We hear all the time why it’s important to set up boundaries in our communication with others. Well, are you setting up boundaries or barriers with others? Finding a difference can be difficult but understanding it can be crucial for your mental health and your relationships.
Do We All Need Boundaries?
Yes! Some people don’t set up boundaries at all and the reason behind this can be low self-esteem, lack of core values or fear of abonnement. You have to understand your needs to be able to set up boundaries and you have become fearless when it comes to speaking out. However, maybe you are drawing hard lines and becoming inflexible? Are you unwilling to compromise?
If the answer is yes, you might be setting barriers that can hurt relationships in your life.
What Are Boundaries?
Boundaries are like guidelines for others, so they understand what your needs, limits, expectations, and capacities are. Boundaries are essential for our own emotional health. Healthy boundaries encourage self-respect. However, they are hard to establish and even harder to understand. Physical boundaries are clear but emotional ones sometimes are not as clear as physical ones. Still, both are very important for our emotional health and for us to feel safe.
Are You Setting up Boundaries or Barriers?
How Can We Define Barriers?
From the other side, barriers are attempts to create a roadblock to intimacy and it can also create a lack of safety and trust. Barriers happen when we become too protective of our own personal space and our own voice. Boundaries can become barriers when we are struggling to find the right balance between what we would tolerate and what we wouldn’t tolerate in interaction with others.
The main difference is the lack of communication. When we have barriers, we don’t communicate with others on what’s important.
How to Find Healthy Boundaries?
Messages we receive as children will often shape our boundaries in later years of life. If your parents are not willing to compromise that will affect your ability to set up flexible boundaries. From the other side if you don’t see boundaries as a child you will be in a difficult position to have boundaries later in life. When a child doesn’t feel respected, we are often left believing that we are not worthy of respect and we carry that feeling through adult years.
Often women need to find a way to set up boundaries especially in relationships with men. Many women struggle to find boundaries with men due to fear of abonnement or other insecurities built through childhood.
To set up boundaries in a way you have to be vulnerable and learn how to express your emotions.
How Can You Set Boundaries Without Creating Barriers?
Knowing your core values matters for creating fluid and clear boundaries. They will reduce stress in your life and increase your ability to self-care and improve overall well-being.
If you want to learn how to set up healthy boundaries you need time, consistency, and patience. When someone crosses the line, we often feel uncomfortable to speak out, so the other side knows that he or she crossed our boundaries.
However, we should never be rigid about our boundaries. We need a clear picture of what matters to us and what doesn’t matter. That’s where knowing your values comes in as an important factor. Having and voicing your boundaries will make you feel more empowered and stronger. However, your boundaries shouldn’t make feel others like you are unapproachable and difficult to work with.
For the most part, we are responsible for how we feel. Others behave towards us as we allow them to. Having boundaries opens up communication and people are clearer in communication with others. People will never have to second guess what type of behavior you tolerate and what you would never tolerate.
Set up clear expectations but ask yourself how important this is for me? Does this represent my core values? Core values are not only values that matter the most but values that are essential such as honesty and dignity. If someone’s dignity is not there then something is wrong in communication with others, meaning boundaries are not there.
When we create barriers, we are not even able to communicate our feelings and expectations but when you have healthy boundaries you don’t have an issue of communicating your expectations with others.
