Demystifying Boundaries: Holiday Edition Pt. 1
We’ve officially entered the portal that is the collection of days between October 31 and January 1, where time either speeds up to a nauseating rate or slows down to barely perceptible levels. You’ve heard it before, or experienced it yourself. This time of year, what we in the U.S. call the “holidays”, can be a challenging time for people. For many, this time of year can be a marker of grief, a reminder of the things we’ve lost or never had. Things like loving, stable relationships with family members. Or a home to go to. For many, this time of year can be stained with responsibilities. The burdens that come with planning family vacations, with returning home to spend time with parents, with navigating raising children while caretaking aging loved ones.
For a lot of us, it may be a mixture of all of the above, plus the good things too, like sharing precious time together. Like making each other warm cups of tea or communicating I love you’s with nostalgic goodies. It may be a house filled with the cozy scent of butter and cinnamon sugar. Or, it may be like experiencing the arc of life in an instant as you watch generations of your very own lineage experiencing one another and exchanging love.
The “holidays” are a big ball of messy life, all tangled up in blue (link included because I just really like Bob Dylan). And instead of getting caught up tight in the tangle, I wanted to discuss the big bad B-word today (and I’m not talking about the one reserved for emergency purposes only when your mom’s driving you nuts). I’m referring to the ever so trendy topic of boundaries.
This word has entered mainstream language and has, as words do when adopted by the masses, naturally lost some of its meaning. Gotten watered down or at the very least, gotten confusing as the collective plays telephone with a big, important, and fairly abstract concept. So…
What the f*ck is a boundary?
Given my academic, clinical, and personal experience, I define a boundary as a way of expressing care for yourself and another person by communicating what it is you (operative word, here) will do if you’re feeling overwhelmed, stressed, or dysregulated. While a boundary is drawn in relationship to other people’s actions, it actually has nothing to do with other people. Let me repeat this. A boundary has nothing to do with other people. This is the whole point of a boundary. You are empowered to take care of yourself regardless of how other people show up. Boundaries are everything. They not only protect you and your nervous system when stressed, but they also protect others from you in times of stress.
This has so many implications for the ways we live our lives. It means your wellbeing is in your own hands. It means, as one of my favorite thinkers, Viktor Frankl, says, “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom” (mic drop). What Frankl is saying here is that no matter what (or who) is pushing you over the emotional edge, you have the power to choose your response.
If you’re not yet convinced of the power of boundaries, think about this. Boundaries are so powerful that they even help reframe the idea of victims and bullies. That instead, moments when we feel victimized or antagonistic are actually just pointing out where we may need to set better boundaries to take care of ourselves for our own sake or for the sake of others (more on this in another post).
Now that I’ve answered what boundaries are, stay tuned for part 2 of this series where I’ll dig deeper into how to set them. Happy holidays and happy boundary-setting!
