With all the talk of boundaries lately, i’ve been looking for a grounded overview to the subject that doesn’t descend into fluffy talk (’claiming your power’ etc) and psychological goo-goo-ga-ga rhetoric. These concepts exist in our real lives and need to be understood and expressed in a pragmatic way that we can study and adapt for use in our daily lives.

Boundaries are those invisible lines that mark out where you end and another person begins. They become most relevant to use when the people we know (and love, i.e. family) walk straight over them and make us feel shit as a consequence. In fact, most people run so rampant over them every day that the concept of boundaries is centred around setting them and defending them, and the latter almost always puts other people’s backs up and makes them call you names when they can get what they want. Boundaries are the borders we put around ourselves that we use to define our own personal and emotional space, and they are to be respected. Being assertive is about explaining where those borders are, making sure others respect them and enforcing consequences when they inevitably don’t.

When we’re young, we’re entirely dependent on our parents for everything, so boundaries develop naturally as our parents help us to identify and nuture our own by them respecting them for us. But if you were part of the 95% whose parents grew up without them, or had theirs violated continually by their parents, it follows that your parents would have violated yours. They had no idea how to set or enforce their own, and as a consequence, couldn’t help you set or respect yours either. And if you don’t learn how to set your own, you won’t be able to set the example for your children.

So let’s start by looking at common irrational beliefs which, if held too rigidly, are likely to lead to emotional distress. These were documented by Albert Ellis in his studies relating to Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT).

1. It is a dire necessity for adult humans to be loved or approved by virtually every significant other person in their community.
2. One absolutely must be competent, adequate and achieving in all important respects or else one is an inadequate, worthless person.
3. People absolutely must act considerately and fairly and they are damnable villains if they do not. They are their bad acts.
4. It is awful and terrible when things are not the way one would very much like them to be.
5. Emotional disturbance is mainly externally caused and people have little or no ability to increase or decrease their dysfunctional feelings and behaviors.
6. If something is or may be dangerous or fearsome, then one should be constantly and excessively concerned about it and should keep dwelling on the possibility of it occurring.
7. One cannot and must not face life’s responsibilities and difficulties and it is easier to avoid them.
8. One must be quite dependent on others and need them and you cannot mainly run one’s own life.
9. One’s past history is an all-important determiner of one’s present behavior and because something once strongly affected one’s life, it should indefinitely have a similar effect.
10. Other people’s disturbances are horrible and one must feel upset about them.
11. There is invariably a right, precise and perfect solution to human problems and it is awful if this perfect solution is not found.

Yes, these are all totally retarded, but you believe them anyway and go about indulging in them every single day regardless of how silly they seem. That should give you a pretty good idea of how stupid you really are whether you like it or not. All of these were taught to you by the process of conditioning, and related to you by others who never bothered to work out why it was a good idea to go about resolving them in their own minds.

If we start at the beginning, we can say all human beings have a set of basic personal and emotional rights - ones your own parents unwittingly denied you, messed up on or just neglected for whatever reason. All of these apply at all times, are unconditional and may never be violated no matter who you are, what you have done or what you think.

• Nobody has the right to know my mind or my business or to tell me what to think, what to feel or what to do.
• I have a right to my own thoughts, feelings, values and beliefs.
• What I share with others about matters that concern me is determined by what feels right to me - not what they want.
• If people are abusive or disrespectful to me, I have a right to tell them so, to ask them to stop and to avoid them.
• I don’t have to be nice to people who aren’t nice to me.
• I don’t need abuse or to be disrespected.
• I have a need and right to love myself, respect myself and to stand up for myself.
• I have a right to be who I am and to harmlessly live my own life regardless of whether others don’t like it.
• I don’t have to feel guilty for not behaving as others might want me to or for not giving other what they expect of me.
• I accept myself just as I am in the moment with whatever thoughts and feelings I have.
• I accept my right to my imperfection and shortcomings and don’t feel guilty for not being perfect.
• I believe that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us - to be treated with love and respect.
• I believe that if I am true to myself and live by the highest truth I know, that things will turn out for the best in the long run.

A boundary is like a border or a limit between us and others. Boundaries can be physical, mental, emotional or spiritual. Examples of physical boundaries include our sense of personal space, sexual orientation and privacy. Other physical boundaries may involve clothes, shelter, safety, money, space, noise or smoke pollution, time, etc. Mental and emotional boundaries concern our beliefs, feelings, choices, interests, relationships, responsibilities, respect and so on. Spiritual boundaries relate to religion, spiritual practices, and our connection to our Inner Self and our Higher Power. Within these four domains, we have both receptive boundaries, which are self-protective, and expressive boundaries, which are respectful of others.

We have guidelines or belief systems for each type of boundary. For example, a receptive boundary belief could be “it’s not ok for anyone to verbally abuse me,” and an expressive boundary belief could be “it’s not ok for me to verbally abuse others”.

So what does it look like when someone violates a boundary of yours? Well, that assumes you’ve set them up so they can actually walk over them. If you don’t have them, then assume you are an open walkover with an open gate.

Physical Boundary Violations

• Standing too close to a person without his/her permission.
• Touching a person without his/her permission.
• Getting into a person’s personal belongings and living space such as one’s purse, wallet, mail, and closet.
• Listening to a person’s personal conversations or telephone F. conversations without his/her permission.
• Not allowing a person to have privacy or violating a person’s right to privacy.
• Exposing others to physical illness due to your having a contagious disease.

But that’s not all. The worst type of violations are emotional, as we enforce our beliefs and opinions on people when we have no right to, or manipulate others. I’m awful for this as i can’t keep my mouth shut or not have the last word. The irony is that i tend to enforce my boundaries extremely aggressively.

When you first start informing people of those boundaries they almost always call you cold, aggressive or unfair, when the truth is that they have very little understanding of boundaries so they a) stampede over yours, b) don’t like barriers being put up because they don’t have them, and c) expect you to run over theirs in turn.

And i i’m not too proud a man to admit that i have run rampant across the boundaries of others. Nothing justifies that, but i never had them or learned to set them, and nobody respected mine. I had no reasonable way to know what i was doing or why it was wrong. I know now though, so no excuses.

Internal Boundary Violations

• Yelling and screaming
• Name calling
• Ridiculing a person
• Lying/dishonesty
• Breaking a commitment
• Patronizing a person
• Telling a person how he/she should be or what he/she should do
• Being flippant/sarcastic
• Shaming a person

There are 3 ways to expressive yourself - aggressively (bullying), assertively (optimal) and passively (not at all). In every day terms the first is bullying, the second is mature (but diplomatic), and the third is wet blanket walkover syndrome. The idea is to be assertive, but you’ll be accused of being aggressive by those who don’t get it. The less said about being a passive little wimp the better.

Assertive people have the following characteristics:

• They feel free to express their feelings, thoughts, and desires.
• They know their rights.
• They have control over their anger. It does not mean that they repress this feeling. It means that they control it for a moment and then talk about it later in a logical way.
• They have a good understanding of feelings of the person with whom they are communicating.

So, it is very important for us to learn to honestly communicate about how another person’s behavior is affecting us - without making blaming “you” type of statements.

There is a simple formula to help us do this. It is:

When you . . . . .
I feel . . . . .
I want . . . .

Since I am powerless over you, I will take this action to protect myself if you behave in this way.

Setting a boundary is not making a threat - it is communicating clearly what the consequences will be if the other person continues to treat us in an unacceptable manner. It is a consequence of the other persons behavior.

Setting a boundary is not an attempt to control the other person (although some of the people who you set boundaries with will certainly accuse you of that - just as some will interpret it as a threat) - it is a part of the process of defining ourselves and what is acceptable to us. It is a major step in taking what control we can of how we allow others to treat us. It is a vital step in taking responsibility for our self and our life.

Setting boundaries is not a more sophisticated way of manipulation - although some people will say they are setting boundaries, when in fact they are attempting to manipulate. The difference between setting a boundary in a healthy way and manipulating is: when we set a boundary we let go of the outcome.

There are basically three parts to a boundary. The first two are setting the boundary - the third is what we will do to defend that boundary.

If you - a description of the behavior we find unacceptable (again being as descriptive as possible.)

I will - a description of what action you will take to protect and take care of your self in the event the other person violates the boundary.

If you continue this behavior - a description of what steps you will take to protect the boundary that you have set.

I’ll get more into boundary-setting soon, but here’s a few simple examples of setting boundaries and asserting yourself:

• “You don’t have a right to tell me what to think, or invalidate my feelings.”
• “Don’t vent your anger on me, I won’t have it.”
• “This is mine, you don’t have a right to use it as yours.”
• “I won’t accept your belittling jokes, your criticism or your condescending attitude toward me.”
• “I won’t be disrespected or lied to - If you won’t respect me, then stay away.”
• “Keep your hands off me.”
• “Stop doing that… or I’ll leave” [ report you; file charges etc.]
• “Don’t try to tell me what to do.”
• “If we’re going to have a working relationship, I need honesty, respect and equality.”
• “I need to communicate when we have a misunderstanding.”
• “I need openness and sharing in a relationship - your witholding is making our relationship not satisfying to me.“