UNDERSTANDING
BOUNDARIES
by Dr. Daniel A. Bochner
What in the world is meant by this psycho-babble word
“boundaries?” Even as a student of psychology it took me a long time
to understand it. But it’s such an essential concept in comprehending
interpersonal relationships and communication, that it sure would be
nice if someone could give a simple explanation of “boundaries” that
would facilitate better interpersonal relationships and communication. I
will attempt to provide such an explanation in this article.
The definition of “boundaries” is this: “boundaries” consist of
those actions we take, or things we say, that protect us from being hurt
by, or keep us from hurting, others or ourselves. That sounds a little
complicated, or maybe too emotionally mushy for some of you, so let’s
break it down into reasonable terms.
The “boundaries” that are being described when the word
“boundaries” is used refers to our emotions and how they are
expressed, controlled, and communicated. When we have an emotion,
no one is privy to that emotion until we communicate it in some way.
That is, we control our emotions to varying extents at different times.
Sometimes we feel angry and we hold it in. Sometimes we feel angry
and other people know it. Sometimes we are hurt and we turn it into
an angry response before we allow ourselves to experience the hurt,
and sometimes we're hurt and we hide it from others. To complicate
matters, we actually have two boundaries. One boundary that
specifically regulates whether or not emotions are experienced by
ourselves, and another that regulates whether or not emotions are
communicated. These separate boundaries can be referred to as an
“inner” and an “outer” boundary.
The inner boundary protects us from acknowledging that we are
basically animals with animal needs, desires, and aggressive impulses.
This boundary is necessary, just as in the case of the outer boundary,
for the purpose of protecting us from hurting, or being hurt by, others
or ourselves. But in this case, the problem is that many of our true
emotions are viewed by us as potentially damaging to others about
whom we care a great deal or, on the other hand, potentially damaging
to ourselves by way of making us think of ourselves in a way that is
too uncomfortable. This boundary operates without our awareness and
simply allows us to go about our business without too much craziness.
It is not likely that someone could go to the bank, deal with their
lawyer, or do the million things we do each day while thinking about
tearing meat off the bones of a freshly ensnared carcas or some other
equally animalistic, but natural, practice. This tendency to push down
emotions that are threatening to us is commonly known as “repression.”
The outer boundary refers to the ways in which we protect
ourselves from the behavior of others as well as the ways in which we
protect others from the emotions we are experiencing. When other
people act in certain ways, we allow their behavior to effect us. If we
care a great deal about another person their behavior is more likely to
have an effect. But if we hardly know a person, or have a limited
relationship with them (like those we see at work but with whom we do
not socialize), then our emotions need not be too affected by their
behavior, nor should their emotions be too affected by us. An example
of a common concern related to this boundary is thinking that other
people are upset with you when they’re simply feeling tired or upset
about something not related to you. In such a case, your experiencing
the effect of a loose boundary that is caused by some form of
insecurity. Another example of a concern related to this boundary is
common “road rage.” When you get upset about how other people are
driving and start becoming irate, you’re letting your emotions affect
others too much (most incidents of “road rage” involve
misunderstandings or driving mistakes and, at worst, obnoxious drivers
who have little interest or specific reason to be targeting you).
One of the great problems with boundaries is that we are often
not aware of who is close to us and who is not, and we learn to react to
the world in a particular way to make us feel more or less protected
and safe most of the time. When we allow too many people to affect
us, our need for their approval or love and affection is making us pay a
high price since we get hurt all the time. When too many people are
affected by our emotions, we make them pay too high a price for our
own inability to handle feelings. Generally, the healthy functioning of
boundaries occurs through a process of development in relationships.
We learn to trust people over time. When we learn that someone
is careful with us (most of the time), we start to feel safe. When we
start to feel safe, we can let people be more aware of our feelings, and
we can allow them to have more of an effect on our emotions. Very
often, people do not protect themselves sufficiently or start to feel free
to burden others with their emotions too quickly. For example, the
process of falling in love involves a fantasy period when, in our minds,
the other person is more what we want them to be than who he or she
really is. During this period, it is likely that we will think this other is a
person with whom we can really open up or, on the other hand, we
might think they are a person who loves us enough to take our crap.
Sometimes our fantasy of this other person is so strong that we
overlook how bad he or she makes us feel or how we have been taking
so many liberties with his or her feelings. But people with relatively
healthy boundaries balance their fantasy with the reality that they really
don’t know this person very well yet. With healthy boundaries, when
the relationship starts to make someone feel bad, or when one can
acknowledge that something he or she did might have been hurtful,
there is a natural tendency to back off and protect oneself in a good
way.
Quite often, however, the problem with boundaries, even for
relatively healthy people, occurs after they have developed through the
initial fantasy period and have become quite intimate. A couple might
have learned to trust each other slowly, but when they finally do trust
each other, they’re behavior starts getting more hurtful, or too
dependent and needy. In these situations, it is important to know how
to express oneself so that boundaries can be better. There are two
basic ways of creating boundaries, responding with anger or responding
with hurt.
Angry behavior pushes others away. Hurt behavior can draw
others closer. If the relationship is truly caring, that is, if both partners
feel a sense of responsibility for the other’s welfare, then acting hurt
when you truly are (as opposed to allowing the hurt feeling to be
automatically transformed into an angry response), will allow the other
person to experience your hurt and take some responsibility for what
they’ve done to contribute to it. When the hurt feeling is expressed
with someone who cares very deeply, the hurtful behavior abates soon
after. On the other hand, when someone is unlikely to feel responsible
(and I believe most people truly do care, so they should be given
several chances with the hurt response), the angry response is much
more appropriate. It is normal to need distance from someone who
will hurt you. The angry response also engenders respect from those
who act angry on a regular basis.
In healthy relationships, over time, some healthy mixture of
boundary setting through anger (sometimes simply acting irritated) and
hurt (sometimes just wearing a sad expression) develops so that the
relationship can sustain itself in a healthy way. That is, there is no
perfect person or relationship that makes it possible for there to be no
hurt or anger. What makes our relationships feel alive is that we do
have a deep impact on one another. That emotional impact is the very
stuff of life whether its derived from joy, frustration, irritation, or hurt.
It makes us feel connected. Emotional impact is to relationships what
air is to breathing. A good balance means we are neither suffocated
nor bloated with that air; that we are sustained by and interested in our
relationship, but not living in chaos because of it.
If we can understand boundaries, why they’re there and how
they help us, it can be possible to use them in a new way that really
helps us express who we are in a way that is better for us. It is not
being manipulative to let yourself act how you really feel, whether you
feel happy, angry or hurt. But doing so does help you create
boundaries with others. It helps you communicate your intentions
more clearly. It helps you let people know you mean business when
you do. And it helps you let people know that you have feelings that
they need to respect and care about. In short, learning how to have
good boundaries will make your relationships healthier, your life more
spontaneous and free, and it will make your endeavors more fruitful as
you start to feel more comfortable taking a path that is really right for
you.