What are my boundaries?
This is part 2 in our boundary series. To review what a boundary is, please refer back to part 1.
Has someone crossed a line? Maybe they borrowed something without asking, or your personal space or privacy was violated. These might be more obvious examples where we know that a discussion about our boundaries needs to happen.
However, it might not always be obvious when we need to negotiate, set, or enforce our boundaries. Maybe you just have a feeling that something is off, but you don’t really know what it’s about. Maybe you don’t quite feel like yourself, or you’re tired and irritable but you aren’t sure why.
So, how can you tell if an issue is even about your boundaries?
Well, there might be some signs:
Are you feeling drained, resentful, pressured, hurt, angry, violated, or anxious?
Do you feel like you are shutting down?
Are you and someone else in conflict about the same thing over and over again?
Do you feel like you have lost your sense of self?
Are your loved ones telling you that they feel distant from you, or that they sense you are putting up walls?
If you answered “yes” to any of the questions above – then you may want to think about your boundaries, how you communicate them, and how you enforce them.
Understanding our boundaries
Before we can set a boundary, we need to understand our boundaries.
What are your boundaries in your relationships with others? You definitely have boundaries, you just may not have really thought about them before!
Thinking through the questions below can help us determine our priorities, needs, and values – all of which can help us understand our boundaries.
Questions to ask yourself:
1. Priorities
This could be spending time with your children, your partner, pets, family, and/or friends. It could be leisure time, regular exercise, or a hobby. It could be traveling, learning, or succeeding within your career. Perhaps it’s your faith or spiritual practices. Maybe it’s giving back to your community through activism or volunteer work.
Whatever the case may be, take the time to write down what matters most to you, and why. Then, ask yourself some follow up questions:
What matters most to me in life, and why?
How do I show up for the people that mean the most to me?
How do I make time for the things that matter most to me?
2. Responsibilities
We all have people, passions, and pursuits that matter to us. We also have responsibilities: obligations and promises we need to keep. Sometimes, these things overlap – as is the case with children and pets, they might be what matters most to us AND those we are responsible for – and other times, these things are at odds, like the need to work getting in the way of spending time with family.
So, how do we find balance between what we want to do, and what we need to do?
What am I responsible for?
How do I fulfill my responsibilities?
Am I meeting any of my responsibilities? How can I tell?
3. Identity
When your friends describe you to other people, what do you hope they say about you? Do you hope they highlight how hard you work, your generosity, or your sense of humour? Or, when your kids talk about you, do you hope they think of your warmth, consistency, and care? Whatever qualities or skills come to mind, those are probably important for you, and highlight the kind of person you want to be.
So, ask yourself:
Which traits do I think define me right now?
What do I want to be known for? Or remembered for?
Am I living up to these traits or qualities? In which ways?
4. Treatment
Boundaries are rules you make about your own behaviour, not the behaviour of others. So for example, you might set a boundary for yourself: “I won’t yell at my kids in anger”.
That said, we can create boundaries by deciding how we will react to others’ actions. For example, you might choose to walk away from a conversation if your partner is yelling at you. Your choice (walk away) is the response to the behaviour (yelling) that you have decided you won’t accept.
It’s important to consider how we want to be treated, and what kinds of behaviours we will or won’t accept. It’s also important to decide how we want to treat others.
We might ask:
What kinds of actions (or inaction) from others would I find hurtful? What kinds of actions might feel violating?
How do I want to treat others? What does that look like?
What might be some (safe) actions I can take if I am feeling upset by something that someone else is doing?
5. Balance
We cannot do it all; there are limits to our time and energy. So what do we do with competing priorities?
We could ask:
Many things and people are important to me, how do I balance my priorities?
Do I have too many competing priorities? Is there anything I am willing to let go of, or outsource?
Do I need to adjust something in my life in order to show up as the person I want to be?
Who can I ask for help?
What now?
Through answering these questions, you might gain more clarity about what matters to you, how you want to be treated, and how you want to treat others.
For example, by working through the questions above, you might think to yourself, “I have been feeling some pressure around work, and it’s interfering with spending time with my kids. I might need to set some more boundaries with my boss,” or maybe, “I do value my privacy, and it did feel violating when my partner went through the messages on my phone. I need to have a conversation with my partner about my boundaries around privacy”.
While these might feel like uncomfortable realizations, they are important ones – and now you know what to do next.
It’s unavoidable that sometimes our priorities will compete, but by recognizing and naming our boundaries, we can understand and plan around what we – and those we care about – need.
Stay tuned for part 3 in this series, where we will talk about how to set our boundaries with others.
It helps to talk things through. If you have questions about boundaries, you can call the Men & resource line to have a free and confidential conversation with a trained professional. If you’re not ready to speak with someone, you can also try the free self-paced Setting Boundaries Toolset or the Men & Collection, which is a bundle of free educational resources.