GOOD fences make good neighbours. A sturdy fence leaves us in no doubt about where an individual’s territory begins and ends. Whether it’s the indignant "Keep Out" scrawl on a teenager’s matt-black bedroom door, or the "Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted" sign on an MOD firing range, the message is loud and clear: this far and no further.
Personal boundaries are a different country altogether. The borders that mark and bound our sense of self and help create a safe place where it’s OK to be who we really are, can be difficult to establish and hard to maintain. We can’t exactly stick a post-it to our forehead saying, "Do Not Proceed Beyond This Point". We rely on a much more fluid and complex range of signs when it comes to the kind of boundary setting that protects the integrity of our mental, emotional, physical and intellectual space.
Since the flood of allegations of sexual harassment and assault concerning public figures emerged, the breaching of boundaries – and its potentially harmful consequences – have been at the epicentre of the media. Personal boundaries are inextricably tethered to our sense of self-worth. If we have an under-developed sense of our intrinsic value, we are easy pickings for the power-predators and narcissists who tend to see people in terms of commodities that can be used to service their own needs (usually power, sex or money). You may well think you could ring-fence a predator a mile off. Probably not. Not because they are necessarily hard to spot, but because we lack a vital ingredient: the self-worth that makes personal boundary-setting possible. Without self-worth in relationships, we are flotsam and jetsam morsels in a shark-infested sea.
From an early age, many of us are taught to believe that what we feel and think doesn’t really matter. Just get on the bus and observe a small child as she tries to tell her mother about what happened at nursery school that morning; all too often, Mum or Dad is fiddling with a phone and not listening. Or consider the friend who insists you go shopping with them even after you’ve said you’re really rattled and stressed and would much rather go for a walk by the sea or lie in the bath and read a book. Somehow, though, you end up in Sauchiehall Street on a Saturday afternoon, hot, sweaty and angry at yourself (and the world) as your friend parades in yet another outfit for the Christmas night out. You smile and say: yeah, you look great in that. And then you soothe the burn of resentment by telling yourself that at least you’re not as egocentric as your pal. It’s a rather perverse way of deriving self-worth.
These micro-denials of what we are really feeling and thinking and the wholesale dismissal of how we need to act in order to feel OK about who we are, may seem insignificant, but they are not. As soon as we are able to toddle and talk, we learn that pleasing others can get us extra treats. Right at the very start of life, we get into the habit of forfeiting our personal integrity in order to get approval from others, mistakenly believing that this is the same as being loved. Sadly, this only reinforces our fear that love will be withdrawn if we are unable or unwilling to please those around us. We have all been there at some stage in our lives and it’s a bleak place to be. There is nothing that induces our sense of helplessness more than the feeling that our value is contingent upon the approval of other fickle folk.
Most of us learn the hard way when it comes to recognising our limits in relation to the behaviour and demands of others. Usually, more than a few fingers have to get burned before we fully understand the consequences of not protecting and valuing personal boundaries. At best, we will feel a little used and taken for granted. At worst, we can end up feeling that our identity and personhood are disposable and eminently replaceable and that we have become a service, rather than a person. Saying "no" in order to protect our self-worth and sanity can be scary and requires much practice but it’s a battle worth fighting. Ignore gut feelings at your peril. They’re the writing on the wall.
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