Brighterdays4you’s Weblog

I’m a survivor fan and I think Jeff Probst put this best.  He said the reason why survivor is so interesting is that everyone draws lines and everyone draws them in different places.  By drawing lines, he means setting boundaries.  Everyone sets their boundaries slightly differently depending on their life circumstances.  Healthy boundaries can vary from person to person.  It mostly depends on what we want to keep private from others, how much we tolerate being bossed by others and even within one person how much we trust the other persons around us.
It is normal for any couple to have discussions on boundaries because of the issues of trust, bossiness, and privacy.  Learning to set appropriate boundaries doesn’t end these discussions.  The trick is to own your own boundaries and not expect others to just know what they are or where they are.  That is what being assertive is about.

Physical boundaries are like a bubble around ourselves. There are many types of boundaries.  You can see your own physical boundary by watching what you do when someone gets too close to you. The point at which you backed up or looked down is your physical boundary. Physical boundaries protect us from being physically hurt by another person. Watch what another person does when you move into that person’s space. Did he back up or look down? Was her space bigger or smaller then yours? The space that we give to the opposite sex tends to be wider then to the same sex. The space given for children is smaller and the space given for taller people is bigger.

Emotional boundaries are when someone overly criticizes you, calls you names, puts you down, and does not value you as a person. You do not have to be treated that way. You can set a limit and not allow others to put you down or call you names. Sometimes when we are brought up in households where there is a lot of verbal abuse, our emotional boundaries have been crossed so many times that we set it inappropriately too close and continue to allow others to call us names. This can be unlearned and appropriate boundaries can be taught.

Intellectual boundaries are insidious and difficult to differentiate from emotional boundaries.  Let me start with a story about a family that I saw in counseling. This family had a single mother and 3 daughters. When the mother was confronted on something and started crying, all of her daughters cried. Similarly when one of the daughters started crying everyone in the family cried. The belief in this family was that if one cried then all must cry. That belief is an intellectual boundary. The intellectual boundary of the daughters had been crossed so that they believed what their mother told them about crying. In other words intellectual boundaries get crossed when a certain message or belief is told so many times, it becomes gospel truth in the family. Beliefs cannot be challenged but all family members must be integrated into the family belief system instead. Intellectual boundaries are most commonly violated in families where to believe anything outside of the families beliefs gets met with criticism and ridicule. So for example if the family’s religion is Methodist then anyone stating a Muslim belief would be met with ridicule. Another example is when a family is homophobic and one of the children realizes that he is homosexual. That family member gets met with criticism and hostility.

Spiritual boundaries are when boundaries around spirituality are crossed like when a person mixes spiritual matters and religion with doing something wrong such as physical abuse or sexual abuse.  Doing the right thing as is taught in all religions gets mixed up with doing the wrong thing.  The victim gets confused then about what is right and what is wrong.  Many victims give up spirituality or at the very least religion altogether because God gets blamed.  Examples of this are when ministers sexually abuse children or when parents see themselves as religious yet treat their children with disrespect and abuse.

Sexual boundaries are the boundaries regarding sex and privacy.  These are crossed not only when an adult touches a child in a sexual way but also when crude language is used around children, adult pornography is shown when children are present and physical privacy is disrespected such as when family members are allowed to go into bedrooms and bathrooms unnounced.