Our skin guards the boundary between us and the outside world. A healthy skin easily and automatically keeps blood in and germs out. We also have an emotional “skin” that acts in a similar capacity, helping us to define who we are and protecting us from unwanted intrusions. With well-defined boundaries, we easily and comfortably keep people at an appropriate distance and give them clear signals about where we stand.
We must also be able to drop our guard and open our boundaries to allow intimacy into our lives. And yet, even in intimate situations, boundaries still come into play. We need a healthy respect for our own and each other’s bubble of space to maintain safety and self-esteem.
A healthy emotional life requires a well-balanced mix of defense and openness. If our boundaries are out of balance we’re unsure about where to draw the line. We often find ourselves in uncomfortable, unproductive, awkward situations, either keeping people too far away, and feeling lonely, or allowing them to get too close and feeling vulnerable. We may find ourselves chasing after people who want to get away, or we may open up to people who hurt us, or it might be us who runs away or hides.
For our emotional health, and even survival, we need to overcome these obstacles and connect with others in emotionally rewarding relationships. As we work to establish harmonious, caring relationships, we may learn about ourselves by taking a close look at our beliefs and habits about boundaries. There’s no one right way. The test of good balance is that we have healthy relationships at home and at work.
Boundaries and relationships
When we feel too loose about our boundaries, we open up too far and too fast. While this surge of intimacy may seem exciting at first, our collapsed defenses are a recipe for pain and frustration. We may throw ourselves on people who aren’t ready for us, who don’t respect or understand us and who don’t intend to stay. We may feel our identity slipping away as we try to find ourselves in someone who has not signed up to take such a responsibility. Ultimately, we become needy, desperately seeking our identity in the eyes of the other, and as we give up more and more of ourselves, we have less to offer. We become confused when the other person complains about feeling smothered, or wants us to stand on our own feet.
At the opposite extreme, we may defend ourselves too rigidly. We use elaborate strategies to keep our distance, such as excess judgments and analysis, or maintaining our “independence” by doing whatever we want, whenever we want it, or by promiscuity that reduces the bond between us to one limited dimension. We still need intimacy, and are afraid to seek it, so we get our attention by permitting other people to be attracted to us, without letting them get too close. And as they express their need for more of our presence, we feel threatened and smothered and push them away. Inside our rigid walls we are perpetually lonely, looking for love and then pulling away. This internal tug of war keeps us preoccupied with our own dilemmas, instead of relaxing and enjoying the support and nurturing of close relationships.
When seeking partners, we often gravitate towards those with the opposite extreme of boundary problems, rigid people being attracted by very loose ones and vice versa. A relationship formed between two people with unhealthy boundaries at first seems to be a comfortable match. The rigid one welcomes the attention, feeling the intensity of openness penetrate his well-protected walls. The wide-open one admires the other’s appearance of strength and poise, feeling that such a rigid person can help them get their own chaotic boundaries under control. “Finally someone who can handle the intense outpouring of my affection.” But soon the fascination wears off, and tension grows as the rigid one gets tired of defending himself against intimacy and the intimate one gets tired of the emotional distance. This frustrating dance leaves both partners feeling unfulfilled. When we are ready to find healthier approaches to intimacy, we can seek couples counseling to heal our current relationship, as well as to heal the patterns that keep us trapped in this cycle.
Boundaries first formed in childhood
As children, we start out with hardly any sense of self, not even understanding our connection with our own body. Gradually we form a picture of where we stop and start, testing our ability to change the world, and learning how others, mostly our parents, can change us. We learn by watching the way people behave towards each other, and the way they behave towards us. All these experiences shape our identity. When we have a clear sense of ourselves we can move out into the world with confidence. Without feedback and nurturing, we aren’t sure who we are, and go out into the world searching for our identity in others or building walls to hide our lack of confidence.
Even if we grew up in a loving family we might have skipped the childhood task of learning about our own boundaries and needs. Many children grew up with parents who were so busy or so needy that they expected us to take over their job. We were forced to take on grown up responsibilities, caring for our siblings and ourselves while inside us was a small child who needed nurturing, support and time to grow. While our adult-like behavior pleased our parents, and made us little heroes and angels, the small child inside us felt invisible and pushed into the background. We never learned to express our needs and in fact learned how to ignore our own needs altogether, and so we grew up with the understanding that other people’s needs and feelings were more important than our own. As adults we now tend to look at our selves as secondary, sending signals that we are not important enough to demand respect. We continue to get ourselves into situations in which we are the caregiver, losing our own identity in the needs of others just as we did in childhood.
After-effects of trauma
The worst damage to our boundaries comes from verbal, violent or sexual abuse, when caregivers violated our emotional and physical space, teaching us a lack of respect for our own safety and personal integrity. When we reached out to loved ones for comfort we found danger or emptiness. These traumatic experiences fester under the surface and, when we’re grown up, our child-within holds on to the terrible expectation that others may violate us or abandon us with no apparent reason. Such fears keep us away from others, or paradoxically may even pull us into situations similar to the ones we are afraid of. These reenactments are the mind’s unconscious need to get it right this time. Despite our best, conscious intentions, we may find ourselves swept up in patterns similar to our childhood, lashing out in rage against a partner or our own children, or allowing our own children or an abusive partner to act out against us.
Because intimacy is one of the most basic of human needs, we may feel, at times, desperate to be close to loved ones. And yet, if we also fear the dangers of intimacy we are in a bind. We find ourselves feeling desperately unsafe when we’re with another, and desperately alone when we’re not. Each of these emotional pressures comes heavily burdened with unfulfilled needs of childhood and the deep longings of adulthood. If we see no way out of this dilemma, we may turn to addictive behaviors or substances to numb or distract ourselves.
Hiding in substances
Drugs and alcohol have the power to reduce our focus on our emotional problems. The substances that cut through our pain do so by powerfully manipulating our brain chemistry, hijacking the very organ that could help us get to higher ground. They never resolve the underlying cause of our pain, and they always add problems of their own, clouding our judgment, provoking impulsive behavior, and their ultimate drawback, addiction to the substance itself. As addiction takes hold we need more and more of the substance to get the same result, and when we try to pull back, we feel a strong craving to continue. Addictions come with a high price, but if and when we stop taking the substance, we still face the agony of our emotional dilemmas. To break this vicious cycle, we need to heal the emotional issues that block us from experiencing the nurturing, safe support of intimate relationships.
Healing by introspection and learning new tools
Throughout our adult lives, we cry out to reclaim the sacred space within our own boundaries. As we try to achieve this inner peace and poise, we may benefit by revisiting the past. When we review our childhood, we remember situations and relationships that profoundly influenced our lives. Despite their power over us, up until now we may have rarely thought about them, and when we did we framed them within our confused child-mind. Now, we need to focus clear, conscious attention on the way our early lives unfolded. We can reduce their hold over us by applying adult ideas and values, reaching new insights of forgiveness, acceptance and integration.
Soothing ourselves and others
When our boundary fears stir up anxiety we lash out or shut down. We can learn to balance our reactions, and gracefully steer through crises by soothing ourselves in healthy ways such as positive self-talk, deep breathing and meditation. Twelve Step programs such as Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOA) as well as individual counseling can help us gain new perspectives and give us a safe place in which to reveal the patterns that keep us running around in circles.
Social skills and balanced boundaries
When our boundaries are out of balance, we either under-react, and have little interest in their situation, or react too quickly, clumsily pushing ourselves into their space without honoring their signals. We can improve the pleasure of our lives by improving the harmony with which we work and live with people. To keep comfortable and happy with people, we need to check out what they need. Listening carefully for what they want from us, and evaluating what we need from them, we can communicate clearly. We can learn such social skills in workshops, counseling and therapy groups. When we can read their signals, and respect what they need from us, we are able to make them happy, and they keep coming back for more.
Strengthen our validation of self and others
When we have a weak sense of self worth, we need to get our validation from others. We may let other people push us around, and feel victimized by people and by life. We crave to see ourselves in their eyes, and yet we filter their feedback through distorted lenses, feeling destroyed by even a mild criticism while lightly brush off their praise. No matter how much we seek their approval, we feel empty until we discover the self-worth that lies within us. To improve our pleasure in life, and to improve our relationships with others we need to build a strong base of wisdom that respects our sacred personhood. Our beliefs about our rights as people can be improved through a variety of learning opportunities.
Through counseling, workshops and group therapy we can explore our self-esteem. First we must learn the underlying beliefs we have about ourselves and others. This exploration includes discovering and weeding out habitual self put-downs, in which we attack ourselves with shameful, guilty thoughts and other negative thinking. In therapy we creatively substitute more positive self-talk and attitudes about ourselves. By speaking to ourselves optimistically and encourage ourselves we can reverse the automatic negative self-talk we’ve been hearing in our mind’s ear since childhood.
When our boundaries were violated as children, we grew up afraid to express our needs. Now, as adults, we may find ourselves ineffectively waiting for others to guess what we need, and may feel victimized and frustrated when they don’t guess correctly. Because expressing our needs was dangerous, we often can’t speak, holding back our feelings until we reach the boiling point. As adults, we need to learn more balanced ways of communicating. Learning the skill of assertiveness, we respect and explain our needs clearly. Instead of the being helpless victim, we become more empowered, and improve our self-esteem.
As we grow stronger in our self esteem, we also open up to a mutually respectful social support network. We learn to find emotional comfort without sexualizing every relationship, and gain strength from mentors, family members, clergy and peers. We also learn that the best support goes both ways. By giving we grow.
We can improve our view of our self through creative expression. Engaging in activities such as writing in our journal, drawing, dancing or any unique expression, we explore and reveal the sacred value of our own individuality, and deepen our respect for the pool of wisdom that lies hidden within us.
Religion offers many advantages for those of us who have lost reverence for our place in life. As small children, our first “gods” were our parents, who held the power of life and sustenance. If our parents were kind and present, we have a healthy base upon which we build our trust in a compassionate universe. However, if our parents were abusive or absent, we get the impression that the world is dangerous and unloving. Being stuck with these limiting beliefs can hurt our chances for a happy, healthy life. When we build faith in a caring consciousness, we gain powerful tools that will expand our confidence in the world, and trust in others. And a kinder, less dangerous world may relieve some of our desperate loneliness. We feel more nurtured, and are able to calm down the raging fires of neediness and turmoil without substances.
Healthy boundaries may seem abstract when we first try to grasp the concept. But as we learn how our healthy boundaries affect our intimate connections, we respect the critical part they play in our lives.
Our boundaries define the borders of our identity, and accumulating wisdom about them is a lifelong process that must proceed along many dimensions. We need to recognize and understand our own patterns, learn how to find value within ourselves, and heal the wounds of our inner child. We need to open up to those parts of ourselves that are incomplete and needy, and face them honestly, rather than allowing ourselves to be unconsciously driven by our pain. Healing takes hard work, patience and practice.
Ultimately, a healthier view of who we are and how we relate to others improves our sense of appropriate intimacy, leading to healthier relationships and healthier, happier activity in the world.
See Also: Assertiveness, Child Abuse, Child Within, Couples counseling, Identity, Loneliness, Promiscuity, Self-esteem, Soothing, Story, Trauma
Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child by John Bradshaw
Boundaries and Relationships : Knowing, Protecting, and Enjoying the Self by Charles L. Whitfield, John Amodeo
Codependent No More, How to stop controlling others and start caring for yourself by Melody Beattie