Healthy unhealthy boundaries

If you are like the thousands of clients and students who have come to see me before you, the frank nature of this work will evoke a range of emotions: hopefulness, extreme weariness, anxiety and excitement. Sometimes you will feel that you are selfish, especially when it comes to changing tacit agreements in relationships and prioritizing feelings. For some, the idea of ​​rocking the boat of boundaries causes fear, guilt, and shame. Will the people I love laugh at me? Am I betraying them by changing the rules unilaterally?

As you develop these skills, know that real, lasting change happens step by step, not overnight. You will learn to change your behavior patterns by doing one right thing after another. There is a long way to go from Part I (gathering information) to Part II (transforming information into new behavioral patterns and choices). So, patience and self-compassion are excellent companions when breaking free from ingrained destructive attitudes and behaviors.

Reflecting on your mistakes, you may feel embarrassed, sorry, or ashamed. Understand that your past behavior is not a reflection of you today, but only what you knew at that time. And this entire book and your personal transformation process is a judgment-free zone. If at some point you feel bad, rejoice. You are doing something that 80% of people will never do. Besides, you are human, my dear. Give yourself a treat.

But here's the thing: you are solely responsible for compiling your own operating instructions. It is "read" by everyone you come into contact with. If you feel disrespected, underestimated, or taken for granted, it's time to rewrite the instruction manual, setting a higher bar for yourself and everyone else involved in the process. This is quite within your power.

To set yourself up for success, create a safe and comfortable place in your home where you arrange your inner space. I call this sacred place a zen lair. This is an ideal corner for meditation, journaling and integration exercises, which you will read more about below.

How to use this book: some tips

This book is meant to be read in chronological order. Why? Because each chapter builds on the previous one.

To help you apply what you've learned, in each chapter I offer practical tips, benchmarks for measuring your progress, and exercises. I use them in my work with clients and students, and they are necessary to achieve the desired results.

• Straightforward advice: In each chapter, I summarize key ideas to help you stay on track.

• Back to you: a quick assessment as you go will help you personalize the information and apply it to your unique case right away.

• Mistress of the Limits in Action: At the end of the chapters, I offer two main ways to apply new knowledge in practice. “The first thing that came to mind” are ways to expand your self-awareness. Digging Deeper are integration exercises (read more at the end of the book) that will help you create sustainable change (don't skip them!). From time to time I also offer something "For inspiration".

• Online Boss of the Boundary Bonus Pack: Check out my website for exclusive mindfulness tools, guided meditations and additional strategies: BoundaryBossBook.com/bonus.

Want some advice? Move at your own pace, take what works, forget the rest. When it gets hot, slow down, cool down, catch your breath. Remember the tools you have mastered and use them. Give yourself a break for a while and come back when you're ready. Inner work can evoke strong emotions. Listen carefully to yourself. Ask yourself questions: “Do I need to take a break? Take a walk? Call a friend or a professional?

Your mental health and peace of mind is your responsibility and should always be your priority. So, throughout our journey, please take care of yourself . I promise that if you work hard, you will see and feel the positive results in your life and relationships.

The process of establishing boundaries takes some time, but learning to define and respect them does not take time. If you stay on course, by the end of the book you will have the skills and understanding of exactly how to do it. You will systematically weed out harmful information that has influenced your behavior so far. You will begin to transform your habitual thought patterns into powerful, conscious beliefs and actions. You will pave the way for positive, lasting change that brings more satisfaction, confidence, and peace to all of your relationships. And they will be based on what you really want, not on the negativity of your childhood. The self-knowledge you have acquired will greatly affect your entire life.

Consider this book a gift of love from my heart to yours. For more than twenty years, I have watched this process change people's lives, and the definition and formulation of normal personal boundaries become accessible and effective. I see tangible results every day in my life and in the lives of my clients. I have already helped thousands of women from all over the world to become mistresses of their own borders, and each went her own way. My mission is to guide you on the road to a unique, fulfilling life.

Ready? Let's get started!

Part I. Links between past and present

Chapter 1. From complete mediocrity to a real master

I was a bridesmaid eight times when I was in my twenties. Eight .

I should have politely declined at least half of these ugly outfits, but I couldn't say no. Or, "Not that," or even, "I'd love to attend your true love party and all, but I have an urgent problem." (Well, for example, I was scraping change from the bottom of my bag for subway fares, because I was a 22-year-old poor student trying to make ends meet in New York.) How could I afford to come to a wedding celebration with girls I knew from working together as waitresses in the old days? To be honest, my fear of upsetting future brides was much stronger than the reality of not having money. I didn't want to appear rude, insensitive, or worse, "unpleasant." If I said no, I would give up the privilege of being elected. Who am I to so to do?

This fear alone made me shell out thousands of dollars I didn't have (hello, new loan!) to participate in rituals for people who wouldn't even be on my housewarming guest list (if I had a house). ). No wonder I felt an unnecessary burden and felt frustrated. These pent-up emotions made themselves felt at bachelorette parties, wedding rehearsals, and any other time I saw blue-green eighties dresses with wide shoulders hanging in the back of my closet, which I definitely not would wear again. For what? For the sake of "honor" not to be able to speak openly. Looking back, I can only say one thing: "People, this is complete nonsense."

My eternal status as a bridesmaid was a symptom of a larger problem that millions of women face: misplaced personal boundaries. Yes, the difficulty in setting, maintaining and explaining healthy boundaries in all areas is practically an epidemic. Wrong boundaries are very costly. This leads to conflict, unbalanced relationships. Do you need it? Of course not.

As far as my border mess (and probably yours too), the fear of disappointing someone got in the way of basic common sense. I could choose another option, decide for myself how I would spend my precious time and money. I could say, “No thanks. This dress is disgusting, just like your fiancé." (He lashed out at my engagement!) I had many options, and one major obstacle to trying to keep my boundaries: I didn't even know I had a choice.

Wherever you are in your life, you also have a choice.

For the last twenty years I have been a licensed clinical psychotherapist, treating primarily women who suffer from a variety of personal boundary issues. All of them had boundaries that were either set chaotically, or were too flexible, or not flexible enough, etc. Some clients are so independent and self-sufficient that they never ask for help and do not allow others to help them in anything. They prevent taxi drivers from putting their heavy suitcase in the trunk, or grocery store packers from unpacking their groceries (but that's their job). “I myself, thank you,” they will say. Others suffer from an obsessive need to please others at the cost of their own well-being. Or they go out of their way to please everyone (even those they don't like). This can manifest itself in a “yes” answer when they want to say “no”: for example, they agree to hold a fundraiser at the maternity committee (again), even if they have a blockage at that moment at work and at the same time they are trying to sell a house. Or they invite a drunken relative to their birthday party, even though they know it won't end well. Based on my professional and personal experience, I am well aware that “no” only seems to be a simple word. For many it is the most difficult.

Let's get back to you. How are your borders?

Below are some common border issues. Learn and Are you yourself?

• Do you ever say "yes" to requests, even if your intuition says "No, thanks"? “Yes, I will come ( while abandoning my own plans ). Sounds great, can't wait!"

• Do you suffer inconvenience for the sake of others? "Of course I'll look after your cat for a week because you don't want to pay for a foster home!" ( Even though it's an hour drive to Brooklyn, and your cat hates me. Okay, let's say it's mutual .)

• If you don't like the behavior of one of your friends, do you avoid a difficult conversation by trying not to meet him? “Oh, I really want to see you, but there is absolutely no time with this job!” ( Although I can meet my girlfriends with whom the relationship is not so tense at any time .)

• Do you express anger in a passive-aggressive way instead of calmly expressing your feelings? "As you wish. I changed my plans based on what you said before, but that's okay!"

• Are you so self-sufficient that you do everything yourself? "I myself!" ( Although I am tired and frustrated and now mentally scroll through the list of those who should help me in gratitude for my kindness in the past . )

If you recognize yourself in any of these examples, don't worry, you are not alone. So far, we are only collecting information about exactly how you manage your borders. This will show you where to focus your efforts.

No matter how many memes we see in social media feeds (for example: "No - this is a complete sentence!" or "You can do it, baby!"), the reality of knowing and expressing the true essence is much more difficult if you are used to managing your boundaries.

Incorrect boundaries are tiresome. Because of them, dramatic situations arise that take up our time and energy. As you probably already know, putting out fires in our personal lives requires a lot of effort. But when we are held captive by our wrong boundaries, we often do not realize that we ourselves are inadvertently starting these fires. To eliminate distractions, we need to go back to our earliest experiences—the crime scene, so to speak—when the first injuries occurred and the first lessons were learned.

To illustrate the idea of ​​the influence of early traumas on unhealthy boundary-setting and spontaneous conflicts, let's walk the path of our memory. I will share a picture of how I myself went from complete hopelessness to semi-hopelessness and finally became a full-fledged mistress of her own boundaries. I hope that in my story you will hear echoes of your own and feel confident that you can also become the mistress of your life, having gone your own way.

Watch and Learn

When I was young, I learned all about broken boundaries and ineffective communication from two people who had almost no life experience before they started raising children. My mother was nineteen and only three months into her freshman year of college when she became pregnant with my older sister. She dropped out and married my father in the back room of the Presbyterian Church in Glens Falls. In less than six years, they had three more daughters. I am the youngest.

Raising us in suburban New Jersey, our parents played traditional roles. My father was a breadwinner - a top manager, a "white collar". He played golf on the weekends, drank too much (jammed martinis in the same quantities as the characters in the series "Mad Men") and demanded that there was always a hot dinner on the table when he returned. Mother was a loving, kind-hearted and caring housewife who raised us and all our friends. My father made money, and my mother took care of everything else, including housekeeping and looking after our well-being.

Our family, like many others, was fine with unspoken grievances and emotional dysfunction. My parents grew up in families where they avoided openly discussing painful topics or problems. And that's the point: ineffective communication skills lead to weak or impaired boundary management skills.

Father was not cruel or aggressive, but we were all afraid of his disapproval. His mother tried not to upset him. My sisters and I rarely heard his low, rumbling voice unless there was a problem. In total, I probably exchanged less than a hundred words with him in the thirteen years before their divorce.

His inability to communicate resulted in emotional withdrawal. So even when he stayed at home, he wasn't with us. Hello sports fans! - it was a signal that meant "I occupy the TV and will watch golf." My sisters and I could sit glued to the screen watching the last five minutes of Grease (right before Olivia Newton-John goes from good girl to smoking, spandex-clad whore), but as soon as the line about "sports enthusiasts" ”, we understood that there was only one option:“ No problem. Bye-ah!” Actually none of us are didn't like not being able to watch the movie to the end, but we acted like we didn't mind. To be honest, this is not an option.

Often the most stable rules in families are those that are not explicitly stated. For example, in my family it was clear that parents had an unspoken agreement about the role of everyone: dad is the breadwinner, and mom brings up children and manages all family affairs. However, perhaps the most important unspoken convention in our house was to avoid direct expression of anger. Just as I felt that my always chirping mother was afraid to rock the boat with my father, I knew instinctively that anger was taboo.

People, even small ones, always try to minimize risks. My childhood experience taught me to automatically read people and scan situations in order to assess the degree of threat and avoid conflict. The threat could be anyone's anger. I tried not to upset my father. Like the sisters, I didn't express my true feelings. But emotions do not disappear by themselves, just because they are uncomfortable or unacceptable in our family systems. They go underground. And this is not good.

In our family, four teenage girls expressed repressed anger by loudly slamming doors, swearing, and, if their parents were not at home, occasional fights. In addition, the anger of the older sisters (and the veiled emotions of the entire family) manifested itself in other unpleasant, albeit indirect, ways: they ran away from home, got bad guys, used drugs and drank. In such situations, the sight of my father's disapproval and my mother's suffering made a strong impression on me. I vowed never to be the cause of either. It's not that I didn't do it all. Did. I just avoided being caught red-handed.

I have learned to hide my true feelings deeply. Adapting, I transformed them into more acceptable ones (for example, anger turned into sadness) and ignored my instincts. It kept me from disapproval and lessened my primal fear of being kicked out of the clan if I dared break the unspoken rules. By the time I left for college, the list of my "accomplishments" was: unhealthy communication style, mess with personal boundaries, and questionable coping methods. I was a total wreck about my boundaries.

Let's get back to you. What forbidden feelings did you have?

Check the boxes for emotions that you were judged, punished for, or banned from as a child.

• Happiness: joy, satisfaction, feeling of carelessness.

• Sadness: disappointment, hopelessness, indifference.

• Fear: anxiety, feeling threatened, fight-flight-freeze response.

• Disgust: disapproval, refusal.

• Anger: hostility, excitement, frustration.

To become a full-fledged mistress of your boundaries, you must allow yourself to experience all feelings. And you need to start with the awareness of those that you would prefer not to experience.

Alone with myself

In adulthood, my disorderly boundaries have not gone away. I have mastered the methods of indirect communication - sarcasm, eye-rolling, and occasionally hostile lies, such as: "I said everything was fine!" (Sound familiar?) Also, I learned how to manipulate; those I managed (usually my boyfriends) never realized that behind the mask of "everything is in order" lies my secret plan. The manipulation ensured that I would get approval, avoid confrontation, and not upset them. In the meantime, I did whatever I wanted, but in a secret way: like spending time with an old love or in the city with my sisters (and "forgot" to tell about it). Attempts to control people and situations were dictated by the desire to feel safe. This strategy worked for a while, but one day it broke. It is not surprising that, having not learned to express my sincere emotions as a child, I found myself on the psychotherapist's couch in my student years. And I've been there for thirty years.

To be honest. Ineffective communication skills are the cause of underdeveloped or incorrect boundary management skills.

When I started psychotherapy, I did not know about the term "boundaries". I had no idea that the mess with setting and maintaining my boundaries affects all areas of my life, including socialization and communication with others. Since college is such a time when even non-drinkers drink alcohol, by my senior year I had already experienced my share of drunkenness to the point of vomiting and passing out. My father set the example, and my merry, out-of-control older sisters followed suit. From the age of fourteen I drank along with them. By the time I entered college, I thought my drinking behavior was normal. But my therapist, Bev, didn't think so.

After several weeks of my casual mentions of alcohol exploits, Bev once stunned me. “If you don’t complete the 12 step alcohol program, I will have to end our relationship,” she said. Wait, what? Is my therapist leaving me?

how to properly build personal boundaries

2020-2021, according to psychologists, are the years of personal boundaries. The pandemic and lockdowns around the world have forced people to take a fresh look at their comfort zone and personal space. Many of the tips about ignoring irritants or avoiding conflict are no longer relevant. We figure out what needs to be done now in order to properly build personal boundaries.

What are personal boundaries?

Personal boundaries are those limits within which comfortable communication lies. Inside them are your values ​​and personality, and on the other side is the outside world, as well as other people with their own boundaries. By building his boundaries, a person literally gives permission to the world around him to influence him.

It is important to understand that by building and strengthening your personal boundaries, you are not creating a blank wall, but a safe space for healthy communication with your family, friends and colleagues

You build and protect your comfort zone all your life, from early childhood. Its formation is influenced primarily by your environment: family, friends and even the mentality of our country. Thanks to them, your personal boundaries can be as thick as the Great Wall of China, or as thin as a soap bubble.

How do you know that you are doing well with personal boundaries?

You confidently answer “no” when something doesn’t suit you: when they offer you to work overtime, go on your day off to weed in someone else’s country house, when friends drag you almost with threats to watch a comedy that does not cause you any positive feelings. If you answer “no” and do not feel guilty, then you most likely have a clear understanding of where your personal boundaries lie and under what circumstances they are violated. If you can verbally explain to the interlocutor what does not suit you, while not getting personal and not using insults, you can consider yourself the owner of a black belt in the protection of personal boundaries.

Two extremes lie on either side of this skill level:

• In one case, a person never refuses for a variety of reasons.

• In another, he always refuses, even contrary to logic and his own interests, completely isolates himself and his personal space from those around him.

Where are your personal boundaries?

In his book “Personal Boundaries. How to set and defend them” Jenny Miller and Victoria Lambert draw attention to how, with the growth of the use of modern technology, people's personal boundaries have become more fragile.

“With round-the-clock Internet, we are always in touch. It is impossible to forget about everything, we are constantly subjected to external pressure and interference (and partly encourage it ourselves). This speaks of unhealthy boundaries and the inability to protect yourself from harm. In addition, we used to communicate in person, face to face, but now there is a risk of misinterpreting a situation, mood or statement” , the authors write in the preface of their book.

The personal boundaries of people have become more extensive, they extend beyond the boundaries of real physical bodies or norms of offline communication. Now they are also in the digital space, where it is even more difficult to track them and mark them with checkpoints. And yet personal boundaries, with all their diversity of qualities, have a special feature - variability, and with the help of certain efforts they can be strengthened, expanded or removed those parts that cause discomfort.

How do you define your personal boundaries?

One word "no" is not enough for this. “In order for the borders to remain in good condition, they, like the skin, need care. The more confident you make decisions, the more you take care of yourself, the healthier the boundaries will be,” say Victoria Lambert and Jenny Miller.

"Frontier" areas are the most common situations that first help you build your personal boundaries, and then can begin to test their strength.

Family

Parents and siblings are especially hard to make boundaries. These people have known you since childhood, they saw you in the days of the very first victories, and in tears from the first defeats, and in a bunny costume at a children's matinee. In addition to warm memories, relatives often also have leverage that they can try to use when they want to give or receive help. It is difficult to refuse in such a situation, so many choose the path of tacit consent.

Exit: Openly and respectfully acknowledge the requests of your loved ones, but do not be afraid to refuse them - you will not renounce your relationship in this way. Chances are, your family has experienced much more dramatic moments than your refusal to come on the weekend after a hard week at work.

Friends and partners

Another category of people whose favor we are afraid to lose because of an unsuccessful refusal, excessively harsh phrases, or because we appear in front of them in a bad mood.

Exit: Remember that we are all living people who have bad days when trains are late or a dog eats a passport, and even the most hilarious movie cannot cheer you up. In a situation where you feel pressure, you should calmly say so without coming up with additional reasons to be alone.

Work

Fear of being fired or losing income often motivates people to work even in their free time. Violation of personal boundaries at work includes overwork, the performance of other people's duties, as well as communication on official topics outside the working day.

Exit: Even if you have great relationships at work, with your team or partners, remind yourself and those around you that you are a living person with a need for work-life balance and that you can do work tasks during the time allotted for this.

Internet

A limitless space in which each user has his own opinion and actively shares it, often condemning other people's views. Anything can cause discomfort and a feeling of violation of your personal boundaries: an unpleasant discussion in the comments or offensive material caught in the news feed.

Exit: Many social networks offer the option to hide posts if the content offends you. In this way, you protect your personal boundaries and at the same time do not violate others.

The key to maintaining your personal boundaries is caring and caring for yourself, which gives you a sense of your comfort zone. To ensure that your boundaries can always perform their protective function, you will need a few rituals that Jenny Miller and Victoria Lambert recommend in their book.

• Establish healthy sleep and eating habits, get rid of bad habits. Thus, the body will be able to function in a comfortable mode and you will better understand the nature of stress.

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