Get Over Your Fear of Setting Boundaries
The fear of setting boundaries is rooted in rejection, pushback, and a lack of self-trust.
As each new year comes and goes, everyone makes their lists of behaviors they want to end or change and behaviors they want to begin. My good friend and artist, Kat, asked me something about the new year that I had never been asked before. She wanted to know what my “word of the year” was. Apparently, this was a trend that I was unaware of and I told her I had not thought of one and then I told her that I would not have one. We continued our conversation and talked about a myriad of things and then I realized that maybe I did have not just one word, but two: communication and honesty.
Radical honesty is something that I feel many people are still putting into practice. For me, I want people to always be honest with me. Lying has been and still is my top pet peeve. I despise being lied to, even under the guise of “protecting” my feelings. I realize that many people lie to avoid confrontation or to simply get out of telling the truth as to not appear to be the bad guy. There’s a host of other reasons why people lie, but I want to focus on its centrality to boundary-setting.
Outsiders or those that we are practicing boundaries with can make your boundary appear to be trivial by acts of dismissiveness and control.
Setting boundaries appears in many ways - usually in regards to respectability of the self and the protection of our mental health and wellness. I have had to set boundaries with many people throughout my life: strangers, close friends, and family. When people do not respect your boundaries, it makes the relationship much more difficult to maintain and it leads to a revelation of wanting or even needing to decide if you want to continue the relationship or end it. This places an unknown triviality on boundaries that should not exist. Boundaries, no matter what they are, are intrinsically part of the self and should be treated with high regard. Outsiders or those that we are practicing boundaries with can make your boundary appear to be trivial by acts of dismissiveness and control. This made me realize that I have some relationships where people are not practicing their own boundaries with me and it is resulting in feelings of unsureness, neuroticism, and plain confusion. However, when people are honest about their boundaries with me, I no longer have to wonder if something I’ve said or did is problematic. Do not misunderstand this as a need to people please. I have a strong belief that our relationships are only as great as what we put into them and if I am unaware of an action that is hurting someone I care deeply about, that it becomes a huge detriment and liability in the long run.
For example, my best friend is a loving mother of three girls who like most parents, experiences the sensations of burn out, overwhelm, and self-critique surrounding “good” parenting. Hearing her struggles often led to me loitering solutions to her that I eventually learned were not helpful. I had been providing “advice” in the form of reprieve and respite-based actions that were not feasible to her. “Take a vacation,” I would say or “See if someone can watch the kids for the weekend.” Then one day, it happened. She sent me a very long text message explaining to me why these options would not work, why they were not as easy to execute as I thought they could be, and how it made her feel each time I mentioned it. It took her a while to arrive to this because she was used to pushback and lack of accountability when she would set boundaries with people. She was conditioned to believe that saying nothing was better than saying anything. I wished it had not taken her so long. I felt terrible and I apologized to her for my oversight, misunderstanding, and failure to recognize that I was blanketing everything she was venting about with a very basic and out-of-touch response.
I’ve always said that the greatest act of deviancy is not trusting yourself.
Since then, I have become much more mindful about the things I say to my friends, especially those with children, as someone who does not have children of my own. I cannot totally understand the struggles of parenthood, however, this does not mean that my input totally lacks value. Previously, what was missing was my basic acknowledgment of how a situation was making her feel, that I was there for her for whenever she needed to vent, and that I am willing to offer my opinion, only when asked. Her hard honesty and communication was an evolving moment for us both.
With continued practice, setting boundaries becomes easier and more manageable. It provides clarity, gets you over the hump of confrontation and it helps foster deeper and rewarding relationships. I’ve always said that the greatest act of deviancy is not trusting yourself. If in your gut, you feel that a boundary is necessary in order to receive the respect you desire and deserve, that you must push past your fear of appeasement, avoidance of friction, and ultimately, rejection. If someone chooses to stop speaking to you or drastically changes how they show up for you after you set a boundary, this is their issue, not yours. It is not your responsibility or duty to carry their feelings on your back. What happens after this is up to you. You can challenge them and ask them why they choose not to respect your boundary or even ask them if there’s something you were not clear about when you did it. If no answer can clear up the matter, then this may be a relationship that you should distance yourself from. Know that in all things, you, in the end, will be okay. It may hurt and you may have to grieve the end of something, but revel in the fact that you showed up for yourself.
