Liberty’s Counseling Office Hosts Event Equipping Students With Familial Boundary Solutions as Thanksgiving Break Nears

As students begin preparing to head home for the holidays, many are returning to tense and stressful situations, ones that have been heightened by the global pandemic. Liberty’s student counseling services acknowledged this with an event last week. 

Over 100 Liberty University students attended Restating Your Boundaries And Drawing Healthy Lines With Your Family, an event hosted by Liberty University’s Student Counseling Services Tuesday, Nov. 3, as part of its Enrichment Series.

The meeting was held in DeMoss Hall and lasted an hour and a half. During this time, Liberty University Counselor Emily Budowanec discussed how to properly cope with tense family situations that often arise when students return home for the holidays.

“This is a weird time because it is almost adulthood, but also not a true independence and that can be weird for us and our parents,” Budowanec said. “The vision with this event was to educate [students] on what a boundary is, what does it look like, and how do we start implementing them.”

While some students attended in order to gain extra credit, other students joined the event to gain wisdom and insight on how to respectfully deal with boundaries in their families and to better understand the emotions that come along with uncomfortable conversations.

“I think the biggest takeaway was knowing my humanity,” senior Amima Labane said. “I think it’s very important to acknowledge that it really does feel good to help people, and it feels good to be there for people. But I think that leads, a lot of times in my own life, to stretching myself a lot farther than I am able to.”

The meeting ended with a Q&A session and information on upcoming events hosted by Student Counseling Services. During the Q&A session, several students took the opportunity to speak up and get advice regarding scenarios in their personal lives.

“I thought it was interesting that she gave examples of things to say in scenarios for people who are having a hard time,” Liberty student Esther Smoak said. “I definitely think [the event] was beneficial, especially for the people who didn’t know they had unhealthy boundaries or for the people who need to set new boundaries.”

“I think it’s super valuable for us as students to come into a room and have these conversations because a lot of times we forget that we have so much more in common than we think we do,” Labane said. “Especially hearing a lot of the questions that other students had made me realize that I’m not the only one that’s struggling with this issue.”

Addi Tarr is a News Reporter. Follow her on Twitter at @addi_tarr.