Personal boundaries are guidelines, rules or limits that a person creates to identify reasonable, safe and permissible ways for other people to behave towards them and how they will respond when someone passes those limits.
Boundaries are not pushing people away, but in fact are telling people how to show up for you.
How to Set Healthy Boundaries
Begins with getting to know yourself and how you feel around situations, experiences you've had and what if anything you would change if you could.
Name those things, write them down, make a note. It's easier to make changes when you where the change is needed.
Tune into your feelings.
Build Your Language Skills
Get to know your communication style and types of communication
Passive behaviour is where you sacrifice your own preferences and needs, so that you can help others to meet their preferences and needs. Consistently displaying passive behaviour will encourage others to take advantage of you, either consciously or subconsciously.
How to set healthy boundaries.
Passive Aggressive behavior express their negative feelings subtly through their actions instead of speaking directly. A person with passive-aggressive behavior will use indirect aggression.
Aggressive behavior can cause physical or emotional harm to others. It may range from verbal abuse to physical abuse. It can also involve harming personal property. Aggression is overt or covert, often harmful, social interaction with the intention of inflicting damage or other unpleasantness upon another individual. It may occur either reactively or without provocation.
Assertive means making your own choices, with confidence, and feel good about this whilst during and after the conversation. Usually achieving their goals; when they don't, they still feel good about themselves because they know they have been straightforward .Someone who is assertive states their needs and opinions clearly.
Begins with getting to know yourself and how you feel around situations, experiences you've had and what if anything you would change if you could.
Boundary Building Steps
Tune into your feelings, name those things, write them down, make a note. It's easier to make changes when you know where the change is needed.
Build your language skills so that you can be assertive, when conveying your needs
Be direct. Be clear and speak about what feels good to you and what doesn't. If speaking is hard for you then make physical distance between you and them. While you collect your thoughts and strength to be able to speak up.
Give yourself permission, to feel and think as you do. Your truth is your truth and no one else can tell you how you should feel.
Practice self-awareness. Practice makes perfect, the more you flex this muscle the stronger it will become.
Make self-care a priority. There is no other you, looking after yourself also helps to look after others.
Seek support, weather that's through trusted friends and family, a therapist or counsellor or even now as you read this post. Wellness is more than doing things alone, but in community.
In What Ways Can You Be Assertive Next Time Your Boundaries Are Not Being Adhered?
Now we have a better understanding of what being assertive looks and the other types of communication styles, we can use this as an opportunity to interweave them with the boundary building steps we have outlined above.
As noted practice makes not perfect, but confidence, confidence in our words, decisions and feelings.
If someone is not listening to our expression of boundaries, then first check within to see that you have spoken clearly to them about it, if you have already, then mention this to them using I statements. If you haven't. bring it up, be assertive.
In instances that you have and they chose to not listen to your requests, then space and physical distance is a great way to draw a line that you are following through with your own boundaries.
Setting boundaries, is not only for others o be able to be better there for you, but also for you to show up for yourself as well. To encourage health and wellness in your interactions with others.
In Conclusion
Some of the reasons why people fail to enforce their boundaries is not because they don't know what they are, that gut feeling tells us when our boundaries are not being met or we fail to have them.
It is the feeling that we will shift and change the relationships we have in our lives.
I see and recognise that out of all the implications of setting boundaries and following through with them, this is the hardest part.
As someone that previously didn't show up for myself, honour my feelings, truth and sense of self, I see this as the biggest challenge and that is why the last part of the boundary building steps, I mentioned finding support. It is in healthy support that, you will see the power of honouring your self and feelings. So that you can be assertive, when conveying your needs, wants and feelings.
This journey doesn't have a destination, but a series of opportunities for us to grow and flourish!
I have made a free downloadable resource on my website called, 'Healthy Boundaries', it is an activity based resource.
Let me know how the resource supports you in this part of your journey.
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