Setting boundaries is a
life skill that has been popularized by
self help authors and
support groups since the mid 1980s. It is the practice of openly communicating and asserting personal values as way to preserve and protect against having them compromised or violated The term "boundary" is a metaphor – with
in-bounds meaning acceptable and
out-of-bounds meaning unacceptable. Without values and boundaries our identities become diffused and often controlled by the definitions offered by others. The concept of
boundaries has been widely adopted by the counseling profession.