26 Boundaries Group Therapy Activities for Your Clients

Boundaries are the limits we set within our relationships to protect our emotional, physical, and mental well-being. A vital component of healthy relationships, boundaries help us communicate our needs, maintain our sense of self, and build connections rooted in mutual respect rather than obligation, fear, or guilt.

While that may sound straightforward, boundaries are a complex and deeply personal topic. Our ability to set and maintain boundaries is shaped by our upbringing, culture, past relationships, and the specific dynamics of each relationship we’re in. As an example, the boundaries you maintain with a coworker likely look very different from the boundaries you maintain with a close friend or family member.

It’s understandable that individuals may hold different expectations about what boundaries should look like within a relationship. When we don’t communicate our expectations clearly, we don’t give ourselves — or the people in our lives — the opportunity to respect them. Over time, this can damage relationships or reinforce unhealthy relational patterns, including codependency, resentment, and burnout.

In this article, I discuss 26 boundaries group therapy activities that counselors and mental health professionals can use to help clients build boundary-setting skills, strengthen assertiveness, and develop healthier relationship patterns. These activities are designed to increase self-awareness, provide psychoeducation, and offer a safe space to practice new skills within a supportive group environment.

According to the APA Dictionary of Psychology, a boundary refers to the psychological demarcation that protects the integrity of an individual, and healthy boundary-setting is closely tied to overall relational and emotional functioning. Difficulty establishing boundaries has also been linked to increased anxiety, depression, and burnout, particularly among individuals with a history of codependent or enmeshed family systems. Mental health professionals should use clinical judgment when assessing each client’s boundary-setting history, relational patterns, and readiness for group-based skill building.

How Does Group Therapy Help Individuals Set Boundaries?

Group therapy can be an especially effective format for clients who struggle to establish and maintain healthy boundaries. Most of us initially learn about boundaries from the adults in our lives as we’re growing up, and as we age, we continue practicing and refining this skill. Boundary-setting is a lifelong, ongoing area of growth for many clients, not a skill that’s mastered once and never revisited.

Group therapy provides a structured space for clients to recognize signs of unhealthy relationship dynamics, build the communication skills needed to verbalize their boundaries, and practice reinforcing those boundaries once they’ve been set. Boundary-focused groups can also normalize the personal struggles clients experience around guilt, fear, and people-pleasing, while giving them a low-stakes environment to rehearse new skills before applying them in real relationships.

Group settings offer something individual therapy can’t fully replicate: real-time interpersonal feedback. Group members can practice assertive communication with one another, observe how others navigate similar struggles, and receive support from peers who understand the discomfort that often comes with setting a new limit. This kind of peer modeling and universality — recognizing “I’m not the only one who struggles with this” — is one of the core therapeutic factors that make group therapy uniquely effective for interpersonal skill-building.

Considerations Before Facilitating a Boundaries Group

Boundaries group therapy can offer meaningful opportunities for skill-building, connection, and insight. However, these groups still require thoughtful planning and clinical judgment. Counselors should consider each client’s relational history, readiness for group work, and specific presenting concerns before incorporating boundary-focused activities.

Clinical Consideration	What Counselors Should Consider
Assess Readiness for Group Treatment	Consider whether each client has the emotional stability and interpersonal safety needed to participate in a group setting, particularly if boundary struggles are connected to trauma, abuse, or an unsafe current relationship. Some clients may need individual stabilization work before joining a boundaries group.
Recognize That Boundaries Are Culturally Influenced	Expectations around boundaries — including family obligation, communication directness, and individual versus collective needs — vary significantly across cultures. Counselors should approach boundary work with curiosity rather than assuming a single “correct” model of healthy boundaries applies to every client.
Be Mindful of Trauma and Boundary Violations	Some clients have a history of having their boundaries violated, including through abuse, neglect, or controlling relationships. Boundary-setting activities can bring up difficult memories or intense emotions, so counselors should use a trauma-informed approach and monitor for signs of distress.
Differentiate Boundary Struggles from Codependency	While related, difficulty setting boundaries and codependency are not always the same clinical picture. Counselors should assess each client’s specific relational patterns rather than assuming every client presents with the same underlying dynamic.
Create a Safe and Non-Judgmental Environment	Clients may feel shame or guilt about their boundary struggles, particularly if they’ve been taught that setting limits is selfish. Establish clear group norms around confidentiality and respectful feedback so members feel safe practicing new skills.
Balance Skill-Building with Emotional Processing	Boundary work isn’t purely behavioral. Clients often need space to process the fear, guilt, or grief that can come up when they start setting limits with people they care about — not just a script to follow.
Model Consistency as the Facilitator	Group members benefit from watching their counselor maintain their own clear, consistent boundaries within the group, including group norms, session structure, and expectations around participation.

Clinical Note: Boundaries group therapy activities should be facilitated by qualified mental health professionals within an appropriate treatment framework. Interventions should be individualized based on each client’s relational history, trauma background, cultural context, and treatment goals.

Group Therapy Activities for Setting Boundaries

The following boundaries group therapy activities are designed to support professionally facilitated groups by building self-awareness, providing psychoeducation, strengthening assertive communication, and giving clients a safe space to practice new skills.

1. Identifying Safe Relationships & Boundary Models

Many clients struggle to set boundaries because they’ve had limited exposure to what healthy boundary-setting actually looks like in practice.

What It Is: This activity helps clients identify the characteristics of people they feel safe and supported by, and explore how those characteristics make boundary-setting feel more possible.
How It Helps Clients: Recognizing what safety feels like in a relationship can help clients identify which of their current relationships may be more receptive to new boundaries, and which may require more caution.
How To Do It: Using a large piece of paper, ask the group to identify characteristics of someone they feel safe and supported by. Discuss how these characteristics influence their ability to set and maintain boundaries with that person.

2. Reflecting on Past Boundary-Setting Successes

Clients often focus on the times boundary-setting has gone poorly, overlooking moments where they’ve already succeeded.

What It Is: This activity asks clients to identify a past situation where they successfully set a physical or emotional boundary, then explore what made that success possible.
How It Helps Clients: Identifying past successes builds confidence and gives clients concrete strategies they’ve already used effectively, which they can apply to future boundary-setting situations.
How To Do It: Ask group members to describe a time they set a boundary successfully. Explore what helped them do it — their mindset, preparation, or the other person’s response — and how they can draw on that same approach moving forward.

3. Exploring Family-of-Origin Boundary Patterns

Many clients don’t realize their current boundary struggles were shaped long before their current relationships — often in the family systems they grew up in.

What It Is: This activity helps clients reflect on how boundaries were modeled, enforced, or violated in their family of origin, and how those early patterns show up in their relationships today.
How It Helps Clients: Connecting a current pattern to its origin reduces self-blame and helps clients recognize which behaviors are learned responses rather than fixed personality traits — which makes them feel more possible to change.
How To Do It: Ask group members to reflect on how boundaries were handled growing up — were they clear and respected, inconsistent, overly rigid, or absent altogether? Discuss how these early dynamics show up in current relationships and what members would like to do differently.

4. Boundaries and Attachment Styles

A client’s attachment style often shapes whether they avoid setting boundaries out of fear of rejection, or over-control boundaries out of fear of closeness.

What It Is: This psychoeducational activity introduces attachment styles (secure, anxious, avoidant, and disorganized) and explores the boundary patterns commonly associated with each.
How It Helps Clients: Understanding the attachment-boundary connection gives clients a compassionate framework for recurring struggles — for example, anxious attachment showing up as difficulty saying no out of fear of abandonment, or avoidant attachment showing up as boundaries so rigid they prevent real closeness.
How To Do It: Provide an overview of attachment styles and the boundary patterns often linked to each. Ask members to reflect on which patterns feel familiar, and discuss how attachment-informed self-awareness can support their boundary work going forward.

5. Mapping Boundary Barriers

Before clients can practice new boundary skills, it helps to understand what’s been getting in the way.

What It Is: This activity helps clients identify the internal and external barriers that prevent them from setting boundaries, such as fear, guilt, uncertainty, or lack of confidence.
How It Helps Clients: Naming specific barriers makes them feel more manageable and gives the group concrete starting points for problem-solving together.
How To Do It: Ask each group member to write one boundary barrier on a slip of paper and place it in a bowl. Draw slips randomly and discuss how members relate to each barrier and what might help them move past it. Follow up in a future session to check in on progress.

6. Healthy vs. Unhealthy Relationship Dynamics

Clients sometimes struggle to set boundaries because they haven’t yet identified what makes a relationship unhealthy in the first place, or because they haven’t named the specific pattern they keep falling into.

What It Is: This activity asks the group to define the characteristics of healthy and unhealthy relationships — including patterns like over-dependence, over-independence, or difficulty communicating needs — then discuss how to recognize these dynamics in real time.
How It Helps Clients: Building a clear picture of relational health gives clients a reference point for evaluating their own relationships. Naming a specific pattern, like “I tend to over-give in relationships,” gives clients a clearer starting point for change than a vague sense of unhappiness.
How To Do It: On a large piece of paper, ask the group to list characteristics of both healthy and unhealthy relationships. Discuss which patterns feel familiar to members, what has reinforced them, and how members can recognize these dynamics as they’re happening.

7. Understanding and Addressing Codependency

Codependency and boundary struggles are closely related, and many clients benefit from understanding this connection directly.

What It Is: This activity provides psychoeducation on codependency, including common signs and consequences, and explores what clients can do to build healthier relational patterns.
How It Helps Clients: Understanding codependency as a recognizable pattern — rather than a personal failing — can reduce shame and give clients a clearer roadmap for change.
How To Do It: Provide education on what codependency can look like and how common it is. Facilitate discussion about how group members can begin shifting these patterns and building healthier boundaries in their relationships.

8. Values-Based Boundaries

Boundaries are most sustainable when they’re clearly connected to what a client actually values.

What It Is: This activity explores the connection between personal values and boundaries, helping clients identify boundaries that would better support the life they want to build.
How It Helps Clients: Clients are often more motivated to maintain a boundary when they understand how it protects something meaningful to them, rather than treating the boundary as an arbitrary rule.
How To Do It: Ask group members to identify two or three core values. Discuss whether their current boundaries support those values, and explore what new boundaries might better align with them — for example, a boundary around work hours that protects a value of family time.

9. Healthy, Rigid, and Porous Boundaries Psychoeducation

Clients often think of boundaries in all-or-nothing terms, without realizing there’s a spectrum.

What It Is: This psychoeducational activity introduces the concepts of healthy, rigid, and porous boundaries, helping clients identify which pattern they tend toward.
How It Helps Clients: Understanding this spectrum helps clients recognize that both over-closing and over-extending themselves can be unhealthy, and gives them language to describe their own patterns.
How To Do It: Provide psychoeducation on healthy, rigid, and porous boundaries. Ask group members to reflect on which category best describes their current patterns and what changes could help them move toward healthier boundaries.

10. Personal Boundaries Bill of Rights

Many clients have never been given explicit permission to have needs, let alone act on them.

What It Is: This activity asks clients to write a personal “bill of rights” — a list of things they’re entitled to in relationships, such as the right to say no, change their mind, or ask for space.
How It Helps Clients: Concrete, permission-based language reinforces that boundary-setting is a right rather than a selfish act, which is often the core belief standing in a client’s way.
How To Do It: Provide a starter list of assertive rights (e.g., “I have the right to say no without over-explaining myself”). Ask members to personalize and expand the list, and revisit it as an ongoing group touchstone throughout treatment.

11. Assertive Communication Scripts for Boundary-Setting

Many clients know they want to set a boundary but freeze when it comes to finding the words. A structured communication framework can make this feel more manageable.

What It Is: This activity introduces a structured approach to assertive communication — similar to Dialectical Behavior Therapy’s interpersonal effectiveness skills — to help clients clearly state a boundary, express their needs, and follow through.
How It Helps Clients: A structured script reduces the anxiety of “figuring it out in the moment” and gives clients a reliable framework they can adapt to different situations.
How To Do It: Teach a simple structure for assertive boundary communication: describe the situation, express your feelings, ask for what you need, and reinforce why it matters. Model this with a volunteer through role-play, then break the group into pairs to practice their own scripts.

12. Practicing an Assertive “No”

Of all the words involved in boundary-setting, “no” is often the single hardest one for clients to say without softening, justifying, or apologizing it away.

What It Is: This activity gives clients focused practice saying no clearly and directly, without the urge to over-explain or over-apologize.
How It Helps Clients: Isolating this one skill builds real confidence, since much of what makes boundary-setting feel hard is the belief that a simple “no” isn’t enough on its own.
How To Do It: Practice saying “no” in a series of role-play scenarios, starting with low-stakes requests and building toward higher-stakes ones. Notice and discuss the urge to over-explain, and practice short, clear responses instead.

13. “I” Statements and Communication Skills for Boundaries

Clear, non-blaming communication is one of the most important tools for setting a boundary that actually gets heard.

What It Is: This activity reviews healthy communication patterns, including the use of “I” statements, and helps clients apply them specifically to boundary-setting conversations.
How It Helps Clients: “I” statements reduce defensiveness in the other person and help clients communicate their needs clearly without escalating conflict.
How To Do It: Review the structure of an “I” statement (e.g., “I feel ___ when ___, and I need ___”). Discuss barriers members experience in communicating their needs, and allow time for role-play practice using this structure.

14. Boundary-Setting Role-Play

Boundary-setting is a skill, and like any skill, it improves with practice — especially in a supportive, low-stakes environment.

What It Is: This activity gives clients the opportunity to practice setting a specific boundary through role-play, followed by group processing of the thoughts and emotions that came up.
How It Helps Clients: Rehearsing a boundary out loud builds confidence and helps clients identify what they want to say before they’re in a high-stakes, real-life situation.
How To Do It: Ask each group member to identify a boundary they’d like to set. Allow time for role-play in pairs or with the facilitator, then process the emotions and thoughts that surfaced and discuss coping strategies for managing them in real time.

15. Non-Verbal Boundaries and Body Language

Boundaries aren’t only communicated through words — posture, eye contact, tone, and physical space send a message of their own.

What It Is: This activity explores how non-verbal cues can reinforce or undercut a spoken boundary, and gives clients a chance to practice aligning the two.
How It Helps Clients: A verbal boundary paired with hesitant body language is often taken less seriously by the other person. Practicing non-verbal alignment increases the likelihood a boundary is respected.
How To Do It: Discuss how posture, eye contact, and tone can reinforce or contradict a verbal boundary. In pairs, practice pairing an assertive statement with confident, congruent body language, and discuss what felt different.

16. Addressing Fears and Guilt About Boundaries

Fear and guilt are often the biggest obstacles standing between a client and the boundary they want to set.

What It Is: This activity creates space for clients to explore the specific fears that come up around boundary-setting, such as fear of conflict, fear of losing the relationship, or guilt about disappointing someone.
How It Helps Clients: Naming and validating these fears reduces their intensity and helps clients problem-solve around them rather than avoiding boundary-setting altogether.
How To Do It: Ask the group to share concerns that come up when they think about setting a boundary. Validate these concerns, then discuss ways members can address them in a way that feels manageable and safe.

17. Cognitive Distortions and Boundary Challenges

The thoughts clients have about boundary-setting often say more about distorted thinking patterns than about the boundary itself.

What It Is: This activity explores how thoughts influence emotions and behaviors, and identifies cognitive distortions — such as catastrophizing or mind-reading — that interfere with a client’s ability to set boundaries.
How It Helps Clients: Recognizing distorted thinking patterns helps clients challenge unhelpful beliefs, such as “setting a boundary will ruin this relationship,” and replace them with more balanced thoughts.
How To Do It: Provide psychoeducation on common cognitive distortions. Ask group members to identify specific distortions that show up when they consider setting a boundary, and practice reframing them together.

18. Anticipating and Preparing for Pushback

One of the most common reasons clients abandon a new boundary is being caught off guard by how the other person reacts to it.

What It Is: This activity helps clients anticipate likely reactions to a new boundary — including guilt-tripping, anger, or repeated testing of the limit — and plan how they’ll respond.
How It Helps Clients: Preparing for pushback in advance increases the likelihood clients will hold the boundary rather than cave under pressure the first time it’s challenged.
How To Do It: Ask members to identify a boundary they plan to set and predict how the other person is likely to respond. Role-play staying consistent in the face of pushback, including repeated requests or guilt-based reactions.

19. Mindfulness and Grounding for Boundary-Setting Anxiety

Setting a boundary can trigger real physiological anxiety, even when a client knows intellectually that the boundary is healthy.

What It Is: This activity introduces mindfulness and grounding techniques clients can use to regulate their nervous system before, during, or after a boundary-setting conversation.
How It Helps Clients: Grounding skills help clients stay present and regulated in a moment that might otherwise feel overwhelming, making it more likely they’ll follow through with the boundary.
How To Do It: Introduce techniques such as guided imagery, progressive muscle relaxation, or five-senses grounding. Practice these as a group, and discuss when clients might use each technique in a real boundary-setting situation.

20. Building Supportive Self-Talk for Boundaries

The internal narrative a client holds about boundary-setting often determines whether they’ll actually follow through.

What It Is: This activity explores how self-talk influences a client’s ability to set and maintain boundaries, and helps clients build more supportive internal language.
How It Helps Clients: Clients who practice self-compassionate self-talk are more likely to follow through on a boundary, rather than talking themselves out of it in the moment.
How To Do It: Ask clients to identify critical self-talk that comes up around boundary-setting, such as “I’m being selfish.” Practice reframing these thoughts into more supportive, self-compassionate language members can use in the moment.

21. Repairing After a Boundary Rupture

Setting a boundary isn’t always successful on the first try, and clients often feel real shame when they cave, backtrack, or let a boundary slide.

What It Is: This activity normalizes boundary “ruptures” — moments a client didn’t hold their boundary — and explores how to respond with self-compassion and reset, rather than abandoning the effort altogether.
How It Helps Clients: Reframing a slip as a normal part of the process, rather than proof that boundary-setting “doesn’t work” for them, reduces the all-or-nothing thinking that often derails progress.
How To Do It: Ask if any group members have set a boundary and later backed down. Normalize this as common, and discuss how they can respond to themselves with compassion and restate the boundary if it still matters to them.

22. Recognizing Signs That a New Boundary Is Needed

Clients often don’t consciously register the early signs that a boundary needs to be set, even when their body or emotions are signaling it.

What It Is: This activity helps clients identify the internal cues — physical, emotional, or behavioral — that indicate a new boundary may be needed.
How It Helps Clients: Learning to recognize these cues earlier gives clients a chance to respond proactively, rather than waiting until resentment or burnout has already built up.
How To Do It: Ask the group to identify behaviors, thoughts, or feelings that signal a boundary is needed. Discuss whether members have ever had a “gut feeling” that something needed to change, and whether they were able to act on it.

23. Boundaries Across Life Domains

Boundaries aren’t limited to close relationships — they show up across nearly every area of a client’s life, including areas that are easy to overlook.

What It Is: This activity helps clients explore the different domains where boundaries matter, including emotional, physical, time, financial, and digital boundaries.
How It Helps Clients: Many clients focus only on boundaries with people, without realizing that boundaries around their time, technology use, or finances are just as important to their overall well-being.
How To Do It: Ask the group to reflect on their boundaries across each domain — emotional, physical, time, financial, and digital (including social media and after-hours availability). Ask members to identify one new boundary in any domain that would improve their overall well-being.

24. Setting Boundaries at Work

Workplace relationships come with their own boundary challenges — power dynamics, professional expectations, and financial stakes that make setting limits feel especially risky.

What It Is: This activity focuses specifically on common workplace boundary challenges, such as overtime, scope creep, and difficulty saying no to a supervisor or colleague.
How It Helps Clients: Practicing boundary skills in a work-specific context helps clients generalize what they’ve learned to a domain with unique stakes and dynamics that don’t always map cleanly onto personal relationships.
How To Do It: Discuss common workplace boundary challenges group members have experienced. Practice applying assertive communication scripts to workplace-specific scenarios, considering professional tone and the realistic constraints of a work relationship.

25. Self-Care as a Boundary Practice

Self-care is often treated as separate from boundary-setting, when in practice it’s a form of setting boundaries with yourself.

What It Is: This activity explores self-care specifically through a boundary lens, helping clients see rest, limits on their own time, and personal needs as a boundary they hold with themselves.
How It Helps Clients: Framing self-care as a boundary — rather than an indulgence — can help clients who feel guilt around traditional self-care language approach it from a more sustainable, values-driven perspective.
How To Do It: Discuss the connection between self-care and boundaries with oneself. Provide a list of self-care ideas and ask group members to identify two new practices they can add to their routine. Follow up in a future session to process their experience.

26. Establishing Healthy Group Expectations & Boundaries

The group itself offers a real-time opportunity to practice and observe healthy boundaries in action.

What It Is: This activity involves the group collaboratively identifying group rules and norms, then discussing how those norms function as boundaries within the group.
How It Helps Clients: Participating in the creation of group boundaries gives clients a low-stakes opportunity to practice the same skills — clear communication, follow-through, and accountability — they’re building for use outside of group.
How To Do It: Allow the group to identify their own rules and norms. Discuss how these function as boundaries the group will be held accountable to, and use this as an opportunity to model clear communication and appropriate follow-through if a norm is broken.

Final Thoughts on Selecting Group Therapy Activities for Setting Boundaries

When selecting group therapy activities for setting boundaries, keep the specific needs of your clients in mind. If you notice a pattern of codependency within your group, spend additional time exploring the concerns that pattern can create and what steps might help reduce codependent behaviors. Similarly, if you become aware of specific physical or emotional boundaries that could be strengthened, use that as a starting point for group discussion.

If you prefer to run your sessions with structured handouts, TherapyByPro’s Setting Boundaries Worksheets can support group sessions focused on this topic.

Finally, group members benefit from watching their counselor model healthy boundaries in real time. This includes establishing and reinforcing group norms, staying consistent in your therapeutic approach, and being mindful of your own boundary-setting experience. The more aware we are of our own patterns, the more effectively we can support our clients in building theirs.

Resources

• American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed., text rev.; DSM-5-TR). American Psychiatric Association Publishing. Resource
• American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Boundary. In APA dictionary of psychology. Resource
• Linehan, M. M. (1993). Skills training manual for treating borderline personality disorder. Guilford Press. Resource
• Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2016). Attachment in adulthood: Structure, dynamics, and change (2nd ed.). Guilford Press. Resource
• Cloud, H., & Townsend, J. (2017). Boundaries: When to say yes, how to say no to take control of your life (Updated and expanded ed.). Zondervan.
• Beck, A. T. (1979). Cognitive therapy and the emotional disorders. Penguin Books.
• Neff, K. D. (2003). Self-compassion: An alternative conceptualization of a healthy attitude toward oneself. Self and Identity, 2(2), 85–101. Resource
• Yalom, I. D., & Leszcz, M. (2005). The theory and practice of group psychotherapy (5th ed.). Basic Books.