Limits
Often the only time we recognize boundaries is only after they've been totally violated, overwhelming our defense mechanisms; then we panic, over-react and fall back into more primitive instinctual defenses.
What might help, is to learn to recognize and honor our own limits and limitations. In order to do that, we need to spend more time being conscious and paying attention to our nervous system and how our body feels. It is easy to just rely on will-power and just over-rule and push through any feelings of limitation, weakness, or tiredness. Just toughen up, and rough it out and through. But the problem with that strategy, is that our will-power eventually runs out, our nervous system is totally fatigued, and we create a habit of over-running and ignoring our own limits, limitations and personal boundaries. Thereby we also end up regularly violating other people's boundaries. And by not respecting and honoring our own limits, we have no power or recognition to communicate our own boundaries clearly to others and ourselves.
Once we start acknowledging, respecting, honoring, and knowing our own personal limits, we have much better resources to create and communicate boundaries to others which are highly adaptable to situation and person. Also our defense mechanisms can be modified and simplified to be healthier, as we can better assess and recognize our own capacity for stress and limitations with interactions with others and the world.
But, it does still all come back down to anger, an open and healthy relationship with anger is an essential foundation for recognizing, setting and communicating boundaries.
Often the only time we recognize boundaries is only after they've been totally violated, overwhelming our defense mechanisms; then we panic, over-react and fall back into more primitive instinctual defenses.
What might help, is to learn to recognize and honor our own limits and limitations. In order to do that, we need to spend more time being conscious and paying attention to our nervous system and how our body feels. It is easy to just rely on will-power and just over-rule and push through any feelings of limitation, weakness, or tiredness. Just toughen up, and rough it out and through. But the problem with that strategy, is that our will-power eventually runs out, our nervous system is totally fatigued, and we create a habit of over-running and ignoring our own limits, limitations and personal boundaries. Thereby we also end up regularly violating other people's boundaries. And by not respecting and honoring our own limits, we have no power or recognition to communicate our own boundaries clearly to others and ourselves.
Once we start acknowledging, respecting, honoring, and knowing our own personal limits, we have much better resources to create and communicate boundaries to others which are highly adaptable to situation and person. Also our defense mechanisms can be modified and simplified to be healthier, as we can better assess and recognize our own capacity for stress and limitations with interactions with others and the world.
But, it does still all come back down to anger, an open and healthy relationship with anger is an essential foundation for recognizing, setting and communicating boundaries.
