Difficulty Levels In Defending Your Boundaries

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Sergey Smirnov

Psychologist, gestalt therapist

In some cases, defending your interests is more difficult than in others. In this article, I talk about how these situations differ. And also what complicating factors prevent you from repelling ill-wishers.

Level 1: Say "you are a fool" and do not die of fear

Some, in principle, cannot oppose themselves to external pressure. Either they have nothing to oppose, or they are so afraid of the conflict that they give up as soon as it loomed on the horizon.

By developing their autonomy, unblocking their aggression and gaining faith in themselves, perhaps, support, such people become able to overcome external direct pressure. Sometimes they can endure conflicts. More and more. Until they feel normal (albeit with a storm of emotions, of course) in any conflict. Even in complicated (see below)

Level 2: Say "the fool himself" even when the person does not resist, but is offended and offended in silence. Or even agrees: "Yes, I'm a fool."

When there is a direct conflict, everything is simple. You are bad, I am good. Fight!

But what if you start a fight, and your opponent immediately throws his paws up and pretends that you are attacking and beating him?

Then you get bad! Life did not prepare for this.

It turns out that if you continue to fight, then you seem to sign that you are a bad person (and he cannot be right, as we remember from fairy tales and films). And in general, selfish and heartless. Devoid of empathy.

As a result, a person is faced with a choice: either to defend himself and his boundaries at the risk of being a "bad guy". Or allow others to violate these boundaries, tolerate this whole thing, but be good.

If a person monitors this matter, acquires the necessary psychological competence, understands what is happening, changes his attitudes and allows himself to be bad, then he becomes able not to carry out these manipulations with passive aggression.

Level 3: Say "you are a fool" when no one said "you are a fool", but said "You are a very good person. Continue to do it like this. And here you would be wiser and it would be really cool! From the heart I advise!"

Veiled depreciation is the most difficult to detect. When the opponent instantly stands in the "above" position and looks from there gently and caringly. Even somewhere wise. And patronizingly advises you not reasonable how to correct your shortcomings.

Behind any unsolicited "good" advice lies, firstly, an indication that right now you are somehow not very good, and secondly, an indication of how you should act and what you should be. That is, a direct violation of borders.

Resisting this is also difficult. Because such a person outwardly does not seem to do anything bad. He cares about you. The worst thing is that it is easy for the opponent to maintain emotional stability and not go into a fight. On the contrary, with the smile of a smart-ass Buddha, you can observe the unreasonable behavior of this funny little man nearby. Thus, confirming their superiority and pity and underdevelopment of this little man.

That is, the reciprocal (quite adequate) aggression seems to confirm the status of the enlightened attacker "well-wisher". He can always say something like “why were you so worried? I don’t attack you, I care about you from the bottom of my heart. you want to. But where are you, right? Who is our cute silly bunny-pusya here? Tyu-tu-tu!"

The main thing here is the ability to recognize a run-in to one's borders and reserve the right to react adequately in spite of all these intricacies. Not agreeing to the assigned role from below. Roughly speaking, if a person himself is not sure that he is adequate and good, then it will be very difficult for him to disagree with this aggressor. It is difficult to oppose something.

For confrontation, you need to have a high level of independence and a developed internal locus of control. That is, the ability to rely on yourself and your opinion, your feelings. The ability to independently decide who you are and what you can and cannot. And the acceptance of the shadow part: their weaknesses and unwanted sides. Including, for example, "unreasonableness" and "ingratitude". After all, behaving so stupid when such a wise person gives advice is stupid and ungrateful, right?:)

Complicating factors

Any difficulty level can be made even more difficult by adding complicating factors to them. They greatly increase the complexity while maintaining the internal structure of the conflict.

In public. When everyone is watching

This is the first complicating factor. It's one thing to confront one-on-one. Another thing is to do it when there is a crowd of spectators. In a company, in public or on the Internet, for example.

One of the biggest contributors to insecure behavior and inability to defend yourself is fear of shame. And shame is a social feeling.

If my opponent thinks that I am "an ungrateful, ill-mannered pig who thinks only of himself," then let him think. He's a stupid redneck and doesn't mean anything to me at all. But if the audience decides in the same way, then this is already a disaster. And the freedom of choice in the means of warfare is already less.

All this is solved by several points.

First, resignation to the fact that you will not be able to manage other people's opinions. People will still think what they want and the only thing that remains is to admit the fact that they will decide anything about you anyway. And you cannot change that. Let them decide for themselves. You need to admit your powerlessness in this regard.

Secondly, you need to have the courage to engage in battle with them too, rejecting them, if necessary, together with your opponent. You need to be ready to lose or somehow spoil this relationship. Here, of course, the background of the relationship in which the person is accepted helps, the opportunity (especially proven by experience) to find new people, and so on. That is, if the light has not converged like a wedge on this group, then you can more easily ignore their opinion.

But you need to understand that it is impossible to completely free oneself from public opinion. It will still matter to us what people think of us. Especially from the inner circle. Especially important for us, authoritative people.

When talking about something important

We all describe ourselves in some way, we classify ourselves as social groups, we take on certain roles for ourselves. This is fine.

Some roles are more important than others. For example, one of the main roles is gender identification. It is important for a woman to be a woman, and a man to be a man.

Therefore, devaluation and insults in these areas will be perceived more painfully. Therefore, the favorite female insult is "you're not a man." By the way, I don’t know why among men “which of you is a woman” is not so common at all. Not that I'm in favor of spreading this case. Just an observation after the fact.

If motherhood is an important part of a woman's life, for example, then there is no worse depreciation than "you do not know how to take care of a child, you are a bad mother."

The same applies to the professional sphere. If an important part of the life of the same woman is professional self-realization, then “you are a shitty professional and you can’t do anything” is very painful.

Accordingly, it is especially difficult to defend oneself in these areas. Emotions go wild.

This is solved by allowing yourself to be not ideal someone. And also the adoption of the shadow part. That is, some of your own shortcomings and qualities that you don't really want to accept in yourself. For example, “sometimes I really act like a bad mother. ?"

That is, loyalty to oneself, self-acceptance is the key to successful overcoming.

Authority

If "you are a loser beggar" tells you a gopnik Vasya on a broken six and wearing clothes for 1,500 rubles in total, then his opinion is easy to devalue.

But what if this is said by a person who REALLY has significantly higher life achievements?

What if a really very smart person who has objective evidence of this reproaches you for your lack of intelligence? And he just enjoys your respect?

A simple strategy is to say "you are nobody. And your opinion is the same. Keep it to yourself, but deeper."

But this will not work in the case of an authority that you yourself recognize. Such a person cannot be divided by zero. And you can't just dismiss his opinion.

What helps in this case? Of course, the removal of the crown from authority and the end of idealization. If a person is smart, this does not mean that he is right in general in everything, for example. And if he earns a lot, this does not guarantee that he is not a goat at the same time.

The best tactic is to hear the opinion and leave it to the outside. "You think so. I disagree with you. We will decide on that." And reserve the right to insist on this, rejecting any attempts to push through and impose their opinion.

It turns out that the most difficult thing is to defend your boundaries in the case when they are attached to you from above and benevolently humiliate in public, in relation to the most important spheres of life. And when it is done by the authority, which periodically begins to play the victim.