Building Boundaries: Part 2
Own your feelings
Your personal boundaries protect the inner core of your identity and your right to choices.
― Gerard Manley Hopkins
Inner Boundaries Refresh
In “Building Boundaries: Part 1”, I talked about Inner Boundaries. An inner boundary is all about taking ownership of your own emotions. We take ownership of our emotions without judgement or blame. We don’t accept blame or feel guilt about someone else’s feelings. The foundation of healthy boundaries, which create healthy relationships, is Inner Boundaries. Take responsibility for your own emotions and you are going to initiate a personal evolution. Understanding inner boundaries was the pivot point for me to gain a sense of balance and wellbeing established in my day to day life during a particularly difficult stretch of parenting.
Sometimes we are blamed or take responsibility for another person’s feelings, or we do the blaming and assign responsibility to another person. Feelings are not caused by someone else’s behavior or words, feelings are caused by our perception and stored memories that are brought on by a current situation. This is an example of missing inner boundaries, and a state of mind that can cause feelings of powerlessness. Here’s how a lack of inner boundaries may sound: “You made me angry, sad, scared.” or “If you weren’t so _ I wouldn’t have , felt so _, or done_”. When we make other people responsible for our feelings we abandon ourselves and the person we’re blaming, we let go our own authority. We may feel out of control of ourselves, a situation or our destination in life. Especially if we’re constantly blaming or taking on blame for someone else’s feelings. Feel your feelings, don’t feel bad about having them or try to stuff them down. By not acknowledging or addressing feelings they actually become more powerful, bigger; they become obstacles to personal growth.
Real, not true
What does Real, Not True mean? Feelings are real. However, the thought or perception that caused the feeling may not be true. You may recall a time that you had a big emotional response to something, which in retrospect doesn’t seem warranted. This may be an indication of a trigger. Triggers are events or situations that evoke a memory from our past, in which we sense that something important to our welfare is occurring and includes a set of physiological and psychological changes and behaviors in response to the situation. Here’s where we need to offer ourselves some self-love and compassion. These are automatic responses, they don’t make us bad or deficient humans. These responses at one point may have helped us in some way, it’s just that they no longer serve us.
what’s a trigger got to do with boundaries?
To be the master of your own life you need to be the master of your own emotions. Triggers are tricky buggers because, while it may seem to you that you are reacting to the present situation, in reality the cause of this overpowering feeling is the combination of the present moment and your stored memories telling your body that you are under threat. Your brain and body respond by delivering stress hormones and you feel your physical state change along with your defensive reactions, all within seconds. Reacting to the current situation from this place of feeling threatened doesn’t give the mind purchase on truth or reality. Remember, an inner boundary is ownership of your feelings. Your feelings are yours alone and not someone else’s fault, this is the premise of the inner boundary and a trigger will put you in danger of violating this boundary by over reacting, blaming, defending, basically missing an opportunity of understanding yourself and connecting with another. This is why triggers are important to understand to create healthy boundaries.
How to defuse a trigger
Start with curiosity. When something triggers a feeling in you, first pause. Examine the feeling, are you feeling hurt, sad, angry? Most big feelings have an underlying feeling of threat or danger, even if wouldn’t be the first thing we would think. Then, ask yourself what about the event makes you feel as you do? Is it a recurring trigger that sets you off? Some triggers are more charged than others. It took me a while to get the hang of this, one thing I found helpful was to create a practice of not believing anything I thought and felt - it was a radical practice for “sensitive” me. Admittedly, it was weird at first, detaching from a belief system that I had engaged in for several decades made me feel like I was in The Twilight Zone. I also began to notice that I felt calmer, my inner world felt like spring on a sunny day rather than a hurricane. It was pleasant.
setting the stage for connection
The word “boundary” evokes an image of separation between things. The interesting thing about boundaries is that creating and maintaining boundaries actually invites healthier connection in relationships. If you consider that inner boundaries are taking responsibility for yourself, it makes sense that other people will begin to feel safer with a person who isn’t going to blame them for something. They will also feel heard and understood when you are listening to hear what they are sharing rather than listening to give advice or share your own experience. Refraining from the need to relate all your experiences to what the person is sharing is a great boundary to keep in mind. So! Inner boundaries focus on you owning your feelings, which enables you to see others as their own people! This invites healthy connection.
