4 Key Points about Setting Healthy Boundaries

One of the most challenging topics I hear my one on one clients and the participants in my detox from judgment program raise is about setting healthy boundaries.

In my own life, I myself have struggled a great deal to overcome and heal my own people pleasing tendencies and learn how to set and maintain healthy boundaries in different aspects of my life.  This self work is a continuous process as things in our life keep evolving and unfolding in different ways and therefore we are bound to be confronted with new situations as well as old patterns popping up again often times in new clothing to test us. As the self-work continues, we can commit to releasing and healing our need to please others at our own expense, compromising our wellbeing to keep others happy,  abandoning ourself as a result of our fear of conflict, and feeling drained-guilty-anxious-resentful.

I want to highlight 4 points about what setting a healthy boundary is and is not:

1. Setting a healthy boundary is not putting up a wall to keep people out; it’s about showing people how to come in through the door if they want to engage with you rather than a side window.
2. Setting healthy boundaries is not about changing people, it is actually about changing yourself because other people are not responsible for what you need – you are. When we see that dynamics in our life are a result of our own small and big choices, and that people ‘violate’ our boundaries because we let them, we can start to take responsibility for our choices and empower ourselves in our life.
3. Setting healthy boundaries takes practice because we are choosing to lean into short term discomfort over long term misery rather than a lack of boundaries that gives an illusory short-term comfort over long term dissatisfaction and suffering. Practice with the small stuff and then build it up. If it gets too challenging for you work with someone who can support you.
4. A healthy boundary is not a demand, like “you cant talk to me that way!” nor an ultimatum or threat like, “if you don’t stop talking to me that way, i’ll leave you”. It is a statement of of our needs and limits – this could sound like, “When you speak to me that way, I feel disrespected. So the next time it happens, I will take care of myself by leaving the room.”

Once we understand what healthy boundaries are really about, then we need strategies to identify the problem and take action on it.

I will give some tips about that in a future post. Meanwhile do share in the comments your own thoughts about setting boundaries.