Strengthening Personal Boundaries — Professionally & at Home

Our relationships are impacted by boundaries — our own and the boundaries of others. Learn to have a choice and stay safe.

Our ability to effectively manage our relationships may be in direct proportion to the integrity of our boundaries. That is, the balance between strength and permeability — not too rigid and yet strong enough to keep us “safe.”

What are Personal Boundaries?

Feeling in Control

Healthy personal boundaries help protect us from being manipulated, used, or even violated by others. When our boundaries are intact, we feel in control.

Feeling Not in Control

If we have weak boundaries we often feel that we are not in control. We feel unsafe and may have difficulty setting limits physically, emotionally, intellectually, as well as sexually.

Personal Space

More about the dynamics of feeling in control in a bit, but let’s first explore the concept of “personal space” — it’s a more common term that’s easy to understand because it’s exclusively about physical space.

This diagram illustrates the distance the average person needs from other people for physical comfort.

Here’s the number of feet for each comfort distance in the four zones:

• Intimate Space — within 1.5 feet (reserved for spouses, partners, lovers, pets, certain family members, and close friends)
• Personal Space — 1.5 feet to 4 feet (friends and acquaintances)
• Social Space — 4 to 12 feet (strangers and new acquaintances — typical social interaction)
• Public Space — beyond 12 feet

These distance ranges will vary from person to person and don’t always match precisely as people interact.

We all know people who don’t seem to understand the social requirements of staying within these distance guidelines.

Enter Boundaries!

Boundaries are the invisible screens around us that let us know where we end and others begin.

Personal boundaries are the physical, emotional, mental, and sexual barriers or limits we set between ourselves and others. (spiritual boundaries also exist but will be covered in a separate essay)

Personal boundaries are important in business and professional settings but can look a bit different than they do in your personal life. Both need to be handled with care, but it can sometimes be harder to “repair” boundary breaches in your work life. (Though it can also be argued that you can change jobs easier than changing family members!) Just know that boundaries can be complicated.

I’ll explain boundaries in general terms and then describe the characteristics of each type.

As you reflect on the attributes of each type, you can apply the concepts to your personal and business relationships.

If our boundaries are weak, it may not be easy for us:

• to feel safe or stay safe
• to make the distinction between our own emotions and those of others
• to trust our own thoughts
• to feel confident about our own opinions
• to know how to be appropriately assertive
• to know how much personal information to share and when
• to be able to choose if and when to be sexual

Personal boundaries give us our identity — our sense of who we are. Boundary strength is on a continuum and is different for each person.

Types of Personal Boundaries

Material Boundaries

Material boundaries are about how freely you lend out possessions or money, your level of comfort with it, and what you do if those items aren’t returned.

Photo by Shelley Pauls on Unsplash

Do you freely lend things to family members, friends, co-workers, and business associates? If so you are a generous, trusting person.

Lending is fine. The question is are those items returned? The more important question is — are you lending your things to untrustworthy people?

If your items are not returned, what do you do about it?

The key here is noticing and being honest with yourself if you are allowing people to take advantage of you.

Do friends and family ask to borrow money? Do you lend it? Do they pay you back? Do you give money away? If so, that might be because you are kind and generous. But if you are unable to say no or you give away money and jeopardize your own financial security, that’s a problem.

Physical Boundaries:

This is about your personal space; your comfort zone. Each person has their own unique physical boundary — how physically close someone can get while maintaining comfort — yours and theirs.

This is partially defined by culture, as well as by childhood experiences. Of course, your physical boundaries will vary depending on your relationship with that person, but here I’m speaking in general terms about how we operate in the world.

If we experienced physical boundary violations as a child we might have difficulty understanding appropriate boundaries with others and setting limits as an adult.

Also, while not as common, we might be prone to violating the physical boundaries of others.

There is a continuum — at the lower end, this might simply mean you are not tuned in to the comfort level of others and may hug them when they don’t want to be hugged. At the higher end, one might get in people’s space way too much — stand too close, or even be physically abusive (though that behavior usually has a complexity of origins).

Emotional Boundaries:

This is about how much personal information we share with others and when. It is about how easily we distinguish our feelings from the feelings of others.

With healthy emotional boundaries, we feel comfortable and safe interacting with others (people who are trustworthy). We share appropriate amounts of information based on how well we know a person and how they fit into our lives.

We feel confident and secure in our own feelings and opinions.

The boundary continuum shows up most with emotional boundaries.

Some of us easily tune in to the feelings of others. We might have great empathy and the ability to put ourselves in another person’s shoes. That usually means we are a good listener, a good friend, and a good partner. But if we tune in too easily and it feels like a burden it might indicate that our emotional boundaries are not fully formed.

If it’s to a greater degree we can sacrifice ourselves too much and feel a compulsion to always put others first. That usually gets us applause for the “selfless” service work we do, but it’s easy to go overboard and not know how to do self-care.

If extreme it can mean that we “absorb” the energy and feelings of others, which can result in mild discomfort to intense overwhelm. We then feel unsafe and cannot protect ourselves (stay detached enough) from other people’s emotions and problems. When that happens we may not have the ability to keep from getting over-involved and/or we may feel violated or burdened.

Those with weak emotional boundaries are often too trusting. In an effort to “be nice” and without the ability to say no, we let people in too easily and have a tendency to trust people who are untrustworthy.

If our emotional boundary was violated as a child we may have difficulty with intimacy due to a tendency to become too closely enmeshed with others.

Or we may feel the need to put up an emotional “wall” as it may be the only way we know to protect ourselves from emotional overload from our enmeshment with others.

With weak emotional boundaries, we don’t know how to move easily from intimacy to autonomy. That might mean that we operate in one or the other extreme. All or nothing — completely entangled with someone or walled off and shut down.

The Perfect Place to Mention Narcissists

If your boundaries are not as strong as they could be, you might have difficulty recognizing and keeping yourself safe from narcissists — the “untrustworthy” people.

The favorite prey of a narcissist is someone with the weakest boundaries. That includes all the boundaries — material, emotional, physical, intellectual, and sexual.

Emotional Boundaries and Our Comfort with Feelings

Emotional boundaries are also about how comfortable we are with our full range of feelings.

What’s it like for you when you feel angry? Or do you never feel angry? If you think you don’t it’s likely you are stuffing those feelings…because everyone feels anger (whether they express it or not).

Codependency expert, John Bradshaw referred to anger as “our dignity energy” — as a signal that we have been wronged, abused, or denied something that is rightfully ours.

Anger is a natural emotion. The only problem with anger is what we do with it — how we express it and how we manage it.

(stay tuned — the Codependency discussion is coming up!)

In my experience as a counselor, life coach, and keen observer of people, I’ve found that those who are codependent (always doing for others and not taking care of themselves) often don’t show their anger, but underneath they are seething with rage. This is not because they are bad people by any means…but because they’ve spent most of their life being “too good and too nice,” and in order to do that successfully, anger must be squelched.

I’m talking about those who are “nicey nice,” put others first, get entangled with self-centered and often abusive partners who they take care of, clean up after, and enable. That means their needs rarely got met, and boy are they pissed!

Anger is a favorite when it comes to emotional repression…at least for women.

For men, vulnerability is certainly near or at the top of the list of feelings to avoid it at all costs.

What feelings do you avoid or stuff down?
Are there emotions you believe you should never have?

What Women Are Up Against

I mentioned that women often repress their anger. I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the unique dilemma women face when it comes to boundaries.

For women, emotional boundaries can be a particular challenge, because of the training we’ve received. Actually, all personal boundaries are harder for women because (especially older women) we’ve been conditioned to have weaker boundaries…we’ve been taught to put the needs of others first.

When someone is trained to always come second, it’s almost impossible to know one’s own needs and preferences. It’s difficult to be authentic when you always defer to others. It’s a challenge to express your opinion when you aren’t encouraged to have one.

We are taught to “be nice.” We are taught to be kind, and submissive, especially to men.

We are taught that men’s needs are important and maybe even more important than ours. Or we’re taught not to have needs…or to not express them.

That’s why so many women don’t ask. We don’t ask for a raise — in fact, we probably didn’t negotiate our salary when first offered our job. Or maybe we work at a job or in an industry that doesn’t pay well or doesn’t give us respect.

We get praise for pleasing others. We often derive our self-worth from putting the feelings and needs of other people above our own.

Intellectual Boundaries:

Boundary issues can also leave us intellectually vulnerable.

Intellectual boundaries are about how solid we feel about what we think and believe. It’s about being able to distinguish our own thoughts and beliefs from the thoughts and opinions of others.

If we don’t have intellectual boundaries that are intact, we might not feel confident about our own thoughts. We might not trust our perceptions or we might feel confused about our own opinions.

This is also related to our personal identity and our confidence. Do you find it easy to form opinions? Do you feel your opinions are of value?

With weak intellectual boundaries, we will have difficulty making decisions. We might continually second-guess ourselves or obsess about the possibilities.

If our intellectual boundaries were violated as a child we may have difficulty knowing our true beliefs, knowing what we are interested in, or trusting the decisions we make. Intellectual boundary violation of children happens when a parent or teacher invalidates the thoughts and opinions of a child. For example when a child says “I don’t think it’s fair that…” or “My coach is mean to me.” and the parent responds with “You don’t know what’s fair and what’s not fair.” or “Don’t you speak that way about your coach. It’s not true!” In other words, the adult denies the child’s reality. The adult tells the child that what they see isn’t what they see and that what they feel or believe isn’t true.

With weak intellectual boundaries, we may be susceptible to mental manipulation from others — also known as “mind games” or “gaslighting.”

Sexual Boundaries:

This is about the ability to decide with whom we relate sexually, when, and how often.

With healthy sexual boundaries, we decide exactly how and when we interact sexually — we say no when we mean no, and we say yes when we mean yes. We don’t operate out of guilt or give in to pressure and we are probably less likely to cheat on our partners (or get involved with partners who cheat).

If our sexual boundary was violated as a child we may have difficulty setting limits sexually. We might be extremely interested in sex or we might avoid sex. We may even behave compulsively with sex.

Like other boundaries, if we experienced extreme sexual violation ourselves, we may suffer from the urge to violate others..in this case, to violate sexually.

A very high percentage of sexual predators were sexually abused as children.

Codependency

You’ve probably heard the term. It came into use around 1995 in self-help circles.

Codependency is a cluster of personality traits that are the result of underdeveloped personal boundaries. They consist of self-defeating behaviors within relationships.

We all have codependent characteristics to some degree — traits that show up now and then, or often. However, those whose boundaries are not fully intact will likely struggle with the issues and problem areas described above.

The Issue of Choice

An important aspect of codependency and how well our personal boundaries function, is the issue of choice.

Since codependency is a form of relationship addiction, the greater the codependency, the less choice one has.

In other words, the lack of boundaries and the compulsion to become enmeshed with another person, to cover for them, enable them, and take care of them translates into an existence where we are not able to distinguish our interests and feelings separate from theirs. We keep doing their bidding and a range of other things we really don’t want to do…because we are unable to disentangle ourselves from that person, or even a number of people.

We are powerless over the way we get involved, the degree to which we get involved, and the behaviors we engage in.

Are you able to make the choice about how close, or how involved you are in a particular moment or with a particular person?

Most of all — Are you able to say “no” when you need to?

Boundaries Quick Reference:

• must be permeable enough to take in and give out information
• must be impermeable enough to offer protection and separation
• are our “perimeter” that determines acceptable closeness
• help us distinguish between our own feelings and those of others
• help us know what is our responsibility and what is someone else’s
• give us the ability to take in feedback and either accept it, modify it, or reject it
• give us the ability to recognize our wants and needs when making decisions
• help us recognize and respect the boundaries of others
• keep us from offending or violating the boundaries of others
• help us take responsibility for our choices and feelings without blaming others
• give us “common sense” in our social judgment- we recognize danger

The list above applies to personal and intimate relationships as well as business relationships.

Professional and Workplace Boundaries

The kind of touching in a professional setting shown in the photograph above could be inappropriate. But, this moment captured by the photographer, the facial expression and body language of the woman being touched seem to indicate that she is fully comfortable with it — it’s her choice to be touched this way and by this person. She’s moving toward the touch with an open stance and a big smile. The person touching her baby bump is a woman.

If the man in the scene was touching her belly that would likely be inappropriate unless he’s her partner. It appears that he is a co-worker like the other two women. He is part of this encounter but is standing farther away than the two women. He knows not to get closer or to touch her. (he has good boundaries and the good judgment that comes with good boundaries)

What’s Your Experience with Professional Boundaries and Choice?

Do you have different boundaries with each colleague? Or do you find yourself in the same patterns with all your business relationships? What about your employees or your superiors?

Do you have as much choice as you would like? Or do you get drawn into other people’s needs and workplace dramas more than you want to?

Are you the caretaker in the office? The peacemaker? Do you ever cover for other people’s misconduct?

Inequality and Power Differences

Power imbalances in our place of employment can have an impact on our ability to maintain our boundaries.

Power differences are a reality and usually require at least a certain amount of submissive behavior.

Do you cover for your boss? Do you lie for him or her? Do they expect you to? How honest can you be with your supervisor?

It’s almost impossible not to engage in codependent behavior with your superiors. We often need to make concessions that seem codependent, in order to keep our job.

When dealing with someone who has power over you, your behavior might look codependent, and it might be. Or it might look codependent, but you’re making a choice to behave that way. If so, it’s not codependency as much as it is conscious submission. You’re using employee survival skills to navigate your relationship with your boss.

We’ve all had at least one boss from hell. They come in many forms. It’s for you to decide how far you will go, how much you will do, and to what degree you will go against your own values or integrity in order to keep your job and get through the day.

There is certainly more to say about boundaries in the business world. There are many facets to explore and nuances to consider, but what I’ve presented is more than enough for you to reflect on for now.

Signs of Healthy Boundaries:

• Improved confidence and self-respect
• More authentic and honest
• More accurate perceptions
• More trust in your own ideas and opinions
• More effective communication
• More assertive (not aggressive, but clean, direct communication)
• Healthier relationships
• Better judgment (common sense)
• Feel in control of your life

Now What? How to Develop Healthier Boundaries

Workplace and Professional Life

While it may seem surprising, the most common issue that I work with clients on in my coaching practice is Boundaries.

However, that’s never what clients mentioned during our initial consultation. It doesn’t even make the list of what they want to work on.

I might work with a client on “customer relationship management” or “developing tactics for higher sales.” Or perhaps assist them with “more effective ways of handling employee performance evaluations” or “how to approach their supervisor about a raise,” but what we are really working on is navigating relationships and the key component of that is boundaries.

While I help my clients improve all their relational skills, good boundaries are one of the most essential of those skills.

Resources for Healthier Boundaries

Assertiveness Skills are essential for strengthening your boundaries. Often misunderstood, learning to be assertive is not about being more aggressive. In fact, increasing your assertiveness skills will help you be less aggressive and also less passive. That may sound counter-intuitive but it’s true. Learn more about Assertiveness.

Emotional Self-Management Skills will also help strengthen your boundaries.

Many books can offer help. Check out those about boundaries and codependency.

Books on Boundaries:

A recent book that covers boundaries effectively is Dr. Pooja Lakshmin’s Real Self-Care: A Transformative Program for Redefining Wellness

Books on boundaries and codependency by Charles Whitfield.

Books on codependency by Melody Beattie.

Books on codependency by Pia Mellody.

Christine Green has coached individuals and business professionals to strengthen their boundaries and improve relational skills.