How to set boundaries and protect yourself from negative energy
Your Guide to Personal Boundaries
A common issue that will come up in your journey of personal development and growth is related to how to develop healthy boundaries. This article will help you understand personal boundaries and their importance in your life, help you understand what healthy and unhealthy boundaries look like in your life, and give you a powerful exercise and tools that can help you move forward to create better personal boundaries for yourself. This article is the perfect compliment to my latest video here.
Have you ever felt like this? Resentful, burned-out, taken, or taken advantage of. Like you have given your all in a relationship or other circumstance and found yourself let down, disappointed, or drained when your expectations hadn’t been met or the energy you invested seemed all for nothing. One reason why these feelings may crop into your life could be correlated to the personal boundaries that you have in your life.
How are your personal boundaries? Are they healthy? Are they unhealthy? Are they so-so? Or does it depend on who you're interacting with?
What are Personal Boundaries and Why are They Important
Personal boundaries are the limits that you set in your life for not only what you will or will not allow in regards to how you treat yourself but they are also limits for how much or how little you will allow other people or circumstances to impact your life. In relationships, particularly, it is what dictates the acceptable and unacceptable behavior that you are willing to allow .
They are important because they are directly tied to your self image. How you mentally see yourself… your pride… your confidence and sense of self worth in this world are directly reflected in the personal boundaries that you set in your life.
What I often find when I'm working with clients, is when you don't have personal boundaries with the other people in your life, and they're impacting you and your energy and your stability and your emotional well being, it disrupts your personal life. That is where the majority of problems lie and if you sat down and disconnected from that disruptive energy, you would find that you are living a very good life. You have lots to be thankful once you don’t place your happiness on external factors that you don’t allow to impact your life so powerfully and negatively.
Signs of Unhealthy Personal Boundaries
When you don't have healthy boundaries life can downright suck and while it may seem obvious, here are some of the things that will occur to clue you in that you need to tighten up your boundaries. You may have people that treat you like a doormat. Now, let this sink in because especially in relationships, we are taught that, especially in marriage, we need to try to stick it out and go through all these ups and downs even though sometimes those ups and downs can border on disrespect, lack of boundaries, lack of your partner respecting and uplifting and valuing you and invalidating who you are as a person. When somebody is doing that to you that is very intimate to you, it can be very concerning. However, we are taught in those types of relationships that we should stick it out.
That was obvious, but let’s consider some less obvious ways that could be a clue to you that you lack healthy personal boundaries. Do you experience feelings of being resentful? Think about areas in which you may be resentful because that can show a lack of healthy boundaries.
For some of us, another way this can show up is via feelings of being burned out. You'll talk about work sometimes...you work somewhere where they don't really respect you as a human being and you give so much of yourself hoping for a reward, recognition, or validation for all that you give but when that energy exchange is not aligned,you feel resentful, tired, and dumped on. You know what that feels like right... I know I do. But here is something you may not want to hear. That is your own problem. That wasn't the other person's problem. It took me a while to learn that lesson. Not speaking up for yourself and depleting your energy without an even energy exchange. shows that you have a lack of personal boundaries.
If you find yourself in positions where you are easily manipulated or pushed, you may have a lack of personal boundaries. In a lot of relationships where you feel disrespected, or you feel like your partner, or who they're interacting with, is just telling you what you want to hear in order to gain a reaction out of you or to get what they want out of you and you fall for it. Is that really the other person's problem that you were allowed to be manipulated by something that somebody said? Or do you have a lack of personal boundaries?
Some of us don't know how to say no, we put everything on our plate. You say yes to things you could do or should do even if you don't want to do it. YOU have a problem saying no and so you end up over scheduled, over committed, tired and not having any time for yourself for the things that are important to you and then you wonder why you don't live a life that's in alignment with what you want. Could it be because you’re saying yes to everybody else except yourself? You've already given your all and are tired after all of that. So not being able to say no is a problem with personal boundaries.
Having a lack of personal boundaries, thereby showing that you devalue your worth and sense of importance, can manifest in many ways in your life. So it is up to you to look for these clues so that you can learn how to be more aware of when you are compromising your boundaries for the sake of other people or situations.
Benefits of Healthy Boundaries
Stick with me here because there is hope. Life can be different for you and it starts with understanding that you have a right to have a life that is more in flow, less stressful, and you deserve to be connected with people that will respect you and be considerate of your feelings. Imagine what your life could be like--You could:
Live in your truth
Have healthy relationships with yourself and others
Live a stable life where you feel more in control
Be more in touch with your true reality
Doesn’t that sound better? Well before you get dismissive because maybe you don’t know what to do to get from where you are now to a place where you feel more in control… hold up… I got you! I have a powerful activity that you can use to get you started on your way to adopting health personal boundaries.
Activity to Assess Boundaries in Your Life
Life Inventory Activity
Sometimes taking an inventory of where we stand in life can help us to connect to the actual areas we need to work on so that it won’t seem so overwhelming when you need to set boundaries for yourself. You could fill in this grid to help you get started.
**If you need help figuring out what you could do to take you closer to building healthy boundaries, you can check out this Personal Boundaries Masterclass along with this handout of Personal Boundary tips.**
So there you have it, having personal boundaries, or lack thereof, is usually a larger symptom of how you value and see yourself. To create more healthy boundaries, it requires you to know that you are worthy of love, respect and consideration. First from yourself and then from others. The activities provided are integral to helping you be more in tune with yourself and your feelings so that you can adequately communicate those to others. Through open communication you can foster healthier boundaries and in turn create better relationships and healthier environments for yourself.
If you want to learn more about why boundaries are important, how to set emotional boundaries, some examples of crossed boundaries, how energy works, and how to protect yourself from negative energy then I have the perfect class for you!
This class also has bonus tips on how to protect yourself from negative energy and some spiritual techniques to protect yourself from negative energy and tips to protect yourself from negative people and circumstances. It also comes with a worksheet with tips to help you protect yourself from negative energy and set boundaries.
You can take the class immediately here!