Empowered Boundaries

by Cristien Storm

  My partner is a processer. She likes to talk everything out. Me, I think you can just say what you need to say and then move on. We used to do the polarization a lot. She would tell me why I needed to talk about my feelings more. I’d get defensive or shut down because it seemed like no matter what I did, it was never enough. The more she pushed to talk, the more I shut down. It was a bad cycle. I’d try to point out why she should leave things alone or let them go, and she’d get defensive and want to talk about that. We dug ourselves into a big hole with both of us feeling attacked, hurt, not listened to, and really alone and far away from each other.

  Compassion and self-directed compassion increase the capacity to listen, which increases the opportunities to be heard. This, in turn, increases the capacity to accept other people’s experiences even when they diverge or are in conflict from our own. The capacity to listen and accept even when disagreeing is a powerful way to interrupt the polarization process. It creates room for a boundary to be set and maintained, disagreed with, and problem solved around—all important boundary-negotiation skills. Continuing with the above example:

  … Once we both learned how to be compassionate to one another and toward ourselves, things changed. I tried to understand how hard it was for her to not process, that her desire to talk things out was something I respected about her and even though it was hard for me, it was something to respect and value about her. I also felt like she tried to understand my need to not talk about things. I could see this was hard for her and the more compassionate I was about this, the easier it was for me to be nice and loving toward her struggle with my need to end the conversation while also keeping my boundary.

  This couple learned how to navigate and negotiate differences in their boundaries, in this case about wants and needs in regard to processing events in their relationship.

  The Art of Negotiation

  Negotiation is an art and a skill that we hone over time, with practice. It’s not a simple or easy thing. Negotiation is often viewed as a compromise between two parties with both people focused on getting as much of what they want as possible. This is one definition of negotiation that comes primarily from capitalism and market ideology. The principles of negotiation for our purposes are: negotiation as a dialogue between parties intended to reach an understanding; resolving points of difference; or, producing an agreement upon courses of action. From this framework, one can set a boundary and negotiate with someone about how to handle the impact of it, or work to resolve how to manage the boundary within the relationship without changing the boundary itself. Of course, negotiation of a boundary may also mean changing the boundary itself—but the process of negotiation is about communication and understanding, not necessarily about changing the boundary so that everyone agrees to it.

  Our boundaries, like ourselves, change and grow constantly. Things we once needed to have firmly in place in order to feel safe, we may let go of. Lines we once drew to clearly designate where not to cross may change and be redrawn as we understand more about the world we live in and our place in it. Our boundaries will change as we develop a more complex view of our world, our relationships, and our wants and needs. This is healthy and normal. People will be upset with us when we set limits, and feelings will get hurt when we say something someone does not want to hear. This is inevitable. We can let this hinder our ability to set boundaries, or we can let this knowledge inform how we interact with the effects of our boundaries. It’s a choice. People’s responses to our boundaries give us information. Our reaction to their responses gives us even more information. The more informed we are, the better choices we can make. The more complex our understanding becomes, the harder it is to rely on polarized victim blaming and reactive rationales. This means we have to assume more personal responsibility for the needs and desires that inform our boundaries. Being accountable is fabulous, scary, exciting, daunting, and tremendously important. We are the experts in what we want and need, and we are the only ones who can set boundaries around it. No one can do this work for us.

  In the next section, we will explore social contexts that inform boundaries and self-care. Being our own expert in what we want and need and being accountable for this is an ongoing process and evolution that involves learning, listening, communicating, and a deep understanding of the myriad of elements that inform and impact boundaries for ourselves and others in the world around us.

  Part II

  Seven

  Safety in a Culture of Fear

  We are all impacted by the environment we live, work, play, love, and set boundaries in. Our environment affects the way we think about safety, informs us of what we want and need, shapes personal perspective, and influences boundary setting. In this section, we will look at how mainstream cultural assumptions affect boundary setting, focusing in particular on how a culture of fear produces reactive approaches to safety. We will then explore ways to counter reactivity and develop alternatives.

  The Box

  When I taught classes at Home Alive, we developed an exercise called “The Box.” It was adapted, in part, from a class activity introduced by Movements In Change, an amazing self-defense partnership formed in Portland, Oregon, in the 1990s. The adaptation I used began with the question, “What are the things each of you have been told will keep you safe?” I let people know they didn’t have to like or agree with the things we were listing, they just had to be things they heard from friends, family, or via the news and media. While they brainstormed, I wrote their responses on a whiteboard. A typical list included:

  Act crazy

  Carry pepper spray

  Don’t carry pepper spray, it will get used against you

  Make eye contact

  Don’t make eye contact

  Don’t look lost

  Be aware

  Lock your doors

  Don’t walk alone

  Don’t talk to strangers

  Stay in well-lit areas

  Don’t go on dates with strangers

  Wear sensible shoes

  Carry a knife or other weapons

  Don’t carry weapons, they can be used against you

  Be alert

  Don’t go out alone

  Stay in groups

  Check doors before getting into your car or home

  Avoid “bad” parts of town

  Don’t leave your drink unattended

  Don’t drink or do drugs on the first date

  Walk with confidence

  Don’t dress provocatively

  After the brainstorm, I asked participants to reflect and notice what feelings, sensations, and thoughts surfaced from creating and observing this, and what the impact from making the list had on their bodies and their emotional state. People often shared feelings such as anger, fear, anxiety, hopelessness, and confusion. Sometimes someone would say that the list offered suggestions and options that felt empowering, but this was the rare exception. Mostly what people said they felt and what I observed in their body language and tone was fear. When participants asked what they should do in a particular situation or if something listed in The Box exercise really worked, I realized that even as we unpacked the problems with providing a one-size-fits-all checklist, that people still wanted (and expected) me to produce one.

  We live in a world full of checklists, from popular magazine essays on “Five Steps to Self Confidence!” to academic articles outlining “Ten Things You Can Do to Impact Climate Change.” We also live in a culture that propagates fear in a myriad of ways, including mainstream media news coverage that inflates a sense of danger, while simultaneously offering actionable step sounds bites and checklists to assuage the same fears they stoke. Author Barry Glassner calls this inflated sense of danger an American fear-ridden environment and argues that it is our perception of danger that has increased in the past few decades, not the actual level of risk. His book The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things explores how our perceptions of fear are manipulated and magni
fied. There are hundreds of research studies and articles exploring how mainstream media exploits fear through an exaggerated focus on violence while simultaneously framing acts of compassion, kindness, and even self-defense as unique and exceptional. This approach prepares viewers for digestible and easily assimilated checklist “solutions” geared toward mitigating fear rather than changing conditions or exploring root causes of violence.

  Fear-Based Checklists

  In boundary-setting and self-defense classes I saw the impact of living in a culture of fear. Participants wanted definitive answers as to the right way to keep safe. Self-defense classes were seen as a place to get a safety checklist of dos and don’ts. However, this fear-based checklist approach as I came to call it, actually reinforces rather than diminishes a culture of fear, and blames victims in the process. When something bad happens, worry, fear, and anxiety prompt people try to find the reason it happened in order to avoid it in the future. This logic assumes that if one finds the reason for why something bad happened, then they can choose to do or not do whatever that was, and hence remain safe. This tactic soothes fears and offers a tangible action to prevent violence. It is human nature to approach safety this way. Our brains are wired to learn from our environments. If our ancestors witnessed someone eat berries, vomit, and then die, they would do well to not eat the same berries. This logic, however, when applied to current situations of violence, abuse, and interpersonal harm (as opposed to which plants to avoid eating), positions victims as responsible for what happened while reducing or even “invisiblizing” the accountability of those who chose to engage in violence or abuse.

  While the intent behind trying to figure out the reason for a horrible event is to avoid it occurring again, the impact directs the blame toward victims/survivors. For example, when people offer assurances that it is never a woman’s fault when she is sexually assaulted yet also try to figure out what happened in an attempt to avoid a similar situation, the focus typically falls on individual behaviors (and her actions primarily), thus creating the underlying message that what happened occurred because of something she did or did not do. This reasoning obscures the reality that the assault occurred because someone chose to assault. It is important to include perpetrators, boundary crossers, transgressors, bystanders, and witnesses in the framework from which we are exploring the context.

  While there are clear-cut scenarios in which there is no question an assault has occurred, there are many instances that are much more complicated, which makes it even more important to develop the capacity to explore context and culpability from numerous perspectives. Sometimes boundary crossings are black and white: “I said no and you ignored it.” But many are not so clear, as interpersonal interactions and the perspective(s) from which we are looking for “the cause” are informed by socialization, experience, communication style, upbringing, access to power, privilege, being a target of social or systemic oppression, culture, and personality, among other factors. I have witnessed this “search for the cause” play out in classes. A participant will share an incident involving some sort of harm—typically a mugging, an assault, harassment, or bullying— and class members then try to identify why it happened by asking for details. When they find something that seems like the cause or the triggering event, they discuss how to avoid similar situations in the future by “fixing” the identified “problem.” In this way, class discussions often became brainstorming sessions about how to ensure a specific skill or technique will work in a particular scenario.

  In discussing an incident, people’s fear of that happening to them and surfacing emotions due to their own past experiences drive the conversation toward “solutions” to avoid rather than seeing what people did to survive a horrible incident. While trying to avoid violence and harm is understandable, and exploring options and choices can be empowering, the tone of these discussions demonstrates the powerful impact of a fear-based checklist approach to safety. In this paradigm, violence is a given and the best tactic is individual-focused (personal safety) with an undercurrent of victim blaming (“It’s not your fault but here is what you need to do to avoid that happening in the future”). Rarely did discussions focus on what the person engaging in harmful behaviors could do to prevent incidents, or on ways to change larger social conditions that ignore and even encourage violence. Of course, people come to self-defense and boundary-setting classes to learn safety and interpersonal skills. But I began to be deeply struck by how much a fear-based checklist framework narrows the way we approach the concept of well-being and safety.

  In all the years I have facilitated The Box exercise, when I asked the question, “What are some things each of you have been told will keep you safe?” the answers almost exclusively place responsibility for safety on those surviving (or trying to avoid and prevent) violence and abuse. Answers like, “Don’t rape someone … Don’t abuse other people … Don’t violate people … Don’t beat people up … Hold your friends and community accountable for the things they do that create a climate where violence is more likely to happen … Create and nurture a support system … Build vibrant communities and reach out to those who try to isolate ourselves…” were not on the lists we created in class. The responses in class reflected how people are used to the concept of addressing violence as an individual issue and not a community concern; the depth to which we hold victims responsible; and how a culture of fear promotes a desire for quick-fix checklists.

  I was also struck by how this framework rendered invisible or minimized the skillful actions people took. Another underlying assumption with the checklist approach is that “good” self-defense or boundary setting prevents something bad from happening. The reality is, however, that someone could use amazing skills and bad things can (and do) still happen. The desire to prevent violence and abuse is understandable. The fear-based checklist approach, however, creates a foundation that erodes a person’s ability to recognize the skills they are already using and decreases self-trust. When people share a personal story and then ask themselves, what should I have done?, the assumption is that they either did not use any skills, or whatever skills they did use were not effective because something bad still happened (which is yet another way to victim blame). It became increasingly clear to me that I needed to create a new framework from which participants would learn new self-defense and boundary-setting skills.

  Reframing the Skills We Use

  After a class participant shared an incident and before brainstorming any options or ideas, I first asked people to identify all the self-defense and boundary-setting skills the person used in the situation. Often this was quite an emotional and excruciating process. Sometimes people would name something they did while undermining the skillfulness of it, reflecting the (false) assumption that had it been skillful they would have been able to stop what happened. It was important to use the process of naming and framing actions as self-defense and boundary setting as a way to interrupt victim blaming while also empowering people to see all the brilliant ways they were taking care of themselves and one another. Asking people to reframe their memory of a situation by seeing all the things they (or other people) did do, before discussing things they might want to try in the future, also functioned to reorient people’s views of traumatic events by decreasing the pervasive sense of fear and helplessness, and interrupted the checklist assumption that there is a right way to prevent and survive violence.

  One spring when I was teaching classes at Home Alive, local news ran a story about a number of young middle school girls who had survived an attempted assault by an unidentified man. It seemed he had tried to abduct a handful of girls who managed to get away. The story ran nightly for a few days, during which time the man attempted to abduct two more girls and assaulted another young girl, who was the only one who saw the man’s face. She was able to work with a police sketch artist to identify him. The man was arrested later that day.

  During this time, Home Alive received dozens of calls to set up cla
sses in schools and youth programs. Worried parents called about our in-house class schedule and the news media made request after request for a story about how young girls can protect themselves. What struck me as I watched the story unfold was how nothing was mentioned about how all these girls had protected themselves. It seemed everyone only saw vulnerable, helpless young women. I saw something different. A large adult male made numerous attempts to abduct and assault adolescent girls who successfully fought him off. He was finally able to overpower one young girl who had survived the assault, got away, and within hours was working with the police, who were then able to identify and arrest him. This, in my mind, was not a community of helpless young girls but a group of badass middle-schoolers who deserved some light to be shined on the skillful way they handled themselves. It turns out they kicked at his knees and shins (target points), screamed, yelled for help, stomped on his feet, sought out support, walked in groups, told the man to go away, and ran away. The young girl who was sexually assaulted fought her attacker during the entire assault, got away from him with her arms and legs duct taped, ran and got help, and then had the emotional, mental, and physical capacity to work with the police. All of these are examples of self-defense and boundary-setting skills. It is important to not lose sight of the ways all of us are doing the best we can to navigate sometimes very terrifying and harrowing situations.