Written by: Danielle Baron, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
BOUNDARIES should be taught in school from an early age. We all have boundaries, but sometimes we don’t declare them or defend them, yet we store up resentment with the world by ignoring them. Why is it difficult for some people to talk about them?
Initially, it would help to say what boundaries are. Perhaps the confusion around what they are is also a cause of the issue. Boundaries are your own personal rules of engagement. They let other people know what IS acceptable to you and what is NOT acceptable to you. They are about not letting anyone provoke you to act lower than your integrity level. Your boundaries are comprised of your limits and your non-negotiables, like your deal breakers and what you will not tolerate in your life. A lot of people wrestle with actually knowing what their boundaries are, but then also just knowing them is not enough. You must also have the ability to communicate with them assertively.
WHY DON’T MANY PEOPLE KNOW HOW TO ASSERT THEIR BOUNDARIES?
Think about the way most people are raised as children: “Be a good girl.” “Be a good boy.” “Don’t make noise.”, “Sit quietly!”, “Stop causing trouble!” The list goes on… “Don’t make a fuss or embarrass me.” “Stop being angry.” Anger is sometimes seen as unacceptable, even in a healthy way. Children are taught not to feel these perceived ‘negative’ emotions and to suppress them or treat other’s feelings as more valuable. As the song, ‘Let it go’, from Frozen says: ‘Don’t let them in, don’t let them see, be the good girl you always have to be. Conceal, don’t feel, don’t let them know.’
The other side of the coin here is that children do need to be socialised but it is important to make sure that they are not denied these human feelings and that these feelings are not devalued. In many cultures, it is not about how children feel, but more so that they should be obedient, the old adage of ‘be seen but not heard’. “Do what I want you to do to make it easier for me.” I hold my hands up and say I am extremely guilty of this myself in the past as a parent. When we were at school, nobody was teaching us how to assert ourselves or healthily regulate our extreme emotions. Healthy boundaries are like a language, and to assert our boundaries is allowing people to get to know the real us. We were raised and praised for being self-abandoning co-dependents. This is the opposite of being able to assert boundaries honestly.
EASY BREEZY
You might have heard some people, even yourself, say: “You know me, no fuss, it’s all great,” like there’s some badge of honour for having no opinion and going with the flow because you don’t share your boundaries. This is just a way to avoid conflict and rejection. I have been a little guilty of this in my tuition business years ago, but you live and learn, and now I am able to solve boundary conflicts without massive resentment on my part or an unpleasant fall-out. In fact, the last client I confronted assertively about her disrespect of my boundaries actually apologised to me. People who are scared of asserting boundaries will respond, no matter what the other person says, with something along the lines of: “That’s good, that’s fine, I’m easy.” Of course, you need to pick your battles, but in not asserting your boundaries, you are also denying the other person the ability to intimately or accurately know you and to step- up to the situation, and you could have experienced a mutual connection, but now that won’t be established. You never know how people are going to respond until you take the risk of setting an appropriate boundary with them.
IS IT POSSIBLE TO BE TO RIGID WITH BOUNDARIES SO THAT THEY APPEAR AS UNREASONABLE DEMANDS?
Yes, but it’s all relative. In a power differential like a boss who uses a rude tone, it’s going to be harder to assert boundaries, but still important. With someone on a more level playing field to you, it will be easier. But what if people try to control by using the excuse ‘boundaries’? It is very important to know the difference. If one person prefers to go to bed at 9 pm, but their spouse prefers to go to bed at midnight, it is not an infringement of boundaries if one partner doesn’t like what the other partner does because they are human beings with rights. It’s a preference, not a ‘must have.’ Desires are also a part of preferences, such as: “When I retire, I want to live in Hawaii.” It is about knowing yourself before you can assert your boundaries or preferences or limits or deal breakers. Boundaries also make you uniquely YOU.
There are many types of boundaries: emotional, mental, physical, sexual and material boundaries. The way that we can express them in a dysfunctional way is that they can be too porous, which is too malleable, like a chameleon or peacekeeper. Or they can be too rigid: “My way or the highway!” That is a dysfunctional boundary style and is not healthy for connection. Sometimes we expect people to know our boundaries as if they are mind readers.
CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS BOUNDARIES
Why are lots of people, people pleasers? There could be something to be said about the caveman days. If you were disconnected from the tribe, you would surely perish, so there’s an unconscious fear of offending other people linked to our epigenetics. If we want to deepen and create relationships that are safe, it is important to let the other person know what is acceptable and what is not. However, sometimes we may assume that someone considers something as acceptable, and unless, when we start a relationship, we come up with a list of EVERY boundary for EVERY situation, there are going to be occasions where we still encounter misunderstandings and get hurt. How we cope with that determines the amount of fallout from it. I once had a friend that tried to completely undermine my work ethic by telling people I must be in so much debt. I was a single parent with a successful business, paying for school fees on my own. She was getting help for the school fees from her parents. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with this, but she obviously did because then she tried to undermine me. Unfortunately, at the time, this was a complete deal breaker for our friendship in terms of my boundaries, and I cut her off. There are some things in a relationship, be it also a friendship or working environment, that we take as a given regarding boundaries- so when they are violated, we cannot stop the feeling of hurt. We think in NLP terms that everyone’s map of the world is the same as ours. But this just isn’t true. However, you have a right to choose who to surround yourself with.
People fear setting boundaries and setting a simple request. If you are a timely person and you have a relationship with someone who is always thirty minutes late, you are always going to be low-key aggravated and feel unimportant and undervalued. A conversation needs to be had. What are we tolerating? You are leaving the boundary to needs unmet by not asserting your needs- that’s the issue.
AN EFFECTIVE BOUNDARY ACTIVITY TO TRY
To improve boundaries in your life, you can do something called a ‘Resentment Inventory.’ On a piece of paper, write the top five things you are feeling resentment for in your life. Small, BIG, anything in between and that will tell you where you need a boundary, where a need of yours is not being met.
CO-DEPENDENCY AND THE CONNECTION WITH BOUNDARIES
The foundation of co-dependency is disordered boundaries. Co-dependency is when you feel you must be the saviour for someone when it isn’t your place to save them. By doing this, you are depriving them of taking their own ownership and responsibility for the situation. It is when this person being in pain is distressing you so much that you need to fix it, like when a child hasn’t finished their primary school project, so you do it for them (my mum was guilty of this!) or when you try to save a friend with addiction by doing everything for them, getting them a therapist, etc., acting more like their parent. It is very common among empaths to be co-dependents because they feel everything so deeply.
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Danielle Baron, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Danielle catalyses children and adults to rise like a phoenix from the flames 🔥 and to reach their optimum potential. She is an entrepreneur, inspiring 11+ and 7+ entrance exams tutor, rapid transformational therapist®️, business coach for overachievers, a life coach for all, and an NLP Master practitioner, and she is also certified by the ILM.
One of Danielle’s much-loved abilities is being an overachiever because she thrives on the excitement and follows her passion, which is to help people live fulfilling lives.
Over the last five years of her tuition business, Danielle has become extremely popular and respected in the tuition industry and is a mentor and coach to other tutors to help them increase revenue in their businesses, but ultimately to be the best tutors they can be. Her own tuition service incorporates coaching for parents and children throughout the exam process and NLP classes for children to help them with lack of confidence, bullying, and anxiety and to help them focus on the imminent goal of exams and to visualise and believe in their success.
Danielle’s second business, coaching and therapy, has been a long time coming and her personal interest in people and psychology led her to invest in the most high-quality courses to be the best for her clients. For her rapid transformational therapy ®️, she had the privilege of personally being mentored by Marisa Peer, a world-renowned therapist. Rapid transformational therapy is a combination of NLP, CBT, psychotherapy and hypnosis.
It has been Danielle’s personal experiences that have led her to where she is today. At age four, her father died of suicide, which installed in her a determination to help prevent people from ever becoming despaired again. Her best friend passed away at fifteen, which solidified Danielle’s determination to live life to the full. Growing up with a single parent, they struggled with money, but Danielle was very inspired by her mother’s work ethic, which had a huge impact on her.
As a teacher in some schools, the politics and bullying amongst staff were toxic and she suffered from depression, stress and burnout and was treated badly at her most vulnerable time of being pregnant and having a newborn and that’s why she’s passionate about helping teachers. She wishes that she had someone to help her at the time.
She has been through the journey of setting up successful businesses on her own while undertaking childcare as a single parent of two after she divorced and strongly believes anyone can achieve anything they put their mind to with grit, focus, and passion.
