So why are boundaries so hard?

There are many root causes of poor boundaries and the perceived need for this kind of manipulation for control. Whether you violate the boundaries of others or don't know how to honour your own, the factors that led to poorly expressed or overly rigid boundaries began as a survival mechanism typically in early childhood.  When we bring these initial injuries to the light of day, we can begin to consciously face our past so we no longer need to act unconsciously and carry them into our future.

Here are some of the reasons you may struggle with boundaries:

• The healthy individuation process in early childhood development regarding autonomy and self-expression wasn’t fully integrated. At ages 18 months to 4 years old we are learning where we end and others begin. We come to a juncture where we play with the ideas of obedience and defiance, between socialization and individuation. This is a necessary stage of life and we must go through it fully, but if it is interrupted, discouraged or stunted we may carry this poorly developed sense of personal autonomy and agency throughout our life. This results in the perceived need to control our environment and others. It can also create the opposite, where we have little personal will because we have never felt like we have autonomy over our own lives. This leads to people-pleasing to gain the perception of safety or control through the controlling others. 

• If you came from a family that didn’t allow you to express your personality, opinions and preferences or you were required to manage other people’s feelings (aka codependent and enmeshed), or your family was overly rigid and strict, or had overly loose parenting styles, then chances are your sense autonomy and boundary development suffered. 

• Boundaries do not come naturally. We must learn them. And they are not taught well in school or most family situations, with the exception of if you are being punished after having violated them. Often times we only learn our own boundaries and preferences after having them violated too. Just as we need to teach young children healthy social boundaries we need to teach ourselves and those people in our lives appropriate boundaries for win-win situations. For example; when we tell a child to hug or kiss another adult because we want them to, we are not honouring their own felt-sense of choice over their own body. Although this can seem harmless, it sets children up to believe they must act against their own instinct and do as they are told so the adults won't be embarrassed, disappointed or feel rejected. This is a dangerous message to install in children yet it is unconsciously done everyday.

• We live in a culture of conformity that requires us (especially women and girls) to be socialized to acquiesce, to be agreeable, to be polite above all else, to bite our tongue, etc. Often, to assert our individual rights means to be seen as bossy, bitchy or difficult. We are tribal creatures who once relied completely on one another and the tribe for our survival. Our ancient primal conditioning is to seek the acceptance of the tribe because when we aren't it is tantamount to death. This primal need to fit in is where our evolutionary biology comes into conflict with our personal independence today. The internal wrestling match between our need to express our individuality and be loved as we are subconsciously bumps up against our deeply rooted need for tribal approval and value within sed tribe. Here we experience a primal conflict of authenticity versus approval/acceptance which shows up in vacillating and inconsistent boundaries. 

• If you are an empath or a highly sensitive and intuitive person who feels emotions very deeply & takes on the emotions of others, you likely have not had good role models to follow about how to delineate between what’s yours to carry and what isn’t. This sense of confusion can stay with you if you don't take deliberate steps to bring it to your awareness. Many empathic people tend to meddle in the affairs of others in an attempt to be "helpful" because they desire to take the pain away from others. Empathy is not a license to rescue another person with or without their permission.   

• If you were a “parentified child”- you grew up in a dysfunctional situation where you had to look after someone else, or where the family dynamic focused on one individual who struggled with illness, or addiction. When you had to make your life centred around someone else's needs you may have gotten really good at denying your own. This would cause you to be susceptible to being a people-pleaser as part of your identity or as what you thought gave you value and worthiness. 

Questions for Further Exploration:

Which of these reasons do you identify with as how your difficulty with boundaries came to be?

How do you see these old patterns showing up in your life?

What have you done to overcome these difficult patterns?

What are you willing to do to overcome these patterns and set yourself free?

Take some time to ponder these questions and to answer the questions in the Worksheet "Overcoming Limiting Beliefs" to learn more about your early childhood core beliefs that you may not know you hold but are affecting your daily life.