Really there’s no better quote about boundaries than Prentis Hemphill with:
I had been noticing I was often uncomfortable with the chatter surrounding boundaries. It felt like a lot of people were misinterpreting walls as boundaries, or using boundaries as ways to control people. I often heard a lot of chatter where I couldn’t shake the feeling, at best someone was choosing rigidity and disconnection but calling it boundaries, or at worst was being a jerk and chalking it up to “boundaries”. I’m happy we’re discussing them and they’ve come into the collective consciousness even if it’s flawed. Are we seeing that therapy speak doesn’t substitute action in some of this chatter? I don’t know. We have to get things wrong in order to get them right. Most people have deployed new skills and not netted a 10 out of 10, so I feel a sense of we have to be patient with ourselves and this is still progress.
What’s so funny about when you make the decision to be more intuitively lead, is it’s still surprising when it plays out. I was thinking on topics, the Jonah Hill screenshots erupted, and then huzzah I knew I wanted to chat boundaries with Dr. Josh. Of course as if by magic the way he explained things told me why it had all lined up the way it had. It’s interesting to me the ways we avoid owning that taking care of ourselves is our job and no one else’s. Sure, we can and should all play a part in caring for one another, and ideally we are interconnected but so often where we go wrong is when we make what’s about us, about someone else. How could they do that versus saying don’t do that. So often the reluctance to set boundaries is really to stay in the fantasy that someone will just magically change. It’s us avoiding all the emotions a boundary brings up and it feeling really good to lay it at someone else’s feet instead.
I get it, I spent decades in the loop. Wouldn’t set or enforce boundaries, would hope magic or mind reading would occur, allow resentment to build up to ridiculous degrees and then generally lose my shit and feel awful about it. I knew I had boundary issues both setting and respecting but therapy really clued me into how deep it went and how many different ways it affected my life. I love a boundary now, whether it’s for myself or others, it’s my way of saying I care about you enough to not jettison you. They teach me how to practice repair, which I’m also not great at. They’ve also forced me to widen my window of tolerance for the feels self advocating and boundaries bring up.
I told my therapist when I had learned how to set boundaries but now they needed to evolve that I just wanted to be able to set them and forget them and she laughed in a way few things have really gotten her which is part of why she’s my therapist. Boundaries like anything else, not only teach us what is okay and what isn’t but also how to be fluid and allow ourselves to evolve. What worked last year may not work this year. I hope we can all give ourselves the grace to be fluid and attend to ourselves in present day. We cannot remain fixed but wow it’s uncomfortable to settle into that.
Let me know what’s the best boundary you ever set for yourself? What was the scariest?
xx. A
P. S. The best for me is I don’t do last minute or same day readings, and the scariest was a refusal to budge on a copyright even though it prevented an opportunity. I wish my inner self hadn’t cared but alas she did.
Boundary things I’m thinking about:
Screenshots, boundaries and Jonah - gift link so no paywall because I love you
An interesting episode of Where Should We Begin with a married couple about boundaries
Nedra wrote a book about boundaries and now has a deck!
Therapy speak, is therapy speak ruining relationships, Esther thinks all the therapy speak is leaving us lonely
Ep. 86 Boundaries with Dr. Josh