It takes Practice, practice, practice.
Here are 4 steps you can use as thought starters from the web.
4 Steps for Creating Healthy Boundaries
When you set your boundaries, it’s important to realize your needs are just as important as the other person’s needs. Working together to reach a compromise will help you set healthy boundaries and a healthy relationship. The steps listed below can help you establish this foundation.
- Create a personal bill of rights: The first thing you need to do is to define your feelings, values and beliefs and let the other person know how you want to be treated. This will empower you and will help you get used to being assertive in your communication.
- Set limits: Stating your limits is helpful in letting the other person know how far they can go. An example of a limit is stating that you want to be spoken to respectfully and do not want to be put down or screamed at.
- Be assertive: If you feel that someone is ignoring the set boundaries, you must speak up. Being assertive is walking a fine line between being aggressive and being too passive. It’s important to know the difference. You don’t want to blame others, lash out or be rude, but you also don’t want to be walking on eggshells and be a pushover. Being assertive is being polite yet firm about your stance. Be clear about what isn’t working for you and keep communication open.
- Respect other people’s boundaries: Don’t forget that you’re not the only one in a relationship. The other person’s boundaries are just as important as yours, even if they are different than yours.
Now let’s get specific about what bad boundaries look like.
- Sacrifice of personal values, plans or goals to please others
- Allow others to define who we are and make decisions for us
- Expect others to fulfill all our needs
- Feel guilty when we say no
- Hesitate to share our opinions or assert ourselves if they are being treated unfairly
- Frequently feel used, threatened, victimized or mistreated by others
- Frequently offer unsolicited advice, or feel pressured to follow someone else’s advice
- Take responsibility for other people’s feelings
- Tell others how to think, feel or act.
A real easy rule that I live by.
“If it comes down to a happy you, or a healthy me, I take a healthy me every time.”
How about
If it comes down to keeping your secret to keep you happy, or a healthy me, I take healthy me everytime.”
You have no idea how ass backwards this sounded to me the first time I heard it, I was floored, I felt like living that way would be completely compassion less. I could not have been more wrong, and I am not afraid to tell you between my friends, and 4 grown kids, I use the mantra on almost a daily basis. The most important times I use it, are when I am feeling unsure, like I let someone down. This is a chance to evaluate that my life is still lining up with my goals, values, and aspirations. There have been many times where listening to one of my kids lash out in anger or my ex wife goes off about something. My first knee jerk reaction is to jump in the pit and start fighting, but these are ways I simply refuse to be treated, I am happy to listen, but the minute it becomes personal or abusive, I end it. I let them know that I will not tolerate it, that if they want to further communicate with me then it has to change. This method carries over into all of my interactions. Plain and simple, I am an emotionally charged individual, I am very self-aware, I cannot afford to wear thoughts or emotions that someone else has tried to pawn off on me.
How does integrity fit into this idea?
For me the answer is simple but warrants conversation, I will give you a very simple example without a lot of detail “names changed to protect the innocent” etc.
Basically during my time in rehab some rules were being broken that could and did have a negative impact on people I cared about very much. Keeping this secret worked against my own judgement and personal values, this is where my integrity came in, or in this case my lack of integrity. Now years later I am only left to ask myself how it could have worked out if I had stayed true to my integrity. The decision not to live in line with my integrity, nearly cost someone their life, and a potential prison sentence. I cannot live others’ lives for them, but we have the power within us to uphold our boundaries, and the integrity to refuse to work outside our moral compass. Very simply we can stay true to these things and stay safe, straying from these things leads to pits of growing darkness, self-doubt, and a well of sorrow that leads right back to drugs and alcohol.