A Lesson in Emotional Boundaries
Photo by Simone Dalmeri on Unsplash
What do I share? What will be helpful? What might be hurtful? And who might I piss off in the process?
These are the questions I ask myself every time I think about writing a book. These are the questions that I struggle to answer as I sit down to write a blog post that involves stories from my life. People in my life. Family members and loved ones I care deeply about and are an integral part of my life and therefore my life stories.
How do I be honest and speak my truth without hurting others?
This question arose as I started to write about boundaries a couple weeks ago. I realized that, when thinking about my own personal boundaries, I am not overly concerned with privacy. I enjoy sharing my experiences and stories, because I believe it’s an integral part of communal healing. And it means I might share a story or experience that involves other people, because people are a part of my life, and how I relate, react, and learn from them shapes so much of the stories I tell.
So how does this relate to boundaries?
In every way possible.
It has to do with a type of boundary that I struggle with most: emotional boundaries. There are several different types of boundaries (physical, sexual, material to name a few--Psychcentral does an awesome job of laying these out so I’ll let them keep the credit). I struggle with all of them, actually, but the one I find most difficult to navigate is the not-so-black-and-white “emotional boundary.”
An emotional boundary is the distinct separation of one’s own emotions from another’s. It is the clarity around the fact that no one else’s emotions are mine, and my emotions are no one else’s. Again, Psychcentral says it beautifully:
“Healthy [emotional] boundaries prevent you from giving advice, blaming or accepting blame. They protect you from feeling guilty for someone else’s negative feelings or problems and taking others’ comments personally. Healthy emotional boundaries require clear internal boundaries – knowing your feelings and your responsibilities to yourself and others” (Lancer 2018).
My lack of emotional boundaries is the very roadblock preventing me from doing a lot of my writing. Despite a lot of work in therapy, there is still a part of me that believes I am wholly responsible for the feelings of others. That if I write something and they are offended or upset, I have done something irrevocably destructive. That if someone reads what I write and says, “you shouldn’t be so public,” I immediately adopt their belief and second guess what I believe is true for me. That if I share a story from my childhood and it upsets my parents, it must mean I’m a bad daughter.
I talked with my husband about this over coffee last week. About being afraid to hurt his feelings in my writing. About being afraid to hurt my parents’ feelings. Old schoolteachers or childhood friends’ feelings. The people who are the most important in my life, and as such will inevitably end up in my writing. They are a part of my history, and skipping over those parts or neglecting to tell those stories would be like leaving out major chapters of my life—but what about the parts that are messy? How can I tell my stories truthfully, and not hurt anyone?
Often, I operate with the belief that other people’s emotions are my responsibility. Since I’m a visual learner I’m going to explain this..well, visually. Imagine that I am one circle and that any other person is a second circle. I tend to operate as though our circles are completely overlapping. If I do something, no matter what, I imagine they will feel it. And when they feel something, no matter what, I will too.
This is a classic case of enmeshment. In psychology, enmeshment is the state of two people constantly feeling the other’s emotions and suggests no clear personal boundaries exist between the pair (Fulshear Treatment to Transition, 2015).
I know this is not what healthy emotional boundaries actually look like, and I am working hard to change the diagram.
In reality (and from what I’ve learned over the years), a healthy emotional relationship between two people is more like a Venn diagram, where there is a clear distinction that my actions and their reactions exist in a clearly defined space: we are not in a constant state of acting and reacting.
During our conversation this morning, my husband said to me, “Rachel, you are a good writer, and you write with grace. I can’t imagine you using your words to hurt anyone, nor can I imagine you forgetting to let people know that your words are your experience, not the whole truth.” I wrote down what he said because it impacted me so much. He was right, and just hearing him say that metaphorically shifted me out of the “shared circle space” and into my own container in the Venn diagram.
He reminded me that a) my words don’t have as much power as I think they do, and b) I have the power to use my words how I choose to. And I’m not the kind of person who uses my words as daggers.
And so, I started to think about restructuring my emotional boundaries. About being honest with myself about the work I’ve done and the work that needs to be done. I imagined myself as a little girl, first learning about her emotions, how others actions impact her feelings, and how she impacts other people’s emotions. What would I teach her so that she understood where the boundary lay? What lessons would I hope she learned?
Naturally, I’m going to share those lessons with you, ah-right-now.
Lesson One: You Are Only Responsible for Your Feelings and Your Actions
What this means:
If I feel sad, happy, or any emotion, it is my responsibility to do something with those feelings, and I have the power to respond to them. It is not the responsibility of whoever made me feel that way to change, appease, or take on my emotions.
Conversely, if I do something that causes someone to become happy, sad, or any emotion, I am responsible for the action I did to create their experience, but not their emotions. This means apologizing for the action and the pain caused, but does not mean taking on saving the person from their feelings.
Here’s an example:
While skipping on the playground, I accidentally hit a kid in the face with my jumprope. OOPS. The kid tells me I hurt them and they accuse me of doing it on purpose.
So where is the emotional boundary here? Am I responsible for the kid’s anger? Nope. Am I responsible for my action? Yep.
So what do I do? I apologize for my action and feel remorse about the fact that I hurt him (my responsibility) but I don’t placate his anger or make it my job to soothe his feelings (NOT my responsibility).
This is where the emotional boundary comes into play: it is not so much about saying “other people’s feelings don’t matter to me, and I can do whatever I want because their feelings are their responsibility.” It’s about owning up to the shit I do, without taking on the responsibility of also saving the other person from their feelings. This is the emotional boundary—and the part I sincerely struggle with, and imagine many other people do too.
Lesson Two: Have Clear Internal Boundaries
What this means:
Understand your own emotional landscape.
What triggers you? What events, phrases, or people cause you more anxiety, frustration, or irritation than others? How can you begin to understand when your emotions are more about your history, and less about the event that stirred them up?
This paves the way for you to have clarity when it comes to placing blame, either on yourself or another person for how you feel. Chances are, the more self-aware you become, the less you’ll find yourself pointing fingers, and the more you’ll find yourself exercising self-compassion and simply moving through your feelings.
Decide who you really are responsible for.
You can’t be responsible for everyone. You also can’t be responsible for no one. Hopefully, you are responsible for yourself. If you’re in a committed relationship, I would venture to say you have some responsibility to that person. If you have a child, I sincerely hope you feel responsible for them until they’re old enough to be responsible for themselves.
What does all this look like with emotional boundaries? Creating clarity around what you are and are not responsible for with these very select, few, important people in your life.
Here’s an example:
If I had a kiddo, I would not consider it my responsibility to save or protect them from their negative emotions. But I WOULD consider it my responsibility to teach them how to manage their negative emotions so that they have the tools to become responsible for handling those feelings.
We aren’t born with the ability to self-soothe, to appropriately direct anger, or express pride without being a dick. These are tools and skills we learn from our caregivers--either by how they model it, by what they tell us, or for some, by the absence of their teaching.
If we are clear internally about what we are and are not responsible for when it comes to our children’s emotional landscapes, we create safe, secure, and clear boundaries for them to experiment, practice, and learn it.
So what’s the takeaway with all of this?
Boundaries are hard. The word itself denotes something defined, clear, and fixed. But I have found that creating, setting, and sticking to boundaries is a complex process full of grey area.
There’s a learning curve.
Chances are, if you’re learning to set boundaries, it’s because you haven’t devised clear ones naturally. This means learning to set them will be full of confusion, mistakes, and do-overs. That’s ok.
For those of you with loved ones who are just beginning the practice of boundary-setting, I invite you to be patient. They might seem wishy-washy on their boundaries at first. They might set some and break them. They might realize a boundary they set isn’t actually that important, or suddenly set a boundary that seems contradictory to their past behavior.
Boundary-setting can be like reinventing yourself. Re-parenting. Establishing, for the first time, how you position yourself in relation to self and others, and practicing consistency with your placement. So be kind, be patient, and remember this as you practice:
You are only responsible for your feelings and your actions, and nothing about that statement gives you the right to be a dick.
Happy Coping!
XO -Rachel
References
“Enmeshment: Symptoms and Causes.” Fulshear Treatment to Transition, 21 Sept. 2015, www.fulsheartransition.com/enmeshment-symptoms-and-causes/.
Lancer, Darlene. “What Are Personal Boundaries? How Do I Get Some?” Psych Central, 8 Oct. 2018, psychcentral.com/lib/what-are-personal-boundaries-how-do-i-get-some/.