Building Better Boundaries (part 3)

(Posted by Ron)

I will not protect your boundaries for you. Your friends, relatives and relationship partners won’t protect your boundaries for you. Maintaining them is your responsibility, not ours. In fact, you are the only one who can know your boundaries well enough to maintain them. Are you willing to do that much for yourself?

The following five ways to protect your boundaries are by no means all of the ways that exist. However, read them carefully. You might find they will take you a long way towards creating and maintaining the boundaries that have been missing in your life.

1.  Know Your Boundaries:

I can hear it now. “If I knew my boundaries I wouldn’t be in this situation!” Well, you just took the first step in knowing them. Sometimes it’s hard to admit your part in not having what you need to feel safe. Setting boundaries is about creating your own safety. Many people wander through life as victims, using their victimization in lieu of boundaries to help them feel safe. That may sound strange, but remember how we’ve been taught to not kick someone while they are down and it will make more sense.

Others build walls. Safety for them lies in keeping others away. Anger, blaming, pushing others away. All of these are walls. These walls are all built on fear. They fear others. They fear themselves. But mostly, they fear letting others into their lives.  They may say they have “trust issues” and indeed they would be right.  But the source of their distrust is NOT others – it is self.  When you don’t trust yourself to know and protect your boundaries, you will NEVER be able to trust others.

You have choices. A choice for change will require you to make substantial changes from who you have been. You do have the choice to stay where you are, though. I hope the fact you are still reading means you are making a choice to change.

How do you know your boundaries?

• Take time for an honest inventory of what’s missing or negatively present in your life.
• If you need help getting started, review the lists in the second boundaries post, but don’t limit yourself to those.
• Then practice.  With work you will create your own. By knowing what’s missing you begin to identify the boundaries you need.

2.  NO!

For years I have taught that NO is a complete sentence, and it is. I still believe it to be the primary solution to boundary problems even though I’ve listed it as the second of the five ways to protect your boundaries. After all, if you don’t know your boundaries how can you know when to say no? NO may be second, but once you identify your boundaries it will protect you unlike anything else. When you can say no to people or situations that might harm you physically, emotionally, sexually or spirituality, you become safer and happier.

So, you have figured out at least a few boundaries that are missing in your life. Now, all you have to do is begin saying NO when appropriate. How do you decide when and how?

3.  Set Limits

That sounds so easy. It’s not. What should you limit? How are your friends, relatives and partners going to react to those limits?

• “Try on” the feeling of living within the limits you want to set.
• Proceed throughout the day experiencing the feeling of these limits.
• “Act as if” they are real for as much of the day as possible.

Do you begin to feel safer and happier as you do this?  Keep in mind that some of the people around you are the ones who need for you to remain without boundaries. You may have been filling needs for them that you won’t once you take back control.

We teach our children how to set physical limits to help protect them from predators. We even teach our pets to respect boundaries that we set for them. Isn’t it amazing when the individuals in our lives with the worst boundaries is us? It’s time to change that.

4.  Retrain Your Robots

We teach others how to treat us. Gayle and I call it “training your robots.”  Imagine for a minute that you just found out all of the “people” in your life right now are actually very sophisticated “robots”.  The kicker being – you have programed each of the robots to do everything they do and say.  Meaning you taught them exactly how to treat you.   If you live as a victim, your robots have been trained to either feel sorry for you,  take advantage of you, and/or leave you.  If you live as a person who is surrounded by walls, it’s likely you’ve trained your “robots” to fear or avoid you. If you have developed strong and well-defined boundaries you will likely have trained your “robots” to respect you and your boundaries.

It may take a while to convince others of your resolve as you identify your boundaries and begin to set limits. You can probably expect resistance from some of your well-trained “robots”. Keep in mind – it is you who trained them.  The good news is that is is never too late to teach an old “robot” new tricks.  You can retrain them, but only when you are consistent can retraining succeed.

5.  Create Boundaries, Not Walls

Create boundaries that are appropriate to each situation. For instance the outer limits of my personal space are much wider with friends than with Gayle and even more spacious with someone I just met.  Poor boundaries can easily become walls if you restrict all of your space out of fear, anger, or mistrust.

Your boundaries will be clear to you and others. With time and practice you and those with whom you come in contact will be aware of the limits you set. It’s not unusual for those limits to be felt by others without you having to tell them.  When you feel and believe in your boundaries you project an energetic field of protection. However it happens, people feel that energy. On the other hand I know people who project a very rigid “wall or nothing” aura. It is a clearly defined “keep away” type of energy when felt by others.

Your boundaries are firm. You decide how, when, where and to what degree to enforce them. They aren’t walls and yet you feel the protection. You allow a free flow of ideas, feelings, and emotions between you and others and feel safe inside your own skin. If you continue to feel afraid, disconnected, angry, and etc., you are still hiding behind your walls. Try something else, such as just “acting as if” and see how this works for you.

And finally, never be afraid to say NO!

You might also like:

• Today’s Secret
• Now She’s Gone and Done It! (Earnest puts his two cents in)
• Today’s Secret: Two halves DON’T make a whole!
• Today’s Secret
• Have I Finally Gone too Far?