Resource Resources for Learning Boundaries

[GoodPersonEffed]

Please share any that have helped you!

Over the years, many books helped me feel "right" after years of false blame and wrong behaviors directed at me, but then what comes next? The following books helped me progress beyond victim and abuser labels, and start being in my own self-power. They provided frameworks I regularly apply to help me in assessing others' character and motives, creating and maintaining boundaries, and recognizing when I'm not honoring others' boundaries and autonomy. (It's easy to be "right"; it takes courage and strength to face when I'm the one in the wrong and change my behavior, as I wish my parents could have done.)

Boundaries - I ignored the Christian acrobatics and the my-shit-doesn't-stink tone of the authors. Helped me to know what's in my yard and what's in others' yards (who is responsible for what), how to recognize when others are trying to override my boundaries and identify their techniques, how to recognize when I'm overriding my own, how to set consequences to reinforce boundaries, becoming autonomous from parents, and more. I finally got a clue about how my dad's passivity and non-connection were boundary issues.

In Sheep's Clothing - Called covert manipulation, the tactics used by narcissists and others to manipulate, including gaslighting. Shows how some people always have to win and set up situations that are only win or lose. Goes well with Boundaries, provides even more behaviors that indicate one's boundaries are being attacked. I had to overlook the author's I'm-very-right tone and propensity for labeling. I have to remind myself to not label someone just because they use the techniques; it's their consistent behavior that reveals their character. This book is taught me to notice that behavior reveals character, and helped my ability to judge others more accurately. Teaches how to recognize when it's best to go no contact, and best practices when you can't.

Controlling People and Victory Over Verbal Abuse, two of the four books by Patricia Evans. Illustrate how other people define you and cannot recognize your autonomy, that is, your separateness from them. I had very controlling parents and a verbally abusive mother, and after years of therapy and trying to work with other books, these two finally made it clear what was going on. I experienced a lot of validation. Not the standard labels of narcissist, borderline, and other DSM faux-pathologies, which are limiting and condemning, but rather the skewed lenses through which one sees the others they try to control. It's really not about you, and these books show how. I had an aggressive mother and a distant father who supported her, I finally got a framework to see how each was trying to control the person they perceived, not the actual me. She can get a bit repetitive, sees herself as very right, and creates her own labels, but the labels serve the allegories she sets up. She has a tendency to try to sell her other books and herself. She is a self-professed expert with an education in psychology but is not a clinician, she's a public speaker, consultant, and gives seminars to audiences and clinicians.

 

[GoodPersonEffed]

Another book I found very helpful: If You Had Controlling Parents

 

[GoodPersonEffed]

Adding the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. Lots of good stuff about personal integrity and how to be responsible to others while maintaining boundaries. He is the only leader I have ever almost completely respected.

 

[GoodPersonEffed]

The manipulation tactics listed in the book recommended in the OP, In Sheep's Clothing:

https://sanctioned-suicide.net/threads/manipulation-tactics.31123/

 

[GoodPersonEffed]

My favorite text from Boundaries:

The parents of a twenty-five-year-old man came to see me with a common request: they wanted me to "fix" their son, Joshua.

When I asked where Joshua was, they answered, "Oh, he didn't want to come."

"Why?" I asked.

"Well, he doesn't think he has a problem," they replied.

"Maybe he's right," I said, to their surprise. "Tell me about it."

They recited a history of problems that had begun at a very young age. Joshua had never been "quite up to snuff" in their eyes. In recent years he had exhibited problems with drugs and an inability to stay in school and find a career. It was apparent that they loved their son very much and were heartbroken over the way he was living.

They had tried everything they knew to get him to change and live a responsible life, but all had failed. He was still using drugs, avoiding responsibility, and keeping questionable company. They told me that they had always given him everything he needed. They supported him financially at school so "he wouldn't have to work and he would have plenty of time for study and a social life." When he flunked out of one school, or stopped going to classes, they were more than happy to do everything they could to get him into another school, "where it might be better for him."

After they had talked for a while, I responded: "I think your son is right. He doesn't have a problem."

You could have mistaken their expression for a snapshot; they stared at me in disbelief for a full minute. Finally the father said, "Did I hear you right? You don't think he has a problem?"

"That's correct," I said. "He doesn't have a problem. You do. He can do pretty much whatever he wants, no problem. You pay, you fret, you worry, you plan, you exert energy to keep him going. He doesn't have a problem because you have taken it from him. Those things should be his problem, but as it now stands, they are yours. Would you like for me to help you help him to have some problems?"

They looked at me like I was crazy, but some lights were beginning to go on in their heads. "What do you mean, 'help him to have some problems'?" his mother asked.

"Well," I explained, "I think that the solution to this problem would be to clarify some boundaries so that his actions cause him problems and not you."

"What do you mean, 'boundaries'?" the father asked.

"Look at it this way. It is as if he's your neighbor, who never waters his lawn. But whenever you turn on your sprinkler system, the water falls on his lawn. Your grass is turning brown and dying, but Joshua looks down at his green grass and thinks to himself, My yard is doing fine. That is how your son's life is. He doesn't study or plan or work, yet he has a nice place to live, plenty of money, and all the rights of a family member who is doing his part.

"If you would define the property lines a little better, if you would fix the sprinkler system so that the water would fall on your lawn, and if he didn't water his own lawn, he would have to live in dirt. He might not like that after a while.

"As it stands now, he is irresponsible and happy, and you are responsible and miserable. A little boundary clarification would do the trick. You need some fences to keep his problems out of your yard and in his, where they belong."

"Isn't that a bit cruel, just to stop helping like that?" the father asked.

"Has helping him helped?" I asked.

His look told me that he was beginning to understand.

 

[noaccount]

I LOVE that passage from 'Boundaries,' GPE.
Uh, for me - "Many Roads One Journey," and anything by Alice Miller.

 

[GoodPersonEffed]

Another helpful book is Al-Anon's Courage to Change, daily readings. My parents were abusive but not substance abusers, so I went to Al-Anon for support. I didn't go to meetings for long, I had the boundary issues but different root causes, so it wasn't quite a fit, but I got a lot of healing through journaling using this book as a guide. It definitely helped with co-dependency and inappropriate ownership of others' actions and problems.

 

[GoodPersonEffed]

Boundary Examples


I'm not sure if much of anyone has found value in this thread, but it is a subject I regularly engage with. I returned to some of my previous study and found something of particular benefit to me that I thought to share.

The following is a list of examples of boundaries to help identify, understand, and use them. I'm writing from notes I took from the book Boundaries, including not only the authors' words but some of my own reflections. The final boundary, unwillingness, is one I came up with on my own.


Skin
Words
Truth
Geographical Distance
Time
Other People
Consequences
Willingness

Skin

• Protects blood, bones and organs
• Keeps germs outside and protects from infection
• Has openings to let in the "good" (food, water, oxygen, sensory input) and let out the "bad" (waste products)

Words

• Your words let other people know where you stand and thus give them a sense of the "edges" that help identify and delineate you.
• "No" lets others know that you exist separately from them and that you are in control of you, defining your responsibility for and ownership of you.
• If you cannot say no to external or internal pressure, you have lost control of your property and the ability to enjoy the benefits of self-control.
• If you have been coerced or manipulated into giving up your "no," or saying or doing anything other than what you want, then it is not your choice and not something you own or are responsible for. Once you are away from the situation and/or have regained the power of self-control, you can choose to take back your "no" and all other intentions, and let whoever was coercing or manipulating deal with the consequences, as they are responsible for them.

Truth

• There is safety in knowing the truth about myself, and about others.
• Honesty about who you are, what you feel, and what you value gives you integrity, the state of being whole and undivided.

Geographical Distance

• Physically removing yourself from a person, environment, or situation can be done to protect myself, and to replenish yourself physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually when you are giving or have been made to give, expend, or had taken from your limits, or near them, or beyond them.
• Separate as you are capable from those who hurt you or try to take from you by creating a safe place with external or internal distance. Internal safe places include revisiting values and virtues.
• "The prudent see danger and take refuge." Proverbs 22:3 [Please note there are many secular adages which say the same thing, no intention to push dogma here, I am not religious.]

Time

• Taking time off from a person, situation, or environment can be a way of regaining ownership of some aspect of your life that has been out of control and where boundaries need to be set or reestablished.
• Even a short break, such as walking away and doing something else, can help to regain control and and set a boundary, reinforce it, or reestablish it.

Consequences

• Like the threat of prosecution on a No Tresspassing sign, or the threatening sharpness of an animal's teeth that are bared, consequences give barbs to the fences of boundaries.
• Consequences let people know the seriousness of the tresspass and the seriousness of your respect for yourself. This teaches them that you protect yourself and what you value.

Unwillingness

• If you are not willing to do something, that is an internal boundary telling you that you need to say no to whatever someone is wanting you to do. It is not to your benefit.
• If you negate yourself for a "higher good," it's really for someone else's good, and that creates disharmony, both within yourself and within the relationship or situation.
• Unwillingness is like anger in that it is a warning system, a friend, and a guide.
• Manipulation and coercion are attempts to override unwillingness and to take what is not offered.
• If someone wants you to say yes or to give something when you are not willing, they want for themselves something that you treasure and value, including external or internal resources that you want to protect. You are not required to sacrifice for others what is yours, what you need, or what you value or treasure.