The Importance of Personal Boundaries

By: Asma Shums,
Often overlooked, personal boundaries are the key to have long-lasting relationships that are respectful, supportive, and sustainable. They are the critical keys in ensuring that you maintain your self-respect and don’t burnout providing constantly for others and being unfair to yourself. By having boundaries, you tell others what is acceptable behavior towards you and in a way determine how you feel about yourself.
If you often feel uncomfortable by how others treat you or in an imbalanced relationship, it may be time to reset these boundaries to your acceptable level. Weak boundaries leave you feeling that you are being taken advantage of and unhappy as you are vulnerable. Healthy boundaries on the other hand, make you feel well-taken care of with plenty of energy left to spend on yourself.
How to Reset Your Boundaries
The most important step before resetting your boundaries is to take some time to identify relationships where you feel unsatisfied. Identify the specific situations and/or people that leave you unhappy and hurt and the motivation behind it.
The next step is to identify the action you can take to rectify this situation. You may decide to let a friend know that their constant jokes on your failures in school is hurtful and put an end to it. Or let a family member know that constant nagging to find a job is redundant and ask for help in your search instead.
This also means you can question insults masked as humor. Also, learn to say no to things that are extending your boundaries. As you learn to enforce your boundaries, try not to overstep on other people’s boundaries. There are multiple ways to identify and rectify these situations and you can use this guide as a cheat sheet.
The ‘Five Things’ Method
•List five things you want people to stop doing around you – such as jokes centering around a specific race of people
•List five things you want people to stop doing to you – such as not taking your suggestions seriously in a work meeting
•List five things you want people to stop saying to you – such as you always giving up on a project that interests you
Using this method, you can keep updating your boundaries. It may be tough enforcing these with friends or families as they might not understand your reasons or take it as a personal attack. However, resetting your boundaries change your values from pleasing others to valuing your own time and having a sustainable relationship with yourself and others.
In hard moments remember Harriet Lerner, “An intimate relationship is one in which neither party silences, sacrifices, or betrays the self and each party expresses strength, vulnerability, weakness and competence in a balanced way” to feel comfort in setting your boundaries. info at: asmashums@gmail.com