Set a boundary or cancel someone?

In this article we will explore what boundaries are, what they are for, and what differentiates boundaries from canceling.

We will explore some family systems concepts that may broaden our thinking.

Finally, we will sit with a few self-inquiry questions with suggestions for further reading.

I have a particularly unique relationship with “canceling” someone.? I was estranged from my mother for 15 years before she died.? I canceled her, in essence.? And oh have I spent a lot of years in therapy exploring this decision.??

For me, it ended up being the right decision IN THIS INSTANCE because it was a boundary in the end but I had to get some distance first and I got it in a canceling kind of way.? I didn’t cast her out of my heart, in the long run, but rather created a safe enough distance from her so that I could love her open-heartedly, authentically, and as my full self.? My nervous system was no longer rattled by her mental illness so positive memories of her and the “good times” came back into my view.? She died three years ago at the young age of 66 and I didn’t get to say an in-person goodbye but she died with my love for her deeply intact because my heart was fully open to her.??

But cut-offs in families can do a number on your psyche and your behavior in relationships for years to come. Even when it was a really good thing to cut-off the family member. I have seen ways I put pressure on some authority relationships to compensate for what couldn’t happen between my mom and me.? This is growth, but maybe, just maybe a harder way.? If you are safe-enough, I say hang in there and learn to set boundaries better, to differentiate, even if the other person makes it hard, and create some new structures inside yourself where you are sturdier no matter what turbulence happens in the relationships around you.? This is, in essence, my work as a couples therapist day in and day out.?

Bowen Family Systems Theory* says we cut off instead of setting boundaries to relieve anxiety. But, when we do, we tend to play out that anxiety in other relationships or contexts.

The less developed a person’s “self,” the more impact others have on his functioning and the more he tries to control, actively or passively, the functioning of others. -Bowen Family Systems Theory

Canceling someone is more a sign that your inner capacity to tolerate the anxiety of “we are connected and separate at the same time” never quite materialized in your young life or culture.? Canceling someone is a sign that there is a raw wound. ? ??

A person with a well-differentiated “self” recognizes his realistic dependence on others, but he can stay calm and clear headed enough in the face of conflict, criticism, and rejection to distinguish thinking rooted in a careful assessment of the facts from thinking clouded by emotionality.” - Bowen Family Systems Theory

But canceling can also be a sign of the regression our society is in.? Our global society has not created the container within which we feel safe enough to create a whole and complete self.

In a [societal] regression, people act to relieve the anxiety of the moment rather than acting on principle and taking a long-term view…The “symptoms” of societal regression include a growth of crime and violence, an increasing divorce rate, a more litigious attitude, a greater polarization between racial groups, less principled decision-making by leaders, increased drug abuse and bankruptcies, and a focus on rights over responsibilities.

Human societies undergo periods of regression and progression over their histories. The current regression seems to be fueled by anxiety related to such factors as exploding population, a sense of diminishing frontiers, and the depletion of natural resources. Bowen predicted humans would deal symptomatically with crises growing out of the regression until forced to address the anxiety feeding it. He predicted that a final major crisis would come as soon as the middle of the twenty-first century and that the type of human who survived would be one who could live in better harmony with nature.?- Bowen Family Systems Theory

As I have said in past newsletters, I am the queen of metaphor and story to help us evolve so can I turn boundaries into a soup pot?? I am really into this whole soup metaphor thing right now and as a small aside, if you have a ridiculously good soup recipe, I would love to have it.??

So here it goes.? When you make soup you make it in a big pot.? Why do you need a pot?? What is the point of the pot?? It allows the soup to be it's own unique flavorful soup.? Without a pot the soup is a bunch of ingredients, potentially hard to heat, definitely slip-sliding in a big gooey mess on your stove, and perhaps not even soup.? The soup needs a damn pot.? And the pot itself is not a mean or hurtful thing.? It is a pot.? Your boundaries are the pot.? That’s it. Nothing more.? No big deal, right?

Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously. Boundaries give us the space to do the work of loving ourselves. They might be, actually, the first and fundamental expression of self-love. -Prentis Hemphill

But, in some contexts or all contexts with some people in our lives, that dang pot feels like abandonment.? They want your ingredients to be mixed with theirs.? So you saying “hey here is my pot” does not feel innocuous it threatens their survival on some level. ? We have to unlearn the idea that being connected and separate at the same time is a threat.? But the more our society is in survival mode the harder it is to get our soup pots working together.

5 Options To Choose From When Setting Boundaries

Option 1:?You choose to remain your warm soup self. (This is healthy differentiation and interdependence.)?

Option 2:?You choose to boil over.? (You shame or attack.)?

Option 3:?You choose to get cold.? (You avoid or cut off.)

Option 4:?You choose to let your soup be ladled out into the other person’s pot until there is virtually nothing left of you.? (You are codependent.)

Option 5:?You choose to boil over and get cold at the same time with a dash of shaming and humiliation added in.? (You cancel)

As I work on human relationships with folks - I have had many people explore ending relationships with loved ones. I hold a cautious middle path with them.? Sometimes I share my story if it seems useful.? But I always talk about liberation in the form of a boundary.? You aren’t free if you are always reacting by attacking, shutting off, or overgiving.? You also aren't free, if you are trying to do everything on your own. Our relationships contribute to our freedom. Check out Mia Birdsong's book, How We Show Up for more on this. Boundaries allow you to advocate for “More of this, less of that, what can we do together here?, how can I be a good pot of soup that can remain soup even when you can’t? etc.”

Learning to set boundaries takes a healing relationship.

1. Part of learning to set good boundaries comes by learning to love yourself as Prentis says above.??
2. Part of learning to set good boundaries is learning to be embodied and inside your own skin so you can calm your nerves when boundaries stir you (no pun intended).
3. Part of learning to set good boundaries is unearthing old self structures that perceive relationships as threats.??

Building new self-structures doesn’t happen overnight. And a very important ingredient missed in a lot of growth work around boundaries is you need a relationship to change the self-structure.? Boundaries practice is relational work.? That is why therapy is a relationship designed for this stuff.? It's the work I do and sometimes the best moments of growth are when we get soup all over the place and sort the mess out together.

Frequent topics that come up in relational therapy that are part of “healthy pot making” or boundaries include conversations about the fee, talking about feelings that come up when session is over, failures of empathy, how the therapist uses their power in session, sharing the desire to be liked/loved, falling in love with your therapist and many many more relating dynamics.? It’s fun and hard and provocative for sure.??

Now what? On your own I invite you to play with a few inquiry questions:

• What feelings and beliefs arise in me when I can’t give someone what they ask for?
• What thoughts and feelings arise in me when someone let’s me down or doesn’t keep a promise? And what do I do?? What do I wish I could do instead?
• What feelings and beliefs arise in me when someone tells me ‘no’?
• What thoughts or feelings arise inside of me when someone gets upset with a boundary I set with them?? And what do I do?? What do I wish I could do instead?
• What do my responses illuminate about me and my patterns in relationships?

If you want good behavioral tools for boundary setting I recommend this book; Dr. Nedra Tawaab, Set Boundaries, Find Peace

If you want to learn how to cultivate healthy differentiation instead of reacting from anxiety or anger I recommend this book: Dr. Kathleen Smith, Everything Isn’t Terrible

*As an aside, I do want to offer a critique of Bowen Family Systems Theory.? There are many great aspects of this theory and it has largely been studied on white populations and taken by white theorists to pump up hyperindividualism.? I don’t believe the differentiation of self goals of Bowen’s were to cheer on hyper-individualism, but rather to shore up what the nervous system and the social system need to create - a kind of container - to allow interdependence to thrive.

Thanks to Bangyu-Wong, Joeyy Lee, and Michael Dziezic for the photos from Unsplash.