Setting boundaries is a life skill that has been popularized by self help authors and support groups since the mid 1980s. It is the practice of openly communicating and asserting personal values as way to preserve and protect against having them compromised or violated[1] The term "boundary" is a metaphor – with in-bounds meaning acceptable and out-of-bounds meaning unacceptable.[1] Without values and boundaries our identities become diffused and often controlled by the definitions offered by others.[2] The concept of boundaries has been widely adopted by the counseling profession.[3]
Contents
Values and boundaries concept
This life skill is particularly applicable in environments with controlling people or people not taking responsibility for their own life.[4]
Co-Dependents Anonymous recommends setting limits on what members will do to and for people and on what members will allow people to do to and for them, as part of their efforts to establish autonomy from being controlled by other people’s thoughts, feelings and problems.[5]
The National Alliance on Mental Illness tells its members that establishing and maintaining values and boundaries will improve the sense of security, stability, predictability and order, in a family even when some members of the family resist. NAMI contends that boundaries encourage a more relaxed, nonjudgmental atmosphere and that the presence of boundaries need not conflict with the need for maintaining an understanding atmosphere.[6]
Process
BPDFamily describes boundaries using a three pillar model:[1]
- Defining values: Healthy relationship are an "inter-dependent" relationship of two "independent" people. Healthy individuals should establish values that they honor and defend regardless of the nature of a relationship ( core or independent values). Healthy individuals should also have values that they negotiate and adapt in an effort to bond with and collaborate with others (inter-dependent values).[1]
- Asserting boundaries: In this model, individuals use verbal and nonverbal communications to assert intentions, preferences and define what is inbounds and out-of-bounds with respect to their core or independent values.[7] When asserting values and boundaries, communications should be present, appropriate, clear, firm, protective, flexible, receptive, and collaborative.[8]
- Honoring and defending: Making decision consistent with the personal values when presented with life choices or confronted or challenged by controlling people or people not taking responsibility for their own life.[1]
Having healthy values and boundaries is a lifestyle, not a quick fix to a relationship dispute.[1]
Values are constructed from a mix of conclusions, beliefs, opinions, attitudes, past experiences and social learning.[9][10] Jacques Lacan considers values to be layered in a hierarchy, reflecting "all the successive envelopes of the biological and social status of the person"[11] from the most primitive to the most advanced.
Personal values and boundaries operate in two directions, affecting both the incoming and outgoing interactions between people.[12] These are sometimes referred to as the 'protection' and 'containment' functions.[13]
Scope
The two primary and most commonly mentioned categories of values and boundaries are:
- Physical – Personal space and touch considerations[8][15][16]
- Emotional/Mental – Thoughts and opinions[8][15][16]
Some authors have expanded this list with additional or specialized categories such as "spirituality",[8][16] "truth",[16] and "time/punctuality".[17]
Assertiveness levels
The implementation style of boundaries can be graded. Nina Brown PhD proposed a four-point scale in her book, Coping With Infuriating, Mean, Critical People.[18]
- Soft – A person with soft boundaries merges with other people's boundaries. Someone with a soft boundary is easily a victim of psychological manipulation.
- Spongy – A person with spongy boundaries is like a combination of having soft and rigid boundaries. They permit less emotional contagion than soft boundaries but more than those with rigid. People with spongy boundaries are unsure of what to let in and what to keep out.
- Rigid – A person with rigid boundaries is closed or walled off so nobody can get close to him/her either physically or emotionally. This is often the case if someone has been the victim of physical abuse, emotional abuse, psychological abuse, or sexual abuse. Rigid boundaries can be selective which depend on time, place or circumstances and are usually based on a bad previous experience in a similar situation.
- Flexible – Similar to selective rigid boundaries but the person has more control. The person decides what to let in and what to keep out, is resistant to emotional contagion and psychological manipulation, and is difficult to exploit.
Risks of reestablishing values and boundaries
In Families and How to Survive Them, Robin Skynner MD explains methods for how family therapists can effectively help family members to develop clearer values and boundaries by when treating them, drawing lines, and treating different generations in different compartment[19] – something especially pertinent in families where unhealthy enmeshment overrides normal personal values.[20] However, the establishment of personal values and boundaries in such instances may produce a negative fall-out,[20] if the pathological state of enmeshment had been a central attraction or element of the relationship.[21] This is especially true if the establishment of healthy boundaries results in unilateral limit setting which did not occur previously. It is important to distinguish between unilateral limits and collaborative solutions in these settings.[22]
Complicating factors
Addictions
Addicts often believe that being in control of others is how you achieve success and happiness in life. People who follow this rule use it as a survival skill, having usually learned it in childhood. As long as they make the rules, no one can back them into a corner with their feelings.[23]
Mental illness
People with certain mental conditions are predisposed to controlling behavior including those with obsessive compulsive disorder, paranoid personality disorder,[24] borderline personality disorder,[25] and narcissistic personality disorder,[26] attention deficit disorder,[27] and the manic state of bipolar disorder.[27]
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- Borderline personality disorder (BPD). There is a tendency for loved ones of people with BPD to slip into caretaker roles, giving priority and focus to problems in the life of the person with BPD rather than to issues in their own lives. Too often in these kinds of relationships, the codependent will gain a sense of worth by being "the sane one" or "the responsible one".[28]
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- Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). For those involved with a person with NPD, values and boundaries are often challenged as narcissists have a poor sense of self and often do not recognize that others are fully separate and not extensions of themselves. Those who meet their needs and those who provide gratification may be treated as if they are part of the narcissist and expected to live up to their expectations.[29]
Codependency
Codependency often involves placing a lower priority on one's own needs, while being excessively preoccupied with the needs of others. Codependency can occur in any type of relationship, including family, work, friendship, and also romantic, peer or community relationships.[30]
While a healthy relationship depends on the emotional space provided by personal boundaries,[31] co-dependent personalities have difficulties in setting such limits, so that defining and protecting boundaries efficiently may be for them a vital part of regaining mental health.[20]
In a codependent relationship, the codependent's sense of purpose is based on making extreme sacrifices to satisfy their partner's needs. Codependent relationships signify a degree of unhealthy clinginess, where one person doesn't have self-sufficiency or autonomy. One or both parties depend on their loved one for fulfillment.[32] There is almost always an unconscious reason for continuing to put another person's life ahead of your own, and often it is because of the mistaken notion that self-worth comes from other people.
Dysfunctional family
Demanding parent. In the dysfunctional family the child learns to become attuned to the parent's needs and feelings instead of the other way around.[33]
Demanding child. Parenting is a role that requires a certain amount of self-sacrifice and giving a child's needs a high priority. A parent can, nevertheless, be codependent towards their own children if the caretaking or parental sacrifice reaches unhealthy or destructive levels.[34]
Communal influences
Freud described the loss of conscious boundaries that could occur when an individual was caught up in a unified, fast-moving crowd.[35]
Almost a century later, Steven Pinker took up the theme of the loss of personal boundaries in a communal experience, noting that such occurrences could be triggered by intense shared ordeals like hunger, fear or pain, and that such methods were traditionally used to create liminal conditions in initiation rites.[36] Jung had described this as the absorption of identity into the collective unconscious.[37]
Rave culture has also been said to involve a dissolution of personal boundaries, and a merger into a binding sense of communality.[38]
Unequal power relations
Also unequal relations of political and social power influence the possibilities for marking cultural boundaries and more generally the quality of life of individuals.[39] Unequal power in personal relationships, including abusive relationships, can make it difficult for individuals to mark boundaries.
See also
References
- ^ a b c d e f Johnson, R. Skip. "Setting Boundaries and Setting Limits". BPDFamily.com. Retrieved June 10, 2014.
- ^ Patricia Evans, Controlling People (Avon 2002) p. 33-7
- ^ G. B. and J. S. Lundberg, I Don't Have to Make Everything All Better (2000) p. 13. ISBN 978-0-670-88485-8
- ^ John Townsend, PhD; Henry Cloud PhD (November 1, 1992). Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life. Nashville: HarperCollins Christian Publishing. p. 245. ISBN 9780310585909.
- ^ Setting Boundaries: Meditations for Codependents (Moment to Reflect). Harpercollins. August 1995. ISBN 9780062554017.
- ^ Bayes, Kathy. "Setting Boundaries In A Marriage Complicated By Mental Illness". National Alliance on Mental Illness.
- ^ Richmond PhD, Raymond Lloyd. "Boundaries". A Guide to Psychology and its Practice. Retrieved May 6, 2015.
- ^ a b c d Charles L. Whitfield, M.D (2010). Boundaries and Relationships: Knowing, Protecting and Enjoying the Self (2 ed.). HCI Books. ISBN 978-1558742598.
- ^ Graham, Michael C. (2014). Facts of Life: ten issues of contentment. Outskirts Press. ISBN 978-1-4787-2259-5.
- ^ Rogers, Vanessa (April 14, 2006). Working with Young Men: Activities for Exploring Personal, Social and Emotional Issues. p. 80. ISBN 978-1849051019.
- ^ Lacan, Jacques (January 17, 2007). Ecrits: The First Complete Edition in English. pp. 16–17. ISBN 978-0393329254.
- ^ Katherine, Anne Where to Draw the Line: How to Set Healthy Boundaries Every Day 2000
- ^ Graham, Michael C. (2014). Facts of Life: ten issues of contentment. Outskirts Press. p. 159. ISBN 978-1-4787-2259-5.
- ^ Richmond, Virginia (2008). Nonverbal Behavior in Interpersonal Relations. Boston: Pearson/A and B. p. 130. ISBN 9780205042302.
- ^ a b Katherine, Anne (1994). Boundaries: Where You End and I Begin. Hazelden. p. 5. ISBN 978-1568380308.
- ^ a b c d John Townsend, PhD; Henry Cloud PhD (November 1, 1992). Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life. Nashville: HarperCollins Christian Publishing. p. 245. ISBN 9780310585909.
- ^ Katherine, Anne Where to Draw the Line: How to Set Healthy Boundaries Every Day 2000 - Chapter 2 Time Boundaries pages 16 to 25
- ^ Brown, Nina W., Coping With Infuriating, Mean, Critical People - The Destructive Narcissistic Pattern 2006. ISBN 978-0-275-98984-2
- ^ Robin Skynner/John Cleese, Families and How to Survive Them (London 1993) p. 93 and p. 213
- ^ a b c Weinhold, Barry; Weinhold, Janae (January 28, 2008). BreakinFree of the Co-Dependency Trap (Second ed.). Novato: New World Library. pp. 192, 198. ISBN 978-1577316145.
- ^ Richard G. Abell, Own Your Own Life (1977) p. 119-122
- ^ Graham, Michael C. (2014). Facts of Life: ten issues of contentment. Outskirts Press. p. 161. ISBN 978-1-4787-2259-5.
- ^ Fenley, Jr., James L. Finding a Purpose in the Pain (2012)
- ^ Goldberg,MD, Joseph (23 May 2014). "Paranoid Personality Disorder". Retrieved 20 October 2014.
- ^ Braiker, Harriet B., Who's Pulling Your Strings? How to Break The Cycle of Manipulation (2006)
- ^ Brown, Nina (April 1, 2008). Children of the Self-Absorbed: A Grown-Up's Guide to Getting Over Narcissistic Parents (Second ed.). New Harbinger Publications. p. 35. ISBN 978-1572245617.
- ^ a b Cermak M.D., Timmen L. (1986). "Diagnostic Criteria for Codependency". Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 18 (1): 15–20. doi:10.1080/02791072.1986.10524475.
- ^ Danielle, Alicia. "Codependency and Borderline Personality Disorder: How to Spot It". Clearview Women's Center. Retrieved 5 December 2014.
- ^ Hotchkiss, LCSW, Sandra. Why Is It Always About You? (Chapter 7). New York: Free Press. ISBN 9780743214285.
- ^ "Patterns and Characteristics of Codependence". coda.org. Co-Dependents Anonymous. Retrieved 2011.
- ^ Patrick Casement, Further Learning from the Patient (London 1990) p. 160
- ^ Wetzler, PhD, Scott. "Psychology division chief at Albert Einstein College of Medicine". WebMD. Retrieved 5 December 2014.
- ^ Lancer, Darlene (2014). Conquering Shame and Codependency: 8 Steps to Freeing the True You]. Minnesota: Hazelden. pp. 63–65. ISBN 978-1-61649-533-6.
- ^ Codependents Anonymous: Patterns and Characteristics
- ^ Sigmund Freud, 'Le Bon's Description of the Group Mind', in Civilization, Society and Religion (PFL 12) p. 98-109
- ^ Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought (2007) p. 403
- ^ Jung, Carl Gustav (August 15, 1968). Man and His Symbols. Dell. p. 123. ISBN 978-0440351832.
- ^ Jones, Carole (September 10, 2009). Disappearing Men: Gender Disorientation in Scottish Fiction 1979-1999 (Scroll: Scottish Cultural Review of Language and Literature) (Book 12). Rodopi. p. 176. ISBN 978-9042026988.
- ^ Colin P.T. Baillie (2012). "Power Relations and its Influence in the Sphere of Globalization since World War II". Journal of Anthropology. The University of Western Ontario. Retrieved 31 March 2016.
Further reading
- Cloud, Henry; Townsend, John (1992). Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No. Thomas Nelson Publishing. ISBN 978-0310247456. Amazon Rank=#230
- Bottke, Allison (2008). Setting Boundaries with Your Adult Children. Harvest House Publishers. ISBN 978-0736921350. Amazon Rank=#6,300
- Katherine, Anne (1994). Boundaries: Where You End and I Begin. Hazelden. ISBN 978-1568380308. Amazon Rank=#51,000
- Whitfield, MD, Charles (1994). Boundaries and Relationships. HCI Books. ISBN 978-1558742598. Amazon Rank=#52,000
- Hawkins, David (2007). Setting Boundaries on Unhealthy Relationships. Harvest House Publishers. ISBN 978-0736918411. Amazon Rank=#60,000
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