Boundaries, Trauma & Self-Care
I was working with a client and we began to dive in a bit deeper to her boundaries as we explored her self-care routines, and the next actions she wanted to take from the work we have been doing together. She never thought of boundaries as a part of her self-care plan. In our time together, we discussed how it is our boundaries that help us make our self-care plan a reality and put it into action.
What are boundaries?
When we hear the word boundary we think of that physical boundary between spaces, like a fence. It separates one property from the next often as a means to protect, defend, enclose or create more privacy between one entity and another. Some people go to great lengths with electric fences, security gates, special codes, and vicious watchdogs to keep people out.
What kind of boundaries do you create for yourself? Who is your watchdog?
Boundaries help us get clarity on two things - who and what you are keeping out and what you want to keep in. We want to be mindful about BOTH because your boundaries include all the nutriments you invite into your life. Nutriments include things like people, environments, vocation, food, movies, books, leisure activities, just to name a few.
Boundaries draw a line in the sand in terms of what we are willing to tolerate in all five areas of optimal wellness - physical, emotional, mental, energetic, and spiritual. As a result, boundaries are so necessary to self-care and healthy living.
Boundaries & Self-Care
Because I am both a yoga therapist, yoga teacher and Ayurvedic Health Practitioner, I have a slightly different approach to self-care. When I talk about self-care I talk about it through the lens of the koshas. The koshas are five layers that make up our being. They include the physical, energetic, mental, wise, and spiritual bodies.
I help clients create self-care plans to optimize health for all five layers, not just physical and mental where the focus often resides. Boundaries are a vital element to our self-care plan because without them we do not how to set healthy boundaries and lack of or compromising boundaries makes it impossible to follow through to put your self-care plan into action.
Blurry Boundaries
If you once had boundaries, did they become extremely blurred in the last several years - even before a global pandemic sent workers, couples, children home together full time to figure out how to work, live and go to school all at once. COVID-19 really just blurred the boundaries more, but they have been compromised for years.
Challenges to our boundaries due to things like:
Email
Hand-held electronic devices or watches
Social media
Instant Messaging
Remote Work
Living in a consumerist society (and keeping up with the Jones’)
“Research on the brain-health consequences of digital technology is beginning to elucidate how these novel devices and programs can both help and harm brain function. Their frequent use heightens ADHD symptoms, interferes with emotional and social intelligence, can lead to addictive behaviors, increases social isolation, and interferes with brain development and sleep. However, specific programs, videogames, and other online tools may provide mental exercises that activate neural circuitry, improve cognitive functioning, reduce anxiety, increase restful sleep, and offer other brain-health benefits. Future research needs to elucidate underlying mechanisms and causal relationships between technology use and brain health, with a focus on both the positive and negative impact of digital technology use”
Dr. Gary Small, MD
Brain health consequences of digital technology use
As with everything in life, moderation is the best approach, and its where boundaries become so vital to our ability to truly thrive.
Scenarios
Let us take a few moments to consider some scenarios for boundaries.
1.Your boss just has a “simple question” and its 9 PM at night so he emails you. You “need” to respond.
Your [insert close yet triggering family member name here] always makes you feel worse then when the conversation began and yet they send you instant messages and call you multiple times a week to complain. You respond because you know they don’t have anyone else to talk to.
2. You are at your sons soccer game and decide you’ll just pull up Facebook “real quick” - in the matter of a few seconds your could read about a traumatic car accident, be invited to shop for new shoes, or the latest life coach for “soccer-moms”.
You work from home and find it hard to separate home from family and self-care time because there is not physical seperation so you always put it off.
These are scenarios I hear about every day from clients. These are the things that are causing good, healthy, happy people to feel stressed, anxious, and burned out and why the landscape of mental health is changing so much in recent years (again even before a pandemic).
When you have set healthy boundaries your response to the scenarios above changes. It might look more like this.
When your boss emails, you know your email reply can wait until the morning.
When that dreaded family member shows up on your phone (yes even your son, even your mother), you know you are not the caretaker and you can reply when you have time and energy.
When you at your sons game, you turn off your phone or make sure its on do no disturb so you can be present for your children
You work from home and have set clear office hours, home hours, and self-care time.
Barriers to Healthy Boundaries
In my healing arts practice, I work with people who have had a variety of life experiences, and many of whom have experienced some form of adverse experience either in childhood or adulthood . The truth is nearly 70% of people have experienced some kind of trauma in their life, much of which is not physical in nature, it is more emotional through neglect or mistreatment.
These kinds of adverse experiences imprint on us, and if it happens at a young age, it can interrupt normal brain development and impact our long-term ability to perceive, process, and respond to the world around us. For example, living in a home with a lot of anger may make you less likely to speak up for boundaries for fear of anger. If you lived in a home with a lot of isolation and neglect you may not set or speak up for boundaries for fear of being abandoned. Evidence shows that if we have past trauma it can keep us silent about our boundaries, but they are VITAL to our health.
The damage that occurs in our brain and the dysregulation of the nervous system, from these adverse life experiences, makes us more impulsive and reckless with our choices hence the rates of substance abuse, and addiction from everything from food, sex, and opioids. When we set healthy boundaries with these substances we reclaim our power of personal responsibility and feel more ownership of our life.
Getting Started with Boundaries
If you are struggling with setting healthy boundaries there are four things you can do to get started right away that are a little more gentle, easy, and “safe”. Here are some suggestions:
Set up DO NOT DISTURB on all devices so that your devices go silent at least 2 hours before bedtime and 1 hour after arising (Do not check your phone unless absolutely necessary during this time (if you use your phone for meditation, music or some other function, go to that app, and that app only).
Set up an auto-reply for your work email that goes out after office hours and make sure those are set in your head too.
Find 10 minutes a day to take care of your self-care especially if you work from home. More is better, but 10 minutes is a great place to start especially if you have been lacking in that department.. Get up, go for a walk, move your body, get away from technology especially. You’d be amazed what you can do in 10 minutes!
Practice saying NO to little things you might normally say yes to but secretly want to say no to (its best to have a friend here who knows what you are doing and can play along a bit).
Watch this video from one of my favorite movies …
When I work with clients I like to work from the inside out. This means helping people begin a meditation practice, learning how to tame the mind so we can develop tender, insightful, and actionable self-awareness skills. With this level of self-awareness, we open ourselves to a whole new world of potential.
I work with clients to understand their relationship to themselves, how their life story has impacted their life, and how to step into and embody the life they truly want while healing from adverse life experiences. We can never really truly “heal”, we just learn to tame the trauma that lives within us and still feel safe, free, and empowered in the world.
When we feel more connected to ourselves, we engage in self-love in a whole new way and start to define the life we want to live, the boundaries we need to set to make that happen. Setting boundaries requires three things:
Define
Communicate
Reinforce
Set Consequences
One of the biggest problems that can come up with boundaries is feeling like we have to defend our boundaries to ourselves or others. This is why the work of self-care, self-love, and self-awareness is so important because if those three things are present we feel less and less of a need to defend however we can be prepared to simply and powerfully reinforce the boundaries we have set. If you don’t know why you have this boundary how will you ever communicate it to someone else OR maintain it?
Next Steps
If you’d like more help with self-care, check out my free guide The Bulletproof Self-Care Blueprint today.
It is not easy to set boundaries, especially if they have been absent in your life. But, boundaries are a vital part of your self-care plan and your overall mental health. Schedule a free clarity call to see if I can help you find healthy boundaries for your mental health.
