Bryan Foster Counseling

12/16/2025

Gonna give last week’s gift card away later today when I have a chance! get those last interactions in to increase your chances of winning!

12/16/2025

12/15/2025

12/15/2025

Walking with other people who are grieving a loss is one way to ease some of the pain and feel less alone.

12/12/2025

Managing a full December calendar can quickly take you from festive to frazzled. ⁠Psychotherapist Niro Feliciano shares advice on reducing stress and increasing joy this season.

12/10/2025

Week two of the annual December giftcard giveaway is in high gear! No thanks to my lack of posts but it is nevertheless.

Just a reminder these weekly giveaways are to celebrate another year of the private practice being in business! Thanks for all the support!

So this week, let’s have some discussion about boundaries. The concept of boundaries has grown exponentially in recent years. Anyone alive in the 20th century will tell you the concept of a personal boundary did not exist in any overt way for most people in those ancient times lol.

So let’s consider a definition of a personal boundary. The one I use, taken from brene brown’s work, is “what’s ok and what’s not ok.”

So things outside your personal boundaries are not ok and those things would violate your boundaries if you participate or they happen to you. And things that you are ok with are inside your boundaries and you are fine to do them or experience them.

Let’s use a holiday example that is often an issue for people; receiving and giving gifts.

Ok, again, in the olden days of the late 20th century and the years before that, the idea that you may not be grateful or you could say “no thank you” to someone’s generosity was, at best, invisible, and at worst, seen as selfish and a character flaw.

Here in the “enlightened” 21st century, there’s at least the ability to consider what boundaries may exist about giving and receiving gifts.

Real quick - it’s important to understand that a boundary is unilateral, internal. It doesn’t require anything of anyone else. If it does require something from someone else, that’s a limit. And there are different considerations then. For today, we’re sticking with boundaries.

So if we use my definition of a boundary, one that could exist regarding gifts is something like, “I’m not spending more than $20 on anyone I give a gift to” or “I’m not going to keep gifts I don’t want or need” or “I will be grateful for all gifts I receive for it’s the thought that counts to me.”

So imagine if you have a holiday gift exchange at work and the expectation is for gifts to be approximately $50 in value and your boundary is $20. If you participate in buying something for $50, you’ll be violating your own boundary. That may not be a big deal sometimes but imagine a scenario where that 30$ extra you spend on that company gift means the difference in what you can afford for your child or partner and you therefore can’t even spend the $20 you wanted to on someone else. Now that boundary violation might mean a lot more.

Boundaries are flexible, maybe moving to $50 for the company gift exchange is fine for you, but if it’s not, and you do it, you become what I call “dis-integrated” from a part of yourself. The part of yourself where that boundary really mattered. And there will be consequences for that violation. Irritability, resentment, avoidance, harshness, judginess, obligation/compulsion. Something will go awry.

So, what are some boundaries you have or you are considering this holiday season? About gifts or otherwise?

I have a consistent boundary that I don’t do more than 3 consecutive days of family get-togethers during Christmas week. More than 3 and I am really angry and resentful. 2 days and I’m good. 3 and I’m on the edge and probably a little rotten to be around. 4 days and well, does the running of the bulls ring a bell? It’s kinda like that.

In a great example of a boundary violation causing a disintegration followed by a re-integration and re-establishing a boundary, consider our friend Ralphie here.

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12/10/2025

OK congrats to the winner! Check your inboxes! More giftcards to give away this weekend!

Send a message to learn more

12/09/2025

Giving away the first week’s gift card today! Winner gets to choose crumbl or petco!

12/05/2025

Happy first Friday of December everyone! Thanks for commenting on my post about priorities! It’s really cool to see all the different ways you are walking through this world!

We’ll be giving away the first gift card this weekend so keep interacting with anything you see posted to get more entries into the random drawing.

Since we’re giving away gift cards, let’s talk about generosity. The benefits of being generous are well documented. Our overall health improves when we’re generous. Generosity can be in any shape or size.

I’d love to hear some of the ways you all practice generosity. Do you give money? Time? Do you do pro bono work of some kind? Do you volunteer?

I just experienced generosity from my extended family as they took care of our kids while my spouse and I went on a 20th anniversary trip. It was the longest we’d ever been away from our kids and it could only happen because of the generosity of our family.

I’ll post more this month about abundance and scarcity mindsets but being generous and allowing others to be generous to you has shown to improve our health. Being Scrooge has proven to damage our health.

So how do you practice being generous and/or how do you allow others to be generous to you?

12/02/2025

Young adults who took just a one-week break from social media showed improvement in depression, anxiety and insomnia symptoms, a new study says. Plus, tips for how to take a break from your feed.

12/01/2025

Welcome to December and the first weekly giftcard giveaway! We’ve got several gift cards so the winner this weekend can choose between petco, Amazon, Starbucks, and a few other options I’m working on adding.

Let’s start the month off with a question to consider/answer.

Last month of the year. A lot has happened to/for most of us this year. Sometimes it’s good to reevaluate our priorities and/or values.

So, what’s your priority for the rest of December? What’s most important for you? If it’s hard to know, narrow it down using your own personal values. If “family” is a main value for you, spending quality time during the holidays might be a high priority. If “financial stability” is a high value, keeping to your holiday budget or working overtime might be a main priority.

For me, my physical and mental health have needed to be a bit more of a priority as it’s been up and down this year, and they haven’t been a priority because I haven’t adjusted my values to accommodate better physical/mental health in some ways. So I’m working on that. I’m working on integrating a value of “health” in its many aspects so one of my top priorities in December is eating less bad than typical lol and increasing my physical flexibility by stretching daily. I haven’t adjusted super tight hamstrings and those cause immense stress on the rest of my body so I’m going to lay on the floor on my back with me legs stretched up a wall for at least 3 minutes a day. It’s agony. That’s how tight my hamstrings are. Even at an angle. It’s crazy. But that’s one of my priorities this month. Stretch my hamstrings so I can do a bit more physically and hopefully lessen some of the chronic pain I experience.

What about you? What’s one of your priorities for December?