Can you maintain healthy boundaries? Are you modelling healthy boundaries?

By Genevieve Simperingham
www.peaceful-parent.com

Do you find it easy or difficult to;

(a) identify your need to assert a boundary? (“I need to say no here”)
(b) respect your own boundaries? (“It’s ok that I want to say no”)
(c) assert your boundaries? (“thanks, but no thanks”)?
(d) be assertive without feeling aggressive or guilty?

If asserting boundaries is mostly difficult and stressful for you ...

then you may tend to either submit and allow yourself to be overpowered by others, including your children, or fight back and hurt the other, including your children, or you may see-saw from one reaction to the other.  You may waste a lot of time and energy avoiding situations with your child or others that may lead to you needing to say no, set a limit "it's time to leave now" or assert a personal boundary "it hurts me when you drive your trike into me".

For those whose boundaries were not respected as a child;

when they said no, when they negotiated, when they resisted, when they needed their individuality respected; these people generally grow up to experience a lot of anxiety, confusion and self-conflict around expressing boundaries.  For such people, it takes a lot of courage to put up clear boundaries, but it's an essential step towards expressing yourself more clearly and with greater confidence.  For those whose boundaries were not respected as children, they generally feel a lot of anger when their boundaries are not respected or when other's put up a boundary.  If your boundaries were not respected as a child, it's normal to harbour anger relating to all situations where your boundaries are not respected, until you become stronger in asserting your boundaries.

When YOU were a child, you needed support, listening, empathy, reassurance and guidance when conflicts arose

Were these needs met? Were conflicts worked through to the end where a satisfactory solution was arrived at? Did your parent sometimes strongly react or even accuse you of negative intentions (eg "you're just being selfish" or "do you care more about your friends than your own family?"), when you tried to assert boundaries as a child, when you resisted or refused or needed to negotiate?

Most adults didn't receive the respect and support that they needed at times when they put up a boundary to their parent "I don't want to do that" or sibling "stop doing that to me" or when their parent asserted limits "I don't want you to do that". For many, the expression of boundaries "I don't want to ..", "I don't like it when ...", "why do I have to ..?" tended to lead to painful conflicts and the break down of feeling connected to those you loved and needed.

For many, their expression of boundaries tended to lead to painful conflicts and the break down of feeling connected to those they loved and needed. Consequently, most adults have difficulties around expression of boundaries (from self or other). It takes a lot of skill to manage the constant negotiating and balancing of wants and needs in the family, which takes a lot of patience. Unresolved frustrations around issues of boundaries can make it hard to listen clearly, express clearly and remain relatively patient during such negotiations and can lead to a lot of conflicts in parenting!

When others push or pull us.

When we experience a battle of wills, unless we are very solid and clear with our boundaries, it provokes our anger.  In these instances, your anger is a normal and healthy communication to yourself that you are out of balance.  It signals that you need to correct the situation by meeting an important need to speak up, move away or otherwise respect your own boundary.  It’s normal and understandable to have the urge to direct your anger at the person who you feel pushed or pulled by, but the responsibility to express your boundaries clearly is your own. The more clearly you can express your boundary, the higher the possibility that your boundary will be respected by others. It's our responsibility to protect ourselves from repeated situations of experiencing an invasion of our boundaries. The more skilled we are at honouring and respecting our own boundaries, the more skilled we're likely to be at respecting your child's boundaries, which includes protecting them in situations where they are not old or skilled enough to protect their self.

Respecting your child's boundaries

Adults often think more about whether or not their children are respecting their boundaries, their limits, than they do about the extent that they are themselves respecting their child's boundaries. Children are often picked up without warning, often forced to do something they don't want to do, forced to eat something they don't want to eat, forced to listen to their parent when the parent interrogates them aggressively, the list goes on. Regardless of what the parent believes the outcome needs to be (but my child has to go to school/ eat their veg), the child needs and deserves for their boundaries to be acknowledged with respect and sensitivity. For children, there is often painful feelings behind their resistance that needs and deserves to be respected sensitively. Generally, rather than control or force, what a child needs is a good listening to!

Feeling confident in saying "NO" is essential for self-care for children and parents!!

Anger is an energy that can be used constructively or destructively. Sometimes, when you feel angry, when you feel stirred up on a particular issue, you gain the energy to make those necessary changes in life with more courage and power.  It takes a lot of discipline to direct that energy positively.  Your anger is often screaming out “NO!!” to those who you have felt repressed, dismissed or invalidated by, and there are times when that NO needs to be seen, felt, honoured and expressed by you.  To harness the power of your anger and move this energy towards positive change and the healthy mature expression of boundaries, it can really help to see your need for boundaries as an energy of "YES!!" for yourself, for the meeting of some important needs.  This perspective can help you to not direct it harmfully at others, because doing so is always a boomerang. 

Anger in the family

Anger is a normal human emotion that most people feel to one degree or another most days.  The world is not divided into the angry and the not angry people.  People are at different stages in their ability to deal with their anger, but most people experience it most days in the form of irritation and frustration, if not a stronger force of anger that they struggle to contain.  However, anger is a difficult emotion for most people to deal with (a) because it’s very strong and hence stressful (b) because it’s the emotion that elicits the least empathy and support from other people and (c) because it's scary, people often fear their anger getting out of control, they fear doing or saying things that hurt their self or others.  The potential to be destructive increases with the intensity of anger. Anger, like any other strong force, like driving a vehicle, commands a lot of skill and focus if we are to harness that energy positively and avoid being destructive. The purpose of this writing is to help you gain a better understanding of;

* What is anger? * Why does anger arise? * How can you best deal with your anger? * What are the positive functions of anger? * How can you transform your anger from being a destructive to being a constructive force in your life?

Anger is probably the emotion that is the least accepted and the least understood in our society.

Many people don't like to admit to others (or themselves often) that they get angry, they like to show that they are not an “angry person”. Yet, this is generally because anger has such a bad reputation, it's difficult for many people to admit to being angry and it's easy to fear that if others see our anger, they might label us to be an "angry person". We could all benefit from the understanding and admission that anger is a normal emotion that nobody escapes. We need to separate out the feelings of anger and the potential actions that people might choose when they're angry.

Anger arises largely as a result of internal conflict.  Our anger is a communication that needs to be listened to, it can be a cry for help from a part of ourselves that feels threatened, repressed, shamed, invalidated, invisible and unseen.  The danger may be in the present or we might be interpreting something in the present as a danger because it looks or feels in some way, similar to a threat that we experienced in the past, but either way it's calling our attention to an important feeling that needs attention. Whether the "threat" is in the present, a shadow of a past threat, whether it's real or imagined, It's always symptomatic of unmet needs that we can benefit from identifying and addressing. For example if we feel threatened by someone in the present who simply looks like a threatening person in the past who we've identified to be safe, yet the fear remains, there may be a need to .  It’s generally a cry for positive action that will lead you to feeling more empowered, perhaps a need to seek support, a need to express thoughts, feelings, worries, strong emotions.  When we can honour and listen to our anger rather than fight it (ignoring, distracting, taking it out on others) and make strong positive intentions towards making good changes, speaking our truth and generally allowing ourselves to be more true to ourselves, anger combined with positive intention and compassion for yourself can give you the energy to bring about powerful and positive changes. 

Being angry doesn't make you a bad person, just someone with unmet needs.

If the messages around anger in your family of origin led you to believe that anger is “bad” and led you to feel like a “bad person” when you were angry, then you probably didn't gain the love, listening and support that you needed when you or another person in the family was angry. What did your parents model around anger? How did they express their anger? If it was either repressed, there was probably passive aggression displayed. If it was misdirected, you no doubt felt the painful effects of that.

As adults, the people who challenge us and bring our anger to the surface may be difficult to be around, they may stir up unresolved hurt and anger relating back to the dynamics in our family of origin and the messages received then. These same people are often those you love and need the most! These same people are often our children and partner/ ex-partner!

Honouring our anger starts to change anger from our friend to our enemy.

We mostly only hurt others with our anger from a place of desperation, fear and powerlessness. Many of these feelings start to resolve when we learn to acknowledge and honour our anger, when focus on really feeling where we hold this anger in our body and start to listen to it's wisdom. One way of honouring our anger can be to share our thoughts and feelings with a trusted and caring friend or counsellor. Sharing with a non-judgmental listener gives us the chance to both listen more deeply to ourselves and hence start to gain the relevant insights that bring clues to changing our situation. Listening to our feelings and being listened to can connect us with our loving heart and bring compassion for self, which always starts to soften and bring release.

Deep down, we always want and need to evolve

We NEED release in these trapped internal places and when we deny ourselves healthy release, it’s nearly impossible not to spit it out to those around us.  When we do hurt others, like our child, rather than blaming or shaming ourselves, we actually need to have empathy for ourselves and the pain inside and see the conflict that arose as a serious sign that we need to attend to this part of ourselves.  We need to not ignore, distract or otherwise repress our anger.  We need to also not mis-direct our anger. Acknowledging and honouring the emotional pain of our anger, allows us to find healthy forms of release, like through crying and getting it off our chest to an empathic listener.  There’s many ways of releasing this toxic backlog of energy once we move from either ignoring it or directing it at other and instead take responsibility for releasing it.  We need to honour our pain; our pain is always valid, always needing love.  But how?

Developing a loving caring mature adult self.

A beautiful way of doing this work is through meditations or journalling.  Use breathing or meditation to enter a calm peaceful centered state, then bring forward that which is hurting you and making you angry.  Witness and feel it in your body sensations while staying connected to the peace, then direct the peace into those angry feelings. This brings powerful release and integration.  It often brings healing tears and insights. 

Get to know and befriend your angry self.

Writing is a powerful tool for exploring and expressing your anger.  Try writing to your “angry self”, asking how you can free yourself in these situations.  Let your angry self write back to you.  Dear angry self, what are you really feeling, how are you, what do you need?  If that part of you wants to curse and swear and talk about hate, then excellent, just let that energy flow and keep flowing and trust that it will take you to a good place.  Writing moves unconscious patterns into the conscious and brings a movement and flow to stuck feelings and thought patterns.  When the strong hurt has been expressed, the energy will soften and the wisdom and light and strength will shine through.

Your anger can be the ally of your fear.

Most people need to be creative to find healthy and constructive ways of harnessing the energy of their anger.  Your angry self links you in to the powerful primal self who knows that you deserve better, your more instinctive self that has an urge towards self-protection. It’s the part of you that wants to fight for your freedom, the part of you that is very clear about the things that hurt you and cause you shame and confusion. Your angry self is your Warrior Self.  When you learn to lovingly listen to, take information from and bring peace and reassurance to your anger, it can be the ally of your fear and powerlessness. When the energy of anger is combined with compassion (com passion = with passion), you really have the power and potential to be a powerful force of positive change in the world.

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