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, either verbally or behaviorally. 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 or shown to others. These separate boundaries can be referred to as the "inner" boundary and the "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, pay the bills, write a letter, cook dinner, or do the millions of things we do each day while thinking about tearing meat off the bones of a freshly ensnared carcase, or running to escape a voracious saber tooth, or engaging in some other equally animalistic, but natural, animal 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 as 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, you're 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 in, 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 costs us dearly 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 (see article, The Dating Fantasy). 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 badly 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 badly, 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 healthy, "good boundaries," 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.
