Setting
Last month we explored how emotional/mental boundaries are intuitive and function to help us feel safe and comfortable in the world. This week I want to go a little deeper and discuss how we go about setting those boundaries.
But first a cautionary tale.
I have a natural tendency for boundary setting and righteous stubbornness. Together these unchecked skills brought restriction instead security and comfort.
We talk about boundaries as adults all the time but our relationship to/with boundaries begins as young children. I’m sure many of you have had similar experiences to these
- Accepting a forced apology from a classmate, as if the apology ractified the transgression
- Told to hug a distant relative you hardly knew and had no desire to hug
- Required to attend gatherings with family or friends that you would have happily missed
These all too common scenarios are adults creating boundaries for children, not maliciously so but because it’s “what you do”. Not to get distracted by how often choices are made for children without their consent; these experiences made me feel like I didn’t have control over my decisions, my actions or how I was treated. As a young woman building my autonomy there was a pendulum swing. I wanted control. Because as a child I had experienced other people making rules for me I, mistakenly, thought that authoritarian edicts were how control was won. I began to build walls. I made black and white rules. I became Arya Stark.
Laugh at my frequent common misspellings – wall
Roll your eyes when I ugly cry at a movie– wall
Dismiss my need for a night in instead of a night out – wall
I was soon living in a self-made fortress, I thought this was power, I thought I was keeping myself safe. I was actually keeping myself alone and exhausted. Control, even when it comes naturally, has a cost. When I look back at that time I can see how DRAINING these monolithic boundaries were. Each wall, a labor to build, consistent energy to maintain and fuel for these boundaries - hurt. I had to keep the hurt close by to keep the walls erect.
I share this because as my list got longer I could either evolve or become bitter and exhausting. I learned to recognize that boundaries are always evolving and a wall is hard to move and change. Walls are sometimes warranted, but there are more strategic ways to keep yourself safe. You might like my brilliant friend put on an energetic hazmat suit when attending yet another contentious meeting. I started putting on a scuba suit when I had to swim into polluted waters. Neither of these require the fuel of pain, victim hood or righteous indentation to maintain.
All of this is great to know about myself and are tools and skills I can use with boundaries I already have but back to the initial question. How do I know when to set a new boundary?The advice I have is simple and one of the hardest things to do.
Listen to Yourself
There are thousands of demands on our time, energy, attention and it's unendingly difficult to give yourself permission to stop and actually listen. I’m sure im not the first to tell you that meditation practices, griefs and a gratitude lists, taking walks without headphones or simply journaling all help you to listen. And As helpful as all of these things are, they are equally as easy to skip. All it takes is wanting to watch one more episode or a kitchen that needs cleaned or even the siren call of just five extra minutes of sleep and the time you allocated for yourself gets put at the bottom of the pile.
So I offer one more thing. Something that helped me listen in a new and deeper ways. It’s advice I heard on a podcast about mindfulness. The speaker, I wish very much I had written his name down now, was describing how mindfulness is more then just sitting in meditation and then dropped this nugget of brilliance.
“The most mindful thing you can do is - When you are having an emotional response, sit down and feel it.”
That’s it, that idea stopped me dead in my tracks. I’d been writing and meditating and trying to deep breath my way OUT of my emotions, but what I need to do was feel them. Our emotions are always trying to tell us something. Every emotion on the spectrum of fury to exaltation is information, and we haven’t been trained on how to listen. I love this tool because you can do it anywhere, anytime, and it works in the moment or even hours later. Angry your idea was shot down at work? Pull over on the drive home, give yourself five minutes to just be pissed. Devastated by the fight you had with your partner? Spend an extra few moments under the hot water of the shower to feel the hurt. Overjoyed that your favorite show got renewed - dance it out!
It may be uncomfortable or foregin at first, especially with those feelings we shame or aren’t ‘suppose’ to have, but it works. I remember the first time I did this. I was so angry about a message I received, I mean spitting mad. I usually would have called a friend to vent and try to prove how wrong the other person was and getting wrapped up in my need to act and my need to be right. Instead of jumping over my emotions I sat down and was angry. I just let myself be furious. As I was letting myself be angry, thinking about why I was upset I saw that I was actually hurt. And when I recognized hurt was dressing up as anger I could see why I was hurt. I was hurt because a boundary was crossed.
Simply sitting with my anger allowed me to listen. My anger was trying to tell me that a boundary was breached a boundary I didn't even know I had. It gave me a chance to change the way I responded, from fighting back from a place of hurt to re-calibrating and setting a new boundary with this person. I didn’t bring out my sword of righteous indignation and try to make that person change their behavior, I changed my behavior. Which is truly the only thing we have control over.
This work is hard, and we aren't well trained on how to feel our emotions, let alone listen to them. I taught kindergarten for a few years and although we talked a lot about emotions all conversations were about controlling them. We get focused on soothing and acting, forgetting to tell our children and ourselves that it's okay to just feel. And when we just feel we have the opportunity to tune in and understand where those feelings are coming from. Feelings are instinctual and help is determined if a person or situation is hostile or harmless. When I listen to my feelings I know where and when I may need to set a new boundary.
With Love,
Erin
