Personal boundaries are a key to living a healthy and prosperous life. While we all understand that establishing, communicating and enforcing personal boundaries is vital for happiness, it can be challenging keeping boundaries in place.
What are boundaries? Based on your beliefs, opinions and past experiences, personal boundaries are limits you put in place to stop people from taking advantage or making you feel uncomfortable.
When establishing personal boundaries, the most important thing to remember is that your needs and feelings are just as important as everyone else’s. Consistently putting the needs of others above your own erodes your self-worth and eventually, it can impact your mental and physical health.
Create your personal boundaries by first taking your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health into account. Then, decide what behaviours you expect from others when it comes to each. Also, decide what the consequences would be should someone refuse to behave acceptably. Listen closely to your heart and be true to what you hear whilst doing this. Weak boundaries will quickly turn you into a victim by attracting abusive people and energy vampires into your life.
Once your boundaries are established, it’s important that you let others know exactly what they are. If someone starts to overstep one, discreetly make them aware that they’re making you feel uncomfortable. Most people will respect your feelings and change their behaviour. If you’ve communicated your boundaries and the other person refuses to respect you, then you must choose whether to protect your personal boundaries or allow the other party to disrespect you.
Most people find establishing and maintaining personal boundaries to be emotionally challenging. Counselling can help you find ways of dealing with boundary issues in a more positive, empowering manner. If you’d like to discuss how counselling can help you, please get in touch.