Emotional Boundary

Emotional boundaries can be set around how we feel but also considering how our actions contribute to other people’s feeling. So much of Codependency is about avoiding or managing how other people feel. I usually ask clients throughout our session if the feelings they are managing are theirs or someone else’s. It is helpful to increase your emotional awareness to help prepare yourself for setting and managing boundaries around your feelings. It would be helpful to start to think about the people in your life that you feel safe around. Who sees you and is supportive consistently? Who are the people in your life you can turn to when you are struggling that show up and don’t judge you? Those people are the ones you can feel safely emotional with. Now consider who you struggle to be your whole self with. When you’re around them, you tend to hold back or put on a mask so as not to let them see what you’re going through. There will be more of these people, generally. It would be great if we could be our whole selves with everyone but that can be a level of vulnerability, we aren’t ready for just yet.

When I was younger, I was identified as sensitive. I had lots of feelings and expressed them often. I was often accused of wearing my feelings on my sleeve. I can remember often feeling like I was too much for most people. As I grew up, I started to build walls around my sensitive heart. I started to hold back and not share what I was feeling, or I would downplay the level of emotion I was experiencing. I got to an expert level where I could fake it most of the time and very few people knew what I was dealing with. It became very easy to put on a smile and pretend like I was confident and secure even while I was in a full-blown eating disorder and considering suicide most of the time. After being accused of being dramatic or problematic I shut down. Talking to people who knew me then would tell you I was fun, outgoing, smart and confident. They often forget that I lost a parent in the middle of high school. I was so exhausted by the time I graduated; I ended up in psych ward on suicide watch. I recognize how much hiding my feelings took a toll on me physically, mentally, and energetically.

It takes a great deal of vulnerability to let those walls down for most people. Growing up where you are working so hard to keep yourself together to avoid negative outcomes means that being vulnerable isn’t safe. So many humans build walls rather than boundaries because it is easier to have a fortress around yourself than fences. The challenge becomes that walls keep us in as well as keeping people out. Working with clients, especially couples, it becomes evident that humans don’t know how to set emotional boundaries. All of us have trauma in one form or another and the first thing we do is try to limit how much more damage we sustain from people, especially if our trauma was perpetrated by people close to us. With emotional trauma, we limit our needs to try to maintain a perceived status quo and not make things worse. The emotional needs of connection get distorted if not neglected all together. We seek to build community while we are carrying around armor waiting for any potential attack. Some of us hold back the best parts of ourselves and prefer to put on the persona of someone who doesn’t have any needs. Most of us have learned to be independent and are unwilling to be seen as needing anything from anyone else. That isn’t how connection works. Cooperation and communication with people who show up consistently help us to see who is safe to have feelings around. It comes with practice with evidence that we can be ourselves with the people we allow to see our most vulnerable parts.

Setting boundaries around our emotions can take time. I have worked with therapists and with friends to hold space for my own vulnerability. It has taken me years of unlearning the skills I developed growing up to hold myself back and away from being hurt. I have been very fortunate to have friends in my life that have been around for years showing me how to let my walls down. It is with their own willingness to be vulnerable that I was able to. When we can take ownership of our feelings and be honest with them, can we then begin to set up limits of access to them in a healthy way. Think of your boundaries as a gate rather than a fortress. If you can set up the parameters of who, when and how much access is given, then you can monitor them more easily.

The who has been identified as people who show up and hold space without judgement consistently. The when will be up to you to define. Our emotional state is in flux all the time. Being aware of your own capacity will be a practice to recognize how your feel and how much energy or space you have at any given moment. I remind myself often that when I am tired or distracted with things my emotional state is more fragile. I have less capacity to hold back or regulate my emotions. I also know that when I am anxious, I have a harder time keeping my emotions in check. My boundary would then be to communicate with the people close to me stating how I am feeling and that I might need some extra attention, or I might need some time on my own to recenter or regroup before processing. It has taken time for me to be aware of what my needs are around regulating my emotional state. I held myself back from being vulnerable for a long time. Now I can check in with myself more easily and I’m able to own what I am feeling.

The part about who gets access to your emotional self is also important to be aware of. Not every should have the privilege of having access to your vulnerability. There are people who may have had that right and have had it revoked. You get to decide how much of you they get to experience. Think about a stranger on an elevator who casually asks how you are. Our first instinct is to quickly respond “fine” or “good”. They don’t necessarily need to know what is going on with you. Consider that parent or family member who isn’t safe for you to share those intimate parts of you or people who have lost the privilege of having access to your feelings. Just because someone was once intimately connected to you doesn’t mean they have an all-access pass forever. You get to determine the admission to your emotional experience.

You are the gate keeper once the walls come down for how much you share of your emotional self. Being aware of your limitations and capacity, recognizing who is safe to share those emotions with and recognizing you have the right to pivot and change if you need to will help you start to set those boundaries. Communicate your expectations with the people close to you. Let them know what your experiences have been in the past if you choose to use that information to help inform them. Be honest with yourself about what the feelings are that you are experiencing. It might be helpful to seek out an objective outside perspective or professional to help identify those feelings. Then work on building tools on managing keeping yourself safe while also allowing yourself to have needs, wants, desires and emotions. Increasing your emotional awareness and doing so with compassion and kindness for yourself helps you to set healthy boundaries to your emotional self.

Things to consider:

Who do you feel comfortable sharing your emotional self with?

Who does it feel uncomfortable sharing your emotional sensitive self with?

Are you aware of when you or where you can share your emotional needs?

Are you aware of how much you are willing to share with the people you are safe being your full emotional self with?

How does it feel when you can be your full emotional self?

Physical Space and Material Boundary

            We take up space. Our physical self is made up of matter with weight and size. As humans we begin to be aware of our impact on our environment pretty quickly in the first few months of our experience of being born. Prior to that, we take up space inside our mother. What I have observed is we strive to create autonomy and independence after about age 2. If you have ever struggled to get a toddler dressed, you understand they want to do things on their own. We are constantly coming up again limits to our physical space out in the world. We have an awareness of the boundaries the world creates for us. Part of increasing our understanding of the larger world and our place in it is to recognize where we end and something or someone else starts. Setting up boundaries will be about communicating what we are comfortable with and what makes us feel less comfortable.  Consider that the physical and material boundaries include touch, space, what our needs are and then what things belong to us in terms of stuff.

We consider some level of autonomy over our bodies when we start to become aware of having a separate body from those around us. It is more common now to consider consent when it comes to touching someone else’s body. There has been a significant movement to teach children that they get to decide whether they want to be touched. When I was growing up there was less of a push for me to have a voice about how I was allowed to be touched. Depending on your culture, being hugged or kissed was at the discretion of the adults who were in charge of you. In the case of abuse, there are no limits to how someone touches your body. The psychological implications are that you might feel like you don’t have any control over what happens to your body or yourself.  In the case of familial interactions, when I was younger it was required to greet family with hugs and kisses. There wasn’t a whole lot of choice in the matter. I do appreciate now that we are asking little kids if we can give them an embrace or kiss them. Things are changing in how we teach kids what is appropriate touch and what they want. There is more information about the negative implications of physical punishment when it comes to parenting. There is also more information about how to help kids regulate their emotions and behavior by being aware of their own capacity for engagement. There are plenty of examples of people inappropriately crossing physical boundaries with touch both intentional and unintentional. I think about being a crowded train or bus where people are up against you and there isn’t much room for choice in the matter. There is always the choice of taking a different bus or train.

We also consider the idea of personal space when it comes to the physical boundary. We think about the space we take up as a human. We consider the space we occupy with our body as well as with our stuff. I think about sitting in the same seat at work or at school. We take a certain ownership of spaces with time. I had a favorite seat in class and a place I liked to study. When we share space with other people it takes time to get used to how and where those people also interact with the space. When we bring a baby or even a new animal into a space it takes a period of adjustment to incorporate their bodies and the stuff they come with. In new relationships or friendships, the lines of space get blurred initially and with time, our need for space can be more evident. We don’t always pay attention at first to our needs. What we do pay attention to is our level of anxiety or distress that comes from having a new person in our environment. Working with new parents and with couples, I helped them increase their awareness around when and how they feel with someone else in their physical space. There are times when it feels comfortable and good to have someone in your space and other times when it can feel overwhelming. I know for me; I only have a certain capacity for some people in my space. I can build up a tolerance, but it takes time. Growing up in a large family, there was very little personal space from other humans. Now that I have been single and living alone, I recognize my need for more space from people.

The way we communicate our needs for space, touch and what our capacity is will come with having an awareness of what it feels like to either have it or what it feels like not to have it. We don’t always know what our needs are in that regard. It is also helpful to recognize the meaning we assign to certain types of physical interactions. Certain places and people can feel safe and comforting. Other spaces and people can feel off putting and triggering. Our capacity for these spaces and how we feel in them changes over time. We can lose an affinity for a place based on what has taken place there and what our level of healing and growth is. It is fundamental to be aware of how you feel in a space and with the people who are around. You can have more tolerance in places when you have someone with you or at certain times of the day. If you are going into a space that can be triggering it might be useful to ask for a support person. It would also be helpful to remind yourself of your goal in being in the space. Once you become accustomed to asking for your needs it does get easier. Increasing your awareness of that you have needs then makes it easier to ask for them. There is a certain level of power that comes from overcoming fear and anxiety in spaces that used to cause discomfort. It is also helpful to recognize the facts of a new perspective with growth and healing.

As physical beings we take up space and we have the right to do so. We can start to be aware of what taking up space means and how we want to do that. As we become more independent and feel more confident, how we take up space feels more like a right than a privilege. When we can determine our capacity for having others in a space, we can communicate our expectations and feel more empowered to do so. Working past our Codependency looks like taking up space on purpose and feeling good about doing it. When we come from a place a loving ourselves, we are less concerned with how our presences effects other people. We can simply be present. We have the ability to set boundaries to protect our peace and ask for our needs.

Regarding our material boundaries, it is important to recognize what things mean to us. How attached are we to these things. Where we keep these things. Do these things bring us joy. How do we feel when they are touched or moved by other people. Think about the items you hold as prized possessions, are they displayed? Do they have the same meaning they once held? People can be particular about their things and can have undeclared boundaries about their things. When we move in with someone, we can start to increase our awareness of what things mean to us. We also become aware of how our space is oriented has meaning. We can become territorial about which way the toilet paper goes or where we put the cheese grater. When we end something or move into different spaces, holding on to things can change. If we lose things suddenly, it can create anxiety or panic. We get to decide what things we hold sacred and what things we don’t care as much about. A childhood toy can have more significance than an expensive bag or pair of shoes. It is important to make people aware of what is important to you so they can treat it with respect. If you find that you are holding resentment for how someone treats your items, that is a place where a boundary can be useful. The boundary is less about the other person and more about what your need is and how it makes you feel.

Much of how we feel about ourselves is about how we take up space on the planet. Although in the grand scheme of things we are but small pieces of a much larger system, we still have meaning and a place. How we interact with the environment and the meaning we give to that environment is significant. It becomes vital to feel like we have power over our body and things we cherish in these spaces. Communicating our needs both for our physical being and our things becomes our responsibility. Letting the people we interact with our desire for space to process is a way for us to manage our sense of peace. Attending to our peace should be the goal. As we continue to feel worthy and deserving, we are collecting more peace. Setting limits with the people around us to address how they interact with our physical being and our stuff is up to us with the intention of taking care of ourselves. The job of maintaining our wellbeing is our responsibility. The process of communicating those needs and expectations comes practice, we get better at it when we use that skill.

Things to consider:

What do we need to take care of our physical needs?

Who does a good job of respecting our physical boundaries and who is more challenging?

What behaviors from other people make us uncomfortable and how can we set limits with those people around those behaviors?

How can we teach the people around us to communicate their needs and expectations?

How do you know when you have reached your capacity for having people in your space?

What items do you have that are meaningful and important to you?

Time Boundary

The boundary of time is being aware of how you are spending the resource of hours or minutes you have in a day to address a situation, goal or circumstance. It can be argued that time is made up construct, but most humans are governed by the clock in one way or another. How we spend these resources are not always up to us. We have busy lives and 24 hours in a day to get things done. Some of how we spend our time is based on jobs, kids, partners and situations. The boundaries that we are responsible for can be dictated by these circumstances. What we can control to varying degrees is how we limit the time we spend doing things that can feel challenging or burdensome. Now I am not suggesting you just disregard the flow of your life as it stands right now. What I am suggesting is to be mindful of how and with whom you are spending your time. I would encourage you to think about the things you do freely, enjoying the time you spend to get your needs met. I want you to think about if the people around you are respectful of your time as a commodity. How we feel about our time helps to inform the way we set up limits of access to our time. If you are scheduled to work a 9-hour shift but your boss is often asking that you stay late, how do you feel about that? Can you have a conversation about it and also can you choose to leave when your shift ends? If someone comes to visit and they often overstay their welcome or extend how long they stay, can you suggest they come earlier or leave by a certain time. When you set up a meeting and people are often late or wander in after you start, can you create a policy or rule about starting on time?

How we spend the supply of time with our family and loved ones is also a place to consider how we set boundaries. What are we doing with/for these people and what are we getting in return? What is our expectation around the time we spend with them? Something to be aware of is how we are using the time with the people close to us. Consider how you feel when you are spending time with them. What is your energetic capacity and willingness to use your time resource with family? Often, these people are used to us giving of our time and not necessarily appreciating the cost we endure to spend time with them. When we can regulate the amount and quality of time, we might be able to adjust the toll on our mental health. If you start to set some limits around your time, you will notice that you have more time and energy to do other things. If you take an opportunity to evaluate your capacity and acknowledge if you are running low or feeling good, then you can choose to engage further or take a step back. Increasing your awareness of how you feel can inform your conscious decision to participate in any activity. I like to consider how our peace of mind is being taxed with the time we are spending with other people.

I challenge you to keep in mind the things you do out of a sense of obligation to the people around you. We sometimes do things because they are what is expected of us due to our role or position in a relationship not considering whether we want to actually spend the time doing that thing. Obligation can be a slippery slope because people may have an expectation of our time doing things, we don’t want to engage in. It would be important to identify what needs are met by you taking time from your day and if someone else could spend that same time doing that thing. You might have to set a limit to the time you spend doing those things and see if those expectations can be met by someone else. I like to have clients work with the idea of saying no to doing certain things with or for other people they are doing things from a sense of obligation. They might benefit from setting up the expectation with people close to them and then have them observe how these people will find a way to get their needs met in the absence of your time. What I have noticed is people will find a way to get their needs met without you always having to use your time resource. They will start to ask others or do things on their own. You don’t actually need to take time from what you’re doing to get things done. When we can pull back and allow the other person to problem solve, the task becomes less of an obligation for you and more for the other person to figure out. It is amazing how resourceful people become when they come against a limit or boundary.

Another way to consider time boundaries would be to consider how you set limits around your own time. The idea of compartmentalizing what you do and when. There is also a component of how you are spending your time on and for yourself then using boundaries to protect that time. Asking for your time to respected can be tricky when it comes to certain people or environments. Some people struggle with prioritizing themselves. They tend to overextend their time for others and then build up resentment or anger about their choice or feel as though they don’t have a choice in the matter. Setting limits before going into a situation can be helpful. Talking about how you feel in specific situations with the people close to you would be something to be mindful of.  Setting aside time for your needs, wants and desires is crucial for your wellbeing. I would encourage you to list a 5 things you enjoy doing and consider the last time you engaged in those things. Think about the activities that bring you joy and fill your cup. Consider the times in recent past when you feel rejuvenated and centered.  Now, think about how you can reintegrate these practices into your life and what you can shift or set a boundary in order to do so.

A while back I started making my time a priority in the beginning of the day. I am a morning person. I have more energy and feel my best first thing in the morning. I used to rush around in the morning getting things ready for other people. When I started to take the best part of my energy and using it for me, I started to feel calmer and more engaged in the day. I started to use that time for exercise, meditation and grounding. I took those precious hours to prepare myself for the day ahead. I created a practice of limiting how many clients I would see in a day and stuck to that limit. I made sure to stick to my own limits and not deviating from it. I put aside time for breaks daily and not schedule work during that time. What I found was I had energy at the end of the day to do things for myself like making a good dinner or making plans with people close to me. I felt more motivated to work during the day. I could be fully engaged in seeing clients.  I was able to enjoy the time I was using making my needs a priority. Admittedly, I work for myself and run my own schedule. For people who don’t have this luxury and have to adhere to a set schedule, I encourage you to you increase your awareness of when you have the most energy and feel your best, how can you spend that time giving yourself what you need? How can you use that time to get grounded and centered? Do you need silence, do you need more rest?

We all have busy lives and are pulled in many directions. When we can recognize time as a resource and how it can be used to create peace for ourselves, we will work harder to protect it and use it wisely. I know it can feel like you need more hours in a day to get all the things done. It can feel like there is not enough of you to go around. Protecting your peace and mental health can be a motivation to be more mindful in how you use the precious commodity of your time. The grown people around you will only respect your time when you start to respect it yourself. They will learn how to do that when you model that for them by setting boundaries or limits around accessing it. Think of your time as something precious and treat it accordingly. If you set limits around it and keep some for yourself you are adding it as a resource like food, water, and shelter to take care of yourself better.

Things to consider:

Think about what part of the day you enjoy and how can you incorporate rituals and practices to take care of you?

When we consider the amount of time it takes to engage with these other people do you feel drained or are you invigorated?

What is the cost to you if you participate in these activities?

How do you feel when you overextend your time with certain people or in specific situations?

Where can you set some boundaries for your own time to take better care of yourself?

What are things you can eliminate from your schedule to give more time to taking care of yourself?

Specifically, when you can a NO benefit how you can love yourself better by giving that time to you?

Boundary Introduction

Setting a boundary can be challenging especially in long standing relationships. It is important to consider the types of boundaries there are and how to create a framework around setting them. There are five primary types of boundaries to be aware of Time, Thoughts, Emotions and Physical/Material and Sex. I will be breaking them down by category and then use some examples of how creating limits in these ways helps to manage your peace as well as helps you establish an expectation of needs in relationship with other people. Keep in mind the goal of setting boundaries is to be aware of where you end and where someone else begins. A boundary or limit needs to be managed by you as your behavior is the only one you can control. You can communicate the limit to someone else but the follow up is yours to maintain. A boundary can be a no but can also be an opportunity to say yes to yourself.

Boundaries can also be set for and with yourself. Often, we put our needs and expectations last and put those of other people first. Setting boundaries for yourself can help to build practices of making yourself a priority. The goal would eventually be to make sure you have your needs, desires and wants met, addressing those primarily then to take care of other people if you so choose. When we start to value our time, thoughts, space, emotions, sex and things we work to make sure they are protected in a way that makes us feel better. Setting limits for yourself and about yourself helps you to shift the perspective inward rather than outside of yourself for attention, validation, and acceptance.

Communicating boundaries is something people struggle with, especially as adults. We don’t always enjoy having to ask for what we need or don’t like from people we are in relationship with. As with anything else, we do have to communicate our needs and expectations in order to get them met.  We can find it challenging to determine where we end and someone else begins. So many idealized relationships are about people becoming one entity or unit. The reality is we are separate autonomous beings even if we are all collectively part of a family, group or couple. Having autonomy is in many ways freedom. If we can recognize that having control of your physical space, time, energy, thoughts, things and sexuality are a gift it might help to create a sense of care and attention to help safeguard it.