Healthy Relationships and Boundaries

It is important that your relationships – whether it is with family, friends, helpers, or love interests – are healthy. Certain characteristics are present in healthy relationships that makes it safe and creates enjoyable connections with others. Setting boundaries is an important part of establishing one’s identity and is a crucial aspect of mental health and well-being. Boundaries can be physical or emotional, and they can range from being loose to rigid, with healthy boundaries often falling somewhere in between.

Relationship skills are an essential component of Social Emotional Learning. According to the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, relationship skills is “the ability to establish and maintain healthy and rewarding relationships with diverse individuals and groups.” To help our clients understand appropriate relationship skills, we teach them the importance of communication, cooperation, resisting pressure, conflict resolution and seeking help when needed.

Our Approach

Communication:

Effective communication requires the use of verbal and nonverbal skills to express oneself. We help our clients understand that communication involves not only speaking clearly and conveying ideas appropriately, but also understanding body language, facial expressions, and gestures that can contribute to perception and accurate delivery. Our staff does a great job promoting a strong sense of self awareness, which can help when building communication skills. Active listening is also seen as a key factor in communication. We aid our clients in comprehending the foundational skills involved in active listening, this includes appropriate eye contact, regulating thoughts to limit distractions, utilizing facial expressions, and providing oral responses.

Cooperation:

When our clients cooperate, they each become active members working toward a common goal. Cooperation requires that our clients be flexible, have an awareness of self and others, take turns, respect each other’s thoughts and opinions, listen well, and practice effective problem-solving.

Resist social pressure:

With our clients we see peer pressure as a larger issue when it comes to relationships. We have seen improvement after teaching strong self management skills. This helps our clients to communicate and commit to their decision not to engage in unwanted, unsafe, unethical behavior.

Conflict Resolution:

At Brightstone we prompt effective conflict resolution technique. This involves teaching our clients that in order to resolve an issue in a relationship, they must know how to calmly discuss the problem, brainstorm solutions, and come to an appropriate decision.

Seeking Help:

Our clients are encouraged to check their understanding in social situations. If a client hit a barrier while working to achieve a relationship goal, whether it is communication, conflict resolution or even peer pressure, they need to know how and when to ask for help. Our staff is always available to offer useful support.

At Brightstone Transitions we help our students learn and practice various skills in order to effectively communicate in their relationships, as well as build trust with each other. Brightstone hosted a Valentines Day social promoting “Spreading Love not Germs” where we had the opportunity to educate our clients on healthy relationships and setting appropriate boundaries. Our clients had the chance to apply what they learn in this social setting.