Dr. Wilfried Ehrmann
Border issues in breathwork and the role of shame
Border issues are crucial for the individual development of every person. The driving forces of our growth are autonomy and bonding. One forces fosters the movement forward and develops individuality, the other force is impartant for our social skills and our sense of safety with our social environment.
Traumatizations always happen as transgression of borders, and abuse is the neglectance of borders. So we need safe and permeable borders around the core of our personality. People react differently towards traumatizing violations of their borders: either build strict and rigid borders, created by fear, or blurry borders (confluence), created by shame.
Narcisistic persons tend to transgressing other people’s borders and are not able to respect them, due to their upbringing where their borders were not respected.
In therapy, the therapist is the role model for safe and permeable borders. The clients learns from the therapist more the way, the therapist acts than by what he tells the client. Therapists who tend to sexually abuse their clients retraumatize them. Unfortunately, clients often later notice what had really happened. So it is important that every community of therapists has clear and unshakeable guidelines with border issues in therapy and with consequences for therapists with missing integrity. Only then, the clients can feel safe and learn to develop their boundaries in a healthy way.
