How to keep your boundaries when they’re being challenged
Back in 2022 I came out of a relationship that wasn’t too healthy.
I remember being scared; walking on eggshells to avoid a mood that I could never anticipate. It was a time in my life where my boundaries were almost completely invisible and I was unable to keep out someone who, at the time, felt so much stronger than me.
The situation was so abrasive to my soft and gentle nature that I had to capture it down into words so I could share it with others, in the hope that they might see the signs of emotional abuse quicker than I did.
And it was these words that I shared with the world, but never with my audience here (perhaps due to shame, or perhaps due to wanting to keep that dark part of my life separate) that I was reading last night, inspiring me, once again, to write about boundaries.
The ever-elusive boundaries that I keep chasing and keep being challenged on.
Why the lessons on boundaries keep repeating
Relationships are always hard but this relationship taught me a very valuable, and painful, lesson around standing up for myself.
Yet boundaries have always been a big theme in my life and there have been many lessons throughout my lifetime teaching and guiding me towards understanding my strengths from within and using them to assert myself.
I feel very emotional talking about boundaries because they are traditionally something that I have been so deeply unconscious of. It’s almost as if I have known, in many of these situations, that something isn’t right, but I’ve never truly been able to put words to it and form them to come out of my mouth and tell someone to back off.
It started in school with girls who were bullyish in their behaviour, overbearing and overly confident in who they were, who I just couldn’t stand up to.
It then followed with situations with boys who I didn’t know how to stand up to, of course (these are situations that many women unfortunately go through). It happened again with housemates, many times over, and again in a job where I slaved for years with a complete lack of worth and boundaries, eventually leading to burnout and exhaustion.
And the lessons didn’t stop there.
They carried on, in more subtle and subliminal ways, almost as if I was being tested. The lessons became harder to spot, the boundaries became slippery in my fingers, so that it felt like I was almost back to square one.
I had, perhaps, naively thought that I had learnt all I needed to know with boundaries, but oh how wrong I was. Which was precisely when this relationship popped into the picture, oozing into my life with charm and promises, hacking away at my timid construction that I believed kept me safe from people who were no good for me.
And this is what happens in life; we have these key repeating patterns and circumstances that keep on playing out in different affairs of our lives, over and over again until we get the message, learn the so-called lesson and come out of the negative aspect of it and into the potential of the positive.
There is no order, there is no end, there is no chance that we cannot continually keep vigilant. It is a lifelong process and one we must pay attention to in order to move through with grace and ease.
The boundaries within your Soul Contract
I believe all of us struggle with boundaries in some form or another; those thin, intangible things that keep us steady in our knowing and power, yet some of us certainly struggle with them more than others.
A reason for this is the energies within your Soul Contract.
Your Soul Contract is an agreement your soul made, before its incarnation into your physical body, where it decided what energies it wanted to work with in this lifetime in order to continue its evolution and journey back to source/love/God.
Within your Soul Contract you have three main parts, which I’ve written all about here. The first is your karma, which is where you will find most of your most challenging life experiences. The second is your talents which are the gifts and abilities you have been given to work through your karma and reach your goals. And the third is your goals, what you’re really here to do in this lifetime, ultimately culminating in your soul destiny; the pinnacle of your whole chart.
It’s through having an awareness of these energies that have been specifically chosen to create our reality, that we can understand why boundaries are so hard for us.
And, in my chart, I have the two energies, both in karmic positions, that create all of my issues with boundaries. Aren’t I lucky!
One of these energies is all to do with learning to assert myself and using my voice to stand up for myself, something that I’ve always found notoriously hard. Whenever I’ve had to use my voice to stand up against someone I’ve had lots of issues with swallowing, which has become one of my biggest watchouts.
I know, if I start to swallow lots, that I’m feeling threatened and scared, and that something is wrong with the situation. And no wonder, the throat chakra is all to do with communication and speaking the truth.
The second energy is all to do with finding the balance between empathy and over-giving. Often, it’s the people who are the most sensitive to others and empathetic that struggle with boundaries because we see the good in people and want to help them, even if it is to our own cost.
This energy is all about being yes-people without giving it a moment’s hesitation, driven by this need to help others, diluting ourselves in the process and landing into situations such as codependency and over-attachment.
If these sound like you, then why not download your chart for free and see if you have the numbers 5 and 8 in your chart, and if you do then perhaps you’ll at last understand why boundaries are something you’ve found so challenging.
How to build better boundaries
One of the hardest things I’ve learnt about boundaries is that we will either end up disappointing ourselves or disappointing others, and unfortunately part of working with boundaries is that we’re always going to feel like we’re letting someone down.
This can feel tortuous to someone who has deep empathy and love for others, yet it is the most fundamental principle of boundary-building. The reason it can also feel so hard is that when you start putting your foot down and saying no you’ll probably receive some backlash.
The people around you who are used to you being so readily available and obliging really don’t like it when you change. This is all to do with role expectations. They have labelled you and set their expectations, so when you start to break free of that restrictive mould, they don’t like it.
Do it anyway.
The second part of building better boundaries is all to do with taking our time to make decisions. The amount of times I’ve said yes to someone without a moment’s hesitation, and then later regretted it, is actually painful for me to remember. I knee-jerked yes all the time.
This comes from the place of wanting to please others, that ultimately stems from a belief that the external validation we’ll gain from it will feed our self-worth. It’s a self-worth issue at its core, and the more awareness we have of that, the better.
Allow yourself the time to make decisions. Allow yourself to place both you and this person in the discomfort of waiting. There are rules, only the expectations that this person is placing on you and you are placing on yourself. You are allowed to take your time and feel into what feels good for you.
This will feel so unfamiliar and alien at first that you will second-guess yourself, doubting your intuitive voice and questioning whether you can make the decision. There is no right or wrong decision, there is only a decision made from your highest self or your lower self, so take that pressure off, accept that you’re on a learning curve, and make a choice either way.
The more we choose ourselves, overcoming that fear and shame of being selfish that is so deeply rooted in our society, the less we bleed ourselves dry.
Building better boundaries and learning to assert yourself is all about experimentation. The most important thing is to stay centred in your self-awareness so that even if you find yourself in a situation that feels like it’s taking away your power, you’re still aware of it and learning from it.
Be gentle, loving and compassionate with yourself as you bravely go forwards in your life, you are doing wonderfully, don’t forget it.
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