“Compassionate people ask for what they need. They say no when they need to, and when they say yes, they mean it. They’re compassionate because their boundaries keep them out of resentment.”
~Brene Brown
What are boundaries?
What are boundaries in a world in which we are all One?
What does it mean for us to have boundaries, and at the same time embrace our limitlessness as spiritual beings who have been taught that anything is possible and “it’s all good”?
What do we do with the inherent urge to break boundaries that arises in the course of our lives? Anyone who has gone through a divorce faces that challenge!
Boundaries are rules of conduct determining how you act and react in relation to others.
Boundaries outline your preferences and they help you know how you want to be treated.
In essence, boundaries help you define yourself as you teach others how to treat you.
Signs of unhealthy boundaries:
- Saying yes when you mean no.
- Feeling guilty when you say no.
- Acting against your integrity or values in order to be accepted.
- Not calling out someone who has mistreated you.
- Allowing touch when you don’t want it.
- Giving too much out of fear of not being liked.
- Getting overinvolved with someone else’s difficulties.
- Adopting someone else’s ideas when they go against your own.
- Allowing yourself to be interrupted or distracted by others.
- …….and there are many more for each of us, customized to our particular adaptation.
How we develop unhealthy boundaries
As children, rather than remain authentic and declare our boundaries, most of us experience our real boundaries being overridden.
We may express the truth that our sister is driving us crazy and we want her to stay away from our stuff or we will kill her, and we are told that in this family we share, or your sister is younger than you, or that such thoughts are a sin! Our true expression of our preferences (boundaries) is not only not validated, but invalidated.
At times, our boundaries are actually violated, as with verbal, physical, and sexual abuse. This totally confuses the entire perceptual and nervous system of a child, and sets the stage for self-violation later in life.
We adapt and adopt the false self who finds her way in the world that fails to mirror her! We smile when we are mad, laugh when we are sad, and we give our personal power away as if it’s a cheap commodity—in order to keep the illusion of safety in a world that has no place for the real you!
We learn to betray ourselves, and fail to express our boundaries—and in fact, we often fail to feel them. This can lead us to do this with others.
One of the most unhealthy ways to disrespect others and break boundaries is the very toxic act of triangulation. This deceitful attempt to gain power is exploitive, and often used when people act out unmet narcissistic needs for power and attention by going to a third party, rather than encountering the person with whom they have conflict.
A drama triangle can arise when someone takes on the role of victim or perpetrator, and where there is a victim, there’s always a perpetrator. Victims tend to blame external persons, places, and things as the cause of their misery. This one-down person then feels the need to enlist other support and triangulates by bringing another person, or people, into the conflict, in order to feel one-up. These enlisted players then take on roles of their own that have their own dynamic quality, and all kinds of twists and turns can occur.
Often the victim might turn on the rescuer, the rescuer then switches to persecuting—or as often happens, becomes a victim. In some cases, the relationship between the victim and the rescuer can be totally symbiotic, and enmeshed, where the rescuer keeps the victim dependent on them by encouraging their victimhood.
Learning to trust ourselves
Your boundaries are defined by your feelings. Your feelings will tell you if a boundary has been violated by you or someone else. It is essential to know how you feel.
A boundary is a line that defines your personal truth from the rest of the world.
No one can tell you what your boundaries are. You define your own boundaries.
Your family, society, religion, spouse, and even your children will attempt to define your boundaries for you, but only you know what works for you.
For example, monogamy is a boundary for the majority of the world, and implies only one sexual partner. That simply does not work for everyone, and for some, it simply changes for countless reasons.
The boundary of marriage is there to contain us during these times, and that is not a bad thing. Since we are complex beings, coming to know all of who we are is a process.
Part of you may be ready to leave a relationship and another part not. To know your true boundaries in such a situation is not a light matter, and requires self-reflection.
The answer is not to say that the boundary of marriage is meaningless, or that commitment doesn’t matter to you. That may be a lie. Yet there may be a deeper aspect of your being that you are being asked to respond to, a more real part of you that had been buried. From this place, new boundaries arise.
We need to know who we are and what we really want.
When we are shamed for that as children, we may be adults who have poor boundaries.
When you violate your own boundaries, you abandon and betray yourself.
This is called Internal self-betrayal.
Self-trust is all about having healthy boundaries. We don’t trust ourselves when we don’t feel safe with ourselves.
Tune back into how you feel and honor that. This is how you begin to trust yourself.
Boundaries in relationships
We survived by developing a false self because the real self was shamed in our early relationships.
When you express the truth of who you are, and are not validated, you learn not to set boundaries, or to set rigid boundaries, in future relationships.
We think of boundaries being violated when someone does something to us, but there is another violation that can be most painful—the distancing violation when someone withdraws from you.
When you do either of these to others, you are breaking their boundaries as well, and it happens all the time. Technology has made this form of boundary violation called “ghosting” an everyday occurrence
To have intimacy means letting the raw truth of who you are be revealed to another.
If you embrace who you truly are, you embrace the unique expression of source energy that you are, which connects you to others. As you experience your limitlessness, you also experience the limitless nature of others.
Personal boundaries help you to differentiate between your Self and the world. No boundaries is not healthy.
A boundary is not about resisting what you don’t want.
Resistance and fear of what is unwanted is not a sign of healthy boundaries. It is not your place to tells others how they can and cannot behave. You simply share what is good for you.
Learning discernment
Brene Brown says:
“I assumed that people weren’t doing their best so I judged them and constantly fought being disappointed, which was easier than setting boundaries. Boundaries are hard when you want to be liked and when you are a pleaser hellbent on being easy, fun, and flexible.”
Be mindful to give others a chance. If you clearly and kindly set a boundary and they cannot handle it, know that this doesn’t invalidate you.
To access true wisdom, we must heal our tendency to judge which leads us to separate and be separate from others. Our survival brains are wired for separation, and constantly sorting and deciding what is safe, in our best interest, or leading us to our hidden and not so hidden goals.
We all judge all the time, and these judgments elicit feelings that we judge to be wanted or not wanted, positive or negative. The judging mind is adept at putting things into categories.
We judge that it’s too bad that it’s raining on the day we wanted to go kayaking, and then we feel sad or mad. We judge a person for drinking too much, and then feel cold toward him. We judge the president for heartless policies that harm innocent children, and lawmakers for doing nothing, and we become critical or hopeless.
We judge whether the dinner we just paid $24 for was worth it, and whether we ate too much and if our judgment was that we did, we may feel guilty, or mad at ourselves.
Then there is the legal aspect of judgment, and what is judged to be within the law or not as the norms of society are like shifting sands. We are now a highly litigious culture where judgments abounds, and yet boundaries are very unclear.
To move in the direction of discernment, you shift from judgment to loving allowance or loving disallowance, which are very different from right or wrong.
Take the example of the rattlesnake: you could easily allow it to live in the desert where it may serve its place in nature, and yet disallow it to live in your basement. In other words, you would avoid it and most likely do something about removing it.
Healthy boundaries
A healthy boundary is non-resistant and in alignment with oneness.
To have healthy boundaries, you must be aware of what is right for you, and in a state of integrity and self-love. You cannot have this if you are pushing against anyone or anything.
Boundaries are not static, but must be continuously reassessed. We see this in particular with children, as we set new boundaries that support their growth over time. For example, the two-year old doesn’t need to make his bed, but the 6-year old does.
Reassure others that they can tell you what is really true for them, so that you can honor their boundaries.
This means you must know, admit to and express how you truly feel.
Follow your happiness, which is to follow your feelings. Yes, having healthy boundaries is to follow what brings you deep joy.
Above all, be mindful of self-betrayal, and when it happens, have compassion for yourself. Compassion is its own form of sacred boundary, that says, “You are blessed and loved, no matter what.”
May I set boundaries with grace and ease, that allow me to know and be known by others.
