Finding Your Edges: Beautiful Boundaries
Your Aunt discusses Cousin Bella’s spicey love life to everyone, your neighbor grabs gardening tools from your shed whenever she pleases, your father-in law drinks until intoxicated at family gatherings, or you find yourself completing projects for coworkers. You feel irritable and resentful, but you push forward to please someone else or blow-up on the next person who comes across your pathway.
Boundaries are edges formed to create meaningful, supportive structure in our personal relationships. Unchecked boundaries are emotionally, mentally draining, leading to a host of health and mental health complications. Leaning in to do life with family, children, friends, coworkers, neighbors, and community is a constant flow. Navigating the day to day becomes complicated. Understanding personal expectations, needs, and values helps create beautiful boundaries. What do your edges look like? Wherever you go, boundaries exist, whether you agree or not.
Part of boundaries requires thinking about access, responsibility, and consequences. No one is limitless! Imagine dropping a key at your front door to entrust anyone to come-in as they please-an all-access pass to your home at any time. The narrative sounds outrageous, yet sometimes people don’t set limits with others. At some point, everyone has experienced an emotionally immature person unable and/or unwilling to set healthy boundaries. Perhaps, a person in your life struggles with emotional regulation, manipulates/sabotages the relationship, constantly demands more of you, and/or operates from a place of an unhealed trauma.
Holding each person accountable helps people respect and value their worth. What are the consequences of giving access to someone not ready to gain entry? Just as physical boundaries are present to create structure and safety for homes, buildings, and roadways, personal boundaries support emotional, psychological, physical, and spiritual well-being.
Take a moment to review the boundaries in your life! If you reevaluate some of your relationships, expect tension to surface. After all, it might be the first-time you are becoming aware, changing personal behaviors, standing up for yourself, and even challenging dysfunction. Setting boundaries means voicing your edges, expressing your identity and values. Embrace who you are and the boundaries you need to hold your life together. Be true to yourself and boundaries needed to uphold it all. You are worth it!
Boundaries Journal Prompts
What do I value most in my relationships?
What do my needs and expectations look like in my relationships?
When did a boundary violation(s) occur in my relationships?
What kind of consequences occur when a boundary violation takes place?
Where do I need to strengthen my boundaries?
Does the level of access given to people in my life match their behaviors?
Who in my life needs a different level of access?
Boundaries Resources
Good Boundaries & Goodbyes, Lysa Terkerust (Christian)
Necessary Endings, Dr. Henry Cloud (Christian)
Set Boundaries, Find Peace, Nedra Glover Tawwab
