Theravive

By Christie Hunter:  View Christie's Profile  

Setting Boundaries

After completing the relationship map (see previous week), we need to begin by assessing our relationships to see where we are investing emotional resources and how this aligns with the bigger picture in our lives. To do this, we need to understand what the goals are for ourselves and for our family. As we start, remember that when I make reference to “family,” it is the three intersecting circles in the middle of your relationship map – you, your spouse, and your children still living at home.

 

Assessing the Relationships in our Life

From here, consider the goals you and your spouse have established for your family. Again, this may require sitting down together and defining or redefining the priorities for your marriage and family. As a family, what is the legacy you want to leave for your children? What are the values and characteristics you want to espouse in your relationship? Are you presently living your life with these areas as a focus? Once you have assessed these goals and priorities for yourself and your family, you are ready to look at how the other relationships in your life are aligning to these.

When you look at your relationship map, consider individuals, volunteer positions, job responsibilities, or groups you are involved.  Now ask yourself, are these relationships aligning with the goals and priorities you have defined? If one of your goals is to ensure your children have positive roles models in your life, are there relationships where your children see positive characteristics modeled to them? How are the relationships in your life aligning to the plans you have for your family?

Additionally, are there any relationships that are in conflict with your goals or dreams? Is there a relationship that is demanding more and more from you at the expense of quality time with your family.  For example, do you have a relative that is always “borrowing” money and taking away from your ability to save and work towards financial security (a goal)? If so, consider that these relationships may require you to set limits, to place a boundary to ensure that your goals and priorities are still the focus of your resources.

Another area to be reviewed is relationships where you have committed time, emotional energy, finances, or other aspects of yourself. In the beginning, when someone comes to us and needs from us, we may feel that we are doing the right thing by investing our emotional resources into that person.  So we say "yes" to that person and give to them from us.  Yet what may have been right or good at the start, doesn't mean it will continue that way.  People can take and take from us, eventually taking advantage of us to the point where we feel walked on, or our other relationships suffer.  You need to look at that relationship and ask yourself, over time, have all the resources you've invested in that person still continue to benefit?  Is that person growing?  Are you growing?  For example, by being an emotional support for your friend in crisis, you provide encouragement, a sounding board, and a sense of stability. But over time, your friend needs to learn how to stand on her own, to move forward into her own life. If you continue to offer her support day in and day out long after the crisis has ended, you may take on a role of enabler, the original investment no longer having the same benefit. Evaluate if your resources in your relationships are still an investment.

Finally, ask yourself, are other relationships in my life suffering or losing our because of one relationship in my life. Is there a friend, position, or other aspect of your life that is taking from other relationships in your life?  A relative who inserts themselves into the middle of your marriage, for example, can have a very devastating effect on the relationship with your spouse.  If other relationhips in your life are hurting because of a relationship that has gotten out of control, its time to analyze and prioritize, and set a boundary.  Look at setting a limit on what you are offering to relationships that cause others to suffer or lose out because of this one.

Avoid Co-Dependency

Sometimes an unhealthy relationship is allowed to exist because you receive a "benefit" from it yourself. Consider the case of a mother in-law who provides baby-sitting support to you. You need someone to watch your baby, and so this really helps you. However, by providing you this "help," she feels that she has rights to how the baby should be raised. As a result, she is always making demands on how to raise and care for your baby. She inserts herself into your family far beyond what is healthy. This causes great tension and strife in your marriage, as she continually makes demands on your family decisions.  She has assumed a role in your family that has crossed a line, and it is hurting you.  It is no longer a family of you, your spouse, and your children (as it should be)- it is now a family with an extra person who does not belong! You want to cut her off, but then who will watch the baby?   Do you see how this kind of snare works?  You feel completely trapped- you know its not healthy, but you do not now how to fix it. We enable unhealthy relationships because we are "receiving" something back from them, and this is called co-dependency.  However, in the end, whatever it is we are getting back is not worth it because it can cause our lives to crumble.  We must make a change.

Making the Decision

As you assess your relationships, if there is one that you feel is not aligned with your goals, is taking from other areas of your life, or where your initial investment is no longer a benefit it is time to make the decision to set a boundary. The most significant aspect of setting a boundary is that it only takes one person. You do not need the other person to agree or to even like the limit you need to put in place. It only takes one person, you can decide at any time to implement a boundary. It begins with a simple decision.

Setting boundaries requires an honest evaluation of your present relationships, how these align with your goals, and making a decision for change. It may not be easy, change usually is not, but the potential for better living, healthier relationships all around you, and more purpose and direction in your life is immense. Next we will look at how we maintain boundaries and the response we may often experience within ourselves and from others as we begin to protect our futures and establish healthy relationships.

By Christie Hunter:  View Christie's Profile  

The Need For Healthy Boundaries

As you consider setting a boundary in your life, you need to first have a reason or an understanding of why a boundary would be beneficial. To do this, we must understand how one relationship affects us and all other relationships in our life. As we invest in someone or something, such as a friend, a volunteer position, or our job, the energy and the time we spend takes from the resources that we have available.   

Our Relationship Map

 

Take a few minutes to map out your relationships.  Draw a circle for yourself.  If you are married or have children, draw circles that intersect yours.  These represent the fundamental and most important relationships in your life.  Now, around your central circles, draw a circle for every person in your life that you have invested emtional energy in.   For each friend, relative, student, mentor, family member, etc, in your life that you invest emotional energy into, draw a circle.  Once you are done, draw lines from every circle and connect them to yourself.   Now, put a percentage of your energy that you routinely invest into each person, and write that number in each circle.  For example, if 25% of all your energy goes into your children, write "25" in the circle for children.  If 50% of your energy goes into your spouse, put "50" in that circle.  Fill in all the circles with the percentage of your energy you invest into each one.    We will refer back to this map in a bit.

Myth: We Can Give More Than 100%

How many times have you heard people say something similar to "give it 110%," or maybe even "give it 200%!"  This is a myth that we must dispel, because believing in it will lead you to a state of exhaustion and burnout.

You have a limit! All people are finite human beings with limits. Each of us has only 100% to give each day, each week, in our life. While we may like to think “I can give 110%”, just as a glass of water has a limit that it can be filled to, so do we as people have limits in what we can offer to others. Our 100% is unique to us and will be different from person to person based on our physical abilities, our emotional resources, and our cognitive understandings. If we are able to understand these limits, we will be a huge step ahead in developing a healthy environment and establishing healthy boundaries for our life and family.

Now here is a question for you:  when you drew your map, did you total more than 100?  If so, you should re-analyze your totals, because you can not give more than 100%.  Secondly, how much did you reserve for yourself?  Did you put everything into everyone else, and reserve nothing for yourself?  How can we give to people, in a healthy way, when we sacrifice everything?  For example, some parents believe in the idea of "100% self sacrifice".  They would put 100 into the circle with their children.   For people that do this, how much is left over for their spouse?  Their family?  Their friends?  Themselves?   The answer is zero.  As you can see, this is clearly an unhealthy way to parent.  Unless we leave some resources for ourselves, we have nothing to model, we are left drained, and exhausted. 

One Bad Apple Affects Them All

Imagine that you have allocated, in a healthy way, all of your energy to your relationships so that everyone is healthy and growing.  Imagine one little circle, say an in-law, is currently getting 5% of your total.   Now imagine this in-law, who is getting 5%, starts demanding more.  "More, more, more!" they demand as they insert and assert themselves into your marriage, and life.  Feeling guilty, you allow this in-law to get more and more from you....the 5 percent grows to 10, then grows to 20 percent.   My question to you is:  if you start giving one relationship more of your resources, where are those resources coming from?  Remember, 100% is our maximum limit, so unless you have deliberately reserved some of your energy, the only place it can come from is another relationship.     As one relationship demands more from us, we have to take away from other relationships, and in the end everyone can suffer.  In order to give that in-law 20% of us, we have to reduce what we give to our spouse, children, friends, and family-  we have to take from them in order to accomodate the deamnding in-law.  So in the end, all of your relationships can suffer simply from one bad apple whom you have not set boundaries with.

Respecting Our Limits

Another aspect to consider in recognizing we have limits is to look at the long term implications of trying to give more than 100%. When we extend ourselves and try to meet the needs and demands of those around us, we start to develop a sense of fatigue. As our body lets us know it is tired and we ignore it we move towards a chronic state of fatigue, burnout. This feeling of burnout, where we are not able to finish a task, always feeling tired, sense of living in a fog, or of running in circles and not moving forward in life leaves us with a lessened sense of enjoyment, fulfillment, and accomplishment in our life. These feelings can lead to sadness and depression.

Even at this stage we can recognize and begin to make changes by placing limits people that utilize our emotional resources. However, if we choose to continue to push through this sense of exhaustion, refusing to say "no" to people and instead just keep giving and giving, other relationships in our lives will suffer, and we face the possibility of further complications to our health. Stress and anxiety from the attempts to fulfill the needs and demands of others leaves us in a chronic state of burnout. Common ailments from stress and anxiety include abdominal issues, headaches, and lowered immune response to name a few. In order to best manage stress and the demands on our life, we need to look at setting healthy boundaries.

Additionally, by setting healthy boundaries we also have an opportunity to have a better relationship with those around us. When we have healthy limits on what we can offer to others, or how much of our emotional resources and time we can give, we create a healthy environment where we feel energized and motivated by the friendship.  This establishes an important balance in our relationships where there is a give and take of who we are and what we want to share and invest in each other.

The Danger of Over-Giving

If we are chronically over giving to someone, or filling an excessive amount of their needs, always saying "yes" rather than saying "no",  we actually thwart and hurt the relationship, hindering the person from growing and developing on their own. Whether it is one person in our life, or if it is our own need to “be needed” and help out, by recognizing these aspects, we are able to identify where a healthy boundary will grow the relationship rather than limit it.

So, as you consider setting boundaries and wonder “why bother”, consider your own personal health and the health of the relationships in your life as significant reasons to place parameters, to define, or to better identify your role in the world around you.

Next Week, we will delve into the task to creating boundaries.  Now that we know what they are, and why we need them, we may ask the question "How do I set them?"  We will explore the answer to this in the next article.