A Key to My Inner Peace
When I experienced an interaction with someone with healthy boundaries, I experienced them as cold, uncaring, cold-hearted and distant. When I was told I needed to develop boundaries, I had a fear that my friends and family would think I didn’t care about them anymore. However, since I was desperate and in a great deal of pain, I was willing to try and do anything. I reasoned, if it didn’t go well and my family and friends really thought I didn’t love them, I could always go back to what I’d been doing before, right?
What I’ve discovered is what I experienced as “warm and caring” was actually enmeshment. What felt “cold and distant” is actually respect and space. Enmeshment with someone has moments where the connection with the person across from me feels really good. It feels like the person deeply cares and loves me. But the moments are rare and has a high price. Some of the costs, in my experience were:
Give up my individuality
Must agree on everything or lie, to protect the illusion we agree on everything
Sacrifice creativity
Perfectionism and constant vigilance
Accept someone’s judgments of me and constantly behave in a way that doesn’t warrant judgment
Accept someone’s value system as my own, regardless of whether I like it, agree or not.
No real intimacy, ever. The connection was often short lived.
Lose self for the sake of preserving the relationship.
To someone raised in a healthy environment, the above must sound impossible. Yet, I know communities of people that know what I’m talking about and have similar experiences.
What Boundaries Does
is teach me where I end and the other person begins, and where they end and I begin.
What boundaries does is teach me where I end and the other person begins, and where they end, and I begin. That person’s experiences, thoughts, feelings, space, opinions are theirs and my experiences, thoughts, feelings, space, values, and opinions are mine. They never have to match up or agree. They get the space they need to exist and be, safely.
I used to watch people interact, and maybe debate something like politics. They’d each share their opinion, maybe verbally jab at each other’s arguments, then change the subject and keep being friends. I couldn’t, for the life of me, comprehend how they could have opposite opinions on something and still be friends.
Now I understand. Boundaries allows for space between two people. Once people know where each begins and ends, there can be a gap in the space between. Each person can choose what they put in that space in between. My friends and I call the space “the sandbox.” A sandbox is a place where kids can play together or separately. They can play cooperatively, or destroy what the other person builds.
My friends and I call the space “the sandbox”
Each person can choose what they put in the space between them. Each person can choose to interact with what’s in the space in between them, or focus on their own thing in front of them. They can interact cooperatively or destructively. They can choose to not interact at all. Like a sandcastle, everything is impermanent.
I was confused by how each person with the opposite and disagreeing opinions placed each of their opinions in the sandbox. I learned with boundaries, sure, they each teased and poked holes at one another’s sand castles; a castle could have even toppled, but a toppled castle didn’t destroy the owner’s self esteem or sense of self-worth. That castle wasn’t responsible for protecting and covering a fragile heart. It was just a sandcastle. They could share thoughts and words in that space, the sandbox, and respect between them was maintained. As long as one person didn’t attack the other person, try to harm them or change them directly, everything was kept to the sandbox. Everything was good. This is my understanding of respect.
I grew up without boundaries or any kind of gap between me and another person. Their thoughts or opinions, when they differed from mine, caused me to question my thoughts and opinions. Every time. There was little space or tolerance to be different. Or the reverse, if I was somehow more knowledgeable or in authority, then the other person had to think and believe as I did.
Boundaries allows for space and mutual respect. You are you, with your thoughts, feelings, beliefs, experiences and values, and I’m me, with my thoughts, feelings, beliefs, experiences and values. And if we meet in the sandbox we can share in some level of connection. Connection, or intimacy can be on any level. For instance (with some examples)
Physical intimacy – sports team members, dance partners, hugs between family members
Emotional intimacy – sharing emotions with trusted friends or a therapist
Intellectual intimacy – co-workers, business partners sharing thoughts and ideas
Sexual intimacy – romantic partner
Spiritual intimacy – spiritual teacher, spiritual community member discussing spiritual or religious beliefs
Energetic intimacy – energy worker/healer
Financial intimacy – accountant, a co-parent where you have discussions about money
And so on. To experience connection on any of these levels, I have found, requires boundaries. If it’s not safe for me to share my emotions why would I share them? Meaning, if I share my emotional reality with someone (i.e. I feel sad. I feel unsafe. I feel excited) and they react somehow (with judgment, fear, anger, harshness) then I’m not safe to share my emotions with that person. Lack of safety doesn’t mean just physical or sexual assaults. There’s lots of types of safety:
Physical safety
Intellectual safety
Emotional safety
Sexual safety
Spiritual safety
Energetic safety
Financial safety
Boundaries allow me to give the gift of safety and respect to others on all these different levels. There’s space for acceptance, care, patience and gratitude. These are all components of love. Boundaries allow me to love myself and others more authentically and deeply. And boundaries have allowed me to understand Allah and His Teachings, via the Qur’an, more deeply and authentically. Unlike enmeshment, there’s no cost. I thought the cost would be less people would like me, but instead more of the right people like me – the people I like, and I want to have like and respect me. People that aren’t safe, respectful, loving, caring, compassionate, kind, these people tend to not like me so much. And happily, I’m okay with that now.
Peace and Light,
Mariam-Saba
Curious about what boundaries are? Come back in two weeks for my next post on exactly that topic.
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