Boundaries and Family of Origin

You will identify boundaries that you learned as a reaction to difficulties in your past and what it looks like to create boundaries that really meet your needs today. This will mean taking some time to reflect on patterns in your family of origin and patterns in your past relationships. You will have the opportunity to study and practice compassion for how old patterns of boundary setting met needs when you first learned them and how they are costing needs now.

Repairing Boundary Violations

Repairing boundary violations can happen in a variety of ways. You will practice offering and asking for repair in relationships in which you want to maintain healthy intimacy and those in which you want to maintain healthy distance. You have a chance to practice staying in MCD consciousness while sharing at a level and in a way that is in alignment with boundary you want to maintain.

Boundaries and Life Decisions

Boundaries isn't just about specific interactions, it's also about creating structures that support you and your loved ones in living from your deepest values. You will have a chance to study the structures in your life and how they are meeting and not meeting your needs. You will have a chance see how core beliefs and reactive habits influence your decisions and how you can ground in a sense of agency in your life.

Need more information before deciding whether or not to join? Give me a call (503-544-7583) or send me an email with your questions or concerns. info@wiseheartpdx.org