Where to Draw the Line_How to Set Healthy Boundaries Every Day

by Anne Katherine

  Yolanda didn’t get an allowance and wasn’t old enough to baby-sit. She had no way to make money. The bill went unpaid and went into collections. The family received notice to go to court.

  In court, Mrs. Race explained to the judge that the bill was Yolanda’s responsibility. He looked at the little, frail-looking girl standing before him, brought down the gavel, and declared that the parents would have to pay the bill.

  Mrs. Race was so upset that, as punishment, she left Yolanda in downtown Seattle to find her own way home.

  What is true about this situation?

  1. Yolanda was irresponsible for not paying the bill.

  2. Yolanda was charged with a responsibility she had no way to fulfill.

  3. It’s an appropriate punishment to endanger a child.

  The obvious answer here is 2.

  Of course we shouldn’t abandon children to dangerous situations, even if we are overwhelmed, or mad at them, or dealing with big problems of our own. But the point of this (sadly) true story is that Yolanda was given a responsibility she could not meet. A quick way to teach children that they are inadequate is to give them jobs they can’t possibly handle.

  Children who are charged with such jobs as making their parents happy, keeping a parent safe, solving a parent’s difficulties in the world, giving a parent a reason to stay alive, or fulfilling a parent’s dreams are set up to fail.

  These are impossible tasks. No one can make another person happy. We each have to find our own reasons to stay alive. We are charged with fulfilling our own dreams.

  Yet children absorb and accept whatever job expectations they are given, even if they are unspoken, and then unconsciously try to fulfill them—sometimes their whole lives long. Since they can’t possibly succeed, they can also—for a lifetime—believe that they aren’t up to snuff.

  Even when these kids grow up, they continue to carry the same roles, and rarely do they realize on a conscious level that they can quit. They may feel compelled to move far away from their parents or to transfer all their attention to their own adult households, but the chances are they will continue to try doing the same job for the new people in their lives. We can be turned inside out a long, long time when we’ve been trained to be too responsible as small children.

  EMOTIONAL NEGLECT

  Few creatures can thrive with just food, water, and shelter. Fish school, birds flock, animals herd—even some insects behave cooperatively. Lizards live independently, but most other creatures need contact with their own kind.

  Children too need more than food, water, and shelter. They need physical and emotional safety, safe touch, limits, consistency, clear communication, instruction, and routine contact.

  Emotional neglect occurs when parents are so involved in their adult pursuits that their children get short shrift. When children are pushed aside, made to wait an eternity to have time with a parent, or forced to endure broken promises because of the endless work demands of their parents, they learn that they are less important than achievement, money, or material gain. Emotional neglect ultimately causes great damage to the child’s self-esteem and to their ability to be in a relationship.

  Don’t be a lizard. Talk to your children. Listen to them. Play with them. Construct events and activities that you can share with them. Teach them how the world works. Demonstrate honest, ethical behavior. Show how to handle anger in a healthy way. Practice negotiation with them. Teach them to express feelings, to grieve, to communicate.

  Prepare them for their emancipation by (when they are old enough) showing them how to handle money, maintain a car, thank others for gifts, cook healthy food, take care of clothing, exercise, respond to invitations, initiate contact with others, and all the other skills that adults need to enjoy life.

  BOUNDARIES WITH CHILDREN, PART II

  1. Attend to their emotional, psychological, physical, and spiritual needs.

  2. Teach them love, acceptance, and tolerance.

  3. Help them belong, both within the family and with other groups they enter.

  4. Teach them to handle feelings, resolve conflict, and negotiate.

  5. Prepare them for adulthood.

  Chapter 19

  SPIRITUAL BOUNDARIES

  Throughout human history, the apostles of purity, those who have claimed to possess a total explanation, have wrought havoc among mere mixed-up human beings.

  —SALMAN RUSHDIE

  Beckah lost her parents in an auto accident and was sent at twelve years of age to live with her aunt. Aunt Van was tediously religious and gleamed with righteousness. She was one of those rare humans who follows even the minor rules. She dusted the lintels of the doorways. She filled out her taxes on January 5. She packed for a trip four weeks in advance (and unpacked minutes after arriving home).

  Beckah’s first week with her aunt extended the child’s shock. She sat on a couch and was shooed to a plastic-covered chair. She reached for a second helping of green beans and was lectured on gluttony. At night she shivered in her hard bed, afraid to ask for another blanket. She came home from school to find that her Nancy Drew mysteries were missing. A hesitant question to Aunt Van produced a storm of words about the secular and depraved popular culture. Beckah got the message that studying anything but holy books was frowned on by God.

  Her aunt read from the Scriptures daily and prayed extensively and loudly about Beckah’s shortcomings. Aunt Van was tactlessly expressive that God’s judgment had culled her sister, Beckah’s mother, from earthly life because of her great sin in marrying outside the faith. To the flinty religiosity of her aunt, Beckah added a God who stole loving parents, and decided she could do without a religion that fanned pain.

  It is hard for children to separate a view of God from the distortions of some of His followers. When children grow up in households full of judgment and harsh piety, when they are hit over the head with the name of God, when they are steeped in messages that turn them against their positive instincts and interests, when they are taught to hate their bodies and their humanness, barricades are placed across the path to God.

  Being in contact with your own spiritual nature and learning to access your connection with God are essential aspects of being fully human. Any person or group that attempts to block these connections commits a violation of spiritual boundaries.

  If you find yourself stifled by your religion, examine what is happening. Is your religious community leading you closer to God, improving your relationship with the most High, enhancing your communion with others, including nonbelievers? If not, your particular religious group could be subtly violating your spiritual boundaries.

  A relationship with God is life-giving. It opens and expands consciousness and perception. We learn that certain behaviors can harm this holy relationship, not because God abandons us, but because when we make certain mistakes, we want to turn away from God.

  True spirituality forces us to find the incredibly wobbly middle ground between the passions of humanness and the boundaries that hold us in a place of respecting and honoring, not only God, but His entire creation, including the earth and all its creatures.

  • • •

  “The Lord laid it on my heart that you are to donate your money to the church and move to Gustavus.”

  “The Lord visited me in a dream and He said you are to be my wife.”

  “My religion is the only true religion.”

  What is the problem with statements like these?

  1. The Lord’s name is being used to control another person.

  2. Someone is placing himself in a position of spiritual superiority over another.

  3. The Lord’s boundary is being violated.

  All of the above statements are true. The Creator is the supreme respecter of boundaries, presenting us with revelations, models, and clear pathways to seek Him out; but He never, never violates volition. Of all the beings in the universe, the Supreme Being is the one with the utmost power to make us do things His way. And He neve
r uses it. He gave us free will and, by God, He sticks to it, come hell or high water.

  I know I get irritated when someone misrepresents me. I wonder how the Holy One feels about being used this way. He did mention He didn’t like his name being taken in vain. Perhaps this qualifies. At any rate, a lot of harm has been done in the name of God—wars fought, people sacrificed, women and races subjugated, politics and government influenced.

  We occasionally run into people who have all the answers, who believe they have an inside track to the mind of God. I’ve had people come to my door to tell me of their take on God. I think it takes great courage to walk through strange neighborhoods and risk the gamut of responses from householders. I’ve invited in some of these apostles and what has struck me each time is how impossible it is to truly converse about God with these brave people.

  Since we both hold God in our hearts, it would seem that we could share the joy of our respective relationships. But I’ve found that my attempts at a real conversation run into an inflexible wall. Another agenda is behind the scenes. Their interest is in convincing me that their group is the only one with the correct path to God.

  I was raised in a religious environment that was strong on the love relationship with God and others and weak in doctrine. Still, I got the clear message that Christianity was the only path that didn’t dead-end before heaven’s gate.

  I traveled in Italy with a group of spiritual seekers that was using unconventional ways of connecting with Spirit, such as dance and drawing and dreaming, and borrowing practices from other religions beside Christianity. I occasionally worried that I’d strayed beyond the interstate and was on a goat path to nowhere, definitely beyond the margins of my childhood religion.

  We entered a doma in Sicily, a cathedral built on the foundations and using the pillars of a temple to Apollo, which itself had been built on the site of worship of a mother goddess. It had been a mecca for spiritual seekers for four millennia. I went over to a pillar and lay my forehead against it and instantly was transported into a vision.

  I saw golden columns, like pillars of light that stretched from Earth to the spiritual realm and these were made of the prayers and meditations of all the people turning to God. Prayers were traveling like beams of golden sunshine and as they connected with the Almighty the answers came vibrating back in similar golden pathways. This pulsing of prayers and responses created shining cables all over the world.

  I understood with a largeness beyond words that it wasn’t doctrine or sect that mattered but the devoutness of the believer. Anyone truly seeking after God, regardless of the religious form it took, was participating in this brilliant synergy.

  It’s these occasional gifts from the Almighty that reveal to me how limited is our earthly perspective, how much bigger God is than we can wrap our minds around. We take a little piece and try to make sense of it and before long we have a religion full of rules and suppositions that can be far from God’s true nature and intent.

  Humans sometimes try to use the name of God to control others. They sometimes try to force their concepts about God onto others. This is a violation of the receiver’s spiritual boundaries. God has already demonstrated God’s way of doing things.

  The Creator never forces spirituality or goodness on anyone. He may offer you so many opportunities you’d have to be blind to miss the invitation, but you are never forced to accept any of them. If you ask, however obliquely, God’s Spirit will be there in a flash, but you have to ask.

  The Bible is full of examples of the way God works. When religious people went off the deep end, God found creative ways to correct them. Saul (Paul) was struck blind with the message to lay off the first Christians, Peter was told to relax about dietary restrictions, and David was told not to grab women. Jesus, who had an inside line, never forced anyone to think His way. He did get irritated with the pharisees for abusing their position of leadership, and we’ve been warned that abuse of religious leadership does not set well with the Heavenly Consciousness.

  God never forced a prophet or potential saint to take the holy path. God did send an occasional engraved invitation. Mary was asked if she wanted to bear God’s child, and Joseph was told to support her even if things looked dicey. Noah was told to take up carpentry. Samuel was told to surrender to God. Each person could have said no.

  Notice that none of these folks were told to use their spiritual connection to coerce anybody else. Moses did set the first boundaries (after Yahweh drew a line around the tree in Eden), but even then he didn’t try forcing people to follow them. Instead, he warned of the consequences, and ever since then we’ve been, one at a time, learning over and over the consequences of ignoring God’s boundaries.

  We humans are each called to work out our own connection with God. It’s a relationship, one to one, between each of us and God—a direct line. We are given, in each generation, wise guides and outstanding examples of how to do so, but the choices and the actions must be our own.

  So, what can you do when someone presumes to be God’s personal ambassador, sent to set you straight? (I’m of course not talking about a priest, minister, rabbi, or religious teacher from whom you’ve sought guidance.) Set a boundary that establishes your own separate spiritual territory.

  “Thanks for your thoughts. I’ll turn to God myself on this matter.”

  “God told me you should mind your own business. Just kidding.”

  “Is His message still on your answering machine? I’d like to hear it myself.”

  “What did God tell you you should do about your life?”

  “That’s strange, God’s message to me was quite different.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t mean to violate my spiritual boundaries, but now that you have, please don’t give me such messages again. I have my own strong relationship with the Creator. It gives me much joy and guidance. For you to try to step between us—God and me—is disrespectful of both of us. If you have judgments about my spirituality, remember that God said not to judge, lest He judge you.”

  Chapter 20

  TIDINESS BOUNDARIES

  Tidiness, or the lack of it, creates all sorts of issues for people. What is the appropriate range for tidiness in a home? How quickly should untidiness be responded to? How does a guest respect the tidiness boundaries of a host? Does a boss have a say over an employee’s tidiness? Does an employee have a say over a boss’s tidiness?

  As I pile up more years of working with clients, I’ve come to believe that tidiness is not a superficial issue about good housekeeping, but an external expression of a variety of important, heartfelt internal processes. The degree of one’s tidiness can directly relate to their energy, health, emotional clarity, cultural values, priorities, upbringing, scarcity, fear, busyness, compulsiveness, perfectionism, and sense of home.

  Cultures vary in their perception of what constitutes untidiness and clutter. When I moved to Seattle, I rented a room for six months in the home of a family from China. Each room was perfectly neat at all times. Furnishings were spare and carefully placed. Two family members, however, aspired to be as American as possible. These two people had acquired a great many more items than the others, and their rooms were much more cluttered.

  Of course, tidiness is not entirely a function of the number of items in a room. I’ve seen crowded rooms that were exquisitely organized, and stark rooms that felt filthy because crumbs and crusted dishes littered all the surfaces. Nevertheless, when the volume of items overwhelms the space in which they are kept, a certain critical point gets passed, and chaos results.

  Is there an American standard of tidiness? I’m amused by a straw poll I’ve been taking for years. In nearly every neighborhood, there is one house in perfect order. Its paint is fresh; vehicles are lined up or put away; the grass is regularly mowed; flower beds are primly ordered. Also in nearly every neighborhood, there is at least one house in disarray. The grass is shaggy; trash cans lie on their sides; and all sorts of flotsam and jetsam litter the
property.

  I’ve also noticed that, with rare exceptions, people will apologize for the state of their homes, no matter how neat their homes actually are. I’ve concluded that, as a rule, we believe we should be tidier than we are, that most ordinary Americans believe they are falling short in their neatness duties.

  Tidiness has advantages. We can find things. For the amount of time it takes to maintain tidiness, we are paid back in time that isn’t needed to hunt for things.

  The Asian art of feng shui is all about arranging space to enhance health and ease. As I’ve applied these principles, I’ve discovered that I do increase the energy of a room when it is tidy and well arranged.

  We each fall somewhere on a continuum between a home that is dangerously cluttered and one that is surgically sterile. If you live alone, a wide swath on the continuum is acceptable. A boundary is crossed only if your health or comfortable living is threatened, or if your tidiness (or lack of it) is actually a defense against some inner fear.

  For example, if you are so busy tidying and cleaning that you miss out on living a rich, varied life, you’ve violated your own boundary. Such rampant tidying could be an effort to create a feeling of control in a chaotic world—an understandable reaction, perhaps, but costly in terms of quality of life.

  At the other end of the scale, severe clutter can crowd people out. Some folks might avoid a house that could double as a news archive, that offers no clean place to sit, or that reeks with unpleasant odors.

  The integrity of your home life becomes compromised when your issues with cleaning interfere with your ability to keep your environment the way you’d really like it. If something inside you is violating the way you’d like to live, do you know what is behind this interference? Working with the internal issue in a therapeutic way, or with a professional clutter coach, can help.

  IT TAKES TWO TO TANGLE

  The tidiness issue heats up considerably when two people live together. You’ve heard of the law of gravity, and you know instinctively of the law of the left sock (the sock that’s abandoned when its mate escapes through the dryer vent and hops merrily to Sock Camp).