How would you answer someone if they asked you, “How well do you protect your physical boundaries?”. If it were asked by anyone other than a therapist, that’d be pretty odd, but nonetheless, roll with it. Put simply – physical boundaries are things like personal space, your comfort level with physical touch, and your physical needs such as eating, drinking, using the bathroom, grooming, etc.
How difficult is it for you to gently let someone know that you prefer not to hug while being greeted, or how often do you intend to take a break at work to grab a bite to eat only to find yourself eating at your desk while trying to type a response to client emails? There are many ways in which people do not protect their physical boundaries as well as they could, but this type of boundary often gets neglected by those who experience some of the reasons outlined in last week’s blog (Read it here: Put Your Boundaries in Check).
For example, if we experience the need to want to fit in or belong, we may not point out when someone makes us uncomfortable by placing their hand on our forearm as a gesture of solidarity or unity. Maybe you’ve worked 50 hours this week, and your body is exhausted, but Amy from the sales department invited you to her partner’s birthday party after work on Friday. Although you feel like saying “Thank you, but no thank you”, you don’t, because you fear it would send some sort of message that you don’t wish to have future invitations to her events.
Your next thought may then be “What if Amy tells everyone from work that I’m a party pooper and think I’m too good to go to her party, and then no one invites me anywhere ever again?” (don’t you love the resulting anxiety spiral). Based on these social pressures and neglect of your physical boundaries, you then decide “who needs sleep?”, and force your fatigued body to spend roughly two hours at a party that effectively costs you to lose two hours of your Saturday, which you could have otherwise used to acquire more sleep or get those annoying errands done more quickly so you can FINALLY relax? This reasoning can also apply to FOMO (fear of missing out) but, in reality, the only thing you’d be missing out on is meeting your needs!
Do you have an overbearing boss or work for a company with wildly unrealistic expectations of your productivity, not to mention the degree of loyalty? Have you been asked to work overtime last minute to get those reports done by 9:00 AM the next day despite having worked 12 hours that day? When we feel stoic or have a fear of saying ‘no’, thereby disregarding the protection of our personal boundaries, we often experience burnout. This can apply to family life as much as work.
There’s no doubt that you want your kids to experience all the joys in life that they can and, by ensuring that, you commit to soccer practice once/week plus a weekly game, swim lessons on the weekend, tutoring twice/week – the list can go on. Kudos to the parents out there who go above and beyond for their kids, but your kids already know you love them, so keep in mind that while they’re living their best life (at your expense), how is the quality of your life, and what are you teaching them about taking care of themselves by watching you run yourself into the ground trying to make everyone so happy?
Parents who go above and beyond for their kids while suffering to a large degree by neglecting their own needs and physical boundaries sometimes do so out of guilt (another one of our reasons for having poor boundaries). They are trying to make up for the things they lacked in their childhood. They fear becoming their parent(s), or that they will rob their children of some sort of life experience that would otherwise launch them into becoming the next Secretary of State or Pulitzer Prize winner. Isn’t doing things out of guilt and fear the entirely wrong reason we should feel motivation for anything in life, let alone enjoying time spent with our family?
When we lack the self-advocacy and healthy physical boundaries to check in with ourselves and ask, “Is this in my best interest?”, or “Why is it difficult for me to take care of [insert physical need here]?”, go back to your childhood, and seek out those factors that may have contributed to a form of self-neglect which manifested into these poor physical boundaries. Were your physical boundaries upheld in childhood? What type of modeling of physical boundaries did your family demonstrate? Why, at this stage of your life, do you think you are not fulfilling these needs by protecting these boundaries, and what needs to be changed in order to fix that?
I challenge those of you who identify with any or all of these examples of not implementing healthy physical boundaries to identify at least one physical boundary this week to focus on and find ways to improve it so that you can get more of your needs met. If you can identify one that you think others can relate to, leave a comment and/or how you are going to start making that change to reinforce yourself and inspire others on our Instagram here.