With the holidays soon approaching, many of us are beginning to feel the warm excitement and cold dread of time spent with family. It can be the best of times and the most difficult of times… rooms full of those you love, those who know you best… those who trigger your most wonderful memories and your most terrifying fears. It’s a lot! So how do we navigate these family relationships in a way that honors our love for each other, without the messiness that sometimes comes with family?
Boundaries! Boundaries! Boundaries!
Boundaries define where one thing ends and another begins. In relationships, setting boundaries (limits) is a helpful way to make clear where you stop and I start – where I stop and you start. It helps us separate what we want to do for one another from what we each need to do for ourselves. Those boundaries guide what is expected and accepted by each person. They provide a way of loving someone that says, “I love you and want you to be happy. However, I am not responsible for making you happy, just to prove that I love you… Your happiness is your responsibility. My happiness is mine.” It pushes us to challenge what many of us believe love looks like. Creating and maintaining boundaries helps to keep relationships clear, consistent and safe. It allows us to honor the “I” in “FAM-I-LY”.
Still, while it is certainly a worthwhile task, asserting boundaries can be hard to do if you don’t understand the value of doing it, don’t know exactly how to get it done and don’t think you have the strength to do it consistently.
So, here are a few tips to get you started:
1. LOVE FROM A PLACE OF OPPORTUNITY… NOT OBLIGATION!
Be clear about why you give what you give, why you allow what you allow and why you demand what you demand. For so many of us, particularly with our families, it is so easy to confuse entanglement with love. We’re all in one another’s business, trying to be everything to everybody and expecting everyone to be everything to us. Instead of loving from a place of opportunity we end up loving from a place of obligation. Instead of embracing opportunities to care for ourselves and for others, we end up heavy with the obligations we convince ourselves come with “loving someone.” We act out our misbelief that we must work to repay others for their choice to love us/ to partake with us/ to relate to us; that we are somehow undeserving of it simply as we are. The truth is that we don’t owe it to anyone to make them happy at the expense of our own joy. We can be considerate, caring, generous and respectful to others, all the while being the same to ourselves. The two are not mutually exclusive. Just figure out what’s your work to do and let them do theirs. Be honest about what you can reasonably offer to others without self-sacrifice and resentment. That clarity will allow each party to make a well-informed decision about whether this relationship works for them or not. Then, everyone can take it from there. Remember, relationships can have healthy limits even when the love between two people is limitless.
2. SPEAK FROM A PLACE OF CONFIDENCE… NOT CONDEMNATION!
When starting to assert boundaries with others, the conversations will be tough and the emotions intense. Here are some Dos and Don’ts to help get you through:
DO
- Validate the other person’s feelings. Now that you’re changing the rules of a long-established dynamic, people are likely to be thrown off. Validate whatever emotional response they have, while resisting the urge to either: (a) explain yourself or (b) be dismissive of how they feel. Just hear them out and express your understanding. Example: "I can understand why we might continue to have such different opinions on this topic. We have such different ways of seeing things.”
- Assert your hope. Be clear about your positive intention for the relationship. Example: "I am confident that we’ll find a way to interact, that feels respectful to both of us. Let’s talk it through.”
- Express your respect for the person’s ability to meet his/her own needs. Example: "One of the things that I love about you is that you are incredibly resourceful. I'm confident that you will find a way to get where you need to go."
- Offer what you can feel good about. There are many ways to be helpful without crossing boundaries. Example: "I’m not going to lend you money. However, I am happy to sit with you one day and help you set up a budget… if that would be helpful."
- Keep a mild tone. Your tone of voice often communicates more of your feelings than do your words. Be mindful of what feelings you are communicating and what response they’re inviting. Example: Indoor voice; medium-paced sentences
- Keep a friendly demeanor. Be conversational, not confrontational. Example: Subtle smile; straight-back posture
- Keep eye contact, if face-to-face. It’s important to show respect and have it reciprocated. Example: attentive eyes.
DON'T
- Don’t apologize for your choices. You may feel guilty or anxious as you consider the other person’s reaction. Let yourself sit in the new dynamic created by this change.
- Don’t lie or minimize your blessings to justify your choices. You don’t have to cry broke to avoid lending money or tell stories about how tough your life is to get out of having to be there for others. Tell the truth.
- Don’t commit to anything that doesn’t feel good to your spirit. Don’t let your guilt over saying “no” to one thing, pressure you into promising to do other things.
- Don’t get angry. Many people may have a negative reaction to your setting of limits. That’s perfectly okay. They are entitled to their feelings just as you are entitled to your choices.
- Don’t use sarcasm/humor. Don’t downplay your requests. You have the right to ask for what you need. Take your needs seriously and set the tone for others to do the same.
- Don’t lose the bass in your voice. You can be assertive without being aggressive or being passive. Stay strong in your decision to set limits in your life.
It can be a tricky thing to practice the creation and maintenance of boundaries in personal relationships. We’ve gotten so used to the messiness. We’re so scared to lose the ones we love if our boundaries offend them. We feel guilty because we were taught to think of taking care of ourselves as “selfish” and to think of taking care of our families as honorable; but as I repeatedly say, “Caring for someone and taking care of someone are not the same thing!” Begin implementing healthy boundaries in your relationships and watch just how fun family time and holiday celebrations become. Your sense of peace, truly is, the greatest gift you can give yourself this holiday season.
