Body Boundaries 101
‘Tis the season for holiday get-togethers! For some this can be a joyous time! However, many of us experience heightened anxiety, stress, and depression around this time of year. This can of course be for many different reasons. The one that’s on my mind today is about boundaries.
Maybe you’ve found yourself asking, “how can I express what is necessary to feel safe and comfortable” in my house, around others, during conversations of who is going where for the holidays or if you’re dating anyone yet.
There’s no doubt about it- setting boundaries is an essential skill. Those of us who have grown up in families with poor boundaries or who have had their boundaries invaded often experience traumatic violations around boundaries. Understanding, developing, and strengthening our boundaries is a vital component to healing one’s sense of personal safety and space.
I once heard a phrase, “how you do anything is how you do everything” and man, has that stuck with me. When it comes to our ability to confidently establish and maintain boundaries with others, it’s important that we first examine our boundaries with ourselves. When doing so, it’s important to come from a place of non-judgment. If we become aware of patterns we’d like to change, judging ourselves harshly only adds insult to injury and makes the prospect of change that much more challenging.)
Boundaries can be physical, emotional, verbal, behavioral, and spiritual (to name a few), so it only fits that examining your boundaries within yourself can look many different ways. For example, how consistent are you with your boundaries around time? Maybe you tell yourself that you need to be in bed no later than 10pm, yet find yourself still scrolling on your phone well past midnight? This could be financially- maybe you have a goal to save a certain amount of money, yet you find yourself spending frivolously on things that maybe aren’t all that essential? Can you get curious about how you show up for yourself, and perhaps begin to label what you observe? Some descriptive words that might represent your boundaries include: strong, rigid, loose, open, flexible, distance, close, merged, or fluid. Building this non-judgemental awareness of your own boundaries will often provide insight into how you handle boundaries in interpersonal relationships as well.
So when it comes to setting boundaries, where do you even start? Before we can begin to set boundaries, we need to “feel and sense” our own boundaries. These are called body boundaries’. Body boundaries begin with the sense of our own personal space. Some questions you might consider-
Where does my personal space begin and end?
Where do you begin and where do I start?
When do I know you are too close?
What tells me you are too far?
What do you feel in your body when someone comes too close to your personal space, or when someone is too far?
The following is a somatic (or body-based) exercise that can be used if you have difficulty sensing your own personal space, or if you feel a lack of boundaries. Working with your own physical muscles can re-establish the internally-felt boundary. If you’d like to experiment with this exercise, we will use the awareness of muscle contraction to sense into your body as a boundary.
The encouragement here is to go slowly and deliberately. At first, you want to feel the body boundary as you contract and then feel the lack of it when you release. Try this out three or so times, then pause and reflect on what you notice.
Start with a muscle that feels easy to access, perhaps your hand or arm. With your muscle, flex and tense and slowly release. Notice the response in your body.
Then move to the belly, your core. Tense the muscle and slowly release. Again, the encouragement is to go slow and with control and awareness so you can notice what is happening in the release.
Observe the sensations that come along with this contracting movement. Allow yourself to simply be with the sensations.
Tense and flex any other muscles you like and experiment! What do you notice? The focus is on having a sense of body awareness and control without overwhelm.
After you contract and release for a while, can you notice how your body boundary stays even if you release? How do you experience that? The idea is to begin to notice a sense of strength and empowerment within your physical body boundaries.
Stay tuned for Boundaries Pt. 2 where I share more about DEAR MAN, an Interpersonal Effectiveness Skill from DBT that teaches us how to communicate our boundaries with others.
Talk soon!
xO Amy Williams