Boundaries are the entryway to your soul. Knowing how to set healthy boundaries is imperative to knowing yourself. If you do not set boundaries daily with the people you interact with, you do not know yourself. Let’s dive in.

Going through life is tough as you interact with other humans daily. Some will be friendly, while others are hostile for reasons you may not understand. But to truly know whether you are confident in who you are, you must have the ability to set boundaries.

Boundaries are the rules of your life. Anything you want to experience in the world has rules of entry or use. If you do not follow those rules, you will not be able to have the experience, or you may receive severe consequences for violating the rules. The human soul is no different.

You are an entity, and another human is another entity. Your boundaries are the rules you set for others to safely interact with you. If they violate those rules (boundaries), then the consequences of the violation are enforced, which may include a loss of access to your presence.

This means having the ability to say NO. NO is a complete sentence that most codependents are terrified of saying for fear of being alone or being abandoned. To develop the habit of being able to set boundaries, you must not fear the consequence of being alone. For if someone does not respect your boundaries, they do not respect you. This means if you never set boundaries, then you have no idea whether the person you interact with frequently actually respects you.

EXAMPLES OF BOUNDARY SETTING

To explain boundaries, we’ll start with examples, since they are easier to process. Let’s say someone approaches you while you are tired and asks you to do an urgent favor. You have already established that you are tired, so doing a favor would be overextending yourself. For this reason, you set a boundary and decline to do the favor. Saying NO to the request is the boundary. If it doesn’t make sense, try reading about boundaries from different perspectives until it does. Given the importance of the relationship, you may offer an alternative for the following day, but the urgent request must go elsewhere, as you’ve determined you are tired, and you love yourself. If this person vanishes from your life, then it is clear they never respected you or your well-being.

Let’s say somebody asks you to do something that is questionable at work. You love yourself and your job, and you do not want to jeopardize this by meeting this person’s demands. If you do not understand boundaries and want to keep their approval, then you would comply even though your body says NO. But now you’ve read this article and are practicing setting boundaries so your body can make proper adjustments. You cannot intellectually teach your body to be confident when setting boundaries. So instead, you set a boundary with the colleague and say, hey, I don’t mind being friendly work colleagues, but please don’t ask me to participate in questionable things in the future. In addition, I won’t be doing what you’ve requested here today. You must realize that this could enrage this colleague or cause them to give you the silent treatment, never speaking to you unless they have to. You have to be able to live with this and still confidently set your boundary.

Your mother calls you whenever she feels like it. At 2 am or 4 pm. You have to work from 8 to 5 pm and need to sleep and replenish from 11 pm to 6 am. However, your mother continues to interrupt what you would like to have happen in your life if you were in control. So to change this, you set a boundary with limits. Rather than telling your mother she can’t call you anymore, which would be a hard boundary, you tell her she can call you between the hours of 6 pm and 10 pm. If she does not honor your boundary limits in the future, then she receives the consequence that you did not answer the phone. And you can ramp up the consequence for each boundary violation, etc., to discourage the behavior in the future.

IMPORTANCE OF BOUNDARIES

Without boundaries, you get entangled with others and often take on tasks you don’t want and are not in alignment with your being. These tasks bring you additional stress, especially if they are with abusers and manipulators. As a child, you were likely enmeshed with your parents, where there was no difference between where you began and where they ended. Boundaries change all of this in your adult life, and you know where you end, and another person begins. When you have boundaries and rules for your life, you do not automatically respond to others’ emotional pull. You are no longer the rescuer of random people because you’ve built self-love and self-respect. Compromising yourself and rescuing another betrays yourself and your inner intuitions. Meanwhile, you are not truly rescuing another since that is an impossible task that requires the other to be ready for rescue, which you cannot control.

BOUNDARY REPETITION

It is not possible to know boundaries through the conscious and intellectual process. It must be a part of your being where you listen to your body and trust its signals. This requires repetition and a rewiring of your brain to know that it is safe to set boundaries. This process also allows you to learn more about yourself as you make adjustments and fine-tune your boundaries to your way of life. For example, you may set a boundary that was too harsh and caused unnecessary stress in your life, or left you out of something you wanted to participate in. You would register this and make adjustments so that, if a similar situation came up, the boundary set would be a little more lax and yield the outcome you want for your life. As you can guess, you may have relaxed the boundary too much on the next event, so the next time, you may need to make it harsher and so on, until you find the sweet spot that will allow you to participate in the life you choose, while still feeling respected and holding your integrity. Your body and brain will also make adjustments, becoming less and less fearful the more you enforce your boundaries.

BOUNDARY ALIGNMENT

With boundaries in your arsenal of weaponry to combat manipulation and mental disorders, you can now do things that align with your soul. If it does not align with you or your soul, then you can set a boundary and say NO. Let me repeat, NO is a complete sentence that communicates everything the listener needs to know. Imagine your being and way of life being a home. Although a home is static, whereas your life and evolving self are dynamic, the following will still make sense. Without boundaries, there is no security around your home. The door is wide open, and anyone can enter your home and move furniture around, create a mess, and leave. With boundaries, you put up a gate around your home with the door closed. There is a smart lock and a Nest camera, where you can grant access if you deem that the visitor wants to visit you for who you are.

Setting boundaries is essential to being yourself and living the life you want. Here are a couple of recommendations that helped me with the concept. Say No & Set Boundaries by Maria Reed and Boundaries and Relationships by Charles L. Whitfield. These are excellent resources that will help you gain the confidence to set boundaries as your body and conscience adjust to your new state of being. An individual with edges that are no longer permeable and cannot be easily manipulated. Good luck in your healing journey.