Why does everyone keep banging on about boundaries?
What even are boundaries…
Until a few years ago the word was solely linked to disputes over where your garden finished and your neighbours started!
Now suddenly it’s all about being mentally healthy, maintaining positive relationships and not allowing work colleagues to take advantage or become too toxic.
They’re tricky those boundaries, because they are not one size fits all. Your boundaries in your job are perhaps going to be tighter than those you maintain with your partner or children.
And then there’s the ones you need to have with your self.
It’s all so complicated.
The thing is though they are quite important, take it from someone who has struggled with them in the past. Either I’m too strict about them and shut everyone/thing out or I’m bending them more than a young sapling does in a named winter storm.
But you see the message is clear, it’s repeated to us every time we get on a plane, and for those of you who have not had the chance to fly, here’s what I mean.
When they do the safety talk, and the pointing at the emergency exits bit, they also tell you, you need to put on your own oxygen mask before your children’s or anyone else. Why? Because if you are struggling for breath and almost passing out how can you possibly help anyone more vulnerable, less capable than you?
And isn’t this a great metaphor for life. If we are struggling for breath, if our chest feels tight from anxiety and that light headed panic starts to set in, how can we possibly be in a position to be of use to anyone else?
Boundaries aren’t about being saying no all the time, nor are they about massages and meditation. They are about setting healthy, manageable and realistic limits within a relationship, a job or in your life.
It could be making sure you don’t work overtime unless you absolutely have to, or perhaps putting a night out for yourself in the diary rather than always be a taxi for everyone else’s fun.
Perhaps it’s about saying to yourself when I do go out I am going to have this many drinks or to not accept an invitation from someone because actually you don’t enjoy spending time with, and your time is precious.
Boundaries are unique to you and yours to decide, there is no right or wrong and there certainly is no pressure. But do you know what most of the time when you start putting them in, people actually respond quite positively. It may take them by surprise the first couple of times, they are so used to you saying yes all the time. But pretty soon they have altered their expectations of you and if they don’t? Perhaps that’s a relationship that needs a little more exploring.