If you are in the process of attempting to learn to honour your own boundaries, or have attended one of my workshops, here are a few observations about some of the things that can get in the way, together with some words of encouragement.
The basic rule about Honouring your personal Boundary is very simple: tune into your Self and then express what is here for you now. However, this can be challenging in daily life, especially when it concerns another who’s thoughts and opinions about you matter to you, whether your employer or client, a close friend or family member, your lover or partner.
My experience of working with Boundaries has revealed that the main difficulties people encounter in honouring personal boundaries in their everyday lives are:
The fear of offending or upsetting others, of not being “nice”.
It is drilled into many of us from an early age to be good, to behave and to fit in. This programming may be useful to some extent in childhood but in adult life, living from the stance of the “adapted child” gets thoroughly in the way being your Self.
Unconscious wounded parts of ourselves can be projected outwards onto others, and an impulse to care–take the other may be triggered. When we are projecting our wounded self onto others and care-taking them, we may think we are being “nice” but we are effectively re-abandoning ourselves. We may also be attempting to forestall negative comments or criticism from others, which is a covert attempt to control.
If we assume responsibility for the other, by believing they are less than capable of looking after themselves, we deny them the opportunity for personal growth. It is questionable just how “nice” care-taking actually is.
When unconscious wounded parts are projected outwards, a reverse impulse can also be triggered, of repulsion to the perceived “neediness” or “weakness” of the other. We then reject this other person, usually blaming them as a cover for any residual guilt we may feel.
Unless we take full responsibility for our own conscious or unconscious need to appear “nice” we may well be left in a default position of either re-abandoning ourselves to care-take others, or of rejecting others. Neither stance leaves us free to express ourselves fully or creatively.
My work with Boundaries has led me to suspect that the fear of “not being nice” is in truth a mask for “I might be really horrible”. When the True Self is finally allowed to express itself, what can be revealed fairly quickly are all the things that have got in the way of that up to now, namely- fears around being not good enough or unlovable, hurts, resentments, disappointments and anger. The psyche which knows this at some level, has already judged all of these things as unacceptable. When these things surface in life or in personal development work, you may experience yourself as being far from nice.
So our self-image may be challenged when we commit to being ourselves. When someone who struggles with boundaries says “this would be selfish, or it just wouldn’t be nice or kind to say No”, it is the fear of facing their own Shadow, one’s own possible cruelty, which is really the issue.
Taking full responsibility for our own wounds and projections enables us to move out of the default position, and become whole again, because we have reclaimed our vulnerabilities and all aspects of our Shadow self which we previously deemed unacceptable. When we let go of the need to care-take others, we are free of residual childhood fears, free to be in relationship with ourselves and free to meet others from a clear, open, creative space.
The paradoxical effect of honouring your own boundaries is not that you suddenly stop being “nice” and become selfish: the effect is that you become clearer in who you are, increasingly confident, and with an internal strength and sense of mastery over your own thoughts and instinctual reactions. In short, you become the sort of person that other people like!
[Note: the above is largely directed to normal adult to adult relationships, whether family, partners, friends or work. There are specific issues in Boundary work regarding the parenting of young children, or family members who are seriously ill]
When your focus is mainly external rather than internal.
This is true even for those of an introverted nature, as well as those who are naturally more extraverted. There is frequently an assumption that boundaries are something to stop others coming into our personal space, i.e., that boundaries are something to do with the external world. The conscious and/or unconscious focus is on “what might other people do, and how do I stop that?” Instead, the Boundary focus needs to be internal, where the questions might be, “who am I, what am I, and what is right for me in this moment now?”
Previous workshop participants have shared with me that they had been trying to double-guess what others might say or think for so long, they no longer knew where their own Yes and No were.
My observation is that where personal Boundaries are incorrectly assumed to be to do with the external, the effect in everyday life is that people often have little idea where or what the boundary that they are trying so hard to protect, actually is. They are trying to protect something that is as yet internally insubstantial, so their attempts to honour their boundaries are unsuccessful. This in turn leads to an ever-increasing use of Walls or Barriers as a substitute for healthy personal boundaries.
The more you shift to an internal awareness of what is right for you in each moment, the easier it becomes to express your Self without making others wrong.
When boundaries are seen as an external matter, boundaries become associated with fear.
A corollary of the focus being external rather than internal is that if the focus is on stopping something happening or controlling others/life events (e.g., someone might came into my space, I might be taken advantage of, no one speaks to me like that etc) rather than on being one’s own True Self, then fear is in the air. I suggest that an unconscious equation between boundaries, fear and survival develops. If this is so for you, a re-appraisal of Boundaries may raise vulnerabilities.
Fear is a contraction of the Self, and a person can’t contract and expand at the same time. Again, if the focus is drawn to the internal, to an expansion of the self, there can be a small, subtle but hugely significant shift. Boundaries become about expression, expansion, communication, relationship, and stop being about control, prevention or fear.
That the True Self has been hidden away so effectively, that the person no longer knows who they are, or what their needs and wants are.
This is surprisingly often the nub of the whole Boundary issue. There are individual cases where the True Self was experienced as being either so unacceptable, or being in such danger in childhood, that the psyche hid it away in a desperate attempt at self-protection. This may well have been the only option open to some, due to early life circumstances. But it sadly leaves the adult ill-equipped to meet the world face on, let alone enjoy themselves fully. As a previous workshop participant said; “I am so far out of touch with my personal needs I don’t know what to look for”.
So the first step of Boundary work – namely tuning into the Self through the vehicle of the body to discover what your needs and desires are – may be much harder for some than for others. If this is true for you, take heart and do not be discouraged. Focus more on tuning into yourself regularly, and expressing your needs to yourself till you get clearer in who you are. Then gradually begin to express this to others.
Boundary work is not about looking at the ego whilst still being in the ego. It is part of a lifetime’s journey about discovering who you really are, through the mechanism of trying to express who you really are in the everyday world in each moment. It is about honouring your Self, just as you are right now, whether that be joyous or fearful, or anywhere in between. The more you practice it, the more you find out who you really are. The more you find out who you really are, the more will you have the incentive to continue, as you move into a state of increasing trust in yourself.
I hope that some of the points above offer you support in facing obstacles that get in the way of you expressing your True Self, even if simply to help you in feeling less alone with your challenges. Please contact me
« go back to news