The Gift of Boundaries in Relationships
Ah, the holidays. A time full of traditions, memories, and family… and usually a fair bit of tension and stress as well. Sometimes family drama is just a natural reaction to compressing a bunch of big personalities, conflicting needs, and divergent schedules under one roof for an extended period of time. Sometimes it’s chronic dysfunction, with each family gathering picking up the story line where it left off last time. If you’re one of the (totally normal) people who simultaneously loves your family while dreading the drama that comes with them, I have one gift to give you this holiday season: boundaries!
Boundaries are all the rage right now (okay, maybe that’s just my perspective as a therapist…). You’re probably familiar with what they are, so we’re going to jump right into how to set/maintain these bad boys.
Create some space
First, you have to give yourself some breathing room. If you don’t live at home anymore, you – and only you – have control over how often you see or speak to your family. YOU decide whether or not you pick up the phone. YOU decide when (or whether) to go visit your parents. You don’t have to talk to someone out of obligation or resentment. Don’t feel guilty for prioritizing your own mental and emotional energy. Here’s the thing about boundaries: generally, the people who you most need to set them with are the people who will give you the hardest time about doing so. If your mom gives you a huge guilt trip for not picking up the phone for three days (in a non-emergency situation) yet you desperately need a break from talking to her, that’s a pretty good sign that relationship could use some clearer boundaries.
Examine your ambivalence
Speaking of guilt, take some time to figure out WHY you feel so guilty about pulling back. What messages are you telling yourself? Do you think it makes you a bad daughter to need space from your dad? Are you letting your sister down if you say no when she asks you to do yet another favor for her? Does it make you selfish if you can’t emotionally support your coworker when he’s going through another tough time? Once you’ve figured out your internal messages surrounding this behavior, decide whether that belief is accurate and healthy. Should you allow it to influence your feelings? You need to feel comfortable with the limits you’re setting and confident about the reasons why. Otherwise, you’ll start second-guessing yourself and slip into old patterns once people start pushing back. If you don’t have respect for your own boundaries, your friends and family won’t either.
Determine your real responsibility
There is a difference between being responsible TO someone and being responsible FOR someone. If you have a close relationship with someone, there’s a certain amount of loyalty, care, and consideration that goes along with it. When we care about a person, we generally take time to see them/talk to them, learn what’s happening in their lives, express sympathy when things aren’t going well, and so on. (In a healthy relationship, this is reciprocated on both sides.) Think about what it means to be a good friend, a loving child, or a loyal sibling – these qualities describe our responsibilities TO the people we love. However, we are not responsible FOR another adult’s emotional health and happiness. You can’t fix another person’s past or heal their trauma; you can’t make them emotionally healthier. The only person’s mental health you’re responsible for is your own.
Envision your ideal relationship
Imagine waking up tomorrow and finding that this difficult relationship was completely healed and healthy. How would you know this had happened? What would be different about the way you interact with this person? How would it feel? Now that you have a clear idea about what you want to be different, think of what concrete changes need to happen in order to achieve that ideal. Come up with a few specific, measurable requests that you could make to bring your reality closer to this goal. Maybe you could tell your brother that you’d prefer to visit every other weekend rather than doing family dinner together every Sunday, or ask your dad to refrain from making comments about your parenting style. The clearer we can be about the changes we want to make, the easier it is for people to meet those requests (and for us to hold them accountable when they step over the line). It’s much better to say, “Mom, remember I asked you to not bring up politics around me?” rather than “You always start a fight whenever we’re together!”
Far from being selfish, boundaries demonstrate your love and commitment to someone. It’s tough to set limits and have difficult conversations with people, so it shows how much you value a relationship when you go through the trouble of trying to improve it. Boundaries are the key to healthy relationships in all aspects of our lives, and we owe it to ourselves (and the people we love) to protect our emotional and mental health with good limits and clear communication.
