In all the years I have been teaching and talking about boundary setting, I keep coming back to the same principles over and over. This text offers them for you to explore. The scenarios, examples, and quotations included in this work are amalgamations from years of teaching classes, workshops, and my therapy work. They are not based on any one person or situation and serve to illuminate themes that many people struggle with rather than any one particular experience. Please take what works for you, leave what doesn’t, and share what gets you excited with family and friends. I hope you enjoy this book. I hope you find it helpful, and I hope it supports your work in negotiating and creating the things you want in your life.
Part I
One
What Is a Boundary?
A boundary involves establishing or negotiating how we are in our environments and relationships. Boundaries are informed by our experiences in the world and the responses we get from others. This includes our family dynamics, the intergenerational history of our families and communities, the social systems we do or do not have access to, the institutions we navigate, our personalities, our sense of who we are in the world, the power and privilege we have or can access, and our lived experiences. Boundaries change and grow, expand and contract alongside the aspects of our emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual self. Boundaries make up who we are and play a role in how we are who we are.
Boundaries are our way of communicating what we want and don’t want, what we need and don’t need. Some boundaries come instinctually, like yelling out in fright. Other boundaries are learned, like how to say no to an unwanted request, or ask for what we need in an effective way. When I facilitate boundary-setting workshops I ask participants for their definition(s) of a boundary. In classes, I get all sorts of responses. Definitions like a bubble, a limit, a line, your personal space, or your right to say no. Examples of how to express a boundary have included “Please don’t talk to me like that,” “Don’t touch me,” “Leave me alone,” “Go away,” and “No.” People rarely offer definitions that involve bringing people closer, letting people in, or asking people what it is they want. Examples could include: “I would really like you to give me a hug,” “Can you sit next to me rather than across from me when we talk?,” “Please touch me like this,” “I would like you to be closer to me,” and “Yes.”
When we think of boundary setting, we tend to think of the word “No.” We connect our perception of a strong boundary with someone’s ability to say no clearly and in no uncertain terms. Saying no is a powerful thing. Being able to say no can liberate and empower us tremendously. Saying no, however, is also only one part of the entire boundary-setting picture. Boundaries are as much about saying yes as they are about saying no. Building holistic, healthy, and happy relationships and lives includes both identifying (and asking for or working toward) what we want and what we do not want. Being able to state clearly and directly what we don’t want is important. There will be times when this is the only relevant thing we want to communicate. If I am being harassed at a club, I might tell the person, “I don’t want to talk to you,” or, “I don’t want you to touch me.” I may, however, choose to tell them what I do want, for example, by saying, “Leave me alone” or “I want you to go away.” There will be times when we will care very much about telling someone what we want. It may be important to share with a friend how they can support you by explaining specifically what you want or need, for example. Telling someone what not to do, is not, by definition, telling them what to do.
It can be hard, for a variety of reasons, to tell someone what you want. Sometimes we don’t know. Fear and reactivity can complicate identifying and communicating what we want or need. If we do not feel safe, feel threatened or anxious it may be safer to state what we do not want. The United States perpetuates a culture of fear in many ways through media and messaging about safety, self-defense, and self-care. We will explore this more in chapter six, but for now, it is important to begin to consider how fear and reactivity inform boundaries by pushing us to focus on what we don’t want. While stating what we do not want is not inherently bad, there are times when stating things in terms of what we do want allows for more information to be communicated and allows for more creative problem-solving about how to make it happen. For example, I don’t want global warming, child abuse, or economic disparity, among other things. How can I express these wants in non-reactionary terms that qualify what I would like to happen? “I want an international community that respects our planet above economic gains.” “I want loving and supportive families made of individuals that come from loving and supportive families that are supported by loving and supportive communities.” “I want to interweave our economic stability to the economic justice and the health and well-being of every person in our country.” These are just some examples of how to reframe statements of needs or wants. Reframing asks us not only to consider what we want; it asks us to envision possibilities and even strategies for obtaining our goals. This (sometimes counterintuitively) can be scary and even painful. Identifying, asking for, and envisioning getting what we want offers hope, but it is also rooted in the reality of what is, which is sometimes painful to consider.
Asking for what we want requires that we have a clear vision of what we want (or at least a fuzzy outline). It can be challenging and even frightening to reflect deeply on what it is that we want and then imagine communicating that with the people in our lives. It can feel vulnerable and at times overwhelmingly terrifying, especially when the stakes are high and the outcome matters. It may feel safer to not ask at all, as hearing a refusal or not having our request met with compassion can be painful and we may not feel equipped to handle it. Communicating what we want can be incredibly challenging when it involves making (sometimes very personal) requests to people, or in situations where asking means taking a chance or being vulnerable, or when power is not equitable. Identifying what we want might be connected to past traumatic events that make communicating it seem overwhelming or even impossible.
I lived my life trying to prevent what had happened from happening again. I lived by default and saw danger everywhere. I was not living, I was trying not to get hurt or die—an impossibility if you are on this planet. When I gave up trying to prevent things from occurring and dealing with life as it was, I began living and I learned to trust myself. I learned that I could not control other people or events but that my fear had struggled against this reality. When I accepted this, I accepted my own power and my own strengths.
—Home Alive boundary-setting class participant
Fear of exploring and communicating what we want can cause anxiety. We may try to avoid this anxiety by avoiding setting or negotiating boundaries altogether. People can spend a great deal of time constructing their lives and relationships so as to avoid setting boundaries as much as possible. This costs us not only time and energy, it costs us the full potential of our relationships and ourselves. We can’t be fully present when we are operating out of anxiety or fear.
Knowing what we want and need, and being able to communicate it, not only benefits us, it also helps those on the receiving end of our boundaries. Think about it. Isn’t it helpful to know what is expected or desired of you, even if you don’t necessarily want to do it? It is much easier to follow a request to not do something when it is followed by what you can do. It also softens the boundary. There are times when we may not want or need to provide information about what the person can do or soften a boundary in any way. In other situations, it may be important for us that the other person understands what we want and also be able to do it. Context is everything.
Saying what we want can also be a way of providing an alternative: This is not helpful but this would be. It may involve telling our partner that we don’t want them to offer advice when we are telling them about our day, but would prefer they just listen. It could be yelling at a stranger who grabs your arm at a party that you don’t like to be grabbed and to let go of your arm,
Now! We might offer our child the option of having a healthy treat after denying them a candy bar. In past boundary-setting classes, participants have sometimes expressed concern that providing an alternative is about trying to lessen guilt or mitigate anxiety about setting a boundary, and that we need to learn how to say no without feeling guilty. Saying no without feeling guilty is a worthy goal and something most of us can work on. Offering an alternative or stating what we want is one of many boundary-setting skills that we will explore further in this book, and while there may be times when we do it out of guilt (which is not inherently bad), there will be other times when we are invested in telling someone what we want them to do. In classes, we practice a variety of skills in a number of different contexts. There will be times when it is scary to say no without justifying, explaining, or defending our boundary, and our work is to learn how to increase our capacity to not act out of guilt but to firmly hold onto our boundary without explanation. Setting a boundary without justifying it or having to offer an alternative is a vital skill. It is just as vital to learn how to tell people what we want, how to say yes. Both are important boundary-setting skills.
We set boundaries all the time. Some are emotionally fairly neutral, like saying “No, thanks” to a refill of coffee. Others are more highly charged, like ending a relationship. Who we are informs not only with whom we set boundaries, but also informs how and why we set boundaries. For many of us, setting and negotiating boundaries is foreign territory. We were told that having boundaries is bad so we learned to ignore or avoid them. We might have learned that we only get to have boundaries if we fight for them, and therefore have to be ready to defend or give up any boundary we may have dared try to set if we “lose.” It takes a lot of energy to battle over boundaries. Battling puts us in a defensive position and we can end up approaching boundary setting like a debate. Boundaries are not a debate. Boundaries can be negotiated, discussed, investigated, reflected upon, but not debated. We should not have to “win” the right to our boundaries. Nor should we have to verify the necessity or authenticity of our boundaries with a more “logical” argument.
When boundary setting is approached like a debate, it suggests that one’s right to boundaries has to be proved. This also suggests that without “proof” there should be no boundary. This strategy embodies the myth that by hearing both sides, we arrive at an objective truth. Boundaries are not objective. They are subjective. There are times when one person feels like they have a right to set a boundary in a specific situation and someone else may disagree. You may believe that it is perfectly acceptable to tell a friend you don’t want to hug them, while someone else believes that it is not only a bad boundary, but even rude behavior. If we approach a situation such as this like a debate, we would hear both sides and then decide who was “right.” This makes our right to a boundary conditional. We don’t need to prove our right to a boundary. Our right to our boundaries is not conditional.
If we buy into this debate-oriented approach, we often spend grand amounts of time and energy prepping our defenses. By the time we attempt to communicate a boundary, we are already prepared to be defensive. We have anticipated every variable, strategized every angle, worked over solutions to every possible scenario, constructed counter arguments and engineered excuses. Preparing for battle makes us rigid, tense, and inflexible. We imagine that our boundaries, like walls or arguments, are better and stronger when they are solid, sturdy, thick, and impenetrable. Sometimes this is true. Sometimes it is not. Sometimes the best wall (or argument, or boundary) is porous and flexible. Again, context is everything.
Boundaries are informed by the social context in which we live, which in turn is deeply informed by the amount of privilege we have (or don’t have), and the systems of oppression that operate in our society. I once participated in self-defense classes for women and learned a great many things on the day we covered boundary setting. The facilitator, a bright-eyed and chipper young white woman with college-educated speech, tidy loafers, and a matching sweat suit, started off the session by explaining how you could set a boundary simply with the words you choose. You could, for example, swear: “You can say the S-word or the F-word,” she told us. She then went on to explain that since people wouldn’t expect this from you, you could “buy time” because your attacker would be shocked from your choice of words. I was shocked. Not because the facilitator said, “Fuck off!” as an example, but because she thought it was shocking. The community I live in uses the F-word like grammatical glue. Saying “Fuck” would not be shocking. How you say it could emphasize your point and set a clear boundary. The word itself, however, would not faze most of the people I lived and worked with at the time. Clearly she was not from my world. This is a small example of how we need to customize the tools we use to fit the social context, rather than use a one-size-fits-all approach. Remember the definition at the beginning of this section? We will all negotiate our lives, our relationships, and our safety differently. Different tools work better for different people. We will use different tools at different times and our toolbox will continue to change and evolve.
Self-defense as a women’s empowerment concept has been predominantly tailored to white middle-class women. Although there are numerous examples of self-defense as a community framework, such as the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, the Center For Anti-Violence Education, and the Worker Defense Campaign led by the employees of Zanon ceramic tile factory, the mainstream concept of self-defense still remains predominately rooted in white middle-class fears of danger and white middle-class definitions of safety. These concepts of self-defense and boundary setting are rooted in the early feminist movements that strove to address rape, sexual assault, and violence against women, among other things. These movements, which encapsulated white privilege in the ways victims were identified, the ways safety was defined, and the ways in which perpetrators were punished, have a history of inaccessibility for marginalized communities, including queer and trans folks, men and women of color, those with differing abilities and financially-poor men and women, among many others whose lived experiences were neither reflected nor represented equitably. When I asked the facilitator of my self-defense class, “So, what if the context in which you live is one where language like that isn’t shocking?” I was informed that “using the F-word” was a strong indicator of how upset you were in any context. Okay, but even if I put “the F-word” in my boundary-setting tool belt, it still felt light. I wanted to add some weight to it.
I don’t mean to speak badly of mainstream self-defense and boundary-setting trainings for women. They offer invaluable skills and have saved many lives. But women’s self-defense and boundary-setting curriculums are still too often rooted in privilege. More mainstream curriculums do not typically address the kinds of violence that many people must defend themselves from: police brutality, abuse by border control vigilantes, corporate decimation of the planet, hate crimes, Three Strikes laws that target and incarcerate poor men of color in incredibly disproportionate rates, forced sterilization programs like CRACK (Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity),4 or other barriers to accessing health care. Comparing hate crimes to limited access to health care may seem like a stretch, but the people whose lives are severely impacted by a lack of quality health and medical care might disagree. Focusing on individual violence without placing it in a larger social context is primarily a privilege for those whose lives (and bodies) are already healthy, safe, comfortable, and taken care of. If you cannot access quality health care, or any care at all, because your life or body are not seen as valuable, you are being victimized in ways that people in other communities are not.
4CRACK is a private nonprofit organization that offers a $200 cash incentive primarily to women of color struggling with drug abuse and addiction to drugs or alcohol in an attempt to persuade them to undergo sterilization or get long-acting contraceptive methods such as hormone injections, implants, or IUDs.
Consider the following example: a
single parent cannot get mental health support for their child and they lose their job because they are forced to manage their child’s health care alone. They in turn lose their home because they are unemployed and have to file bankruptcy because they cannot afford medications and food, and they themselves eventually suffer medical conditions from the chronic stress and fatigue after years of struggling with homelessness and unemployment (which they can’t afford to treat). Due to all these circumstances they may believe (and I would agree) that what they experienced is very much a form of violence. This scenario, unfortunately, is all too common. When we talk about self-defense or boundary setting, what tends to get prioritized is individual safety. Individual safety isn’t a bad thing; it just excludes the violence that many communities are grappling with. For some communities, being able to defend against systemic or institutional violence is just as important as defending against individual violence. Individual safety-oriented programs, in focusing on individual violence and safety, also ignore the self-defense these communities are already doing and the creative ways in which they take care of each other.
When we say that boundaries are a negotiation of how we are in our environments, we need to take these environments into account. My self-defense cohort thought that yelling “Fuck” was a fabulous tool because it would startle the people (men) in our environment. If I tried to bring this tool to a group of young women who were not white, middle/upper class, college educated, primarily straight, able bodied, and over eighteen years old, it would look much different. Try telling a group of fifteen-year-old refugee girls from Cambodia to “just yell ‘Fuck you’” at their attacker or telling it to a multiethnic group of gay men, an African American youth church group, or a punk rock collective of vegan anarchists. You get the idea. The point is not to substitute a different word or skill for “the F-word,” but to look at how easily examples of boundary setting can embody oppressive systems if we’re not careful in both our critique and construction of them.
Empowered Boundaries Page 3