Redefining Your Boundaries Ready For New Relationships
Now that I have spent more time thinking of the concept of boundaries I have begun to realise how key boundaries are for relationships.
Fundamentally, I can see within myself, how when my boundaries are not understood either by myself or by others I can feel smothered / claustrophobic or abused.
Sometimes, only when the feelings swell within me do I realise that a boundary has been crossed. I did not see it coming, now it is too late and I need to react, unfortunately charged with the emotion of past experiences of boundaries being crossed emerging from the unconscious.
Understanding ones own boundaries is clearly fundamental in being the person you are, almost the aura around you defined by unwritten rules that appear as associated past feelings when they are challenged.
They could be seen as the ‘interface rules’ of interaction with others. But then there is something about dealing with the relationship one has with oneself and agreeing consciously with the laws of engagement with yourself, i.e. what you are prepared to allow yourself to do..Do your boundaries need to change?
Is your behaviour appropriate?
Do you now understand yourself and know that that rule is now not needed, let someone get closer to you? Allow someone to rely on you more than you would normally allow because you consider them in need?
I strive for a sound understanding of my own boundaries enabling me to feel comfortable with myself, wanting a good balance between selfish and selfless. However I have experienced letting my own boundaries become weak and have let others abuse me intentionally and unintentionally in the past.However all is theoretically avoidable. The school playground, the office bully and the unintentional over-demanding friend. For both, a clear understanding of what I am willing to accept is the start of dealing with the issue.
By suppressing my own dissatisfaction with my boundaries being crossed creates tension within that eventually erupts. One incident happened recently when I realised I had been suppressing my own feelings on my independence with my partner. Friends tell me I have been good at convincing myself and others of how I am or feel when the opposite is the case.
This behaviour, learnt early in life as a way to adjust to my environment. This clearly does not help me since I am unconscious of suppressing my needs and the boundary challenges until they become a very strong emotional feeling. The more this happens the more I learn the feeling and understand that these feelings can and must be raised to consciousness, not denying my own rights for the boundaries I have within my personal and professional life.
The result of the eruption of feeling was a far greater clarity of the relationship’s challenge and a great inner calm within me about who I am and what I need, feeling very comfortable with that and acceptance of what it is to be me, raising my confidence in myself.It seems to me that a person with a weak sense of their own boundaries is susceptible to abuse from others who have a need to abuse.
Submissive people, like a close friend of mine, attract predatory individuals who need to prey on others to feed their own lack of self esteem, perhaps projecting their own faults and failures on those submissive others who are seemingly willing to accept that role.
Seemingly of course but the reality is that a submissive individual must be taking on a lot of abuse of their own boundaries, ultimately creating mental and physical ill health.So where can a breakdown of boundaries lead someone? Perhaps a breakdown in identity, confusion about who they really are. Their own choices about sex, in the case of sexual abuse, or simply a child with little opinion in the case of overly authoritarian parents.
Surely this can lead to a mental breakdown, where a person can be complete exhausted by the confusion within them about who they are, what it is to be them and confusion over the horrible things that a person may have done to them can not be accepted by their Ego anymore even though perhaps Superego told themselves they need to as part of someone else’s internalised rules.I have someone known to me who gave her daughter little boundaries as part of her method of dealing with their daughter’s rape experience.
She realised the error of her ways too late, having contributed in creating a very disturbed person who is unable to deal with who she really is, finding her behaviour extreme and contrasting to the rest of the family.
She moves through life narrowing the number of family individuals who are able to cope with her, living with others who are equally disturbed as her and are untrustworthy to her. I can only see a breakdown as the door she needs to pass through to really discover who she really is.
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Guy.
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Filed under: Relationship Break-up
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