Setting Healthy Boundaries in Relationships

On my life journey I have turned into a person who saw myself as a victim of circumstance; to one that can understand that I may need to be setting healthy boundaries in relationships.

On this journey, I realized something. 

It was easier playing the victim; being angry and thinking that everything happened to me.

Turning inward is hard.

Reflecting is much harder than trying to understand my accountability in a situation instead of being angry.

Setting healthy boundaries in relationships can be even harder.

Being angry and holding a grudge was far easier.

My life wasn’t as joyful, but it took less effort to blame other people. 

There are grudges and there are healthy boundaries.

Which leads me to something I have been struggling with since I began my spiritual journey. After reading many books on Buddhism; I learned about love, compassion, and understanding. Since then, I know that I want to try to love everyone to the best of my ability.

It was hard for me to find balance after going from one extreme to the next.

 

While I do believe that loving everyone is what is truly going to give me the most joy in this life; I had to realize that loving someone could look different depending on the circumstance, and sometimes that meant setting healthy boundaries in relationships.

It doesn’t mean that I need to give everyone a whole front row VIP access to my life and everything in it. Someone explained this to me in a very unique way that struck a chord. 

She said: “I have an auditorium. There are many people whom I let into my auditorium but there are few people who I let sit on the front row; then there are people who sit in the rows behind and then the people whom I encounter everyday fill the rest of it.

The people sitting on my front row are those who get most of my attention, my children first and foremost, my partner; then if I have extra space and time, my close family members and friends.”

For years I thought that loving everyone meant I needed to give every single person in my life a front row seat and my undivided attention at all times. For me, to love someone was to say yes to every invitation and be available for them always, no matter what was going on in my life.

It was exhausting. 

There is only so much of me to go around. I found that by the time I got home, there was little left for my family. The people that needed my love the most were getting my leftover scraps of emotional attention.

To me, this was unacceptable.

I had to step back and take a hard look at what loving someone really meant to me.

Would I want to be an obligation to someone else?

“She needs me and I really do not have the time or energy, but I’m going to suck it up and show up for her because that is what a good person does. However, I’d rather be home with my kids.“

Absolutely not.

When we are hurting or when we are so excited that we want to share something with someone; it’s easy to think that our lives, in that moment, are deserving of more attention.

I think as human beings we sometimes forget to realize that we all live in and create our own worlds. Sure I have this huge thing happening over here, but there is really no way to know for sure what is going on in someone else’s life.

I have also learned to try not to take anything personal, via The Four agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz.

If it seems as though someone may be acting some sort of way towards me, most of the time it has absolutely nothing to do with me.

Also, if I am not capable of giving my full undivided attention to someone who has reached out to me in a vulnerable space; the most loving thing I could do for this person is to let them know:

“I love you so much and I’m not in a space right now to be able to be there for you like I want to be. As soon as I am in a good place, you will be the first person that I call.”

We also live in a society that constantly tells us:

“They’re your family! You have to be available for them no matter what!

Wrong.

Toxic for you is toxic.

It is completely okay, no matter the individual, to take a step back and create boundaries in relationships if a person is taking away rather than adding to your life.

I can still love someone from a distance if my relationship with them has become toxic for my mental health.

To love someone is to realize that we all have trials and hardships and have empathy for a person; even if you do not allow this person into your personal space.

Loving someone may look like setting healthy boundaries.

There are people over the years whom I have had to take a step back from; sometimes forever and sometimes only for a period of time.

I can take a break from someone and still love them and want the best for them. My feelings are valid and I can feel them without letting them consume me.

I do this by reminding myself that we are all on our own journeys and we all have our own timeline to reach a healthy place for ourselves.

I am not better than anyone else and vice versa. 

I try to not have judgment towards a person because I absolutely have no idea what trials that they may be experiencing.

TikTok university has taught me that sometimes we have destructive behaviors that are most likely the exact opposite of our love language. My love language is quality time and physical touch.

When I am experiencing pain and heartache as a result from an interaction with another person, I tend to retreat and disappear from everyone and do not allow people to get close to me. I turn inward until I feel like I have established a better understanding with myself and my feelings. Sometimes this happens for me rather quickly and sometimes not so much. 

My destructive behaviors kick in when I build a wall fully equipped with barbed wire. If you are familiar with the Myers-Briggs personality types, this is called the (INFJ) door slam. 

While destructive behaviors are a thing; there is also a line between being destructive and setting healthy boundaries.

Setting Healthy Boundaries in Relationships

Vs. Holding a Grudge

Check in with yourself

Is there a possibility that I could have judgments based on something I do not understand?

Where is my accountability in this situation?

Do I feel good around this person most of the time?

Reflect

Spend some time thinking about the answers to the previous questions. I do this by doing a meditation saying the mantra, “I am loving awareness.” This is something I learned from Ram Dass in his teachings.

From this place of being loving awareness, I am then able to, with love, make the best decision for myself in moving forward.

Check in Again

Am I setting a boundary out of love for myself and the other person or from a place of judgment?

Only you can know this answer.

Nothing about this is easy, especially if you are creating a boundary with a person that you love dearly.

My friend, there is nothing wrong with loving yourself enough to know when it’s time to create healthy boundaries in your relationships.

Saying yes to yourself; voting for yourself is the most loving and kind thing you can do for anyone.

I did an exercise once at a seminar called,

The Lifeboat.

We were each given three sticks to give to the people that we wanted with us on our lifeboat should our ship sink. We were to go around the room and give them away to the people who we thought deserved to live.

At the end of the exercise most of the people had given all their sticks away. However, if you did not have one, you would not be allowed to be on the lifeboat.

As we looked around the room only four of us had sticks left in our hands.

I was one of the four.

How would I have been able to help anyone else unless I helped myself first? At the time I did not know the gravity that this exercise was going to have on me.  I cry every time I think about it.

This my friends, was the first time that I had experienced a love for myself that was so deep, I sobbed while the four of us stood in the center of the room holding our sticks while we imagined everyone else drowning. Had we all loved ourselves first, and had we all seen value in everyone’s lives, we would have all been getting on that lifeboat together.

I kept that stick and wrote on it “Vote for yourself” in big black lettering. It is stuck onto my bathroom mirror where I see it everyday.

Vote for yourself!

Creating healthy boundaries can be one of the most important things you can do to be the best version of you!

All my love,