We would like to think that we are stronger than we are and emotionally more stable than the next person, however that would be difficult to prove. Furthermore, it would be hard to believe. We all carry baggage and problems from our past that occasionally make us feel unsettled and shaken.
There are very few of us who can honestly say that we are as stable and strong as we appear, for the rest of us it is a daily battle to find that balance. When people come to therapy it is for a reason, there is something in their lives that has become unmanageable. There is something that has been pressing under your skin like a splinter that has become embedded and is now an infection.
What is that splinter whose mucous pus is causing so much pain in our lives? PEOPLE! It is usually a person or a group of people. It’s amazing how much power we give others over ourselves. It never ceases to amaze me how we allow others to create fear and anxiety to such levels that we are unable to function or become dysfunctional.
Dysfunctional is the clinical term for when the engine in our Begin isn’t running right and needs some oil and TLC. When we have allowed the action and behavior of ourselves and others to cause friction in different areas of our lives, such as school, work, friendships, family, spirituality and health. We start to throw rocks at our engine, when we have built barriers or have poor boundaries with others.
We all have a personal limit, it is an imaginary line that surrounds you and protects you from situations and people by which you feel threatened. When the threat is real, this limit is essential for our survival, but sometimes the threats are not what they seem. Our past can make us imagine threats that do not exist, when we have learned to mistrust and that we are all enemies.
When we have difficulty trusting, we see treats that aren’t always there. Our boundaries soon became barriers or walls that are likely to cause us harm instead of protection. As children, we are not always taught healthy boundaries and are forced to allow people to be closer than we are comfortable with. We may have felt that those we have allowed to shut down took over our inner thoughts and feelings, abusing the lines that protect us, our limits.
As children we learn in situations like these, where personal boundaries were not respected, to build walls instead. A learned situation could be something like your parents wanting to know if you’re gay because of behaviors they’ve noticed, or being forced to date a guy to show you’re straight, but it could also be something as destructive as physical or sexual abuse. In any of these cases, we probably build walls as defense mechanisms.
Unfortunately, as we get older, tools like building great walls to survive the impotence of childhood become weapons in adulthood. If we can’t let our lover in and trust her, she will never feel like she is in a committed relationship and there will be no intimacy. I have noticed in my own past and hearing stories from my clients that when we have walls we are not emotionally available. For most of us it has been a lifelong experience that we have become completely unaware of this tapping process. Chances are, you heard your partner call you “distant” or felt a need for your partner that never seems to be met.
When we are emotionally unavailable, we cannot commit and we also attract the emotionally needy. The human dynamic is something extraordinary where the magnets of our soul attract people who will continue to push the unmanageable monster within us as we will for them.
Here are some key steps to developing healthy boundaries:
1. Learn when others do not respect your boundaries, for example, when people are: too entangled, dissociated, excessively detached, victimized or martyred, aloof or shy, cold and distant, always in your face/suffocating, and not Do not respect your privacy.
2. Why do you allow others to do these things to you? Most likely, you have thoughts or ideas that you deserve it or that you are to blame in some way. At this stage, seeing a therapist would be recommended to help you overcome these maladaptive thoughts and the damage to your self-confidence system.
3. Trade the old for the new! Get some healthier ideas and think to yourself if something doesn’t work for you let it go and try something new. For example, go from “Maybe I deserve this abuse” to “I want people to respect me. I want a supportive partner.”
4. Identify behaviors that will help keep you healthy, for example, learning to say “NO” and “thanks but no thanks.”
5. Be consistent once you decide to change. You have identified how to do it, now do it in all areas of your life. Remember that being healthy is a skill, so the more you do it, the more proficient you’ll become! So get practicing!
You deserve the life you want and you deserve to be happy. Don’t let anyone treat you less.
Alex Karydi ~ The lesbian guru