Communicating your boundaries may sound self-explanatory, but there is a reason why it can be difficult and it all goes back to your self-esteem and your sense of self-worth. There are often a lot of situations that contribute to your self-worth and how you feel about yourself, and usually, this can be rooted in childhood, but ultimately the relationship we have with ourselves and how we view ourselves and feel about ourselves. Sometimes we can hold other people’s needs over our own and put others on a pedestal, and other times we may just not feel like an important person or the main character in our own lives and this makes it hard to stand up to others and stand up for ourselves.
Something that often happens when we are not setting our boundaries is that resentment can arise and we can often resort to passive aggression or pent-up anger that is bound to explode at some point. Some people are not conscious or aware of what their boundaries are or even when they are crossed and this makes it very challenging to state boundaries and even understand what’s happening and why you feel so upset.
The first step to communicating your boundaries is to understand what they are exactly, and while this can be a complicated process to figure out, it all starts with the ability to label your emotions and understand how different situations affect us emotionally. Start by labeling emotions for every situation that happens to us, whether positive or negative.
For example: Let’s say a friend of yours is difficult to be around sometimes and they tend to take out their anger or frustrations on you by being cold, distant, or unkind when they feel this way. An important thing to note is that this would make the person on the receiving end feel uncomfortable, hyper-vigilant, hurt, sad, angry, etc. So being able to label the emotions and how this situation has triggered you.
Hint: Think about what YOU are feeling and consider only your own emotions and experience without blaming others, even if their actions or words are hurtful.
The next step is to communicate these boundaries from the perspective of your emotions and what’s coming up for YOU, without focusing in on what the other person is doing and avoiding the word “you” and keeping to the words “I feel” as much as humanly possible. This will ensure that you are stating your emotions from your perspective and from your emotions, which allows you to be in your power, yet vulnerable. Anyone who cares about you and is important in your life would not want you to feel negative emotions in their presence.
Bringing up the same example of the friend being unkind when in a bad mood, letting them know clearly and calmly “I feel _______ when I’m spoken to in this way and I notice a pattern that it seems to happen when something difficult is happening in your life”
In this sentence, it is clear that this is not ok for you and that you have effectively communicated the emotions and the pattern, and this opens up the discussion about your boundaries and for you both to improve and grow together and separately.
If you have an interest in learning more about communicating boundaries effectively, non-violently, and with love, I would love to work with you!