Welcome back to my Life Lessons 101 series. Today I want to talk about the importance of creating boundaries where necessary. No matter the type of relationship we may share with another, whether family, friends, or colleagues, it’s important to create boundaries where/when necessary to protect against the ones who may not have our best interests at heart, or perhaps, those around us who constantly suck the life out of us. Boundaries are necessary for good mental health and self-preservation.
Being around negativity can become quite a contagious thing. And as much as we’re all subjected to it at some times in our lives, we must learn how to be assertive and create those boundaries when necessary to avoid getting caught up in a tailspin of other people’s dramatics, gossip, or plain, sucking out of our energies. I speak with great experience on the subject.
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Dodging the Clouds
Negativity is like a huge umbrella that has the power to swoop us in unwittingly. As I’ve written about in other articles, energy is a real thing and plays a big part in the vibes we give off to others. We all give off our vibes and energies into the atmosphere, and if we’re in close proximity to someone negative, we can feel the draining vibe it leaves with us. These vibes can come off from a complete stranger as well as from the people we know. Negativity comes in all varieties. Negativity could even come from a constant naysayer in our circles, or from an acquaintance, friend, or family. There are several terms for these types of people who leave us feeling ill at ease when around them. But the bottom line is that they suck our energies and make us feel quite uncomfortable when around them.
We can avoid these people easily if they are not in our usual circles. We can just remove ourselves from their presence. But other times, like when it comes to family, or even some friends, or maybe a colleague, it can be difficult to navigate around these people and their frequent storms. If these people are constantly bringing us down with their moods, demands, or temperaments, it may be time to re-evaluate the relationship we have with them and decide how much we’re willing to put up with from these people and set some boundaries.
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If someone is always angry, accusing, conniving, inconsiderate, or downright rude, we must take a look at our own self and evaluate whether or not we are going to continue to tolerate the mental abuse, and make a change. Either way, it isn’t easy, but often when it becomes a decision about keeping our own sanity, cords must be severed for self-preservation. I have much experience with this procedure of creating boundaries in my own life. And in all situations, they sadly, involved family.
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Knowing Limitations and Creating Boundaries
When my own family became too much for me to endure, I was faced with making such decisions. For much of my life, my mother was the antagonist in my life. But because she was ‘a mother’, I always respected her, took her rantings daily, and I never raised my voice to her. It took all the discipline in the world not to tell her what I really thought, but I didn’t want to hurt her. It didn’t matter that she hurt me so very much through life, I am not a tit for tat person. But through the years – and decades, the proverbial last straw finally hit the camel’s back one day where fifty years of taking her garbage came to a head. The last dagger had finally hit me, and courage was summoned. I’d taken enough abuse. When I received her last harmful barrage of word bullets, the separation was immediate and forever. And there was no going back because there was nowhere to go to but back on the hamster wheel.
Yes. It took me fifty years until I summoned the courage to stand up to her toxic words; but I did it. . . please continue reading at Sally’s Smorgasbord.
Source: Smorgasbord Blog Magazine – Life Lessons 101 – Boundaries by D.G. Kaye | Smorgasbord Blog Magazine
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