The Truth About Why Most People Lack Healthy Boundaries (Read Time: 3 min.)

It amazes me how much we live under the spell of having ultra-bendable boundaries.  Whether you know it or not, society promotes bending over backwards to meet the needs of others.  And I'm not talking about service or charity or giving of your time and self to help the less fortunate.  Only people with strong boundaries can do that consistently, selflessly and well.

What I'm referring to are the ways in which society sends these subtle messages of "You don't deserve to have your time valued or respected."  For example, when a boss sends you an email request for a project THREE MINUTES before you're heading out of work to go pick up your kids AND expects you to complete the project before you leave for the day, what boundary message are you getting?  Yup, "Your boundaries don't matter.  I need what I need now."  When your father, knowing that you have two birthday parties to plan, a graduate class to finish and a spouse who's at home in bed sick asks you to "stop by" to help him with something, what's the message you're being sent?  Yup, "My needs are more important than yours and even if you're overwhelmed, I want you to stop and take care of this for me."

At what point does the insanity stop? 

When you say so...

Here's the thing I want you to understand about creating AND keeping healthy boundaries.  It's not popular.  You won't get a lot of applause or praise for doing it.  In fact, many people will turn their noses at you, will consider you less of a person, less of an employee, or less of a friend... in the short run.  That will occur until you've sent the clear message that your creating AND keeping healthy boundaries is how it's going to go for a lifetime.  Once the people in your life get that message, they either respect it or find someone else's boundaries to bend.  Either way, all of this healthy boundary creation begins with you understanding the reality of what's going to happen once you set this wheel in motion.

When you start to set and keep healthy boundaries, here are some initial reactions you'll get:

1. Push back- people will insist, nag and cross-examine your lack of availability to meet their needs
2. Criticism- people will question your motives, whether or not you "care", or make your boundaries about their emotional baggage and ask you why you aren't who you used to be and when you're going to become that person again
3. Blame- people will point the finger at you and blame their lack of success because of your abundance of boundaries.
4. Guilt- those who've bent your boundaries for a long time will try to put a guilt trip on you as a means of getting you to resume your doormat role
5. Decrease in perceived performance- Specifically at work, when you stop killing yourself to please your boss, it will appear, at the onset, that you aren't working "as hard" or "as long" and guess what?  That's a perception.  Yes, you aren't working 75 hours and causing havoc in your marriage.  Yes, you aren't staying late and missing your daughter's recital.  Yes, you are saying 'No' to projects and responsibilities that are not your own.  But what you are doing is creating space in your life to have harmony in all areas of your life so you can show up to work without resentment, fatigue, or dissatisfaction.  You're becoming the employee who gives ALL he or she has to ALL he or she does while at work and you have enough of you left over to be satisfied with your performance and to continue to contribute to the company.  If you work for a firm that doesn't appreciate or respect your boundaries (a company that requires you to be the workhorse in order to make ends meet), guess what?  It's time to get some courage and find another job.

None of the things you'll experience when you create and keep healthy boundaries is easy.  None of it.  I'd be lying to you if I said you won't lose friends along the way.  The people who use you will leave your life when you no longer allow that.  But what unfolds, upon the creation and maintenance of healthy boundaries, is a level of living that's courageous, authentic, brave, and bold.  You weren't born to shrink.  You were birthed to rise.

Keep it moving!

You Are Not a Back Door Exit to a Front Door Problem (Read Time: 3 min.)

Scapegoat...

Dictionary.com defines it as "a person or group made to bear the blame for others or to suffer in their place."  It further points to the origin of the term because, in biblical times, a goat was let loose in the wilderness on Yom Kippur after the high priest symbolically laid the sins of the people on its head.

So when you allow other people to put them blame, shame and guilt on you (essentially to treat you like an emotional garbage can that they can drop their stuff in as they please), guess what happens?

You take on wounds, sins, and pain that do not belong to you or that you have the capacity to heal.  

Where am I going with this?

One of the biggest boundaries you will ever set with others comes when you take a stand about what you will and will not allow into your energy field.  One of the things you need to decide to NOT allow in is other people's blame, shame and guilt.  You might be a Capricorn but you are certainly not a scapegoat.  The moment you allow other people to explain away their bad behavior or the bad behavior of others because of you, you have not only lost your power but you have given it away to your accusers.

That kinda sucks...

You are not a back door exit to a front door problem.  

Let me clarify...  

You have an older sister who, since the beginning of time, has been jealous of you for some twenty+ year old reason.  Maybe you got all the guys in high school and she was a nerd.  Maybe you were mom's favorite and she felt abandoned by mom.  Maybe you got everything you wanted because you were the baby and she never got those privileges.  The reasons are irrelevant.  The point is that your sister has been carrying around blame, shame and guilt for years and what she's now trying to do is place all of that emotional garbage inside of you.  If you buy into her drama and feel sorry for her and allow her to treat you like an emotional garbage can out of some strange sense of guilt or sympathy, what you're really doing is allowing her to use you as a back door exit for a front door problem that is 100% hers.  It will not create a solution nor will it erase a problem.  In fact, her misery will become yours because you didn't create and keep an adequate boundary with your sibling.

Here's the boundary: 

I am not your scapegoat.  Your issue is yours and my issues are mine.  You are responsible for your happiness and it is not my job to take your crap as my own.  

Now you can find all sorts of nice, sugar-coated ways to say what I just said but the boundaries are created with a clear, concise, conscious boundary conversation BUT they are held by boundary fortifying actions that back up your words whenever this person tries to use you as a scapegoat (and they will).

Here are some actions that back up this boundary:

• You do not allow discussions about what she feels you did or said that hurt her.  You know where the conversation will go.  Agree to disagree and do not engage in circular arguments.
• Refrain from doing over the top "kind" gestures to make her feel better about her life.  Nothing you do or say will make her feel good about being who she is unless she chooses to.  Do not waste your time.
• Keep conversations on the light side.  People who scapegoat like to slip in "dark side" conversations without you even knowing it.  Any reference to the past, who you were growing up, and how much better things were for you than her are off limits.  The moment a conversation like this starts, simply say "That was then.  This is now.  What good thing is happening in your life right now?  Nothing?  Well let me tell you about how wonderful things are going for me."  That kind of conversation will either make her shut up or send her away or cause you to decide to leave the negative energy that she's committed to having.

At the end of the day, this is not biblical times and you need not be the sacrificial goat for other people's sins.  You get to choose your life.  Especially with the holidays coming up, remember that you don't have to be anybody else's emotional garbage can.  Let people find their own front door exits to their back door issues. 

Faking It For Love (Read Time: 4 min.)

One of the ways that we deny ourselves the room to set healthy emotional boundaries comes in pretending to be someone we're not.  I remember being in a 10 year marriage and feeling like an imposter.  Who I was pretending to be was an appearance I couldn't possibly hold up.  I was afraid to be seen, horrified by the idea of being known.  At that point, being myself wasn't an option.  I kept thinking "What if he knew who I really was and how I really felt?  Would he want me then?" 

The truth is who I was never felt "good enough" so I denied myself the right to be me and, in doing so, usurped my power to set healthy emotional boundaries.  I bent over backwards to please.  I overextended myself for friends, family and my husband.  I beat myself up when I was tired and worked hard to push my true nature down when I'd feel that simmering level of discontent.  But that voice never went away.  You know the voice I'm talking about, the voice that says, "This won't work forever...  You deserve to be who you are... You don't have to apologize."

And one day the real me came pouring out.  I couldn't take living the lie anymore.  I couldn't keep pretending I was happy being an imposter when I was so far from happy, I couldn't see straight.  But when you wait til the point of emotional eruption to stand in your power, the opposite actually takes place. 

The glass house cracks, the foundation rips apart, and you're left in the rubble to pick up the broken pieces... a divorce, custody battle, and poverty stricken period later, that's what I was left with: the pieces of who I pretended to be mixed with the embers of who I was born to become. 

From there, I began to choose me.  I began to embrace myself: the good, the bad and the ugly.  I began to see that I deserved more than I had given myself, that I was worth more than the alter ego I was pretending to be and that I could say 'yes' or 'no' and not worry about other people's opinions of me because, honestly, what they thought of me was none of my business.

Don't get me wrong.  I still grapple with my alter ego.  There are moments when I feel myself conforming, working towards 'perfect' when all I really need to do is be real.  The difference between me five years ago and me today is this: I know I make mistakes.  I know I'm not perfect.  I know I can be hell on wheels some days and sweet as apple pie on others.  But I love my virtues and I love my vices and I refuse to apologize, defend, or cover up any of them.  That's what makes setting my emotional boundaries relatively easy. 

I'm now able to say: "This is me.  Take it or leave it" and feel good either way. 

Remember:

Faking it for love doesn't work. 

What love you obtain by deception you will lose by redemption,

yours and theirs. 

7 Signs that "I Need Space" is a Boundary Violation (Read time: 4 min.)

There are many different ways it can be said.  When one or both partners in a relationship declare a need for "space", it's a pivotal boundary moment. 

Is asking for space an attempt to save the relationship... or end it?
Is "I need space" the beginning of the end or a way to slow down and savor what's being built up?

Or is "Give me some space" a form of boundary violation? 

The answer is... Yes and No.

In Boundaries - Where You End And I Begin: How To Recognize And Set Healthy Boundaries, Anne Katherine defines two types of boundary violations: intrusion and distance violations. 

What's the difference?

An intrusion boundary violation happens when someone crosses a physical or emotional boundary.  Examples of intrusion boundaries include incest, inappropriate communication, or overly controlling behavior. 

A distance violation is one in which a person inappropriately withdraws or withholds intimacy.  Distance violations are harder to detect than intrusion boundaries.  Most of us know when someone has inappropriately crossed a line.  However, most of us live in a limbo state of confusion when someone withdraws from us.  Oftentimes, we spend days and months wondering, "Did I do something wrong?  Is this person going through something?  Why all the distance?  Am I trying to hard?  If I give them space, will that help?" 

So focused on what you did wrong, this second guessing hurts self esteem and, in the meantime, ignores the real issue:

Is this a distance boundary violation?

Here are 7 signs that "I need space" really equates to a boundary violation:

Sign #1: The person withdraws from you when you show signs of wanting deeper levels of intimacy but comes closer to you when he or she needs comfort. 

Sign #2: The person demands an unspecified amount and duration of "space" out of the blue and cannot clearly explain why space, at this point, is necessary.  This demand for space is enforced without any consideration for or input from you.

Sign #3: The person wants to continue certain aspects of the relationship (i.e. sex, work relationship, borrowing money or items, living arrangements) but does not want to contribute to the relationship in a way that involves emotional investment and commitment.

Sign #4: When you ask to "talk", the person discounts the idea of communicating and dismisses your feelings, needs and desires.

Sign #5: Most of the relationship has existed (and been held together) based on your meeting the other person's demands with no reciprocity of him/her meeting your needs.

Sign #6: You feel compelled to give space because you fear that if you don't, you'll lose the relationship.

Sign #7: You don't feel known by this person.  You have a relationship but not one where you can truly and authentically be yourself, flaws and all.

If any of the above 7 signs seem familiar to you, don't miss out on the upcoming FREE teleseminar:

5 Reasons You Let People

Violate Your Boundaries

& the Two Things You Need to Do

to Stop Allowing It

Saturday, October 1, 2011

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