Setting Personal Boundaries - protecting the Self

To contact Peter for an appointment click here. To email click here.

I have written this article several times and have struggled with it for some reason. Eventually I found that if I wrote this through the eyes of a client then it fell into place nicely and I was able to get my points across. For boundary setting for me has been very easy since I was a child and it comes very naturally and unconsciously. This was something that I had to learn and define for myself in order to write about it and teach it. I used to just do it. So that is why I had to use this approach.

There are three primary areas in relationship to learning to have a healthier relationship with Self and others:  boundaries, emotional honesty, and emotional responsibility. In this article I am discussing the issue of boundaries. The three areas are however intimately interrelated.

We need to change our relationship with ourselves and life, which is vital in order to make any long term changes in our relationships with others and interrelate in a healthy way. It is vital to learn to respect and honour our Selves, so that we can awaken to the need to have boundaries that let other people know that we deserve and demand respect.
In my process with clients they will immediately understand when I say, what is so powerful and effective about the inner child healing process, as I have learned to apply it, is that it changes our core relationship with ourselves.  Once we start having a more Loving relationship with ourselves, everything changes. It fundamentally affects everything in our lives. We start to naturally and normally (me – unconsciously):  set boundaries with others;  speak our Truth;  own our right to be alive and be treated with respect and dignity.

To start by learning how to set boundaries and assert ourselves, without changing the core relationship with ourselves, will ultimately not work in the relationships we care most about.  It is relatively easy to start setting boundaries in relationships that don't mean much to us - it is in the relationships that mean the most to us that it is so difficult.  That is because, it is those relationships - family, romantic, etc. - that our inner child wounds are the most powerful. The little child within us does not feel worthy, feels defective and shameful, and is terrified of setting boundaries for fear everyone will leave, not love me, reject me, abandon me. Some times we feel that we have to please, over protect, be responsible for, be the floor mat, be abused, be used, control etc. and so the list can go on and on. The other extreme of this phenomena is those of us who throw up huge walls (barriers) to try to keep people from getting too close - and sabotage any relationship that starts getting too intimate - to try to protect the wounded child within from being hurt or the possibility of being hurt.

With boundaries, as in every area of the healing process, change starts with awareness.  I had to hear about boundaries, and start learning the concept before I could even realize that I didn't have any (client).  I had to start getting some glimmer of an idea of what boundaries are, and how to set them, in order to understand how hard they were for me - and how absolutely vital to learning to Love myself. I even struggled with the concept that I am allowed to put boundaries in place – I thought that I just had to do these things because that is the way that things need to be done. I was amazed at what I had discovered – it may sound strange to you the reader but that is how it was.

So, in this article I am going to be focusing on setting personal boundaries with other people.  I am going to attempt to keep the focus on a very basic level for those readers who are new to the concept of boundaries. 

Personal Boundaries

"Boundaries define limits, mark off dividing lines.  The purpose of a boundary is to make clear separations between different turf, different territory. . . .

In relationship to recovery and the growth process, I am going to be talking about two primary types of boundaries.  Natural boundaries that are part of the way life works - that are aligned with the reality of the rules that govern human dynamics - and personal boundaries."

The process of Recovery teaches us how to take down the walls and protect ourselves in healthy ways - by learning what healthy boundaries are, how to set them, and how to defend them.  It teaches us to be discerning in our choices, to ask for what we need, and to be assertive and Loving in meeting our own needs.  (Of course many of us have to first get used to the revolutionary idea that it is all right for us to have needs.)

(Text in this colour are quotes from Co-dependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls)

The purpose of having boundaries is to protect and take care of ourselves.  We need to be able to tell other people when they are acting in ways that are not acceptable to us.  A first step is starting to know that we have a right to protect and defend ourselves. It is our God given right. That we have not only the right, but the duty, to take responsibility for how we allow others to treat us.

We need to start becoming aware of what healthy behaviour and acceptable interaction dynamics look like before we can start practicing them ourselves - and demanding the proper treatment from others.  We need to start learning how to be emotionally honest with ourselves, how to start owning our feelings, and how to communicate in a direct and honest manner.  Setting personal boundaries is vital part of healthy relationships - which are not possible without communication.
The first thing that we need to learn to do is communicate without blaming.  That means, stop saying things like:  you make me so angry;  you hurt me;  you make me crazy;  how could you do that to me after all I have done for you;  etc. these are our own personal reactions that kick in when a situation arises.

It has nothing to do with the person or incident in front of you. It is your stuff.  These are the very types of messages we got in childhood that has so warped our perspective on our own emotional process.

I grew up believing that I had the power to make my father angry and to break my mother's heart.  I thought that I was supposed to be perfect, and that if I was not, I was causing the people I loved great pain.  I grew up believing that something was wrong with me because I was human.  I grew up believing that I had power over other peoples feelings - and they had power over mine.

The client had completely lost their “I”, that part of us who says this is who I am. This is me. That is you and you are separate from me. I am responsible for me and you are responsible for you. S/he had in a sense given it away or had given others the right for them to take it away.

In my co-dependence I learned to be enmeshed with other people - to not have healthy boundaries that told me who "I" was, and that I was a separate person from them.  I had to become hyper-vigilant in childhood.  I learned to focus on trying to interpret what my parents and other authority figures were feeling in order to try to protect myself.  As an adult, I unconsciously tried to manipulate people - by trying to be what they wanted me to be if I wanted them to like me, or trying to be either intimidating or invisible if that seemed the safest course.  I had no real concept of being responsible for my own feelings because I had learned that other people were responsible for my feelings - and vice versa.  I had to learn to start defining myself emotionally as separate from other people in order to start learning who I was.

The ideal way to understand if your boundaries have been transgressed is to check and see if there is any personal cost to you anywhere, be it in your wallet, personal, personal space, energy and / or exchange. As soon as there is any cost then you know that your boundary has been crossed.

I was not able to start seeing myself as separate in a healthy way (I had always felt that I was separate in an unhealthy way - shameful and unworthy) until I started to see that I had been powerless over the behaviour patterns and belief systems that I took on about myself, I learned in childhood.  Since my behaviour patterns, my behavioural and emotional defence systems, had developed in reaction to the feeling that there was something wrong with me, I had to learn to start taking power away from the toxic shame that is at the core of this disease.  Toxic shame involves thinking that there is something wrong with who we are.  Guilt - in my definition - involves behaviour, while shame is about our being. 

Guilt is:  I did something wrong;  I made a mistake. 

Shame is:  I am a mistake;  something is wrong with me.

On an emotional level the dance of Recovery is owning and honouring the emotional wounds (belief systems) so that we can release the grief energy - the pain, rage, terror, and shame that is driving us.

That shame is toxic and is not ours - it never was!  We did nothing to be ashamed of - we were just little kids.  Just as our parents were little kids when they were wounded and shamed, and their parents before them, etc., etc.  This is shame about being human that has been passed down from generation to generation.

There is no blame here, there are no bad guys, only wounded souls and broken hearts and scrambled minds.
In order to stop giving the toxic shame so much power, I had to learn to detach from my own reactive process enough to start being able to see a boundary between being and behaviour.  I had to stop judging myself and other people based on behaviour.  I started to learn how to observe behaviour without making judgments about myself and others. There is a huge difference between judgment in my definition and observation.  It is vital for me to observe other people's behaviour in order to protect myself.  That does not mean I need to make a value judgment about their being based upon their behaviour.

Judgment is saying, "that person is a jerk."  Observation is saying, "that person seems to be really full of anger and it would be better for me to not be involved with them."

When I use the term "judge," I am talking about making judgments about our own or other people's being based on behaviour.  In other words, I did something bad therefore I am a bad person; I made a mistake therefore I am a mistake.  That is what toxic shame is all about:  feeling that something is wrong with our being, that we are somehow defective because we have human drives, human weaknesses, human imperfections.

There may be behaviour in which we have engaged that we feel ashamed of but that does not make us shameful beings. We may need to make judgments about whether our behaviour is healthy and appropriate but that does not mean that we have to judge our essential self, our being, because of the behaviour. Our behaviour has been dictated by our belief systems, by our childhood wounds; it does not mean that we are bad or defective as beings.  It means that we are human, it means that we are wounded. We all are.

It is important for us to understand the difference between boundaries and barriers, barriers are when we want to hide away from the world, we don’t want to interact with the world due some fear that we have and we want to protect ourselves from being exposed. Boundaries are about us protecting ourselves when some one wants to abuse us in some way, in a healthy way, by not allowing the abuse to take place. With healthy boundaries in place we can freely interact with the world knowing that we can put a boundary in place when the need arises. This gives us great freedom.

When we set a boundary with anyone it is important to know that when you do that the other person automatically generates respect for you. they cant help it. They may then choose to over ride it with another harmful behaviour but that respect is there. If you keep applying boundaries with the person they will eventually treat you with respect. Your ultimate goal.

It is important to start setting a boundary between being and behaviour.  All humans have equal Divine value as beings - no matter what our behaviour.  Our behaviour is learned (and/or reactive to physical or physiological conditions).  Behaviour, and the attitudes that dictate behaviour, are adopted defences designed to allow us to survive in the Spiritually hostile, emotionally repressive, dysfunctional environments into which we were born.

About the Author:

Peter has particular effective techniques in identifying what is going on within oneself, why is your life like this, what is going on, what is your thinking pattern and belief systems. Once identified, we then decide what it is that you want to do about your life situation. This is where you take control, take personal responsibility and choose to change what ever it is you want to, you then replace them with something substantially better. Peter has seen many clients’ lives change completely within weeks of a consultation. You can also do it.

Peter’s sessions are powerful, quick to resolution and bring about long term healing. Peter does not believe in long term therapy and in most cases between 5 to 10 hours of process work can sort out most minor problems be they business, personal or minor illness. In the case of severe trauma it does take a little longer as there is normally more than one area that needs to be addressed.

Peter is a Business Consultant, Life Coach, Healer, Teacher as well as a Business & Personal Coach. He is an expert in the areas of Leadership, Self Empowerment, Healing and Personal Development and in integrating these several, seemingly different, disciplines, Peter is successful at this as the result of personal experience - a solid business background combined with a passion, and gift, for personal development and helping others.

To find out how Peter can help you to move your life forward, check out his website here, and contact him directly by e-mail on peter@iempowerself.com .

To contact Peter for an appointment click here. To email click here.

Please read these articles hyperlinked below. They contain gems that will assist you to gain some insight into yourself and why this happened to you and how you got there. The real crucial thing is for you to understand, in some way – unconsciously – you put it there. All you need to do is discover how you did it then you can undo it. You can overcome it, many have already around the world. Because we are all constructed in the same way, we all have access to the same healing possibilities, if they can heal so can you. The final issue is that it is your choice!!.

Here are the articles on the website, enjoy and ponder – these are pointers for you.  God bless you.

My Unconscious Belief Systems.

The Universal Laws and how they affect you. Once you understand them you can get them to work for you. Look also atthe Universal Law of Belief Systems – it will amaze you.

The wonderful world of Quantum Physics. See how this actually is the mechanics of the laws and the belief systems. Once you get this and use it to your advantage you will never look back. Never!!

Also look at the law of attraction and your belief systems. You will see how it is that you have attracted this to yourself to facilitate your growing. Learn it, the sooner you do the sooner you get better.

Now you may or may not fully understand all of the above. Contact us to teach you how to overcome it. If you can do it in your own – well done and God bless you. Please pass your insights and learning on.

Thank you - Peter