02/18/2023
What are boundaries?
An invisible line that defines which behaviors will be accepted by a person.
Why are they important?
It’s a form of self-care that shows what you will and won’t accept from others. It shows a desire to be respected and feel safe.
By setting healthy boundaries, you can improve relationships, decrease your stress levels, reduce burnout, and improve your own emotional health. What I mean by improving emotional health, is that it can reduce anger, anxiety, and resentment, in addition to allowing you to feel happier, more peaceful, and have greater self-esteem.
If someone fails to respect your boundaries, it shows they don’t respect you and that’s not healthy.
You should consider how you will handle situations of people not respecting boundaries.
If it’s a new boundary in a previously established friendship/relationship, do you want to give them just one chance & then you’re done? Maybe 2-3 chances, especially if you previously accepted or tolerated a behavior from them and they may slip in trying to respect your new boundaries? It’s not healthy to give them unlimited chances or they will never try to respect you or your boundaries and that is a toxic person/relationship.
For some situations/relationships, it’s as easy as unfriend-ing someone on social media. For other situations, you may need to delete or even block a contact. I’ve even had to make extremely hard choices to leave friendships of many years because of disrespect. It hurts to do this, but in time, it gets easier and you realize how much stress that friendship was actually causing.
Whatever boundaries you set, be consistent. If someone you know sets new boundaries, do your best to respect those new boundaries.
Photo: Kevin Butz on Unsplash
