Empowered Boundaries

by Cristien Storm

  It is not always easy to identify and make requests around our needs. How do we get to the root of what we want? How do we discover what hooks our imagination, sparks our soul, makes us tick? How do we know when to listen to that “should” voice and when to ignore it? We don’t get there by only acting on what we think we should do. There will always be things we should do and things we think we should do, and things we want but believe we should not want. When we focus primarily on shoulds, life can seem pretty bleak. Life is more dynamic, resilient, and robust when we find balance between wants and shoulds. The reflective loop is an important tool in exploring and seeking balance (or recognizing imbalance), as it encourages reflection about the various aspects of desires, requests, and boundaries; these include the impact, possible consequences, emotions, thoughts, values, and cultural considerations as well as how all these factors impact and inform one another.

  The tyranny of shoulds can also prevent people from developing the skills necessary to accept a need being met, resulting in a push/pull reaction or even in sabotage. In the above example, not only had my client learned to make sideways requests, the guilt and shame he felt about asking for physical touch created a tumultuous and oscillating relationship to his desires. When he received physical touch, a hug or back rub, or other physical affection, he felt guilty and undeserving. He wanted affection but when he got it, it made him feel bad, which made him not want it and sometimes even reject it. His back and forth, or ask/reject as we called it, confused and frustrated his boyfriend, which only seemed to confirm my client’s mistaken beliefs that he was selfish.

  Shoulds also prevent people from learning how to tolerate their needs not being met. Continuing with the above example, when my client did not get physical affection after hinting for it, he felt guilty for asking (even indirectly), rejected, hurt, and angry. Sometimes he lashed out by saying mean things to his boyfriend because he was unable to tolerate his needs not being met. Being able to handle a need not being met is an important skill. If desires or wants are buried under a mountain of shoulds and subsequent judgments, guilt, shame, or other distressing emotions, it becomes difficult to tolerate them not only when they are not being met but also when they are being met as well—a double-edged suffering.

  There are very real shoulds in life that are important to pay attention to at certain times (I really should get home to walk the dog) and ignore at other times (I shouldn’t call my friend to talk, she’s probably busy). Boundary setting, as a negotiation of who and how we are in the world, invites us to reflect on (and communicate) our desires.

  Letting People Know How to Support You

  Another important aspect of the reflective loop is letting people know how to support you. This means knowing yourself, knowing what you need, and being able to communicate it. After all, you can’t tell someone else how to support you if you don’t know. Do you want advice? Suggestions? Critiques? Empathic listening? Physical touch? To be left alone? Not to be left alone? What we want and need can change from moment to moment, and sometimes we discover what support is helpful through trial and error. You may start out thinking you want advice only to find out it feels overwhelming. You may ask for constructive criticism and when you get it, you become defensive and realize you were still too emotionally raw or vulnerable for criticism and what you really needed was to be comforted. You can negotiate what you want (setting boundaries) while in the middle of getting support about negotiating boundaries. Circles in circles! It can be helpful to practice asking for and accepting different kinds of support and to explore the various thoughts, feelings, sensations, and action urges that arise as a result.

  Giving Support

  When offering support, it is useful to know what it is the person wants. In the absence of knowing, we may try all kinds of things. We may jump in with great suggestions or ideas on what someone can do to fix their dilemma when all they wanted was some room to cry. We try to soothe someone and they end up feeling like we are shutting them down. We may be ready with tissues and open arms when they want to roll up their sleeves and get busy solving the problem. Some guesses may be on the mark—others, not so much. Sometimes people spend a lot of time guessing what the right thing to do is. One way to save a lot of time and energy is to simply ask. If the person already knows and can communicate it clearly, and you are able to offer the support they want, great. However, there are all sorts of barriers that can get in the way of being able to offer support, including not knowing what the person wants, not having the skills or capacity to ask, not being able to fulfill the need, having fear, and finally, defensiveness.

  Mastering the art of offering support requires people to be flexible and able to learn from the times when a need is not clear or the support offered is not helpful. In these moments, it is useful to explore thoughts, feelings, beliefs, sensations, actions, and behaviors with compassionate curiosity, which can offer insight about how to navigate future situations. For example, a client discussed her frustration with her boyfriend. When she came home from work, he would ask about her day and as she shared her frustrations about her supervisor and coworkers, he would inevitably interrupt with helpful suggestions and encouraged her to look for a new job. He routinely reminded her that he would be more than happy to support her while she looked for new work. He thought he was being kind, supportive, and encouraging. She felt shut down and invalidated. When she tried to explain this to him, he became frustrated because to him it seemed like no matter what he did, she never felt better. He was offering her support, to be sure, but it was not the kind of support she wanted and it was making her feel bad, which made him feel discouraged. She and I took some time to explore what it was that she wanted in those moments. Through our discussions, she was able to identify her needs: she wanted to vent without him saying much of anything, and she wanted her frustration and irritation to be validated as justified and reasonable without any problem-solving. When she explained this to her boyfriend, he was not only able to understand that his method of supporting her (problem-solving) was not helpful, he was also able to support her in ways that felt validating and loving for her, which in turn made him feel like an effectual partner.

  How the Reflective Loop Helps Support Strategies for Boundary Setting

  At times it can be challenging to explore all the thoughts, feelings, sensations, judgments, desires, values, and secondary and tertiary emotions (i.e., feeling angry about feeling jealous or feeling insecure about feeling lonely) that arise when seeking or offering support, especially when it is not going well. But it is important work. One way to explore this is to be mindful of what comes up in situations. Do you get agitated when someone asks for advice? Are you comfortable with physical soothing but get tongue-tied when someone wants to hash things out? Another strategy is trial and error. Give yourself permission to try out different ways of asking for and offering support. This includes giving yourself permission to “fail,” because in order to achieve the goal of improving your ability to ask for what you need and support other people in asking them for what they need, you’ll need to be able to offer a variety of different kinds of support. Situations are not static. Different situations with different people will be, well, different. This process is about deepening interpersonal awareness about the complicated nature of identifying and communicating desires; it’s about asking for and giving support, not about coming up with a blueprint. Part of increasing awareness is accepting that things may not always go the way we want even when we are being skillful.

  Ten

  Learning Self-Care and Self-Acceptance

  This chapter considers radical acceptance as an important core boundary-setting, self-care, and communication tool. In addition, this section will explore a few core concepts for improving self-care and boundary-setting skills, including how cultural norms, power, and privilege impact and inform communication.

  Skillfulness Is Not a Formula

  Becoming skillful involves trying new things; some will be u
seful, some will not, and others will depend on context. Failing is part and parcel of gaining mastery or proficiency in a new skill, be it boxing, speaking a second language, tap dancing, writing a poem, or asking for support. Learning to identify what you need requires the ability to tolerate being a beginner (unless this is a skill you are already adept at). If one has a low threshold for making mistakes, learning can be more challenging and distressing, which can motivate one to either seek out formulas for success or avoid new experiences altogether. For example, a child whose environment produces overwhelming stress during times of learning new skills or information will either shut down and avoid these types of situations whenever possible or focus on how to not make mistakes to the exclusion of learning how to learn—how to explore, not know, be curious, and question things from different perspectives. The overwhelming distress in learning moments can be a product of both negative and positive reinforcement. If a child is yelled at when a mistake is made, then they learn to associate errors with stress or anxiety or depression. If, on the other hand, they are overly praised or encouraged after making a mistake, rather than learn how to tolerate the discomfort, distress, or stress associated with being incorrect and developing corrective strategies, the same associations may occur. Either way, the child is more likely to seek out formulas or specific strategies for how to succeed, rather than have a resilient capacity to tolerate the discomfort of not knowing, being a beginner at something, exploring various options, or being inquisitive and explorative about a new skill. While this is a boon for the self-help industry, the inability to explore new ideas or theories, in this case regarding communication and self-care specifically, without striving to have “an answer” or precise methodology delimits one’s curiosity and creativity and erodes self-trust. The core concepts discussed below are offered to support examinations of interpersonal communication styles, issues, and barriers while promoting critical reflection, active listening, and evaluative self-trust.

  Finding information (or formulas) on improving communication, identifying desires, and negotiating wants and needs is easy. There are books, tapes, videos, and TV shows on improving communication everywhere one turns—it’s a self-help supermarket out there with hundreds of different styles and theories to choose from. With the plethora of products offering to help improve communication it can be overwhelming and difficult to know where to begin and what will be useful. While there is not a one-size-fits-all approach to improving communication, there are two core concepts that are important no matter what style or approach people choose. The first is that power cannot be communicated away, and the second is to be aware when using cultural norms to set or explain boundaries.

  Power Cannot Be Communicated Away

  Just about any communication skill or tool can be used to coerce, manipulate, or maintain power and control. Just because someone uses “I” statements or “feeling sentences” or even nonviolent communication skills does not mean they are not misusing power. Power is a very versatile little creature and can sneak in just about anywhere. Using the reflective loop and being aware of how power is playing out in your relationships is an important and ongoing process. Being mindful of power and power dynamics does not inherently make them go away, but it can inform you about how you choose to communicate, negotiate, and interact in the relationship. There are many ways power enters into relationships. Sometimes differences between partners involves a power dynamic, such as when one partner is a fluent native speaker in the country they live in and the other is not, or one partner is undocumented and the other is not, or one partner owns a car in an environment where it is necessary for transportation while the other one does not. Differences in power are not inherently bad or wrong, but the way they are navigated is important. There are endless ways in which relationships hold differences that translate into social power. One partner may be more comfortable negotiating with institutions and take responsibility for this in the relationship. While this could create a power imbalance in terms of who has more direct access to, or information about, the institutions they are in contact with (e.g., banks, credit unions, utility companies, internet providers, student loan companies, etc.), how the couple communicates and addresses this matters more than the difference itself. If the person who is in direct contact with the institutions uses this to manipulate, isolate, or control their partner then power is being abused. If, however, they communicate and address things in ways that feel equitable to both of them, then it works for that relationship. Power can be misused and abused in countless ways and it is important to not get hooked into believing that any one formula or approach to communication or boundary setting will mitigate it. Power must be grappled with as directly as possible, and this requires practice in identifying power and becoming increasingly more skillful in negotiating and navigating it in relationships. If you are just beginning your journey into understanding privilege and power, consider reading the following articles: “Beyond Inclusion, Beyond Empowerment” by Leticia Nieto; “Anti-Racist Toolkit” by Ignite!; “What is a ‘System of Privilege?’” by Allan G. Johnson. The National SEED Project is another wonderful resource.

  Cultural Norms

  Communication is not only complicated by individual experience, skill, and preference; it is also complicated by cultural norms. Passed on from one generation to the next, cultural norms are the shared, sanctioned, and integrated systems of beliefs, values, and practices that characterize a cultural group. Norms differ from group to group. Navigating differences in cultural norms is an important part of communication and boundary setting. Problems occur when a cultural norm is mistaken for what is “normal” or “right” and the problems are compounded when there is social and institutional power to impose the norm. Modern Western medicine is one example. Many people prefer to use herbs, acupuncture, energy work, and other forms of alternative medicine to treat medical and mental health issues. Most insurance companies elect to not cover “alternative” treatments because they are not considered medically or scientifically established or proven in the way that say an anti-depressant or chemotherapy is. Even the allocation of these practices as being “alternative” is an imposition of a cultural norm, positioning Western medicine at the center from which all other modalities are viewed and evaluated. That certain practices are codified and covered by insurance is based on cultural norms surrounding how to define and treat medical and mental health issues, and on what evidence is considered necessary to prove efficacy. If someone is unable to access alternative or holistic treatments because their insurance won’t cover it and they can’t afford care without insurance, that is an example of a cultural norm being imposed because it is seen as right or normal. In this way, some cultural norms are upheld over others and at times reflect the systemic issues of classism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, ableism, and other forms of marginalization and oppression.

  At an individual level, if you believe that not raising your voice when you argue with your partner is a “good” communication style and you frame your boundary as the normal way of doing things, you are imposing your cultural norm and values onto your partner rather than negotiating your boundary. Not everyone feels uncomfortable around loud voices and yelling. In fact, for some people or within some families, communities, and cultures, raising your voice implies passion—not anger. The goal is to be mindful and intentional when using cultural norms or social rules and expectations to explain boundaries. A great resource for becoming aware of power, cultural norms, and how they can be invisible is Peggy McIntosh’s article “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women’s Studies” (1988). You can also check out The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond.

  Holding vs. Defending Your Boundary

  You don’t always have to defend your boundary; sometimes you only need to hold it. People can get so caught up in defending a boundary that they don’t pay attention to what is happening in the moment. A si
mple but challenging strategy is to see what the other person’s response is rather than anticipate it. Set a boundary and pause, wait and see what happens, and then respond to that, rather than to what you think might happen. When we leap ahead, it is easy to make assumptions and mistakes. There are humorous examples from everyday life when one person asks for something and the other person says yes right away but the person arguing for their want is so busy explaining why the other person should say yes that they don’t even hear the yes and keep explaining. Pausing helps unhook us when we get caught up in emotions, thoughts, and anticipated reactions. Pausing can be challenging, especially if the situation is emotionally charged.