Boundaries – What They Are and What They’re Not
Boundaries.
Part of every healthy relationship, from family to friends to work colleagues.
Let me tell you how I thought boundaries worked. I would have an issue with someone’s behavior, like mocking me, particularly in public. I would ask them to stop, as that makes me feel small and defensiveness and I quite simply hate feeling like that. Who doesn’t? I assumed that once I told that person my boundary, they would of course respect my request and take care to not mock me in the future.
Here’s a little secret for you on how that went: It didn’t. Straight up did not work.
And why would it? It was not their boundary, it meant nothing to them and in my experience, it was just another tool they could use to upset me. Now that they knew that I didn’t like it, they would do it more often. All I had done was given them more power to hurt me.
I would get so frustrated by them tramping on my boundaries, these things that I had been told would protect me. I didn’t realize that I was coming at it wrong, that I had the wrong expectation for what boundaries were and how to enforce them.
Here’s what I realized:
Boundaries aren’t for the other person; they are for me. They’re not to restrict the other persons behavior; they give guidelines for my own behavior.
That completely blew my mind when I discovered that. Like, boom! *Insert exploding head emoji here*
Now my boundary is if they start to mock me, I will ask them to stop it or just leave. These are things that I’m in control of. The one thing I’m 100% not in control of is another person’s behavior. They have the same agency that I do and if they choose to speak in a hurtful manner to me, I can choose to leave.
If you’re mentally yelling at me right now ‘but it’s not that easy!!’ you’re right. It’s not. Often that seemly simple act of walking away actually means undoing potentially years of mindsets telling you that you must be polite. You can’t take a stand to protect yourself, that’s being rude. It’s not that bad anyway, why make a fuss. But chickadee, you can take that stand, and you are worth it. Your continued wellbeing is so worth it.
There have been two family members that I’ve chosen to have no more contact with because their behavior hurt me over and over again. One of those was my Dad. Repeatedly telling him what he was doing was hurtful didn’t change any of his actions, so I told him that I couldn’t talk to him anymore because of some specific reasons. It was one of the hardest conversations I’ve had in my life. (And believe you me I had several appointments with my therapist over that time! [and more than one shot of vodka.]) My boundary was if you won’t change your behavior, I’m going to have to leave this relationship. He couldn’t, so I did.
Easy? Nope. So incredibly painful. I hurt for the relationship that I’ve lost with him, but I’m no longer subjecting myself to someone that couldn’t see; or didn’t care that they were damaging me. It hurts, but my mental and emotional health are so much better for it.
Having to cut contact like that is extreme, and hopefully not something that you feel like you must do. Don’t be too quick to cut people out for not respecting your boundaries. Instead, be willing to have those hard conversations with people, and even consider whether it’s your own behavior needs changing. Either you will have a stronger relationship for it at the end, or it will show you clearly if that relationship needs some space.
And if you skipped down here it was taking too long, I’ll give you the key point one more time:
Boundaries aren’t to control other people, they’re guidelines for you. To remind you what you’ve decided is okay for a given situation.
The discussion of healthy boundaries is of course much bigger than what I’ve so briefly mentioned here, but it’s a starting point. I’ll be writing more about them as I learn more, but if you feel like you need to know more about healthy boundaries right now I’ve linked a couple of articles and a book, Where to Draw the Line by Anne Katherine. I’ve just started reading it myself, let me know if you’ve read it and what you think. I love over-analyzing books with people 🙂
https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/set-boundaries#how-to-define-your-boundaries
