A Hard Truth About Setting Boundaries
In today's episode, we're talking about boundaries. Boundary setting is one of those areas that we hear about so much in the personal development world, and yet bridging the gap between theory and practice remains a challenge for most of the folks that I work with (particularly those with an anxious attachment style).
We cover:
Why boundary setting is so hard for people with insecure attachment patterns
How anxious and avoidant attachment styles differ in boundary setting
The truth about boundaries in healthy relationships
How to navigate a fear that setting boundaries will lead to the relationship falling apart
A Hard Truth About Setting Boundaries
Boundaries are essential for any healthy relationship. They serve as markers that define where one person ends, and another begins, allowing for mutual respect and understanding. However, setting and upholding boundaries can be particularly challenging, especially for those with insecure attachment patterns. Let's explore why this is the case and uncover some hard truths about the process.
The Struggle with Boundaries
Many people find boundaries difficult to both set and maintain. This is often because they did not have healthy boundaries modelled during their formative years. Growing up without a clear blueprint of what boundaries look like, individuals may find themselves in adulthood either unable to establish personal limits or overly rigid in their approach.
If boundaries feel awkward or unnatural, it may be due to a lack of practice and understanding. Remember, enforcing boundaries isn’t about rigidly adhering to a list of rules but about knowing and communicating what feels acceptable and safe.
The Impact of Attachment Styles
Different attachment styles experience boundary-setting in diverse ways. For those with anxious attachment, the idea of setting a boundary can elicit fear. There's an underlying anxiety that enforcing a limit may lead to a loss of connection. This fear often leads to self-sacrifice, where personal discomfort is ignored to keep the peace and maintain the relationship.
Conversely, individuals with avoidant attachment may put up very strict, ironclad walls to protect themselves from perceived enmeshment and loss of self. These walls can be so rigid that they prevent genuine intimacy and connection. Healthy boundaries shouldn’t be so flexible that they’re non-existent, nor should they be so rigid they become barriers to intimacy.
Misconceptions and Hard Truths
A common misconception is to view rigid boundaries as a sign of security and confidence. In reality, boundaries formed out of fear and a need for self-protection do not equate to healthy self-assurance. True security in boundaries incorporates a balance, allowing for both personal space and connection without fear.
One hard truth about boundaries is that they often come with a cost. Particularly for the anxiously attached, the fear of not getting what one desires after setting a boundary can be a significant deterrent. The possibility of experiencing a loss of connection can make it tempting to forgo boundaries altogether. However, enduring discomfort and self-sacrifice for the sake of connection leads to anxiety and internal tension.
Navigating the Tension Between Self and Other
An important realisation is that true, healthy relationships do not ask one to choose between self-respect and connection with others. If advocating for oneself often results in the withdrawal of affection or connection, it serves as a warning sign. While this doesn’t necessarily mean the relationship is doomed, it indicates that changes are needed to achieve a secure, emotionally safe relationship.
It’s essential to find a balance between advocating for personal needs and maintaining flexibility and understanding toward the other person. This isn’t about ultimatums but about knowing what non-negotiables are crucial for one’s sense of safety and wellbeing.
The Courage to Hold Firm
When setting a boundary, it’s crucial to decide whether the boundary matters enough that being in a relationship where it is not respected is unacceptable. This does not mean becoming rigid in every small request, but it means recognising and holding firm on what is fundamentally important.
It’s essential to follow through on communicated boundaries. Declaring a boundary without enforcing it weakens its impact and can lead to self-abandonment for the sake of preserving the relationship. True growth often requires courage and a commitment to one’s self-respect and emotional safety.
The Path to Authentic Connection
Understanding that relinquishing personal boundaries to maintain a semblance of connection is detrimental is liberating. Constantly sacrificing personal comfort and authenticity for the sake of keeping someone close leads to anxiety and insecurity.
Healthy relationships respect and value boundaries, fostering an environment where open communication and mutual respect thrive. Each step in setting and upholding boundaries builds a foundation for authentic, secure connections that honour both personal needs and mutual respect.
In summary, setting and upholding boundaries, particularly within the context of attachment styles, involves reflection, courage, and continuous practice. While it may initially seem daunting, the process ultimately leads to healthier, more fulfilling relationships marked by mutual respect and genuine connection.
Questions for Discussion & Reflection
Do you find it challenging to set boundaries in your relationships? What fears or anxieties come up for you when you think about setting boundaries?
Reflect on a time when you felt your boundaries were not respected. How did that experience impact your sense of safety and connection within the relationship?
How do you currently navigate the tension between maintaining a connection to others and staying true to your own needs and feelings?
Do you recognise a pattern of abandoning your own needs in order to keep the peace or maintain a relationship? How has this impacted your emotional well-being over time?
When you think about setting a boundary, do you worry about potential consequences, such as the loss of the relationship? How do these worries influence your actions?
Consider the types of boundaries you tend to have. Are they more diffuse and porous, or rigid and uncompromising? What are the effects of these boundary styles on your relationships?
Do you find yourself negotiating with your own comfort levels and needs in order to avoid conflict? How might this affect your long-term happiness and sense of self?
Is there a specific boundary that you know needs to be set in your life right now? What is stopping you from setting and upholding this boundary?
How might you start to practice better boundaries in small, manageable ways within your existing relationships? What steps can you take today to move towards healthier boundaries?
Reflect on the idea that a healthy relationship should not require you to choose between connection to self and connection to other. How has this perspective shifted your understanding of your relationships?
FURTHER LINKS & RESOURCES:
📣 FLASH SALE: Get my Better Boundaries masterclass for just US$30 (usually US$88)
Check out my couples course, Secure Together (& save $200 with the code SECURE)
Save $150 on my Higher Love break-up course with the code PHOENIX
Follow me on Instagram: @stephanie__rigg & @onattachment
You might also like…
Episode Transcript
[00:00:29]:
In today's episode, we're talking all about boundaries, and specifically why you might struggle to set, uphold, and be on the receiving end of boundaries, particularly in your intimate relationships. So, boundaries are one of those areas that I think most of us will be relatively well acquainted with, at least on a surface level, if you spend any time in the personal development space. It's pretty hard to scroll through Instagram, at least if your algorithm looks anything like mine, and not encounter some sort of content around boundaries. And yet I know from speaking to so many people in my community, in my programs, that boundaries continue to be really challenging. And it's something that a lot of people, I think, have a theoretical grasp of, but, you know, the practical implementation, the doing piece, still feels really challenging. And I think oftentimes there is that gap between theory and practice in so much of this work, which is why, you know, so much of the magic is in taking those real life steps rather than just trying to read or listen our way to growth.
[00:01:36]:
So in today's episode, I'm going to be sharing a little bit on why boundaries feel hard for so many of us, particularly those of us with insecure attachment patterns at both ends of the spectrum. So despite what you may think, which is that boundaries are, you know, hard for anxiously attached people, but not so much for avoidant people, I would push back on that and say that I think boundaries are a challenge for both anxious and avoidant leaning people, although they can certainly look different. And I suppose also share some hard truths about boundaries because I think there are many misconceptions when it comes to boundaries, and sometimes we have to reckon with the reality that boundaries will come at a cost. And I think that's, you know, the great fear that underpins boundary setting for so many of us, particularly those of us with more anxious patterns, is that, you know, we'll set the boundary, and then we won't get what we want, so to speak. And then we'll have to deal with the consequences, which might be a loss of connection or something else that we desperately want to avoid. So talking through some of those pain points, I suppose, and validating how hard it is and why it feels so hard, but while also serving up some hard truths. So that's what we're gonna be talking about today. Before I dive into that, I just wanted to share, I moments before hitting the record button, I thought I might offer a special deal on my Better Boundaries masterclass.
[00:03:08]:
So you can go on to my website, and the masterclass is usually $88. I'm going to put it on sale for $30. You won't need a discount code or anything. I'm just going to modify the price at the checkout. So if you are interested in going a little deeper on the topic of boundaries and you wanna save, and we do the math off the cuff here, over 60% on on the cost of that masterclass, head to my website or click the link in the show notes, to grab the Better Boundaries Masterclass for just $30. Okay. So let's talk about why boundaries are hard. I think for most of us, we did not grow up with good boundaries.
[00:03:46]:
We did not have that modeled for us. We did not have a blueprint of what healthy boundaries look like. And so we tend to progress through to adulthood without really knowing what boundaries look or feel like. And that tends to go one of 2 ways. Either we are boundaryless, we have very porous or diffuse boundaries in that, you know, we let anyone in as much as they want. We have no sense of demarcation of what is okay for us, what we're comfortable with, And likewise, we are not terribly good at respecting or perceiving other people's boundaries, and so we want to be as much in their world as we possibly can, this idea of enmeshment. The other version of things, and this tends to align more with avoidant attachment patterns, is we're maybe afraid of enmeshment. Maybe that's been part of our family system or other relational experiences that we've had, And so we fear engulfment.
[00:04:44]:
We fear loss of self. And so we put up these ironclad walls to keep people at bay. And, you know, both of these versions of unhealthy boundaries, you know, the very diffuse, porous kind or the very rigid, uncompromising kind, Neither of those are healthy. And, you know, I'll just say as a side note, I think for people with more anxious attachment patterns, they can sometimes see their avoidant partner's very rigid boundaries, as, you know, an expression of security. Like, wow, there's a confident look at their boundaries. But you know, a very black and white boundary is not necessarily what we're going for here. That's not a sign of, you know, security if it's coming from this fear driven place of self protection at all costs. What we're really aiming for when we talk about healthy boundaries is something in the middle, as is so often the case.
[00:05:37]:
And people with a secure attachment tend to be pretty naturally good at this. They can advocate for themselves in, you know, what works for them, what doesn't, what they need, but they don't forget that there's someone else in that equation. And so there's this level of flexibility and an openness to maybe negotiate or understand another perspective rather than just kind of clamping down and saying, you know, it's my way or the highway laying down the law, or otherwise kind of collapsing altogether. So as you can see in these patterns, and particularly for more anxious people, what often emerges is this tension between connection to other and connection to myself. And if we think of a healthy boundary as being that feels so foreign and why it feels so hard. Because if you have more anxious attachment patterns, probably all you've ever really known is sacrificing connection to self in the interest of maintaining connection to other. We know that that's very much at the heart of anxious attachment is, so long as I'm connected to you, that's really all I need in order to feel safe, in order to feel happy, in order to feel valuable and worthy. And so I will do whatever I need to do.
[00:06:58]:
I will contort myself. I will swallow my words. I will override my discomfort with something in order to maintain the connection with you, even if that connection starts to look and feel like something that isn't really what I truly want or what I'm truly comfortable with, because I have this framework of, like, connection is better than no connection, no matter what that connection looks or feels like. So just really validating that if you have this more anxious attachment pattern, you may struggle to set boundaries to even think about doing it, because you have so much anxiety that the other person's not going to meet you in the boundary and be receptive to it, and that they're just gonna say, well, if that's your boundary, I'm not interested. I'm gonna walk away. And when the the cost feels so high, right, when you feel like the the consequence of setting your boundary could be the loss of the relationship, All of a sudden, the thing that you're wanting to set the boundary about starts to pale by comparison. You start to negotiate with yourself and go, well, do I really care that much about this thing that you know, has been bothering me? But if it means that I'm gonna lose the relationship, maybe I'll just stay quiet about it. Maybe I'll just sweep it under the rug.
[00:08:11]:
Maybe I'll just kind of suck it up and deal with it myself, because it's not that big a deal that it would be worth losing the relationship over. Right? That's often the internal dialogue. Now, that obviously begs the question of, like, what do we do with that? What do we do with this tension between connection to self and connection to other? And I think that a really important thing to understand, as I sort of alluded to, is that healthy relationships don't ask you to choose one of those two things. Right? If you are being made to choose between what feels safe to you, which is really what we're trying to lay down with the self advocacy of setting a healthy boundary. And you're feeling like to advocate for yourself in that way will likely lead to the withdrawal of the connection, whether through some sort of punitive measure like stonewalling or, you know, someone just withdrawing on you and going quiet, or getting very defensive, shutting down, or leaving the relationship altogether. But this sense of, If I step forward and take up space and advocate for myself, there's going to be some sort of adverse consequence in terms of our connection, then that is kind of I hesitate to use the term red flag. If you've listened for a long time, you know I don't tend to use that kind of language, but it is a bit of a warning sign that there are other things that are not, you know, working as they should in terms of the emotional safety of the relationship. Now does that mean that the relationship is doomed? No.
[00:09:42]:
A lot of us will not have, like, really wonderful emotional safety and security as a baseline if we're coming to a relationship with insecure attachment patterns. That's the whole point of this work, is that we need to learn and practice those things. But it is a sign that something needs to shift if you are wanting to build a secure relationship, because continuing with the status quo where you are afraid to advocate for what you need in order to feel safe and loved and secure, if you're afraid to speak those things and to stand firm on them because you're worried that you're going to be punished in some way with the withdrawal of love and connection, it's going to be very hard to ever feel emotionally safe, when that dynamic is present. So really recognising that this stuff is important, and that bargaining with yourself on, is this really worth losing the relationship over? Am I asking for too much? Should I just let it go and make myself be comfortable with something that I'm not comfortable with? I don't think that that path is going to lead you to the peace that you seek or the connection that you seek. It's likely to lead you to more anxiety and more internal tension, because the truth of what you are comfortable or not comfortable with, you know, it remains. And it's just you trying to silence that in the interest of holding onto, you some semblance of connection or relationship with someone, even if it's not on the terms or in the way that you truly desire. So all of that to say, and this is kind of where the hard truth comes in, there's no way and I I'll often get questions from people in the vein of how can I make sure that speaking my boundary and, you know, standing firm, enacting my boundary, it's probably more important than speaking? And I think oftentimes we speak it and then we don't follow through in our actions. We kind of declare this big boundary.
[00:11:41]:
And then if we get any pushback, we quickly try and backpedal and chip away at our boundary again, to hold onto that connection. But when setting a boundary in a relationship, you need to decide for yourself whether that boundary matters enough, that you are not willing to be in a relationship where that boundary is not respected. Okay? Now, of course, we're not talking about, like, any and every little request or boundary that we might speak to in a relationship. I'm not encouraging you to be, you know, really rigid and absolute about this. But if there are big things, things that you know are really fundamental and important to you, then you need to let them be fundamental and important to you. You need to let them be nonnegotiable, if that's what they truly are in your heart. And you need to get honest with yourself about the fact that you're not willing to be in a relationship where those things are not respected. And if that means that in communicating your boundary to someone about, you know, I am not willing to go on like this, here is what I need.
[00:12:56]:
Here is what I am going to do if this thing happens again. You need to be willing to follow through on that. You need to be committed enough to yourself that you're gonna follow through on that rather than being more committed to holding onto the connection and letting go of abandoning yourself, for the sake of of just holding on. I know that this is incredibly challenging. I have struggled with it my whole life, and it's not something that you're going to be able to switch overnight, but that really is the work. That is the crux of the challenge, particularly for more anxious folks around boundary setting, is that you need to recalibrate this whole conception of connection to other, connection to self, and recognise that if a connection with someone else requires that you let go of your connection to self, that you abandon yourself, that you lie to yourself, that is not the relationship that is going to bring you peace, that is going to bring you safety, that is going to bring you security. And, you know, there is grief and there is liberation in recognising that. So I hope that that has given you something to think about.
[00:14:18]:
I know that it's really tough. I know that you can probably hear this a 100 times. And if you're in that situation where you feel like things are on the brink and so you're really scared of saying the thing that needs to be said for fear of those consequences, I I totally understand, and I'm there with you in spirit and sending you so much love. This is really where your courage is required, and sometimes growth does really ask that we get very honest with what we want, what we need, who we are, really. What is authenticity to me in a relationship, and what am I willing to sacrifice just for the sake of holding on? And is it really worth what it's costing me, to hold on to someone when things that are fundamental to my sense of safety and my sense of self are not being respected in this relationship. So sending so much love, particularly to anyone who's struggling with this at the moment. It's really big work, but, you know, just taking it one day at a time, one step at a time, and I'm, as I said, there with you in spirit.
[00:15:27]:
Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you wanna go deeper on all things attachment, love, and relationships, you can find me on Instagram @stephanie__rigg or at stephanierigg.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review and a 5 star rating. It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here, and I hope to see you again soon.
Keywords from Podcast Episode
boundaries, insecure attachment, attachment patterns, personal development, intimate relationships, healthy relationships, emotional safety, connection to self, connection to other, anxious attachment patterns, avoidant attachment patterns, porous boundaries, rigid boundaries, Better Boundaries masterclass, self-advocacy, relationship dynamics, loss of connection, negotiation, enmeshment, engulfment, emotional security, self-protection, flexible boundaries, social media, practical implementation, relationship coach, family system, blueprint, stonewalling, setting boundaries, attachment theory.