It’s Not Rude to Have Social Boundaries, Even with Family
Often, I hear clients tell me that they feel guilty for thinking about making boundaries with family, friends, co-workers, etc. The idea of creating boundaries with people we care about, or with whom we want to maintain a good relationship, feels like a challenge. Or, you feel that you’re doing something wrong or bad if you were to make boundaries while keeping up a certain role.
I’m a bad daughter, a bad son, a bad parent, a bad friend, a bad partner, a bad co-worker…
The list is endless.
Yet, it’s important for us to re-evaluate boundaries from a curious perspective, because historically and personally, boundaries have been necessary and beneficial if understood properly.
Conceptualizing Boundaries
I want you to imagine a house surrounded by a white picket fence. The owner of the home gets to establish who is allowed to enter their property, and who is not allowed.
The mail carrier? Of course.
The person delivering your package? Sure.
Your friends coming over for an invited dinner? Absolutely!
That nosy neighbor who wants to get a better look at your holiday decorations to see if it meets the HOA standards? Hmm, not quite.
Essentially, the fence around a home acts as a boundary that establishes the response the homeowner can give when it comes to other people entering their property. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean the homeowner can always control who ends up crossing the fence.
The nosy neighbor may quietly enter the property on their own, until they’re caught on camera and asked to leave. The neighbor kids may quickly hop the fence to grab the ball that landed in the backyard.
Or, there may be a stranger who quickly runs past the fence to grab the package that was left on the porch.
In the end, the control you have is the response you give in these situations for when you notice people crossing the fence: it can be a warm welcome or a stern command to leave with possible consequences.
It may feel foreign to think about creating boundaries in relationships with loved ones and familiar faces. Yet, everyone has a form of boundaries when it comes to relationships, even if it may be unconsciously made.
Boundaries and Values
Boundaries in social context are the values you hold about yourself in relations to others that produce responses in different social situations. Values are beliefs that are subjectively meaningful and important to you, and that influence your decisions and actions.
So how did this feeling of guilt and belief that it was wrong to have boundaries with loved ones form? When people aren’t clear about boundaries, they tend to believe and model to others that boundaries mean a form of rejection. In actuality, boundaries help you to navigate a relationship that feels balanced and considerate of both yourself and the other person.
Furthermore, having boundaries doesn’t mean you’re selfish or rude. Rather, boundaries create a balance in interactions with another person whom you can’t control, for healthy and respectful relationships.
You can’t predict or control another person’s behaviors. However, you have the ability to choose how you interpret and respond to a situation based on your values. Acknowledging that you are deserving of care and advocacy in social situations help to produce expectations for respect and consideration for both parties within interactions.
Flexible vs. Inconsistent Boundaries
Culturally, there may be expectations of duty and honor to parents and elders. That doesn’t mean you can’t have boundaries. Boundaries can be flexible based on consistent values that are culturally informed.
Reminder: there is a difference between flexible and inconsistent boundaries.
Flexible boundaries are changing the responses you give due to varying situations and context, but in alignment with your core values.
Inconsistent boundaries are changing the responses you give due to negative pressures, resulting in the disregard of your values.
Getting Started with Making Boundaries
The first step is to identify your core values that remain the same in different situations. Make a list of your core values that are fundamental in your life. These values are anything you believe to be meaningful and important. They can be thoughts, feelings, beliefs, items, or even actions.
The second step is to reframe when you feel guilty. Yes, you feel guilty, but is it because of something you’re doing wrong, or perhaps the lack of normalization and emphasis of boundaries in social settings? Expanding your understanding of the guilt you feel beyond self-blame can help you to process and conclude that the guilt that you feel is not so black or white.
The third step would be defining actions to respond in social situations that reflect your values. For example, using assertive communication of I-statements rather than shutting down or raising your tone of voice when someone criticizes you can be a change in response that reflects your values of grounded and composed communication of your feelings.
Recap: 3 Steps to creating boundaries
Identify your values
Reframe and expand your understanding of negative feelings about boundaries
Define actions that reflect your values in different social settings
