The Art of setting Boundaries.
By Pablo Das
The practice of setting boundaries is a way of establishing and enforcing limits on other people’s unacceptable treatment or behavior. Boundaries can also protect the use of one’s time, energy, and attention. Self-protective in nature, boundary setting is an empowerment practice. They protect us from physical, emotional, and psychological harm and overwhelm.
They are necessary for wellbeing.
Here are 7 things to consider in the practice of establishing and maintaining boundaries.
1. Attune to and honor your own internal experience.
This may seem obvious, but the process of establishing and maintaining boundaries begins when you direct your awareness inward and attune to your own internal experience. Pay particular attention to the sense of liking or disliking things. Boundaries are built on attunement to this internal sense of “yes” and “no”. For people who have poor boundaries, I encourage them to practice honoring that sense. Allow that sense of liking and disliking to inform how you navigate your relationships, how you use your time and what you expose your body, heart and psyche to.
2. Boundaries can be expressed or unexpressed.
Boundaries are yours. They are established internally when you decide to honor your internal experience. You have a choice as to whether you communicate them or not, depending on the situation.
If you are in a relationship with someone who is reflective, open to feedback and emotionally conscious, then communicating boundaries could be an opportunity for the relationship to grow. In some cases, you may ultimately feel closer and safer as a result. When you feel that someone is responsive to your needs, that’s an obvious sign of a healthy relationship. It’s even possible that if you don’t communicate your needs, you robbing people of the opportunity for them to give you what you need.
With defensive people who aren’t open to processing things, who aren’t responsive when you communicate your experience, it may not be useful to communicate boundaries. You can simply establish them within yourself and begin to live from them. With people like this, you might want to keep them at a certain distance. Sure, they can come over for dinner, but you’re probably not going to Vegas for a week with them. You get to decide.
When we’re dealing with legitimately abusive people, it might be dangerous to communicate boundaries. You may just want to get the hell out. Poor boundaries move in both directions, while there are some people who have poor boundaries, there are also those who aren’t in the habit of honoring boundaries and seem to need to cross them as a kind of test. People with poor boundaries and people who habitually transgress against boundaries are a relationship made in hell.
3. Boundaries are not inherently punitive, they are simply consequences. There is a meaningful difference between punishing someone and allowing people to experience the appropriate consequences of their actions. When we punish, we are trying to hurt them back. When we impose compassionate boundaries, we are restraining ourselves from firing back but acting to protect ourselves (and possibly them) from harm. The difference between punishment and allowing someone to experience the consequences of their action is compassion. Compassion is an acknowledgement of pain. It is frequently the case that people transgress against us because they are suffering. Compassionate boundaries acknowledge their suffering while simultaneously refusing to enable them to continue causing harm.
4. Their suffering is their work. One of my organizing principles in my life is a phrase I’ve heard many times in spiritual circles. “We are not our fault, but we are our responsibility”. For me, if a suffering person is doing their awareness or healing work, then I can probably work with them with minimal boundaries. If they aren’t actively engaged in their own work, then I’m likely to have super strong boundaries with them or to disconnect altogether. This sounds firm, and it is. The position I have taken is that suffering is not a justification for causing harm. It’s not an excuse to neglect your responsibilities in a relationship. This is the fairly hard line I’ve drawn in my life. But even then, I don’t punish. I do, however, refuse to shield people from consequences. Even if it’s me who’s imposing them.
5. Boundaries without enforcement (consequences) are useless. If someone transgresses against you repeatedly without consequence, you are enabling them. Setting a boundary is one thing, following through on maintaining your boundary is where the rubber hits the road. This is the hard part! Often, we must set boundaries with people we really love and wish we could have in our lives. That puts an emotional demand on us. But in the same way we hold transgressors responsible for working with the suffering that’s behind their behavior, the fear and sadness and mental and emotional processing we experience in setting the boundaries is OUR work. If a person you have boundaries with continues to cross them, you must be push back through further boundaries or you may have to cut them out entirely. Which brings me to…
6. Do not care-take the other person. If a hard boundary is set, it is not wise or appropriate for you to be the one to support them. It’s not good for either of you and it opens the door to manipulation. This can be hard because people who have poor boundaries re often the highly empathetic ones who are busy helping and saving people all the time. You must restrain the impulse to fix, save and caretake.
7. Over time, allow the growth in this part of your life to make you more forgiving. Once you become a person with good boundaries you may find that you have less of a need to impose them. One truth that seems to be built into the experience of being a person who has poor boundaries is that there can be a sense of a lack of control, helplessness, and victimhood. This experience of self makes the transgression seem like more than a transgression. It confirms a narrative. It’s further evidence of a story. It’s an added layer of suffering and it heightens the pain involved. Once you really know in your bones that those self-protective capacities are there, and that you have a little more ontrol over your life and relationships, the extra layer of suffering lifts. You become more grounded and stable. You become a little more willing to let people be where they are in their process.
Life is messy, people are imperfect. We all have angels and demons within us. We are all capable of terrible things. Take a second to reflect on the time it was you who caused harm, and how badly you want not to be defined by your worst moments. When appropriate, try to be as forgiving as your nervous system allows you to be. The world doesn’t need another morally superior person, waiting to punish people and calling everyone out all the time. Don’t become rigid and punitive. Be judicious with your boundaries. If you can’t forgive anyone and if no one can pass your endless purity tests, you may find yourself righteous and alone.