Positive Mental Hygiene Includes Healthy Personal Boundaries
It’s more than simply knowing how to say no.
Back in my Christian days, one of the more popular books to relentlessly circle every church group was one called Boundaries by Henry Townsend. It’s been many years since I last read it, so I can’t speak to how effective it is, but I know that nearly every person who reads it loves it, and in the years since it was first published, there have been many sequels.
Boundaries in Dating, Boundaries in Marriage, and Boundaries in Parenting — folks just can't seem to get enough talk about boundaries.
Boundaries = No?
The glaring problem with all of the talk about boundaries, however, is that people often get stuck on the meaning. They hear the word boundaries and think it merely means knowing how to say no.
Sure, knowing how to say no is important for anyone’s mental health… if you keep saying yes to your detriment. But to be honest, we don’t all have that problem. Many, if not most of us, actually have the opposite issue and say no way too much for our own good.
Not to mention the good of others.
If we do have a problem with saying yes too much, it happen with a few specific people and not even happen across the…
