Back to Boundaries

Different Categories – Different Strategies
They’re all still Boundaries

© Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC
from the Boundaries & Coaching Series

Moving on with the Boundary Series

Found HERE

In the prior post, The Benefits of Boundaries, I likened setting Personal Boundaries to having a moat with a drawbridge around your castle.

Raising and lowering the drawbridge helps to ensure (enforce) the kinds of behavior that you will and will not permit yourself to experience in your environment.

The “moat and drawbridge” of Personal Boundaries acts as a filter to permit only those people who are up to where you are in life to come into your castle and join the party.

Setting your boundaries defines the actions and behaviors that are unacceptable from those you do allow inside your metaphorical castle — in coordination with your Standards, which also determine how you will interact with them.

Different types of Boundaries

Dolly, the author of the wonderful koolkosherkitchen blog, left a comment under the prior Boundary post that led me to decide that, before I continue, I need to further define what I mean by the terms I will be using in the ongoing Boundary conversation.

In addition to Boundaries we set around behaviors of others, there are boundaries we need to have in place that determine our personal behaviors, sometimes referred to as “self-control.”

Boundaries can be further divided into several “domains” —
physical, intellectual, social and emotional.

While there is certainly overlap in some of these categories, let’s take a look at distinguishing these “types” from one another.

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Physical Boundaries

Found HERE

Physical boundaries define your sense of personal space. They are often discussed in the domain of sexual and touching behaviors, as well as intrusions upon privacy and focus, but there is a great deal more involved in this category.

Young children frequently cross physical boundaries, biting, hitting, kicking and grabbing the toys of others, for example, until they are taught not to.

Some adults never generalized those lesson from childhood – or were raised by parents who had little understanding of the concept of physical boundaries themselves.  They frequently grow up to be individuals from whom those of us who have developed relatively healthy physical boundary awareness need protection.

Examples of missing physical boundaries that need work (even in some of us who are fairly aware otherwise):

• Touching: unwanted sexual advances certainly, but also unwelcomed “friendly” touches and hugs that some of us believe are simply “how we relate.”
• Encroaching: respecting personal space requirements – often culturally based.  When we are speaking with someone and he or she backs off, for example, we’ve probably crossed their “personal space-comfort” boundary.  When we close the gap, we’ve done it again.

I once watched an American businessman back a Japanese colleague all the way across a room, totally unaware of what he was doing.

Other examples of unconscious encroachments include using someone else’s desk or fountain pen without permission, or assuming a “mi casa, su casa” environment that has never been expressed.

• Barging in: intruding on physical surroundings — for example, entering your daughter’s bedroom without knocking, or a habit of dropping in on a co-worker’s office whenever we are at a stopping point and in need of a break.
• Interrupting or distracting: Cutting people off as they are speaking to voice a thought of our own, finishing their sentences, changing the subject mid-discussion, and so on — but also including requests or demands for time and attention when someone is obviously busy cooking, working on the car, writing, etc.
• Snooping: invading the privacy of personal files, diaries, emails, phone calls and messages, internet histories, bureau drawers, medicine cabinets, etc. — privacy boundaries some adults are more likely to cross with their children or partners.

IMPORTANT POINT: What you will discover is that when you cross the physical boundaries of others — regardless of what you tell yourself about why it is okay for you to do so — it becomes all that much more difficult to set healthy, effective boundaries around similar encroachments from others.

Another type of Boundary Protection

Reflecting on her former role as an educator of children with “special needs,” Dolly also left a comment under the introduction to the Boundary Series that brings up another point about the importance of learning to adopt physical boundaries:

Found HERE

“As an example: an ASD child [autism spectrum] would wiggle himself between me and his mother as we were talking because he was fascinated by bluetooth blinking on my chest (I wear it on a chain, like a pendant).

The problem was, of course, that he would do the same to some students who had different issues and could not abide violation of personal space. Obviously, it would result in a “Wham!” Teaching this child boundaries protected him for life.

This is an extreme example of physical lack of boundaries that is visible. Social boundaries are just as vital to a person’s survival, albeit not visible.”

I won’t be focusing on setting boundaries of this type in this Series, but I felt it was an excellent illustration of the many ways that boundaries protect us.

Intellectual Boundaries

Found HERE

Intellectual boundaries protect our right to our own thoughts and opinions (including our right not to have to defend them or disclose them), our entitlement to determine where it is appropriate for us to spend our time, setting our own priorities, as well as our right to learn and develop in our own best manner.

A few intellectual boundary crossings include the following:

• Anyone who attempts to shame, bully or worry us into agreeing with their thinking (political and religious arguments are rife with this one!)
• Plagiarism, failure to attribute, claiming the work ideas of another as our own.
• Insisting that our children study in the same way it worked best for us.

People who chronically cross intellectual boundaries are generally considered annoying, if not actually rude — and are sometimes doing things that are actually illegal! They are always inconsiderate, stepping over the rights of others in an attempt to commandeer their desires, or to make things more comfortable in their own lives.

It rarely serves them, ultimately, and makes it almost impossible for them to set boundaries that don’t devolve into arguments when others violate their intellectual boundaries.

Social Boundaries

These are boundaries set by social convention, which can be different from country to country.  These can include adherence to laws as well as what we often refer to as manners — items my good friend Cindi tosses into the bin of “social lubricants.”

Found HERE

• Observing the “niceties” — please, thank you, excuse me, opening doors for others, etc.
• “Manners” – Etiquette and table manners, of course, but also “polite” behavior in general: appropriate dress in certain situations, refraining from or engaging in certain behaviors in public (for example, not belching or, in some cultures, belching to show appreciation for a meal), paying attention when we speak with others vs. allowing a cellphone bleep to jump ahead in the time and focus line, and more.
• Obeying the “rules of the road” — including a conservative use of the horn, passing on the accepted side of the road, and maintaining a respectful distance between our car and the one in front of us (vs. “crowding” them when we want to drive faster than they are going), etc.
• Social conventions like shaking a hand offered in friendship or introduction, speaking respectfully to our elders or bosses, etc.
• Respecting public and private property – putting trash in appropriate receptacles, keeping your animals off your neighbors lawns and out of their gardens and always cleaning up after your dogs, etc.

Whenever we fail to observe expected social conventions we run the risk of violating someone else’s social boundaries. Few people will feel entitled to express those boundaries, but it doesn’t make us very popular when we cross them!

Emotional Boundaries

Found HERE

The ability to separate our own desires and feelings from those of anyone else keeps us from being overly affected by their wishes and behaviors, so that we don’t end up feeling confused, frustrated, or angry.

The presence or absence of our ability or willingness to express these boundaries without defensiveness or anger is often described as high or low “self-esteem.”

A few indications of missing emotional boundaries:

• Emotional bleeding: Not understanding how to separate our feelings from our children’s or our partner’s or our parents’, allowing their mood to spill over to determine our level of happiness or misery — including holding them responsible for how we feel (sometimes referred to as codependency).
• The blame game: Blaming others for our problems and poor decisions, rather than taking “ownership” of our choices and our actions, setting effective boundaries around behavior that frequently tempts us to believe that someone else “made” us react as we did.
• Sacrificial Lambs: Abandoning or diluting portions of our life to please someone else – frequently changing our plans, giving up on our dreams, or limiting our goals in response to the wishes of another.
• Over/under-sharing: sharing intimate personal information and feelings with relative strangers – before there has been time to develop a mutually beneficial and trusting relationship.  Conversely, refusing to “open up” in intimate relationships.

Boundary Management

We really don’t want our own personal boundaries trampled, and few of us are fully aware of those times when we are trespassing ourselves. But why do we do it? Why do they? And why do we frequently find it difficult to set, enforce or maintain personal boundaries?

We’ll explore these questions as well as looking at some effective ways to set and maintain boundaries in the upcoming articles of this Series, so STAY TUNED.

Becoming Aware

Awareness is always the first step in the change and growth game, and so it is with establishing healthy boundaries and developing the habit of maintaining them.

• Look back through the examples above and think about the areas in your life where some boundary work might give you greater life-satisfaction.
• Remember, as you look, to give yourself a pat on the back for the healthy boundaries you have already developed – and share your success stories below.

I want to remind everyone that, once you’ve internalized the Boundary process, at some point your Boundaries will become practically automatic.  You will rarely need to enforce them and you will stop attracting Boundary pushers and disrespectful people and treatment.

That’s ideal, of course — to stop attracting certain types of people and behaviors to begin with!

While we are working on that particular state of being, understanding how to set effective Boundaries and taking the actions to set them in place is a great way to course-correct as quickly as possible.

As we become willing to express our Values in how we live our lives and truly honor our Standards — setting Personal Boundaries that don’t allow the actions of others to affirm otherwise — we’ve set our personal development on the fast track and our former frustrations are on the way to transformation.

Then life gets really fun!

If you are interested in your own personalized “boundary bootcamp,” I currently have several openings in my coaching schedule.

Get in touch if you would like to hire me to personally coach you
through the entire Personal Foundation process in a you-specific fashion.

I’d LOVE to partner with you — and celebrate with you as you watch your experience of life get better and better.

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