Boundaries

Sooo misunderstood. Then what are they?

Very often when I hear people talking about boundaries they are actually talking about walls. “I had to put up my boundary.”

One of the most helpful trainings I took part in in the late 1990’s was Bodynamics. It originates out of Denmark and was developed by Lisbeth Marcher. Bodynamics is a body centered training that intricately looks at how our life experiences affect how we develop over time. Lisbeth and her colleagues looked at the physical, emotional and psychological development of children from in utero up to adolescents. They observed the muscular development at each stage and what the emotional and psychological development was at each stage and how the muscle tone in various parts of the body hold the healthy, or unhealthy development.

We learned to read bodies and could see what stages of development were interfered with either early or late in each stage of development, and in some cases both early and late. This training was critical for me in identifying what someone’s internal resources are or are not in Phase 2 of EMDR therapy, so I knew what needed to be built so reprocessing traumatic memories could be successful.

Boundaries were one of the areas that was very helpful. What I love about Bodynamics is there are activities to do with people that allows both myself and the client to see what they have and what is missing or has been breached because of trauma. The really fun part is that by repeating the activities regularly the internal resource will come back online. That is if someone is willing to do the work to repair the issue.

Our healthy or unhealthy development starts in utero. In utero we a just a clump of cells to start out with and we have no sense of separation from mother. We rely on both mother and father’s boundaries up until around age 2 when we go through our first process of separation. If our parents’ boundaries are not healthy then we will learn unhealthy boundaries early on. Our parents can’t give us what they don’t themselves have.

Of course there is also the boundary of our skin. This is where we can see issues if someone has sensory integration issues. They cannot stand to be touched. Working with skin boundaries can be helpful.

As we tend to explore the world separate from our parents, ie: a toddler running away from parents, getting overwhelmed without their boundaries and then running back to them, we learn to develop and rely on our own boundaries but they will be modeled from our parents.

Being reliant on our parents’ boundaries up to around age two is an energetic process. We have energetic boundaries that young. We sense things around us. We have this same capacity all of the time, but we are taught to ignore it or that it is woo woo. In fact, energetic boundary work I do with people is one of the most effective and empowering I have ever seen. There is just an organic unfolding of healthy energetic boundaries if people repeat the work consistently. There is no having to do anything about them.

The HeartMath Institute has spearheaded this kind of work through their research of coherence between heart and brain. They have actually been able to measure a field of energy around the heart that extends six feet from the heart outward. When the heart and brain are in coherence people have a naturally occurring energetic boundary around them that others can sense. When we don’t have it, we tend to suck in other people’s stuff and misidentify it as our own. We become incoherent. We lose our creativity. We are less productive, stressed. The people want to “put up their boundary” – WALL.

Back to this self-awareness thing I keep harping on. To res

tore your healthy boundaries you will need enough self-awareness to know when you have healthy boundaries, when you have no boundary and when you have walls. When you can catch yourself having dropped your boundary or having a wall up you can use tools to bring your boundary back online in a healthy way.

I have done energetic boundary work with people who have been victims of various kinds of abuse who have been stunned when they realized they were getting accurate signals not to trust the person who hurt them but had dismissed it because they did not trust themselves, let the perpetrators perspective override what they inherently knew. I have also done this same work with perpetrators who are wanting change in their lives, who have recognized that they were picking up the energetics of who did not have healthy boundaries, that they could take advantage of. In both cases, resourcing their boundaries bring people back into a healthy state of boundaries.

Healthy Boundaries

When we have healthy boundaries, we meet others at their boundaries and choose what we let in and what we do not. That does not mean we drop our boundary. It means there are areas our boundaries overlap but are still maintained.

Unhealthy Boundaries – No boundary

When someone has no boundary, they tend to feel other people’s emotions, sensations, thoughts and feelings within their own body, mind and emotions. They assume those experiences are their own, but they are not. They will tend to defer to others for what to think or feel or choose. Muscles are often collapsed and have little tone in them. As their boundaries are resourced and come online, they can sense what is going on with others but no longer feel it inside of themselves. This leaves more space to know what their own preferences are and choose based on that instead of defaulting to others.

Unhealthy Boundaries – Walls

Walls prevent anything from getting in. They also prevent anything from getting out. There is a rigidity in the muscular structure. Walls can be learned from parents, and they can form as a necessary protection from ongoing abuse and/or neglect of any kind. People can feel safer with walls but also very alone. Resourcing boundaries allows the walls to slowly release as the resources replace the need for walls.

As I mentioned in the beginning, walls are what most people refer to as boundaries, and many therapists teach walls as boundaries. There is really very little comprehensive training for therapist about boundaries. Boundaries are usually approached as mental construct instead of an exploration of how boundaries form, what healthy boundaries are, look and feel like, or how to restore healthy boundaries. They are talked about not experienced.

The important theme here is the restoration of healthy boundaries through experiential activities. When internal resources are built there is less of a need for the unhealthy structures, so those unhealthy structures can slowly change since there is a healthy and more stable alternative available.

That doesn’t mean that we may not need walls at times in our lives. For instance, if we speak up and let someone know what is not working for us or what we need and they don’t listen, then we need to set a limit and if they do not respect it, and we set it again and it is dismissed over and over we may need a wall, especially if things get more dangerous. We want a healthy hierarchy of responses, from speaking up and letting people know what works for us and what does not, to setting limits, to more reinforcement of this, to consequences to walls, as needed.

We see walls in some professions: law enforcement, military, other emergency services. The repeated exposure creates more of a need for self-protection, especially if the person has been traumatized over and over from their work. Usually, healthy boundary resourcing and resolution of the traumatic experiences tends to restore healthy boundaries.

The thing about walls is they take a lot of effort and energy. It can be very tiring and very isolating.

Two VERY important thing about boundaries are:

You have to know what is true for you and what is not! (There is that pesky Self-Awareness again.)

You have to tell people what is true for you, what is not, what works for you and what does not. If you don’t tell them then they cannot be respectful and honor that boundary, because they do not know. Which is why you have to know what is true for you and what is not and what works for you and what does not. (Why Self-Awareness is so important). Speaking up and letting people know is part of having boundaries.

After writing all of this it seems I should create some experiential classes for people to experience and explore healthy boundaries.