So far we have dived into a few topics regarding personal boundaries. We have learned why we need personal boundaries, how to tell if we have boundary issues, and also what personal boundaries are. Today we are looking again at another topic from the Boundaries Book, why personal boundaries are good for you. This may seem similar to the first main article in the Boundaries Book, and it is. But this article will solely focus on the benefits of personal boundaries. Frame this topic as “what personal boundaries give you”.
What You'll Find Here
Personal Boundaries Give Gifts!
Looking at what personal boundaries can give you versus why they are good for you, I have found in my practice as a life coach, make them easier to implement. Sure we all need them, but sometimes the want aspect to fulfilling is lacking. When the want is lacking, the potential of implementing them becomes even tougher (that is unless you grabbed our course, Lasting Change). So looking at the benefits of something and wanting them makes it easier to attain, in this case implement, them.
We all know vitamins and when needed medicine are good for us. How easy is it for us to remember to take them? What does CoQ10 even give me again (kidding, it’s great for heart health which is why I took it). Another example in realizing the difference is one of my children. James hates trying new things, this was very evident when he had a chicken nugget and fry diet and basically wrote off everything else. He eats broccoli now because it helps build up his immune system, I explained it as a missing piece to his “health puzzle”.
Have Self-Esteem Issues? Personal Boundaries May Be Your New Best Friend!
I was reading an issue of Forbes not that long ago (actually it was going on 3 years ago so maybe a bit of time ago) and noticed the relationship between self-esteem and personal boundaries. At first I thought that was interesting, but then I realized that Forbes caters to the business community and a weak leader is a huge issue (NO current president jokes regardless of the validity). I did some soul searching. I looked at my past life when I was a ruckus raising pain in the law’s butt. I was respected by everyone. I also had zero issue handing out punishment which led to that respect/fear.
I saw first hand that my boundaries helped me gain respect. I found something extremely interesting that I kept going back to in that article. The exact quote is below. “You define how you are going to be treated and how you are going to react”. I love quotes and that one is HUGE for me. The issue was, I didn’t want to be feared, just respected and appreciated.
So did I have to readjust my boundaries? To an extent. The funny thing is, when I was in relationships I wanted to be, I was walked over regularly. In the streets, nobody messed with me. I had to connect the dots somewhere and see what was wrong. The full quote below explained it perfectly.
Establishing personal boundaries reflects the way you take responsibility for your life. You define how you are going to be treated and how you are going to react. Of course, we can’t control every situation in our lives, but in many personal interactions, we have the ability to state, by word or deed, that certain behaviors by others will or will not be tolerated.
Svetlana Whitener
I found, through some step work and a lot of reflecting, I had boundaries but I picked and chose when I enforced them. I couldn’t physically harm a woman, that’s just not cool in my books, but they might leave! At that time I realized how completely codependent I really was. I started sticking to my guns (not literally this time) and said enough was enough. I lost my most relationship over it, but at the same time I was losing myself. My esteem was low and my boundaries with her were basically nonexistent.
The correlation had been found. Not only was the correlation between boundaries and my self esteem found, I also began finding I liked myself and was worthy of respect.
Your Boundaries Help Explain Who Your Are
There are three main types of boundaries I have found: emotional, physical, and mental. Although they are self explanatory, allow me to broaden each type a bit. Explaining each type of boundary will help to show you what I meant when I said boundaries can help to explain who you are.
Mental Boundaries and Why They Matter
Mental boundaries are what you hold upstairs in your noggin. Your wants and needs are found here. You can also find your beliefs and values hanging around the mental label area. Know what else makes up your mental boundaries? Your thoughts as well as opinions. So how can we have these violated and how do they affect our self esteem?
One thing we have to throw in here is a figurative crowbar, knowledge. This will effect how others view your opinion, thought process, as well as values. Take for instance the abortion debate. I was listening to someone argue for abortion and they explained that the fetus doesn’t feel pain so it really isn’t alive. In the medical community, her opinion raised eyebrows and wonder toward what she was reading. She was basically a big mouth with no knowledge toward the being of a fetus.
In fact, if you have an exposed nerve on a tooth, it would hurt right? I’ll let you have at that, it was just a good example of knowledge being imperative toward your thoughts and opinions. I really despise discussing politics personally. Again, having a lack of knowledge toward something will lower others view of you. I’ve also seen this lead to pointless arguments. When you have established mental boundaries, with knowledge, others will hold your discussions with more esteem!
What About Disagreement on Values and Beliefs?
Ahh yes, a fighting tool for Christians! First we should have a good understanding of what a value and belief is. A value is something you believe is important. A belief is a trust or faith in something. Those are the most toned down definitions I could think of. It’s also where a lot of Christians do the opposite of what God wants! As a Christian Life Coach, I had to bring this one up (also a big reason I get numerous secular/atheist clients!). We are not to shove our beliefs down anyone’s throats.
I have great reasons for my faith (belief) having huge importance (value) in my life. Now, my values and beliefs will differ from many other Christians. In discussing them, I like to first get a good understanding for why others believe a certain way. This includes the thoughts that make up their opinions and such. I have no issue explaining my points even if they aren’t aligned or even run contrary to someone else’s. I also realize they are mine. I don’t engage with people when they belittle my God, I pray for them instead and either end or change the conversation.
Many Christians feel they have to save someone, and while we do play a small part in it, we plant a seed, their thought is not very biblical. Would I correct them in that argument? Sure, with Scripture that I believe would help them. However, I would respect their beliefs and values (their mental boundaries) and pray for them to understand the truth being Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6).
Emotional Boundaries are Just as Important as Mental Boundaries
They are, and you know what emotional boundaries are right? Just in case, let’s clarify what we are talking about here. Emotional boundaries are your feelings, choices, and decisions. If you are emotionally healthy, you’re probably going to make wise decisions. A decision is a choice. A choice is what you picked from your options. Sometimes you only have one choice. Feelings are a bit different, we aren’t talking about me having no feeling in my left thigh, but rather that I’ve enjoyed a relatively peaceful life since January.
So how do we regulate emotional boundaries, especially when we have no control over the feelings of others? That’s actually easier than you may think! We can certainly regulate our emotional boundaries even if we can’t regulate the emotional boundaries of others. Going back to that quote above, it is what we allow.
For instance, I am living the single life. One thing I didn’t like was negativity around me. When negativity was around me it was tough to be my typical free spirit! I would argue back rather than discuss and her emotions typically rubbed off on me. I allowed my emotional boundaries to be regularly violated. It was literally either her or me in my own life. We protect our emotional boundaries by not letting emotions, choices, or decisions we are against dictate our life.
Granted there will be times where we have no say in the matter, like if your husband decided it was time for an affair. However, even in that situation there are areas you can regulate your emotional boundaries! You can either forgive him and fix the marriage with the caveat that next time he’s out or part ways and love him from a far. Regardless, you have your boundaries toward what you will or won’t allow.
Making moves, choices, or decisions when it comes to emotional well being interacts with self-esteem in a big way. When you realize your emotional boundaries and how you enforce those boundaries there’s a good chance you may, even if you are sad, feel empowered. When you allow yourself to feel those feelings, your self-esteem should rise with it!
How About Physical Boundaries?
This one is touchy, get it? We are not talking about property lines here, although we actually are to an extent actually. Physical boundaries are your personal space. This is an area I can see easily how people respect me. I have a specific chair in my living room, and my dog is trained not to get on it. I let her for a while, but then I couldn’t take her trying to warn everyone in a 90 mile proximity that a leaf was blowing down the street. She wants to get on the chair, but all she does is look at me and get on the couch instead. My dog respects my physical boundaries.
There’s a saying that says (that reads interestingly to me) “home is where the heart is.” I love that saying, but I have my own, “home is where your peace is.” For a while I never wanted to be in my home. When I was, I was typically drunk to escape my environment (and apparently early trauma which is another story for another day). This happened with a few relationships, and even company. My kids ran amok and would never clean their mess, nor would the adults or their kids I was in a relationship with. My house was constantly nothing but chaos.
As I discussed when going over codependency, when physical boundaries are enforced, there will be uncomfortable situations. I gained a lot from the transition. My dog is happier and barks less, my kids help clean more. I thoroughly enjoy working from my home office now, although I do leave my house I look forward to coming back to it.
“My Body, My Choice”
When you receive respect, especially within your physical boundaries/personal space you feel a sense of respect. But what about your most intimate personal space, your body and it’s proximity. Look briefly at a rape victim, I have met many and I am one myself (females can rape too). When our personal space is violently intruded we feel a plethora of negative emotions and feelings. To say our self-esteem drops is a gross understatement.
One thing we should have absolute control of is our body. We shouldn’t even have absolute control of it, but it rather should be seen as sovereign. Of the three different types of boundaries, I ask almost, if not, all the time if they have seen a therapist or even considered it. Can you survive rape? Sure, you can have a full life but it’s one of those things you can’t pretend never happened. I feel rape or sexual assaults show the extreme importance of keeping your physical boundaries safe.
How Can We Make Sure Our Physical Boundaries Stay Safe?
Even More Ways Enforcing Boundaries Can Reward You
We have already covered a good amount. We have discussed self-esteem, the types of boundaries and their importance, as well as a slew of other topics. I feel like that guy from the old commercials when I say, “but wait, there’s more!” and oh boy, there are more ways that enforcing your boundaries can help you.
You Are You, Your Self-Worth Is Important!
Our self-worth is crucial to our health. I won’t go in depth on the topic yet, but I will in the future, however I do need to touch briefly on it. Our identity is comprised of too many factors to count in this article. Some of those we have already discussed being our value set as well as emotional make-up. This is where enforcing boundaries becomes very important.
There’s a character trait that I have seen in many people when it comes to boundaries; something I’ve called the “doormat syndrome”. This is when people are constantly walked all over and it is typically how people view themselves or others. With the “doormat syndrome” you’ll hear things like “oh, it’s only Jerry, he won’t care. Even if he does he won’t say anything about it.” Can you relate or have you said that about someone?
If you can relate to that, I bet you probably don’t feel very good afterward, right? Maybe you take offense to it, but at the end of the day is that who you are? Without enforcing your boundaries it is going to be seen as you being a pushover. This is where identity and boundaries gets tricky, how do we fix it?
We fix , set, and enforce out boundaries cautiously. Having overly rigid or gargantuan boundaries are not going to benefit you or anyone else. Take for instance a man who get cheated on by a rich Caucasian woman, would it make sense for him to take offense any time a rich Caucasian woman approached him? Of course not. Unreasonable boundaries can also be seen in racism, people of a certain color can’t approach you? That’s foolish.
This is not to say there is anything wrong with preference. However when we have reasonable boundaries we will, as I said earlier, see higher self esteem and not be viewed as a welcome mat. Sometimes setting boundaries will be tough, however I have great respect for people who enforce them when I try and break their boundaries, typically accidentally. If they explain how they feel with grace and upfrontness (yes I made that word up) I’ll admire their sense of self worth.
Enjoy the Peace!
I mentioned before I hate chaos. I may not have said it in those words, but I absolutely abhor chaos and confusion. I’m hard of hearing in an eye and my brain works “differently”. Even the smallest noise can throw me off track at times. ADHD is not any fun, but I deal with it perfectly fine. So how can we enjoy peace by enforcing boundaries?
We won’t feel guilt when we have to tell a coworker we can’t cover their shift. When we have a full day, we can say “maybe not, but I will let you know” so we can wind down quickly. Granted sometimes life will throw, well, life at us and that’s okay because everything passes. If it keeps coming back, we probably need to look at and adjust our boundaries again which is fine. Don’t forget about Ruth Graham’s tombstone!
Who REALLY Needs Boundaries?
I’ll make this easy, anyone who wants peace of mind and more tranquility in their life is going to need boundaries. Boundaries are a critical element for people in recovery, to this I speak with experience as a helper as well as someone in recovery. We typically, speaking to the addiction community, have poor or unhealthy boundaries – I surely did.
As I mentioned before, self worth and identity are awesome rewards for enforcing boundaries. Most addicts, in recovery or not, don’t have the best view of themselves. We stress over tomorrow and yesterday and if you think that sounds crappy, it really is. Enforcing healthy boundaries will allow that to increase although we like “normies” have to put the work in to get there. It is so absolutely doable though.
Regain Control!
When we have, set, and enforce healthy boundaries we are able to do really cool things. One of those is to regain control of our lives. It may seem like, and that is because it’s true, we really are out of control when we do not enforce healthy boundaries. Aside from getting figuratively stepped on, we also have to deal with other things. We are more prone to have people pour their hearts out to us when we are not mentally or emotionally able to comfort them.
Peace with healthy boundaries is also given in the form of reduction. We will typically argue a lot less when we have good boundaries. Why? Because we aren’t settling for that anymore and that’s okay. We are bringing us into relevance in our own lives!
What About You and Your Boundaries?
Take a few minutes and really think about what you need for boundaries in your life. I have to pay the bills and will plug the absolute success Lasting Change has had in helping people with minor or major boundary issues! Click here and grab it, especially if you think you need help with boundaries (that is one of my fortes). It’s a great course and you also get discounted coaching rates not available anywhere else! Grab it today because I haven’t decided how long it will remain at that price. As of now it looks like mid-September, however it really is about the help and not the profit and I absolutely believe in it that much.
Reflect on your boundary issues, or places where you could even be too rigid! If you have noticed a difference once you set boundaries let us know in the comments below!
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