Top Tips for setting healthy boundaries:
Top Tips for setting healthy boundaries:
This month’s blog theme is on ‘healthy boundaries’. This is a topic that has come up recently with many of my clients. By implementing health personal boundaries, interpersonal and professional relationships will improve. Some people unconsciously feel the need to please others, often without realising. By saying “yes” to everything, they are also saying “no” to something else that might be equally important to them or more important to their self-care. This can have negative effects on both your personal life and your career.
Not being able to set or maintain healthy boundaries is often related to common issues like low self-esteem, needing approval from others, learned helplessness or the fear of being rejected or judged as well as the feeling of letting others down.
Even when some people don't like what you do, they will likely still respect you for standing up for what you believe in. Boundaries also generate safety in relationships. When your privacy is respected, you are more likely to feel heard, validated and appreciated. But most of all, you are not taken for granted by either your loved ones or your colleagues and supervisors.
Not everyone will respect of understand your boundaries but remember, this is absolutely no reflection of you at all. Some people just won’t respect your boundaries at all and often this is due to the other person does not have their own boundaries or they are unclear and resistant towards our own and their own needs. Accept that you can't control another person's behaviour, so detach yourself instead.
If boundary setting is new to you, you might have to reinforce your boundaries a few times. We are only human, and even those with the best intentions may forget or overstep the line from time to time. It is okay to hold people accountable when they cross a line and do not respect your boundaries.
Those who pay attention to you and care about you won’t try to push you around and make you feel less than comfortable and unsafe.
Why is boundary setting important?
• 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.
• They are based and built out of beliefs, opinions, attitudes, past experiences and social learning.
• Personal boundaries help to define an individual and draw a clear line around what is ok for us and what is not.
• Boundaries are essential to healthy relationships and a healthy life.
• Healthy boundaries are necessary components for self-care.
• Without boundaries we can feel exhausted, taken advantage of, taken for granted, or intruded upon. Whether it’s in work or in our personal relationships, poor boundaries can lead to resentment, hurt, anger, and burnout.
• Boundaries help us take care of ourselves by giving us permission to say NO to things, to not take everything on, especially important if you are a people pleaser
• While some behaviours clearly cross the line for almost anyone, we all have different comfort levels when it comes to everything from intimacy and privacy to lateness.
How to set healthy boundaries:
• Know your limits - identify your physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual limits. What can you tolerate and what makes you feel uncomfortable or stressed?
• Tune into your feelings - how are you feeling with certain people and situations. Do you feel at peace and happy or do you feel uncomfortable, energy drained or resentment?
• Be direct - maintaining healthy boundaries may require being more direct to set your limits with certain people depending on personalities.
• Give yourself permission - let go of guilt, fear, and self-doubt in terms of how the other person might or might not respond. Boundaries aren’t just a sign of a healthy relationship but also self-respect
• Practice self-awareness - honour your feelings. If you’re feeling like you’re not sustaining your boundaries, perhaps ask yourself ‘what has changed and what am I going to do to reclaim my power?’
• Make self-care a priority - put yourself first. This maintains and protects our energy. ‘You can’t pour from an empty cup’
• Be assertive - follow through with boundaries. It’s one thing setting them, but we need to assertively communicate with others and action our boundaries.
• Start small - consistency and practice. It’s learning a new skill, build up and try not to take something on that leaves you feeling overwhelmed
If you do not like the way you feel or act, know that you have the power to change it. You are the master of your universe; you control 100% of your actions and reactions.
Setting and sustaining boundaries is a skill. Setting boundaries takes courage and commitment - you’ve got this!
If you feel like you are a ‘people pleaser’ and would like support and guidance to understand your boundaries and set your own health boundaries, then please click here to book in a consultation call.
