Enforcing appropriate boundaries is the single most powerful thing that you can do unilaterally to improve your life as a NonBP. Because many borderlines never seriously seek the help they need to improve their side of the relationship, enforcing appropriate boundaries has become recognized in our online community of Nons as the single most powerful technique for improving the situation. Your BPSO doesn’t need to cooperate for you to set boundaries. Boundaries will change your life. It will get better over time. Without boundaries it won’t get better over time. They are that essential.
Boundaries are lines that separate objects. In terms of people and human relationships, boundaries are invisible lines that separate people from each other. Their purpose is to help keep us safe. Boundaries come in many forms and protect various parts of us. These include physical, emotional, spiritual, financial, and relational. For instance, what is appropriate between a husband and a wife is not appropriate between a mother and a child. What is appropriate between a mother and child is inappropriate between employer and employee.
To get the concept in a different way, we invite you to think of the walls around a castle. People live inside the castle. There is a moat around the castle with water and other obstacles inside it. There is a bridge across the moat that leads to a drawbridge. People use the drawbridge to enter or leave the castle. There is a trained guardsman at the drawbridge. He knows how to operate the mechanism that raises or lowers the drawbridge. He knows who to let in, and what to let in. The guardsman knows who are enemies of those who live in the castle. He knows his job so well that people inside the castle are often unaware that he’s even there. Things go well.
One day, though, a new guardsman is hired. But the head guardsman is too busy, and somehow, no one else gives the new man any training in how to operate the mechanism for raising and lowering the draw bridge. No one teaches the new guardsman who lives in the castle and who does not. No one tells the new guardsman who the ‘enemies’ are. He is confused. Although he has the best of intentions, and does his absolute best, he lets the wrong people in and keeps those who live in the castle on the outside. As a result bad things happen to the people in the castle.
Like the new guardsman, many Non’s didn’t get the right training to be an effective guardsman of their feelings, emotions and body. They’re not sure what to allow in and what not to allow in. They’re not sure how to make the mechanism that opens the draw bridge work correctly. They leave it open when it should be closed, or leaving it closed when it should be open. Or it gets stuck half way open and half way closed, doing no one any good. In other words, the Non allows those (particularly the BP) in his/her life to take advantage of them, abuse or violate them. This causes them great pain and hurt. Nons often end up believing that they deserve the bad things that happen to them.
Healthy boundaries can also be imagined as a sort of a ‘majick bubble’. This bubble surrounds you and keeps you safe. It allows oxygen and food and other good things inside to nourish you and allow you to feel, learn and grow in good ways. This majick bubble is invisible to others.
This majick bubble gets larger, creating more space around you to give more distance between you and others for safety. To keep you from being hurt. It gets smaller, to allow others closer to you - intimacy.
For those of you who enjoy Star Trek, this majick bubble is like a force field. It keeps all the meteors and other space debris from hitting the ship. It is permeable enough to allow air, food and other good things inside for the crew. It is strong enough to keep bad things, like photon torpedoes, out.
The most basic physical boundary that we are all familiar with, is our skin. It is a barrier that protects our physical body. It keeps us safe. If our skin is violated, like a cut or scratch, we are open to infection, pain and even disease.
You have many tools to help you keep this majick bubble just the right size. Some of these tools are words, actions, facial expressions, the ability to move toward or away from another person. Learning which tool to use, and when, is a new concept for many Nons and takes time, repetition and patience.
Boundaries are a fascinating concept for most Nons first learning about them. Most of us Nons have poor or less than effective boundaries. Many of us Non’s have boundaries that are of the ’all or nothing’ kind.. either full walls, layers thick that an atomic bomb couldn’t dint, or nothing, nada, zilch..
This is often a legacy from dysfucntional families of origin where our sense of self was not allowed to develop in a healthy way. Boundaries are supposed to be elastic, stretching out to give us more space and distance, or shrinking in to allow those we care about close to us, called intimacy.
Empathy is a skill that in some professions is valued, like nursing, counseling, and others where being able to ’walk in the other guys/gals shoes’ gives us valuable information and insight that allows us to provide support to them during times of conflict or crisis. Empathy can be a bad and unhealthy thing, if we put the others needs higher on our priority list than our own, while never quite getting to looking after our own needs and wants.
If we are not sure where we begin and end and the BP in our lives begin and end, it might be possible to have some sort of ’connection’ or heightened awareness of what is going on for them, or for others.
It comes down to balance and health, I think. Asking the following questions might give us a sense of where we’re at and where we might choose to go to get healthier or stay healthier. Do I have a good grasp of my own sense of self? Do I ensure that my needs and wants get at least equal attention and time? Do they get met often? Never? At the BP’s discretion?
Am I strong enough in my own experience of reality to stay out of the Land of Oz (BP reality)?
In the same way, if we are injured in other boundary places, we carry scars and places of vulnerability. These may be almost invisible to others. Being in a relationship with someone who has a personality disorder can leave many areas of vulnerability, many areas of injury, pain and suffering. When we don’t know how to repair that damage, more damage happens over time. By learning to set appropriate and healthy boundaries, we begin to repair the damage we’ve sustained.
Many Non’s grew up with an abusive parent, or in a home where feelings weren’t recognized as important friends. Perhaps they had a parent who expected a child to meet the parents’ needs in an inappropriate manner or where the child’s needs were unrecognized and unimportant. Perhaps one of the parents had a personality disorder. Like the guardsman who didn’t know how to do his job, many Non’s didn’t learn the skills they needed to set appropriate and healthy boundaries.
It is important to remember, that you have certain rights. These are your rights, even if you learned something different, formally or informally, in your family of birth. You have rights, even when the BP in your life tells you something different or makes you think it’s all your fault.
Being involved in a relationship with someone who has a personality disorder is frightening and damaging to you, the Non. You may have been exposed to a lot of projection or other traits of the disorder in ways that challenge your sense of the person that you know yourself to be. It may feel like you’ve taken a trip to the Land of Oz, and none of the rules you are familiar with make sense any more.
So, you may be thinking: “Now that I have a little bit of understanding about boundaries, what do I do now?” Or, “How can this help me with the BP in my life?”
These are both good questions. So what can you do? You can begin to learn to set healthy boundaries. Establishing a boundary may seem intimidating at first. This involves deciding what is acceptable behavior for you to engage or participate in, and setting a limit or consequence about what you will do if that boundary is not respected.
You might want to take some time and make a list of the most serious issues you have with your BP now. Then put them in order of how important they are to you. If you are being abused or if you are afraid of physical violence, we strongly suggest you contact an emergency shelter and leave immediately.
Many BP’s are very good at creating crazy making and chaos. They can often talk circles around you and make you think you are the one who’s controlling, unreasonable, selfish, or a myriad of other things that you are not. Hang on to your own reality. You can find others who’ve shared these experiences or many like them on our mailing list.
For more information on boundaries, go to our Partners page and read some web pages, or read some of the recommended books about boundaries. Life is a Cycle of learning and growth. You get to choose for you.
Follow the link if you want some exercises to see if you have unhealthy boundaries and to test your knowledge of boundaries in various situations. Learn to set healthy boundaries.
One of the most effective ways to learn about boundaries is in counseling. If you are having trouble thinking about what boundaries are appropriate for you, or are having trouble enforcing your boundaries
- Deedee and Kelly
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Disclaimer: The information on this site (http://www.bpd411.org) is based on personal experiences of the authors and members of our e-mail mailing list. It is NOT meant to replace professional advice or take the place of counseling, therapy or additional personal research.
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