September 22, 2022 - Chocolate Serenity

Navigating the Journey

So you have set some boundaries. You got the courage up and told the folks who need to know. Hopefully you have been met with understanding and folks are honoring them. It’s nice if other people honor your boundaries, but truthfully the key person that should honor your boundaries is you. But it is hard, because as we previously discussed in an earlier post it can be both enlightening and lonely. When it gets lonely we often question ourselves and are tempted to roll back the boundary. It’s only natural and we must resist the tendency to be too hard on yourself. This is a marathon and not a sprint. It’s ok to adjust a boundary or abandon one altogether as long as it is your choice, and you are making it for reasons that you shouldn’t regret. Sometimes you try a boundary and realize that it doesn’t quite fit your need. It may be too harsh or too lenient. That’s ok. Adjust and find what fits. I will say this, setting boundaries across cultural lines or generational lines will probably result in some adjustment. Its also ok to have customized boundaries for different groups of people. There are privileges that you may want to extend to groups of people that you don’t want to extend to others. That is your choice. Ultimately this journey is about your physical and mental safety and well-being. If you slip and allow a boundary to be crossed, spend some time reflecting on why you made the allowance. Was it necessary? beneficial? intentional? accidental? Another thing to reflect on is how it made you feel. Whether intentional or accidental how did it feel when you did not honor your own boundary. How much personal capital di you have to forfeit? You may be tempted to judge or beat up on yourself. Resist the urge. This is a change process and change processes aren’t always smooth. Don’t invest in shame about it whether from yourself or someone else. Instead figure out why it happened. Similarly if you find that you were persuaded or coerced to relax your boundary for someone else’s benefit, please interrogate that. Some folks are deliberately manipulative and some folks are less direct about getting their own way. If you find yourself people pleasing, you will need to uncover why you are invested in pleasing others at your own expense. I will bet that it doesn’t feel good, so be honest with yourself about why you do it. Setting and maintaining your boundaries is only your responsibility. Other people may vary but you are the one that others will look to when they are determining if they should honor your boundary. On the other hand, no prizes will be handed out for sticking to a boundary that no longer serves you. Seek balance not perfection in this process. Give yourself and others grace to adjust as necessary. Choose what is important to you for yourself even if you have to fight for it. Fight for your boundaries if you have to. Make time to reflect on what is important to you, and look for alignment between those two categories. You are worth the work it will take you and other people to get this right. You are not too much, stuck up, sedity, or high and mighty. You are a human trying to have the most fullfilling human experience that you can. Best of luck on your journey.

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Other People’s Perspectives

Other people’s perceptions. Whew. They are ever present and are always informed by their own experiences. When a person sets a boundary they are likely to experience other people’s perceptions, perspectives, opinions. What to do with them is always the money question. If you qualify as other people, this post is for you. At some point in our lives we are all ‘other people’. There are a couple of assumptions I will make about people who set boundaries. The first is that they thought through what was important and prioritized what were must haves and what were nice to haves for both health and well-being. The second is they weighed the cost of both setting and not setting the boundary. The third is they are/were willing to pay the cost of whichever action they choose. What that means is that while we (other people) are entitled to our thoughts and feelings about someone else’s boundaries, before expressing them it’s probably helpful to understand why we have that perspective. Are you reacting to and prioritizing your own wants/needs/issues/traumas? I will give you an example. Someone I love deeply chose a boundary for themselves and I was upset by it. But when I dug deeper I realized that I was processing their boundary as a rejection of me. I was centering myself. When I figured that out I was able to honor the boundary. Once you understand your why, you need to make a decision about what you will do with that perspective. You don’t always have to share it! Weigh the cost of both sharing and not sharing and decide if it’s worth it. And by that I mean, will sharing it help the other person or just you? Sometimes it’s worth it and sometimes it’s not. If you are sharing only to make yourself feel better, interrogate that before you act. In the example above, what I ended up sharing was the journey I had taken to honor the boundary, as opposed to my initial self centered perspective. For some people, doing the work of setting the boundary is hard emotional work and when it is verbalized there are still residual doubts or fears. If sharing your perspective will unnecessarily exacerbate those, is it really worth it? The other thing to remember if you are other people in this context, is that leading with curiosity could help you to understand why the person needed to create that boundary. Now curiosity is not the same as nosiness. You don’t need to know someone else’s whole life story to honor a boundary. What I mean by curiosity is how have they been impacted by not having the boundary and how will having it improve their lives. If you are the boundary setter, sharing your rationale with people upfront could help them to better understand your need and increase their investment in honoring your boundary. For other people in this context, please be empathetic. This work is not easy.