You get one of those annoying phone calls offering you the deal of a
life time, you respectfully cut the call short and go back to eating
your dinner. You've just set a boundary. A feeling of entitlement helps
you to understand that how you use your time (irrelevant phone call or
enjoying your dinner) is a choice that you get to make and then
communicate. Boundaries make it more clear where you end and I begin
and visa versa. Healthy boundaries help you know who you are. That's
important as you interact with other people.

Boundaries come in assorted forms. Physical boundaries can involve how
close someone can come to you before you start to feel uncomfortable.
There are assorted factors that will influence this. Comfort or lack of
it may involve things such as the physical size, shape, and volume (as
in loud/soft voice), or gender of the other person. You're likely
influenced by how well you know the other person and how much safety or
trust you feel with him or her. The latter is an emotional aspect of
boundaries.

Boundaries also involve mental, psychological, and even spiritual
issues and are influenced by culture, personality, life experiences,
roles and so forth. These influence how much of yourself you share in
terms of your thoughts, feelings, and even physical intimacy. It
becomes clear that defining the term boundaries can involve physical,
emotional, mental/psychological and spiritual dimensions and there's
considerable overlap. It is also important not to limit the discussion
or definition of boundaries.

How do we acquire our boundaries and entitlement to communicate them?
If a baby is cared for by a parent or parental figure who is
emotionally present and offers physical and emotional nurturing, the
baby learns to develop trust in the parent. This is an important
learning task of infancy and childhood. The child's needs are heard and
attended to. If the baby is hungry and cries, the parent responds with
food and the cuddles that go with the food. If the parent is distracted
with her/his needs for an extended period and repeatedly, the message
to the child is, "My needs are more important than your needs" . This
can happen in homes where the parent is frequently inebriated,
seriously physically or mentally ill, emotionally numb, and so forth.
When an infant's needs are met, the child learns to trust her/him self
and this is the beginning of learning boundaries and the right to
express needs and boundaries. The child whose needs are repeatedly
ignored learns to stop listening to him/herself. This interferes with
the development of healthy boundaries. Some childhood examples may
clarify how learning healthy boundaries can be interfered with. The
child who feels sad and cries and is told "Stop crying or I'll give you
something to cry about" is sent a message that sad feelings are not
allowed and certainly not allowed to be expressed. That child as an
adult may have a difficult time expressing a boundary that involves
their (sad) feelings. Consider a child who yells "Stop, Stop" while
playing with a parent who is ticking her/him. The parent ignores the
cries and continues to tickle. The message to the child is, "You don't
get to decide when who does what to you body". This is a mild example
and would have to occur repeatedly for a child to have their boundary
learning interfered with. Take a more dramatic example of the child who
is repeatedly physically or sexually abused. This child learns that
they must ignore their instincts that tell them that the abuse is not
ok. Additionally, they learn that they have no right to set boundaries
or limits even about their own bodies. Childhood learning set the stage
in numerous ways for adults who have a clear idea about their own
boundaries and their right to communicate them. An articulate sense of
self, hopefully cultivated during childhood, is the basis for healthy
boundaries. For adults who weren't lucky enough to acquire healthy
boundaries in childhood, the challenge is bigger. They may tend to be
too rigid in setting limits which reflect boundaries or they may go to
the other extreme and have very few boundaries. It's probably most
useful to see boundaries as a continuum, rather than polarized as
having all or having none.

Lets consider a few ways that an adult can expand her/his healthy
boundaries. Problem ownership is a good place to begin. If a problem or
issue arises, first one needs to decide who it belongs to. Does the
problem/issue really impact you? Does your teenager's messy room really
impact you or can you just close the door? If your teen left the family
room in a mess and you and your friends want to watch videos, this
impacts you directly. You need to be involved in setting a limit and
communicating a boundary. If you feel frustrated because your friend
rarely brings enough money when you two go out to lunch, is this really
your problem? If you buy her/his lunch and thus avoid stating a
boundary ("I am not comfortable paying for your lunch") are you
rescuing instead of looking after yourself and setting a healthy
boundary? A positive first step in healthy boundaries is deciding if
the problem belongs to you. If it does, you have some responsibility in
working on a solution which likely involves boundaries.

We see from the examples above, that being able to say "No" is a vital
part of healthy boundaries. Before you can say no, you have to feel
that you have a right to say no. This is entitlement. Watch out for
guilt. It's often one of those old habits that says, "Ignore your needs
and feelings and just take care of the other person". Guilt can really
get in the way of building healthy boundaries. Other people sometimes
use guilt to get you to ignore your boundaries.

Healthy boundaries involve an awareness of self. They also require an
ability to match self with appropriate boundaries. If one becomes
misguided this can become an issue about power and control. It's
important to balance flexibility with firmness. Consistency and clarity
will be very useful. It's likely that expanding healthy boundaries will
be a work in progress and may need to evolve as you evolve as a person.

Parting words: Get to know you. Listen to you. Take care of you. This
is done within a context of respect for self and respect for others
with integrity and flexibility.

More information about Susan may be found in the CounsellingBC.com professional directory.