Boundaries Not Walls
8 minute read
Boundaries are the key to inner peace and healthy relationships. This is kind of good news, but also kind of not. In the short term, it might make for discomfort and guilt, but healthy boundaries are indicative of your commitment to the life you want. They are a central component of a virtuosic life. The people I know who are most skilful in asserting their boundaries are also very comfortable in their own skins and manage to communicate their boundaries without coming across as rigid or inflexible. Somehow their ease translates into how they expect to be treated and how they comport themselves.
The good news is that getting clear on what you will and won’t accept and thus asserting your boundaries is a practice, and life will give you ample opportunity to get it right. So what exactly does that look like and what does having healthy boundaries mean?
In her book Set Boundaries, Find Peace Nedra Glover Tawwab explains that boundaries are central to having healthy relationships and failure to cultivate and assert them leads to resentment, burnout, anger and avoidance. Boundaries are inextricably linked to self-care. Not only do they help you manage your inner environment and relationship to what’s going on around you, they are a cue to others about how to treat you. When you say no to something that makes you uncomfortable or causes you to violate your integrity, you say yes to inner peace and deeper self-regard. In Tawwab’s words ‘saying no to something in order to say yes to your own emotional, physical and mental well-being.’
It’s important to note that asserting boundaries takes practice, and can be particularly tricky for those of us who might have experienced childhood trauma, or who had to take on familial roles that children should not have to, for example, being the family mediator or peacekeeper. By the same token if home is a place where your physical boundaries are not recognised, say because you’ve been physically or sexually assaulted, then it’s hard to have clear boundaries as an adult.
Unhealthy boundaries can be a survival tool for those who’ve been traumatized. Trauma causes visceral and psychic distress and the entire system to go into fight or flight mode. When you don’t feel safe in your body and don’t feel that the world is a safe place, it can be difficult to have healthy self-regard and assert boundaries.
I used to apologize for my boundaries a lot of the time. I would assert one and then over-explain why, or ask if it was okay. Or I would remain silent while seething inside and eventually explode because my boundary had been disregarded.
And here’s the thing, other people are not mind-readers! It’s up to each one of us to communicate our boundaries as a cue for how we want to be treated.
Over time as I’ve become more comfortable in my own skin, more confident and easeful, I have become more skilful in communicating my boundaries without apologizing and just as importantly, without coming across (I think) as rigid. But it took practice and plenty of discomfort. Boundary setting can be uncomfortable so it’s important to be able to sit with that discomfort and not capitulate to the expectations of others. Phew! Serious adulting.
I’ve also had to learn to have boundaries and expectations about my worth as a yoga teacher. I derive most of my income from private clients. When I was a younger teacher I did not value my own worth sufficiently and probably set my rate lower than I should have. As the years went by and my experience accrued, I began to charge more and after an experience where a client threatened to take me to the small claims court for telling her I would need to apply a twenty-four-hour cancellation policy, I changed to a forty-eight-hour cancellation policy and raised my rate even more. The funny thing? I got better clients who respect my policy and pay me well.
I know the reason why, it’s because I shifted my inner environment and my sense of self and what I’m worth. People treat you the way you feel you deserve to be treated and if you settle for less, people will give you less because they know that you’ll accept it.
Words are not enough, it’s necessary to follow through with actions, which can be uncomfortable, but like everything, the more you practice the easier it gets. When you embody something people sense that, and don’t try and take advantage. Which doesn’t mean that I’m completely rigid about my rules. If a loyal well-paying client needs to cancel inside the window, every now and then I’ll waive the policy or reschedule to a mutually convenient time. This lets them know that the relationship is important to me and that I value them as more than just a transaction. The important thing is that I’m now secure enough in my own self to be able to have that ease.
It’s not just in my professional relationships as a yoga teacher that I’ve become more comfortable asserting my boundaries but in all my relationships. The longer we have been married, the better both my husband and I have become at having clear (but mostly flexible) boundaries with each other, and this has greatly improved our relationship. This makes sense. If you’re able to be clear about your boundaries in one domain, it’s easier to in others. Possibly with the exception of your family of origin and in-laws. This is some tricky territory that I’m not going to wade into here. We all have family dynamics that are tough to navigate and require courage to try and change. It’s difficult work and may require assistance in the form of professional counselling.
Getting clear on your boundaries requires thorough and sometimes uncomfortable self-investigation. Often when you are not honouring a boundary, you’ll feel it in your body. You might say yes to something, but your body will give you feedback that’s a no. It’s important to listen to that ‘no’ and develop the fortitude to be with the discomfort that can arise. Yoga helps because yoga teaches you to ride waves of discomfort and stay present. Again, tricky stuff that none of us really want to deal with. But alas, we must.
Tawwab suggests three strategies for clearly communicating boundaries:
Be clear and precise.
Be direct and ask for what you need or want, or say no without too much explication.
Deal with the discomfort and embrace guilt as part of the process and amp up your self-care practices.
This is the work of a lifetime and requires great self-regard, tenderness and compassion. Learning to value yourself is key, to love yourself in a way that communicates to others how you want to be treated. You deserve that. We all do. I hope you embrace the process.
Dearbhla Kelly, July 2021
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