CREATING A HEALTHY BOUNDARY FOR EMOTIONAL WELLNESS

“When we fail to set boundaries and hold people accountable, we feel used and mistreated.” 

- Brené Brown

Boundary is one thing we rarely talk about in many abusive relationships until we get to the point where "we can't take it anymore!" It's like more people find it too cumbersome to do, or are totally ignorant about how to go about having a healthy space between them and their emotional abusers. This shouldn't be though. Unless we don't have a full grasp of what a boundary means when it comes to relationships.

Creating a boundary in a relationship is our attempt to let the parties to the relationship know how we want to be treated by asserting our needs and expectations before them. This way, everyone is aware of their roles, and your expectations of them. So there's no room for pretence or feigned ignorance as excuses to do anyhow in a way that continually hurts you.

Boundary shouldn't happen only when we require a police order to limit a brutal ex-lover's distance from us. Boundary can also be mentally asserted too. In fact, it's more preventive to have it that way before issues would degenerate to having a police order to protect you.

I consider creating a boundary the right way to protect our space from intruders, backstabbers and emotional abusers. It serves to help us filter our space from unwanted or even unnecessary entrance for those we desire to have some limits with.

I get asked when one should consider setting a boundary a lot by some of my clients. And my simple response has always been to do so as soon as you start to feel uncomfortable, and unsafe; whether emotionally or physically, around the person.

We don't always have to wait until they've projected all their pain and anger on us before we know to limit their access to us.

Once you've observed that you are often made to seem small, insignificant or often manipulated against your will, then it's time to begin the work of creating a healthy space to protect your mental wellbeing. Unfortunately, too many people wait far too long because of their assumptions about the person's potential future change. This delusion have caused more harm than good. Don't fall into this trap.

People often lack boundaries because of their fear of what people would say about them, or for their lack of knowledge about who they are, and what they really want from the relationship. This makes it easier for anyone and anything to happen in their space without decorum.

Codependency, without a corresponding balancing independence traits, can make one become too needy. When you're too needy, it can be really difficult to have a boundary around you because you fear that the unavailability, or lesser availability of this person's presence in your life would make you lonely. So you tend to manage the situation by bearing their unfortunate abuse of you just so you can at least still have people around. This is a risky personal behaviour that have led many people to their early graves, because most of these narcissistic individuals don't care about your pain.

It's important then to love yourself enough to always see when you are in danger, in order to act to prevent this, at least for the cases under your control. Then you can be rest assured of having done your own part in cases where you had no control whatsoever.

Creating a boundary can serve us many benefits.

One of the major benefits that is easily noticeable and felt is the peace that having a healthy boundary can bring into our lives.

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