How to prevent burnout as a psychologist: A guide to creating work-life boundaries

Are you struggling with keeping your work and home life separate and preventing burnout? I share my top 9 strategies to help you create strong workplace boundaries to help maximise work-life balance and prevent burnout.  

You face numerous stressors as a psychologist. These include administration overload, isolation, compassion fatigue, Imposter Syndrome, dealing with grey ethical issues and workplace bullying. However, you can minimise the risk of burnout and create a sustainable, thriving career using an intentional self-care approach. One powerful self-care strategy is having clear work-life boundaries. Staying in control of your work-life balance and protecting your time, energy and values is an ongoing process. The following strategies can help you create boundaries to maximise your work-life effectiveness and prevent occupational burnout. 

1. Identify what matters most to you
2. Identify recurring stressors
3. Clarify role expectations
4. Set realistic expectations of your time and energy
5. Make Imposter Syndrome your best business buddy
6. Own your diary
7. Have clear work policies and procedures
8. Establish a work-life transition process
9. The five allies you need to defend your boundaries

9 STRATEGIES TO HELP YOU CONFIDENTLY CREATE YOUR WORK-LIFE BOUNDARIES
Strengthening work-life boundaries requires you to take a mindful approach.  The 9 strategies below challenge you to examine your current situation and take practical steps. Let's get started.
 
1. Identify what matters most to you
Finding the confidence to set and protect your boundaries is difficult, particularly for early career psychologists.  Certain boundaries in a work setting are clear.  These include legal, professional and some ethical boundaries. Other boundaries are more flexible and negotiable. Where you choose to place these boundaries is influenced by your needs, beliefs, resources, and intentions
 
After you consider legal and ethical requirements that come with being a psychologist, it’s time to consider your values. As a professional you have many decisions, including who you work with, what you charge, when you work, what modality you use, what resources you buy, how you want to work.  ​

• Are you clear about your values? 
• Does how you currently work reflect what is important to you? 

Too much incongruence between your values and those of your workplace will create a situation where your boundaries feel under constant attack. 
 
If you’re not clear about your boundaries, spending time reflecting on your value is an important step.

​2. Identify recurring stressors
Make time for regular reflection and bring awareness to your current work situation.
 
How do you feel when you: 

• Sit down to write a report or a doctor's letter?
• Receive a notification or a ping on your phone? 
• Open emails?
• Have a client cancel at the last minute?
• Are seeing a client with an unfamiliar presentation?
• Have someone tell you they can’t afford your fees?
• Receive a phone call, email or text from a particular client or particular organization?
• Take a client history and realise their risk factor is high?

 
The above are some potential areas of recurring stressors that contribute to workplace burnout AND opportunities or threats to your boundaries. Identifying recurring stressors are a good place to stop and think about your boundaries.

• What have I set up to deal with this situation? 
• What matters to me in this situation?
• Is this situation violating a boundary I have in place but aren’t protecting?
• How can I stop this situation sucking up my time and energy?  

Too much incongruence between your values and those of your workplace will create a situation where your boundaries feel under constant attack. ​

3. Clarify role expectations
It’s clear from my conversations with other psychologists that role expectations vary, often dramatically, between workplaces.  And the lines between being a subcontractor or employee can be blurred.  One clinician stated that at "My other clinic I feel confused by, in terms of am I an employee or a contractor. It feels quite grey, rather than black and white, which leaves me at times confused as to accountability and responsibility and who is managing the risk". 

Legal advice on whether you are an employee or a subcontractor is recommended.  And then this helps the next step, of fully clarifying your contract details.  Read your contract and position description. Write down your interpretation of what the contract means. Check your interpretation with your employers understanding. Work through ambiguities.  If you are employed, check it with any relevant legislation including workspace, and think about asking a lawyer to check through it as well.  
 
Areas to ensure you understand include who is responsible for areas such as

• Covering when reception is at break
• Compulsory attendance at meetings
• Following up when clients don’t attend sessions
• Talking with clients outside of sessions
• Marketing
• Sending doctor’s letter and reports
• Rescheduling client appointments

 
Outside of work, do people in your life understand what you do?

• Do the people in your life understand what your role as a psychologist means? 
• Do they know what is your work and non-work time?  For me, working from home without a formalised work day means I sometimes need to protect my work time from friends and family who want to catch up during the week.
• And if you are a solo psychologist, do you need to do all the roles? Can you outsource anything? Accounts? Marketing? Virtual administration? If not now, when? 

My other clinic I feel confused by, in terms of am I an employee or a contractor. It feels quite grey, rather than black and white, which leaves me at times confused as to accountability and responsibility and who is managing the risk".

 
4. Set realistic expectations of your time and energy
Remember that drive to impress when starting out? The need to do more to quiet you inner Imposter Syndrome?  It’s not sustainable. Do you want to be working these hours, taking on these responsibilities in two years’ time? If you don’t, stop setting up unsustainable expectations.
​
Whilst flexible boundaries are important in helping you adjust to the changing demands that are part of managing the ebb and flow that is work-life balance, there comes a tipping point. This occurs when your mindful decision to do more, to bring work home, to talk about work at home, becomes less of a choice and more of a reflection of a loss of control about keeping work-life separate. This seepage is an indicator that you are slipping towards overwhelm and burnout. 
​
Think about your current individual situation. 

• What are your personal resources, demands, physical and mental health? 
• How much do you have to give to work? How many clients do you want to see? How many do you need to see for financial reasons? Do the fees you charge allow this happen?
• Do a client audit.  How does that fit with the number of clients you ideally want to see?
• How long does a letter or report take you to write?
• How do you know when you finish a report? 
• How much unpaid time do you spend between sessions talking to clients, contacting clients or planning client sessions?

Looking at the above, where can you set boundaries around unpaid for time and unproductive tasks?  
 
The digital time black hole
The time spent reading, organising and responding to emails is estimated to take hours each day It is a big productivity drain. If you want to check for yourself you can track your time and see for yourself how much time and energy you take with this task.  
 
Digital time drains include engaging in tasks such as responding to emails / phones and texts from your workplace and/or clients outside of hours.

• Do you have a separate work and home number/phone?
• Do you have emails on your phone?
• What is your system for managing emails?
• Do you respond to calls/texts/emails from clients? Or do you wait for session time?

 
If the digital world is overwhelming, a regular digital declutter can help. 

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5. Make Imposter Syndrome your best business buddy 
The imposter is that pesky voice in your head that tells you that you aren’t good enough, you don’t know enough, you can’t do that, even when there is plenty of evidence to the contrary
 
When that pesky voice is driving you to do more, to be more, this has a direct impact on your time and energy levels.  It can mean putting your hand up to do things that aren’t your responsibility to prove something to yourself and others.  It can mean putting in extra hours so you know just what to say and do in the next session with a particular client.  
 
You can flip this though.  When Imposter Syndrome is reframed to be the quiet voice of questioning and curiosity it can be your best business buddy. 
 
Sit down and listen to it and let it guide you into doing a reality check. 

• What are your areas of stress and overwhelm. 
• What are your strengths, talents?
• What are your obstacles, are they real? 
• What do you know and not know?
• What do you need? Is it actually more knowledge and experience, or is it a tightening of boundaries? 

 
As a bonus, the Imposter Syndrome can help test out the congruence of your workplace setting as well as strengthen your interpersonal boundaries.  Identifying people you trust can result in lowering your boundaries in some areas and lifting them in others. 

• If you are fearful of being found out as a fraud, who do you trust to talk to? 
• Who can sit with your vulnerabilities without judgement? 
• How do you feel in your workplace when you make a mistake or don’t know something?  

 
6. Own your diary
You are a limited resource. No matter how hard you work, there is still only 24 hours in a day. 
 
Use your diary as a tool.  Mark in your self-care time, and any other time that is important to you. Mark in your holidays. Don't let admin fill your diary out until the end of the year without breaks. Do that client audit and work out how many client hours you are doing a week. Is this sustainable? During times of crisis many psychologists report a need to ‘step up’ and do more for their community. Whilst this may be sustainable in the short term, it can create a chronic lack of control over work-life imbalance leading into burnout.

• What gets in the way of your personal diary?
• How do you manage client reschedules and cancellations?
• How do you manage client/workplace requests for appointments outside your agreed upon hours?
• What happens when you are ill, or your child has as a special event on? 

Whilst flexible boundaries are important in helping you manage the changing demands that are part of  the ebb and flow of work-life balance, there comes a tipping point

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7. Have clear work policies and procedures
Your work setting will have these policies and procedures.  Official policies include, but are not limited to, missed appointments, working with separated parents, social media, how you communicate with clients etc.  However, there are likely to be gaps.  And if you are a solo psychologist, you will be creating your own policies and procedures.  
 
Create your policies to not only include necessary legal, professional and ethical obligations, but to also prioritise your self-care.  Think about:

• What happens when you are ill?
• How and when you will write reports?
• Under what circumstances, and for how long, will you take on an extra workload?
• How much prework will you do for each client?
• What clients you will, and won’t, work with?
• What work will you take home?

 
Even though you are only one person, having established policies helps you create and maintain work-lifeboundaries. They add clarity for both you and your clients and help you avoid the stress of making decision making on the run). *As a note - people do sell their policies. They take time to develop and it is rude to ask people to share them for free. 

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8. Establish a work-life transition process
Having a mindful routine that helps delineate work from home is helpful in letting your mind know that work is done for the day. Being able to rest from work demands is essential in maintaining control of your work-life balance. Some strategies include:

• Environmental Cues – having a separate space for work and home activities. Turning off the computer when you are finished. Changing work phones. Turning on your voice mail. Changing your clothes or earrings. Playing a particular song or piece of music. 
• Routine. Going for a walk/gym/dance/yoga etc at the end of your work day. Making a special snack or a cup of tea. Journaling about your day, writing down your to do list for tomorrow, or a list of what you have accomplished today. If you are transitioning physically between home and work perhaps there’s some music, or a podcast you regularly listen to. Perhaps you touch a special bush or tree in your front garden where you leave all your concerns before opening your front door. Maybe it’s taking three deep breaths before leaving your car. Choose something meaningful and easy for you. 
• Mantras. The variations on this are endless. For example, using a Mantra such as “today I have made a difference when I could in the lives of my clients. Now it is time for me to rest and entrust them to their own resources”. Or, “today I did my best to embody a caring, compassionate psychologist. Now it’s time to rest so tomorrow my best most caring compassionate psychologist self can show up again”
• Visualisation. This may involve visualising putting all the concerns and worries you are left with at the end of the day in a velvet lined box, locking it up and putting it in a safe for you to get out when you next work. 

 
Do you have a favourite transition strategy?
 

9. The five allies you need to defend your boundaries
After you have set boundaries congruent with your values and designed to honour your time, energy and what matters to you, it’s then up to you to defend them.
 
Broken boundaries can be subtle.  Although the impact of stress is often cumulative it can take one thing to make you realise that you have lost that sense of control you once had over your work and home life, leading to exhaustion, resentment and burnout. Many factors go into why your boundaries become porous, why you say 'Yes' instead of 'No'. Interfering factors include Imposter Syndrome, compassion (and lack of self-compassion), overt and covert pressure, workplace culture, financial considerations, lack of clear policy and procedures, guilt, and an inability to prioritise self-care. 
 
Your five best allies in defending your boundaries are: 

• Taking the time to increase your awareness of what boundaries you need.  
• Creating boundaries in alignment with your values. 
• Practicing assertive communication. Use all the knowledge and certainty you have from these 9 strategies to be firm. Use lots of ‘I’ statements. Some phrases that may help:
• Utilising third parties to reinforce your boundaries.  These include email automations, voice messages, virtual or real admin, static policy and procedure documents, session fee policies on your websites, the law, ethical codes, contracts, professional advice. 
• Having a strong network.  This means having people you trust, referral options in line with your needs and goals, and people backing your business growth

CONCLUSION
Maintaining control of your work-life boundaries to avoid slipping into overwhelm and burnout takes effort.  It means getting intentional about your self-care.  The encroaching of work demands into your personal time, energy and what you hold important ranges from very clear breaching through activities such as workplace bullying and exploitation, to more insidious and subtle practices.  Without a preventative and proactive self-care approach you are placing yourself at risk.  Creating clear boundaries is one of the key self-care strategies.  Use the questions and reflections in this article as a guide to help you prevent occupational burnout and improve work-life harmony.
 
OVER TO YOU
I’d love to hear your experience of work boundaries and burnout.  Is it the digital time suck, the weight of Imposter Syndrome, or the exhaustion of trying to work out the essential from the non essential administration tasks?  Or something else?

​If you found this article useful please share.  

If you want me on your side as you honour your own needs, so you can turn up as your best self for your clients without sacrificing your home life, I'd love to help. .


Until next time, take care of yourself

Kim xx