Empowered Boundaries

by Cristien Storm

  Solidarity

  Solidarity is a defined as, among other things, a “union or fellowship arising from common responsibilities and interests.” Negotiating safety and boundaries is not just about setting a limit, asking for a need to be met, or saying no to an unwanted request. Negotiating boundaries is a way of relating to other people and to the world we live in. While there will be times when we do not care about the impact our boundaries have on others, there will be situations where we will care a lot. Setting boundaries with a larger spirit of solidarity means developing a broad sense of how your actions are informed by and impact others within a social context. Social context considers current situations with an understanding and awareness of historical implications. This may mean developing an understanding of your partner’s personal experience in regard to the challenges they have in saying no to unwanted requests and locating that understanding in the larger social context of who they are in the world.

  Considering the consequences of our boundaries, being accountable and responsible are powerful when done with a sense of solidarity. Accountability by its very nature asks us to actively listen to the person who has been harmed, seek to understand their experiences, and to the best of our ability, offer the reparation they request. When amends are made or people engage in restitution for harm with an appreciation of common interests, it becomes easier to imagine more possibilities of how to be in the world, how to create conditions in which harm is less likely to occur, and how to address it collectively when it does happen. It also allows us to see how much we gain when being accountable, how accountability contributes to our own growth as well as to stronger and more resilient relationships and communities.

  Solidarity asks us to attempt to hold onto people even when they have caused harm. This is counter to the mainstream punitive models that diagnose, pathologize, and criminalize perpetrators—all approaches that situate people outside the mainstream or “normal” society. Setting boundaries with a spirit of solidarity does not mean ignoring or enduring harm, nor does it require people to stay connected to or in community with someone who is dangerous or engaging in violence or abuse. It does ask that we use the skills of compassion and accountability to find ways to address incidents of violence and abuse that do not dehumanize. We are all capable of doing harm. We all have and will cross other people’s boundaries. The extent to which we do matters tremendously. Ignoring a friend’s statement that they do not want to go with you to a barbeque and showing up at their house because you are sure you will change their mind is very different than forcing someone into a sexual act against their will. These are extreme examples on opposite ends of the continuum of boundary crossing. But in between them are a great many scenarios that are gray and confusing with complex interpersonal and social contexts. Having an understanding of the complexity moves us away from black and white, right and wrong checklist thinking and creates a much richer blueprint for boundary work.

  The mainstream culture of fear propels us toward an individualistic model of self-care. It is not bad to focus on oneself, but without a sense of solidarity we risk perpetuating the isolating, victim-blaming paradigms that in actuality make us less safe and make negotiating boundaries more difficult. Having a sense of solidarity invites us to connect our well-being to that of others, which in turn widens the possibilities for how to identify and negotiate needs, and encourages creative and compassionate approaches to boundary setting and self-care.

  Boundaries are highly personal and interpersonal. We set them in social contexts imbued with history, culture, community, and individual experience(s) that inform various aspects of how, when, and why we set (or don’t) set boundaries. Compassionate curiosity, forgiveness, accountability, responsibility, and a sense of solidarity suffuse boundary work with a practical dexterity that helps navigate the sometimes very clear and often very complicated work of negotiating and setting boundaries.

  Nine

  Creating and Understanding Supports for Boundary Setting

  Boundaries are set, negotiated, and defended within relationships, social systems, and community. In order to set effective boundaries it’s helpful to understand how you can build and nurture support systems for yourself. In relationships, giving and receiving support is key, but there are also interpersonal patterns and traps that can make it difficult to communicate.

  Boundary setting involves learning from “mistakes,” renegotiating limits (in some circumstances) as new or unexpected developments occur, and changing (or defending) boundaries when necessary in response to how they are received. The reflective loop, discussed in chapter four, is helpful for all of these. Using this tool, which involves receiving and offering support, care, validation, and critical feedback, requires a social support system. If you don’t already have a support system, you will need to build one. If you already have one, it may need tending to or nurturing. If you have a robust and healthy support system, great! No matter what kind of support system you have, it is important to consider that using the reflective loop may be a new and very different way of interacting and relating to people.

  Creating a Support System

  Creating a support system can be an intimidating prospect for some people. It may be useful to view building one as a series of small steps, rather than as one large action item. First, make a list of everyone you know who you believe could offer validation, feedback, support, and/or constructive criticism. Some people may be able to offer all of these while others may be better at one or two. Can’t think of anyone to put on your list? Make a list of activities that you can participate in where you will meet and establish connections with people who might someday be on the list. No idea how to get involved in activities? Here’s a short list to get you started …

  Volunteer with a group or program that shares your values/interests

  Host a dinner party with a “get to know one another better” theme

  Ask your friends, coworkers, or peers to throw a dinner party

  Connect with your faith community

  Go to all the social events you can and make an effort to introduce yourself and talk with different people

  Join (or start) a group, club, or class

  Participate in team events/sports

  Engage in social activities you enjoy with other people

  Let one or two people know you are reading this book and ask them to be part of creating your support system

  Start a reading group or book club with the theme of creating support systems

  Join a book club

  If you are overwhelmed or it seems impossible to participate in activities and meet people, it may be helpful to address barriers and issues that are getting in the way. This could involve talking to a counselor, mentor, coach, spiritual guide, teacher, pastor, or priest or doing somatic practices, art therapy, writing, or other healing work.

  Nurturing a Support System

  If you already have a great network of friends, family, and/or peers, your support system may still need some interpersonal maintenance. Many people with vibrant social networks report feeling lonely, disconnected, and isolated and lack support and feedback. Some people find it hard to ask for help no matter how many loving friends they have. Others may find it challenging to give advice or offer constructive feedback to people close to them. Sometimes people don’t have skill or experience in providing validation, reflection, or critical feedback. Using the reflective loop with friends and family may involve practicing unfamiliar skills, connecting with people in different ways, and forming new types of relationships.

  Variety is healthy for human beings, from diet to exercise and relationships. Having a dynamic and robust support system means developing different kinds of relationships that meet different needs—not trying to have one or two people fill all your support roles. There are people who are better at offering compassion, but not so good at direct critical feedback and people who have the personality and skill to say it like it is, while others are much bet
ter at diplomacy. Tending to friendships allows them to grow, deepen, and mature, which can radically change interpersonal dynamics. Ultimately, tending to relationships in this way is about supporting people in being who they are, not trying to change them or their personalities.

  Using the Reflective Loop

  The reflective loop is a practice of exploring, reflecting, and receiving feedback on intuition, self-care, and boundaries. The loop involves the flow of communication. That might mean giving yourself a chance to reflect on your own actions. It might mean a chance to reflect on and receive feedback from your various support systems. Using the loop can help you get “reality checks” on your motivation for setting a boundary, the effect and impact of setting it, and your desired outcome. Such a process can also help you gauge your emotional responses and safety needs, and social and cultural considerations. Reality checks are compassionate observations about a situation, interaction, or event that are free from interpretation, meaning-making, and judgment. Interpretations, meaning-making, and judgments are not inherently wrong, but this process encourages you to be able to look at events from somewhat of a distance. It is as if you and your support system are watching a play. First, you want to state what is happening and have everyone observe “the play” before offering interpretations, opinions, advice, validation, or other reflections. It is important to set the scene before engaging in feedback. Being able to pause and assess a situation before jumping in and offering validation, support, advice, or any other feedback is an important skill and allows people to practice being more responsive and less reactionary.

  The Advice Trap

  Constructive criticism and feedback are different from advice. The practice of using a reflective loop involves non-shaming and nonjudgmental reflection, exploration, feedback, and constructive criticism before any advice is asked for or offered. This process is important because seeking advice is often a means to avoid reflecting on challenging, difficult, emotionally charged events or situations. Thinking I messed up! What should I do? takes one down a different path than I messed up! I wonder what contributed to my actions? How do I feel about what happened? Are there other steps I may have taken? If so, what got in the way of me taking them? Was there a payoff or unintentional benefit to my choice/behavior? Using the reflective loop helps explore with compassionate curiosity rather than seek “the right answer” and can lead to more meaningful insight and options for change. This process invites one to sit with and increase one’s capacity to feel uncomfortable and sometimes distressing emotions that arise when one is looking critically at events. While challenging, learning to feel emotions without reacting allows people to be able to see more clearly what is actually happening, rather than letting the event be clouded by strong emotions.

  Another aspect of advice is that it often contradicts itself from person to person and if people do not trust themselves, it is easy to be overwhelmed, confused, and sometimes incapacitated by trying to decide what to do when people are offering different and sometimes wildly contradictory advice. One interesting rabbit hole of the advice trap is that confusion that arises from contradictory advice can lead people to seek more advice in the hope of discovering “the right” advice. This process is external; searching for an answer from an outside source is not inherently bad or wrong, but over time and without a strong core sense of self or resilient ego, this searching can erode one’s self-trust. In other words, the process of seeking advice can actually impair our ability to trust ourselves.

  Learning to filter advice, take it in, weigh it, and reflect on it without reacting immediately to each new piece helps keep people grounded and able to take action from a responsive rather than reactive place. Doing this requires listening to ourselves, which not only means being able to trust ourselves but also requires a sense of self, a “core” if you will. Having a resilient sense of self and the capacity to listen to and trust ourselves can be impacted by overwhelming experiences, trauma, abuse, systems of inequity, internalized oppression, isolation, family dynamics, illness, and physical and environmental factors, to name a few. Self-care and healing work are important tools for self-trust. These can take a variety of forms including counseling; somatic practices; yoga; meditation; art; music; writing; joining or starting groups; connecting with a naturopath, psychiatrist, doctor, or medical professional; joining a gym; getting out in nature; starting new relationships or ending unhealthy ones; eating well; exercising; volunteering; engaging with community; connecting with your faith; and exploring other activities that get you in touch with yourself. The more we are in touch with ourselves, the more we can take advice for what it is: one piece of information among many others that informs how we may choose to respond to an event, situation, or interaction.

  The Agreement Trap

  People don’t always have to understand (or agree with) a boundary to respect it. There are times when having agreements about a boundary or request will be important. For example, a friend of mine asked for time off during a busy season at her job. In this case, she was very invested in having her supervisor understand and agree with why she needed a few days off in order to have it approved.

  The agreement trap happens when the boundary or request is viewed as conditional. We often believe that if someone doesn’t agree with our request, we don’t have a right to set the boundary. This can create a great deal of pressure to explain why a boundary or request is important and why refusing to agree with it is unreasonable. This approach tends to polarize discussions into right/wrong contexts and can lead to attempts to not only change someone’s mind but to also change their values and personal views.

  For example, a client struggled with her boyfriend, who refused to agree that being twenty minutes late to meet her was a problem. She tried to get him to understand that she thought it was rude and made her feel unimportant. He countered with examples of how he demonstrated her importance to him in many ways, and expressed that being late had nothing to do with her and that she should “lighten up” on this issue. Over time, the argument devolved into more personal territory with her claiming that he was disrespectful and him stating that she was uptight. Each person defended their position in the hope that if they could just get the other person to understand why their approach/belief was right, the problem would be solved and things would improve between them. They got stuck in an escalating agreement trap that resulted in neither person feeling heard and both feeling defensive and hurt.

  It can often help to let go of trying to agree. A fairly straightforward “Let’s agree to disagree” approach sounds simple enough, but it can be challenging. The core of this strategy is the acceptance that the difference is unresolvable and that it is causing an issue that needs to be tended to. The goal then becomes finding ways to negotiate the difference. This approach creates room for collaborative problem-solving; it asks people to handle moments when differences arise and cause problems in relationships in ways that are rooted in accepting the difference rather than trying to make it go away (e.g., by trying to get the other person to agree with us and thus getting stuck in the agreement trap). In the example above, the couple decided to use a 1–10 scale. If she rated an event or date as a “5 or higher” in importance, he would be on time; if it was less important, she would not worry about him being on time. Of course, in accepting their differences, their ability to be more compassionate about the impact it had on each of them was helpful. He was able to validate her frustration and remind her that she was important to him even if he was late. She was able to appreciate that he valued people and conversations more than being on time and recognize how important she felt when he didn’t worry about time when they were talking. Things may not always work out as smoothly as in this example and to be sure, differences can be tricky to accept and navigate. But, if the alternative is getting stuck in the agreement trap and trying to change someone in ways that can feel hurtful, elicit defensiveness, counter-defensiveness, and decrease communication overall, the effort may
be worth it.

  The Tyranny of “Shoulds”

  How do we know what we want? There are a myriad of complications that make it difficult to identify and communicate what we want and need. We may have grown up in a family where certain needs were mocked, shamed, left unspoken, invisible, or simply unmet. In some circumstances, it may feel too distressing or frightening to identify a need, or too vulnerable, for a variety of reasons, to express a desire directly. Sometimes we think we shouldn’t want something so we don’t ask. Sometimes the “shoulds” are unconscious; we are unaware that we should ask for something we desire or we’re seeking out things we don’t want because we think we should want them. Other times, we may be aware of the “shoulds,” but because they are too ensnared in guilt or shame we ignore them. For example, if someone believes they are weak for wanting help, or selfish for wanting time alone they are unlikely to ask for those needs to be met because of guilt or shame surrounding the need itself. This not only prevents us from asking for what we want (or saying no to things we don’t want), it prompts us to ask in an indirect way. If someone feels guilty, weak, or ashamed about asking for support, they may not ask and suffer alone instead. Or, they may ask indirectly. For example, I worked with a man about the guilt he felt from asking his partner for physical affection. He grew up with the message that asking for (and receiving) physical affection was bad and that he was selfish for wanting it. He overheard the adults in his world make disparaging remarks when people hugged at family gatherings and mocked him when he tried to hold his dad’s hand or climb into his lap. It was excruciating for him to ask his partner directly for any physical touch, even though it was extremely soothing and connecting for him. He made implications and discursive attempts at prompting physical touch by talking about how his shoulder hurt or how it was sweet that the couple he saw on his walk to the bus stop was holding hands. His partner, oblivious to the veiled requests, would suggest a hot shower or yoga and agree that it was sweet—not at all what my client wanted. At times, my client told me he would become frustrated and tell his boyfriend that he didn’t care about him, that he was cold and unloving. The boyfriend, confused and feeling attacked, countered by saying that he was selfish and demanding, which only served to prove that his childhood messages were “true.” When my client was finally able to openly ask for a shoulder rub, or for his boyfriend to hold his hand, he was much more likely to get what he wanted.