The Boundaries Of My "I" - The Practice Of Applying

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

Personal boundaries are a hackneyed topic that sounds often and "original":

- you need to defend / defend your borders;

- violation of boundaries leads to chronic frustration, dissatisfaction, destroys relationships.

Well, and other obvious facts.

It is necessary and necessary, but it is not always clear and obvious HOW to build these boundaries, and often, this process is seen (and recommended) as a kind of construction of special communications and behavior: how to refuse, say no, to verbally rebuff the violator.

The process of building personal boundaries, I see it as a little more difficult than learning the skill "effectively" to refuse and speak directly about what does not suit you. Summarizing the practice in this matter, it can be noted that the complexity of the clients initially lies not in the fact that they do not know HOW to set and defend the borders, but in initially discovering WHAT to defend and defend.

What is defining, in the very understanding of personal boundaries:

- Borders separate our "I" from "not I";

- Borders are related to our values, attitudes and norms;

- They serve for self-identification and representation of our personality: we define for ourselves and inform others about who we are, how it is possible with us, and how it is impossible.

Other people trespassing is essentially an attack. What is important and valuable. The difficulty lies in the fact that this attack is not always recognized as such. For example, when formally, a person does not violate social norms, acts "on soft paws" and "with the best of intentions", and at the same time, we ourselves are not very focused on what kind of value the violator is trying to encroach on.

At the same time, we feel anger, irritation, and sometimes, generally incomprehensible to ourselves, an undifferentiated mixture of unpleasant feelings and sensations, but we cannot legally respond with aggression and alleviate our condition. Since there is no formal reason related to the violation of social and social norms. But also preliminary personal agreements that "you can't do this with me" - too.

The accumulated and unreacted anger at the systematic invasion of personal space, subsequently explodes with rage and is fraught with the destruction of relationships.

I propose a small practice that I have successfully applied in a training format for teenage groups and which is able to integrate the understanding of personal boundaries and the step-by-step formation of the skill of building them:

1. To understand WHERE are my boundaries, it is important to understand WHAT belongs to ME and is valuable to me.

To do this, write the word MY on a piece of paper, and after the colon, list everything that you think is yours, is connected with you, is a part of you, belongs to you and is of value to you.

For example:

- my body

- my stuff

- my thoughts

- my feelings

- my relationship

- my family

- my house

- my beliefs

- my activity / career / hobby

- my habits

- my tastes

-my time

-my dreams

-my ideas about life, etc.

2. Further, you can imagine or recall examples of how, in what way and in ways this "MY" can be "violated, destroyed", how each category of your personal values can be "attacked".

For example:

- it is possible to devalue thoughts and feelings;

- to treat the body carelessly and rudely;

- things can be taken without demand, broken, stolen;

- in a house, room, space - to manage, inherit, burst into it without demand or knocking;

- habits, tastes can be ridiculed;

- Subject to harsh criticism of beliefs and values;

- on the sphere of significant relationships, you can "attack" inappropriate advice, the imposition of your opinion, caustic remarks about loved ones;

And so on and so forth.

The more detailed these two points are, the clearer it becomes "how it is possible with me and how it is not possible with me".

One boy, in the process of completing this task, asked a question:

- "Can I add my name to the" Mine "list?

- Of course you can, why not? And what is a violation of the border associated with him for you?

- When they call me not by the name that I called, in a diminutive way, but I introduced myself as a full one. When a name-calling is made of him, they distort.

A good example of how this teenager defined the criteria for acceptable and unacceptable communication for himself, in a significant part of his interaction with others.

3. The third part of the assignment includes a very important task - to define and formulate HOW POSSIBLE and SHOULD communicate and deal with you and the points "MY" that are important to you.

At this stage, you can prescribe a "set of rules" that regulates how you and significant aspects of your personality and life are treated, in terms and expressions in which you can tell about these rules to others

people (significant and not so).

This is extremely important, since your values and the boundaries of your personality are "visible" only to you.

And it is not enough for us to know the limits of permissible treatment ourselves, but it is important to inform others about this. It is easier for people communicating with you to navigate in advance in the rules of communication, preventing or excluding the possibility of running into your invisible border and facing aggression.

The following comparison is appropriate here: animals react sharply to an invasion of their territory, attacking, driving off the intruder quite aggressively, often simply biting into the throat. This aggressive act is the final frontier where physical strength and open aggression are required. Before that, the animal marks its territory. Indicates its boundaries. Warns in advance. If he sees an intruder approaching, he does not attack immediately, but as a rule shows with a grin “here I am and my territory, stop, no further”. If all warning signs are ignored by the violator of the territory, then for the animal this is a signal of an open attack: the opponent has come to take away, conquer, appropriate, and this is a reason to actively and aggressively defend himself. People are often forced to "bite into and defend the territory" when this territory has already been trampled on by someone for a long time and furiously, having skipped the stage of "grinning", "marking" and warning in advance.

4. Well, the next step, if necessary, will be the creation of speech formulas - how to correctly (and sometimes not) express disagreement, outline a rule or formulate a refusal.

In individual work, often, the client needs help in building these speech structures, simply in the absence of experience. How to find the words when you need to refuse a friend who is used to coming at any time convenient to her to chat about life, without fear of interrupting communication? How, finally, can you tell your mother that you can no longer enter the room without knocking, without fear of aggression in response?

When there is no experience, for a long time a living space was organized in which others habitually invaded different aspects of "MY", when suddenly you discover the right and the ability to do differently, then - the words can simply "get stuck" in the throat. Therefore, the practice of working out with a psychologist, or in a group, other methods of communication turns out to be very, very useful: in a safe space and calm atmosphere, it is easier to construct a phrase, choose words. And when, through such training, a skill appears, and the dictionary of “necessary and effective words” for these situations is simply enriched, it becomes much easier to start confidently using this tool.