4 Keys To Setting Healthy Boundaries

If we manage to establish healthy, firm and clear boundaries, we will favor our mental health. Not only that, but our interpersonal relationships will improve as we make it clear what is and isn’t allowed. Furthermore, this daily exercise allows us to clarify identity, values, and exercise a highly effective assertiveness with which we feel secure in any situation.

However, some note that personal limits are a two-way street. The moment people identify and clearly know their direction, others will follow their own path with millimetric respect. But, as we well know, this is not always the case.

Although we don’t like it, there will always be that kind of skillful profile when it comes to invading other people’s spaces and questioning psychological and emotional boundaries. So it’s not enough just to define these personal barriers, you also need to know how to keep them standing. Achieving this is critical for the rest of our investments in our mental health to bear fruit.

This is what Edward T. Hall and Robert Sommer explained to us in their times. These anthropologists and psychiatrists were pioneers in the study of personal space. These researches, started in 1969, spoke of the limits in which a person is contained and in which he inhabits something more than a physical territory.

It’s a place where we feel mentally, physically and emotionally protected. It’s a haven that no one can violate with their comments or behavior. However, and as surprising as it may seem, something these experts have revealed to us is that in our daily lives it is common to bypass these borders, these barriers that we don’t always protect with the attention and resources we need to keep from falling. Let’s look at how to achieve this below.

1. Honesty: the oxygen of healthy limits

Honesty is an attitude that encompasses true intent and transparency. Nothing is more necessary to reach firm and secure personal limits than to include it in our own attitudes or dispositions. For that, let’s keep in mind:

• It’s impossible to set limits if we don’t make it clear in advance that violating them will have consequences.
• For example, in the context of an affective relationship, the other person must understand that if our self-esteem, values ​​and dignity are attacked, this bond can no longer be maintained.
• Let’s try to maintain consistency. It’s hard to pretend that others don’t violate our boundaries when we don’t do it to others, or that others don’t get lost when the sanctions we impose don’t fit what they’ve done.

• So, being honest implies maintaining an equity between what we say and what we do. Also enter what we demand and what we offer.

Likewise, healthy boundaries need some updating and maintenance work. It’s not worth giving in, it’s not worth leaving an open space where blackmail enters and a request is introduced to which we say “yes”, when it should have been a resounding “no”.

2. Healthy microaggression-proof limits

Microaggressions are like drops of cyanide that we end up diluting in our daily lives almost without realizing it. It’s that sarcastic phrase from a friend. In turn, it is also that macho, “but funny” comment that makes us laugh at a co-worker. It’s that mockery camouflaged by our partner’s affection or even that comment from our mother who doesn’t hesitate to judge us…

All of these examples are actually the subtle stings of everyday microaggression. If we give in to these little attacks one after the other, if these little thorns stick in us every couple of days, there will also come a time when the pain and the wound will appear. We must not allow this, it is necessary to establish healthy and firm limits where aggressions do not enter, regardless of their magnitude.

3. You are responsible for yourself, respect yourself every day

We all demand respect from others. But, do we respect ourselves? Amazingly, not always.

• Psychologists from the University of Virginia, Timothy D. Wilson and Elizabeth W. Dunn, conducted a study in 2004. In it, they showed that one of the main mistakes of the population in psychological issues was precisely not having worked with self-knowledge.

• If we are not able to develop this architecture deprived of needs, desires, weaknesses, fears and identities, we can hardly establish firm limits to protect ourselves from others. Because what am I supposed to protect if I don’t know what defines me, if I don’t know what is permissible for me or what hurts or makes me angry?

This task, that of self-knowledge, is up to us alone. So if we demand respect from others, let’s start by respecting ourselves and listening to that inner voice to know what we need.

4. Detachment as a key to exercising the psychic space

It is often difficult for us to say “no” to that close person because we have an emotional bond with them. Dimensions such as proximity, friendship, affection or even simple respect for someone imply a difficulty in establishing healthy and firm limits. Almost without knowing how, we ended up giving in, saying “yes” when it should have been “no”. Thus, we end up discovering how certain people violate our borders.

We must know clearly: the best muscle to create a safe psychic space is detachment. It is to establish a distance between feelings or affective loyalties in relation to our identity and our real needs. At the same time, we cannot overlook the obvious: those who really respect us will never dare to cross or violate our emotional and psychological boundaries.

In conclusion, when it comes to setting healthy boundaries, we must first focus on all the work on the inside: on ourselves. Self-knowledge, the exercise of self-esteem, self-responsibility and detachment are the essential ingredients with which we can create a safe haven that is safe from intruders.