Aoife Henry

I wise therapist once told me that “your only job is to see the truth in this moment”. I think of this “truth” as reflecting your core needs and desires in that “moment”. Not only is it “your only job”, it is nobody’s job but yours. Nobody else has a unique view into your mind. Nobody else can know what you truly need and want. It is nobody else’s responsibility to uncover your needs and to lead the effort to fill them. That, friends, is our own noble pursuit.This is not to say that meeting our needs is something we need to do alone, it just means that if we want support it is our responsibility to make that known.

I think of boundaries as protection that we construct and enforce to ensure that our needs our met, irrespective of other peoples’ behaviours. It’s a gated fence that clearly marks what you are and are not willing to do, and what actions you will take for your own well-being. The gate allows you to make exceptions as you see fit for certain people, for certain situations, or for the less “needy” mental states you may find yourself in. Here are some examples of me stumbling through life without a fence, for fear the neighbours won’t like it:

“I feel tired and need rest, but I have to go and hang out with them, I said I would.”
“I feel overwhelmed and need peace, but I have to stay here and talk to these people, it’s the polite thing to do.”
“I feel uncomfortable around him, but I can’t ask him to stop doing that, his feelings would be hurt.”

Me, failing to impose boundaries for fear of the consequences.

Underlying all of the above examples, is dishonesty with the people I am in relationship with, and a betrayal of myself. In each case I am lying to the other involved in the conflict, either directly or by omission of truth, in favour of containing that conflict in my own psyche. In each case I am denying myself the right to have my most basic physiological and safety needs met, in favour of abiding by perceived social rules.

Boundary-setting, in my unqualified opinion, is empowering oneself to speak up and take action for your own interests, unimpeded by projections of how others will react. And they will react. People may respond with shame or defensiveness when you ask them to not to treat you in a particular way. People may feel rejected when you tell them that you can’t allocate time to them this week. People may think you odd for abruptly leaving a gathering when you have had your fill of social time. But there is a also a good chance, that if you are honest with people about why you are protecting yourself like this, and if they truly care for you, that they will understand. They will understand that this is not about them, that this is about you sustaining and protecting yourself, as is your duty and nobody else’s.

I suspect that giving free rein to others to dictate our behaviours, and lying about what we really want and need, engenders and internal inferno that burns us up from the inside. I wonder how many of our self-harming habits – the nervous tics, the desperate distraction, the numbing – would melt away if we enables ourselves to “see the truth” and meet our own needs as best we can in each moment.