How A Lack of Boundaries Affects You

by Melanie | Mar 12, 2020 | Blog, Home, Life, Personal Development

This post is an excerpt from a Make It Happen Podcast episode. To hear the episode instead, click here.

More than anything I think we have information overload.  We’re processing a whole lot of information on a daily, and in some cases minute-by-minute basis.  We hear conflicting ideas from friends, family, doctors, news articles, passer by-ers on the street and…just everyone! Everyone has an opinion and their own way of doing things but you don’t have to care about something just because your friend does.  

When you have to process and dissect a whole lot of information, it becomes challenging to gut through all the excess to figure out what you want.  As in: the stuff your soul actually wants without outside influence impacting you. 

Be cautious of where you’re taking in information from. 

We know that many organizations and companies have something in it for them so they can fear monger you into buying their products or following their ideals.  However, this can happen much more subtly with people. Often, we go around repeating the same information we have been told or raised with throughout our lives. 

Just think back to when you were a kid and how everyone would ask you what you wanted to be when you grew up. I remember adults asking me and I’d answer lawyer, journalist, magazine editor, or whatever my career interest was.  Of course, my pool of knowledge in terms of careers was also incredibly small. I don’t feel like I am significantly more aware of careers nowadays because there are just so many. But as a kid, I wasn’t taught to keep boundaries.

I mean, the obvious boundaries regarding safety, yes, I was taught those. There are physical boundaries that one can utilize to stay away from rude, dangerous, or otherwise harmful people or situations.  However you can’t always choose what people interact with you or shield yourself from what they say.

That’s where emotional or–actually, I’d prefer to call them energetic boundaries. Energetic boundaries are something I’ve learned more about in the past year.  To have these in place means you are able to have outside projections, societal conditioning, propaganda, or misinformation come your way and not take it all to heart.  

Here’s how this looks for me. 

Lately, what I’ve been trying to be cautious of is the espousal of diet or thin idealism language or ideas.  Anyone can fall into this trap because conditioning is so strong and deep. Most frequently I’ll hear people make comments about not being able to eat certain things– that aren’t objectively even bad foods–but they have been told by diet culture that select foods are off limits because they are unhealthy.  I also try not to look at anyone’s plate because I don’t need to compare my serving sizes to them, nor do I want anyone else comparing their meals to mine.

Another gnarly thing is when people make comments about what someone is wearing. I have heard both of my parents do this and now with my clear eyes I can see that this was present when I was younger, too.  Unfortunately, the people saying these things aren’t bad people. They are victim to conditioning. They heard certain ideas at one point in their life, the ideas were likely reinforced to the point where they became subconsciously ingrained in the person’s mind, and then there these people go spreading the same ideas around.

There is so much more I could probably say on this but for the sake of keeping myself on the subject, boundaries are how we navigate the world because we choose how much space to allow outside influence to occupy into our psyche. 

Yes/No

Beyond physical and energetic boundaries, we also have verbal boundaries–the choice to say yes or no to things that either resonate with us or don’t resonate with us. I think it’s a really important practice to say yes or no to everything to give yourself the reminder that you always have a choice.

The people who don’t have their shit together are typically saying yes to things that distract them from what they really need or want to be doing and therefore need to employ usage of the word no. 

Another thing that could be happening is not making a decision.

A shrug or middle ground stance strips you of your decision-making power. I’m not saying you have to be a dictator when making plans with your friends but when you feel “eh” about something.  This might intuitively feel different for you but for me I initially feel a sense of “blah”. As if I don’t care what happens. But, as I’ve been exploring this decision-making power to set boundaries, I’ve realized I do care and most often the indifference is hiding a no.  It’s me wishful to leave an event but not wanting to hurt anyone’s feelings. Or being cognizant of my schedule or my ideal bed time (when I’m hanging out late at night) and going along with what those around me want to do even though my heart is telling me this is going to set me back or I don’t have the energy to do more.

As I said before, these are things we really need to practice.  There are a lot of temptations and sometimes it’s not a big deal to splurge once in a while.  You’ve just got to be aware of what boundaries you value and try your best to say yes to yourself more than others.