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This is one of a series of articles on Lesson 4 - choose and evolve
nourishing relationships. These articles build on Lessons 1 - 3, and prepare
you for Lesson 5 (evolve and enjoy a nourishing fam-ily) and Lesson 6 (learn
to practice effective parenting).
All people, couples, and families need effective boundaries to
preserve their security and identity. They can
conflict, and people violate each others' boundaries. This article offers...
The article assumes you're
familiar with...
Recently a thirty-something man emailed me about dissatisfactions with his marriage. His mes-sage concluded “Don’t respond, because my wife reads
my email though I asked her not to.” His wife’s
insecurity and distrust was violating an important boundary of his.
She interpreted her
husband’s request for privacy as “keeping secrets,” which made her
anxious. He did need to keep
some secrets, because he experienced her typical responses as
unsafe - i.e. over-emo-tional,
critical, unempathic, and combative. So far, this college-educated couple was
not able to use ef-fective communication
to unravel their web of
and
mutual conflicts.
This and other dynamics were
inexorably increasing distrust, hurt, resentment, and anxiety in their year-old
marriage. These were growing because both mates were ruled
by
which needed to deny that
psychological
and
were
eroding their relationship. When I suggested this to the
couple and proposed what to do about it, the wife quit marital therapy.
In working with hundreds of
courting and committed couples, I’ve seen countless variations of
signif-icant boundary conflicts and violations. There are powerful options to avoid
and resolve them! Before exploring them, take a...
Status Check
Acknowledge what's real in your family now: T = true, F = false, and “?” = “I’m not sure,” or
“It depends on (what?)”
Our family adults (a)
can clearly define what personal, marital, and family
are now and (b) why they're important, and
(c) our definitions agree
well enough. (T F ?)
We're all clear enough on what boundary
conflicts and violations are (a)
a person, and
(b) between people. (T F ?)
We
can clearly describe why
boundary conflicts and violations can be significant marital and parental stressors.
(T F ?)
Our family adults have
evolved an effective strategy for resolving significant boundary conflicts
and violations (a) inside us and (b) between us
now. (T F ?)
We all usually feel
comfortable enough discussing significant boundary problems among any of us. (T F ?)
I
know why I’m reading this article (T
F ?)
Someone in our family has a serious
boundary problem now. (T F ?)
Each of our family adults can (a) clearly describe effective
now, and feel com-fortable enough (b) asserting and (c) enforcing
boundaries with other adults and kids.
(T F ?)
We are intentionally teaching the
young people in our family how to (a) set effective boundaries, and (b)
avoid and (c) resolve boundary conflicts and violations. (T F ?)
My
is
my
now.
(T F ?)
Pause and reflect: if you just
learned anything important, what is it? To help you resolve boundary
problems, consider this...
Perspective
See how you
feel about these premises...
What Are Relationship
"Boundaries"?
If someone
asked you to eat a live centipede, would you? Either "yes" or "no" demonstrates a
per-sonal boundary or limit. In our context, boundaries are invisible dividing lines between
what people and groups will and won't accept, tolerate, believe, or do.
Boundaries define
what's currently acceptable physically, psychologically, and spiritually, and
what isn't. “Acceptable” means “I can tolerate (something) without taking some
action.” For instance, "I like red meat, but I refuse to eat horsemeat or
raw hamburger."
Your family members
have many boundaries, including infants ("Emma won't nurse now.")
We grow them automatically as we accumulate experience with pleasure and discomfort.
Boundaries are universal, so we're often unconscious of how and
when they regulate our lives until they're conflicted, violated, or
absent "too much.” Some boundaries change with age, experience, and our
dynamic environments. Others remain constant across our years.
Adults
and kids hint,
imply, declare, or shout their boundaries verbally ("OK," "No," "Not now,"...)
and nonverbally, via eye, face, voice, and body dynamics. If your
is
solidly
of your
your verbal and nonverbal boundary announcements match.
If a
false self (a distrustful group of personality parts)
controls your thoughts
and behaviors, you may feel uncertain, mixed, guilty, or
torn about your boundaries. You may then give or receive
confusing
about them: "You say you're not
bored, but I feel like you're disinterested...?!"
Sometimes it’s useful to
differentiate between limits and boundaries. A limit is
something you can’t do, like levitate or chat with Buddha. A
boundary is something you won’t tolerate without taking some action. It may
also help you problem-solve if you separate boundary conflicts from
disputes. The
latter occur when
people disagree over what is
right vs. wrong, good vs. bad, safe vs. dangerous, and
better vs. worse. Values and boundary conflicts are resolved differently.
Firmly-flexible boundaries are essential
for persons, couples, and stable
They
help to define identities ("We don't eat meat on Fridays."), and regulate the psychological distance between
people and groups. When boundaries are compatible, stable, and enforced
respectfully, they provide fa-mily kids and adults with enough identity, safety (comfort),
privacy, and order.
Boundaries can be tangible (skin, doors, walls,
fences, clothing...) and invisible
(thoughts, values, preferences, emotions). Both can promote order, harmony, and security,
or frustration, anxiety and stress.
Remember the last time
someone important violated (disrespected or ignored) your
personal boundaries? Relationships flux dynamically as each person asserts and enforces
their boundaries to
balance closeness (MeYou), and separateness (Me) + (You).
A key
boundary to manage is the invisible envelope around
couples. Mates may conflict or agree on what their couple-boundaries are ("Kids,
when our bedroom door is closed, we need private time - unless someone needs an
ambulance!") Couples may also agree or conflict over how and
when to
declare and enforce their boundaries, and with whom ("Jan, I need you to
tell your sister to stop calling us at 6 AM!")
Privacy
is what happens inside your personal, couple, parental, and family boundaries.
An
inevitable courtship task is each partner learning to adjust their personal boundaries to mesh
well enough with
their mate’s. Courtship and cohabiting usually trigger two or more
families merging. This forces the declaration and adjustment of many personal and group
boundaries over many months. To succeed
at this, typical family adults need...
-
to be
steadily
by their
-
awareness of boundary concepts and of
their
and...
-
clear, stable, personal
(a sense of self");
-
shared language to discuss boundary needs, conflicts, violations,
and consequences;
-
effective
communication
- specially awareness, assertion, and empathic listening; and...
-
tolerances for (a) changing
their
family
and lifestyles,
and (b)
any significant losses
(broken bonds) these changes cause.
Do you know anyone
who has had trouble
merging
biofamilies and forming
stable new personal, marital, parental, and household boundaries?
Why are Boundaries Important?
Because they regulate
your security, comfort, serenity,
self-respect, and relationships, your boundaries...
determine what experiences you select
or avoid, which limits your direct knowledge ("Yes" on fudge and waltzing,
"no" on raising rattlesnakes and sky diving); and they...
define your identity as a unique person
("Judi will talk about her spiritual beliefs, but not her brother's
death or her sexual
experiences"); and boundaries...
regulate...
-
your emotional and physical
security ("No, the roads look too icy. Let's stay home today."),
and
your health ("I smoke a pack a day, but I won't eat animal fat or use
cocaine."); And...
-
the emotional distance or
closeness between you and every other person ("Jerry,
I need some alone-time right now. Do you mind?")
Boundary
Conflicts and Violations
Because
we're unique individuals, some personal and family boundaries will
conflict
(among
personality
and among people: e.g. "You're OK with eating dinner after 8 PM, and I'm not."
A different stress occurs when one person accidentally or intentionally
ignores (“violates”) a sig-nificant boundary in
another person, like "I asked you not to buy so many lottery tickets,
but you did anyway."
Boundary conflicts
are simpler to negotiate and resolve than violations, because violations usually
require rebuilding respect and
trust, and healing
hurts and
Personal, marital, and/or
household boundary violations by kids and adults cause major
home and family stress.
Boundary conflicts and
violations can range from minor (no action required) to significant (some action
or consequence is
required). Each of these has two levels:
surface boundary problems, and the primary problems (unmet needs)
that cause them.
Healthy and Toxic Boundaries
When
boundaries and their consequences promote everyone's personal wholistic health,
safety, or-der, and self and mutual respect, they can be labeled healthy.
Boundaries and consequences which di-minish or block these and stress
relationships and families can be called toxic. The latter usually
means a false self controls one or more people.
Implication - (a) the personal and social effects of
boundaries and their consequences, and (b) the way they are set (e.g.
respectfully and empathically or not) can be just as important as the boundaries
themselves.
Enmeshment – Too Few Boundaries
Many American adults have
a significantly
childhood. A common legacy from that is psychological
including excessive shame, guilts, and
fears. Before
and
choosing to
their wounds, typical survivors tend to unconsciously choose each other as mates
and associates repeatedly, despite painful results.
Sometimes the wounds manifest as rigid, aggressive boundaries and a high need to
control relation-ships. Some
survivors feel they
don't deserve
the right to have, assert, or enforce personal boundaries, and/or they don’t
know
to assert
them effectively.
When two
such people choose each other, they may have few to no boundaries with each
other (“Juan and Charlene are joined at the hip.”) They (their ruling subselves) become fused or
and
they have wispy personal
Symptoms of fusion are
reflexively discouraging each other from having individual friends, hobbies,
careers, thoughts, feelings, dreams, worship practices, and solitudes. Each
partner feels high guilt and anxiety saying “no” or “not now” to their mate – or
talking about this.
relationships have un-balanced or too few
healthy
interpersonal boundaries.
An enmeshed relationship may satisfy
some wounded couples who are unaware of themselves and their primary needs. A high cost they pay is stunted personal
growth and muted or no personal life goals. As such couples age, factors can
combine to cause one of them to need more personal boundaries. That inevitably
raises their partner’s anxiety, and causes boundary conflicts and violations.
A variation
of this occurs when a parent is enmeshed with a child. Wounded, overwhelmed custodial parents with few resources can
unconsciously require their child to become a “surrogate mate” – a confi-dant,
partner, and companion. In the worst case, this includes toxic physical
intimacy
From unawareness, shame, and fear, the parent (i.e.
their false self) discourages their child from de-veloping an identity and
other relationships, moving out, and choosing their own partner ("growing up" /
"maturing"). Some clinicians
call such burdened kids "parentified."
Now let’s build on this perspective on "boundary problems" by exploring...
-
typical boundary conflicts and violations
-
the common unmet primary needs that
promote
them, and..
-
options for resolving them effectively.
Typical Boundary Conflicts
The basic
interpersonal
boundary conflict is: "I will accept, tolerate, or allow (something)
without reacting, and you won't." Like
basic resolution options are "You and I
(a) acknowledge our mutual conflict
and negotiate a compromise we each can live with," or
(b) "we don't."
Boundary conflicts among your
are the same: one
subself (like
your Curious Kid) says "I want to experience 'x' (like spiders crawling
on my hand)." Another subself, like your ever-alert
says "Well
I don't! Spiders will poison us and we’ll slowly die in unspeakable
agony, you idiot!"
Your other subselves may add their own mosaic of boundaries about
relating to spiders (or what-ever), depending on many things. Your behavior and
emotions are the outcome of all your subselves’ needs, boundaries, and
negotiations together. ("OK, OK, we'll collect, study, and discuss spiders,
but we’ll never touch them.")
Many topics trigger
surface boundary conflicts in typical families: money ("No, I won't
agree to buying a $145 parrot."); "manners;" hygiene and health; food
and eating; co-parenting; spirituality and worship; holidays and vacations;
sensuality and sex; time balances (work, play, or rest); privacy and solitude;
socializing; TV and leisure choices; home decorating; transportation;
promptness; dress and appearance;, etc., etc.
Think about five or
more things
you feel intensely about. Have you
experienced boundary (yes/no) conflicts with each other family members on any of those vital
areas?
Typical Boundary Violations
Boundary violations occur between personality subselves and between
people. Let's look briefly at each of these...
Boundary
violations
among your
are so universal they go largely unnoticed. For instance your
and
subselves say “We really need to call the dentist about
these cavities today!” This activates your
who remembers early dental pain and trauma, and dis-trusts this (new)
dentist.
That activates your
and
subselves, who try to protect the Scared Child by causing you anxiety from
images of the dentist discovering
“something really awful that will cost thou-sands of dollars.”
Their
persuasive ally the
joins in by urging you to "call later in the week," and your
subself provides convincing reality distortions like “a few days isn’t
going to make any differ-ence, and maybe the pain will subside by itself.”
Result: you don’t call the dentist, and the boundaries of your Health
Director and Adult subselves are violated (disrespected and
overruled.)
Your
may then chastise you for “not taking good care of yourself (What
would Mom say?”, which may activate your
Overall, your inner family of subselves is polarized and out of
harmony, which causes you vague inner
and maybe a headache or stomach ache.
When
the cavities get worse and cause serious pain and expense, all subselves feel
anxious and insecure because no one among them was able to forestall that - i.e.
they didn't trust the resident
to guide them.
If you
were in true
from
your
subself would have effectively com-forted the
Scared Child,
so the other Guardian subselves wouldn’t have ganged up to take over your
Self, Health Director, and
Adult ("common sense"). That would free them to call the dentist, and get
appropri-ate self care.
Every
time you feel "I know I shouldn't, but…" you violate some internal boundaries.
That activates subselves who bring you guilt, shame, self-doubt, anxiety, and
perhaps disgust. Those in turn promote false-self dominance, and the temporary
or chronic loss of your true Self's wisdom and guidance.
Personal wound-reduction via some form of
can reduce that over time, by har-monizing your inner crew and improving their
problem-solving skills. If you’ve never communed with any of your subselves,
this will probably sound like low-budget science fiction.
If you're skeptical about person-ality subselves, read this
letter to you, and try this safe, interesting
exercise. Then study these
slides or this article.
Continue learning about boundary
violations, the real
problems causing them, and practical resolution options. Do you need a break first?
