Setting Personal Boundaries
As the snow begins to melt, my mind wanders to the gardens and beds circling my house. Soon I’ll be cleaning the debris that accumulated around my plants over the winter. I know from experience that, if I don’t keep up with the weeding over the spring and summer, my healthy plants will choke and their growth will be stymied.
Setting Boundaries
I think of protecting my plants as setting boundaries. I put rocks in place to prevent the growth of weeds. I cover the area with mulch for the same reason. Sometimes, I have to spend a whole morning on my hands and knees, ripping out the offending intruders. I’m the gardener; it’s my job to protect my plants.
Protecting Ourselves
Likewise, it’s everyone’s job to protect their healthy selves with personal boundaries. One psychological definition of personal boundaries is: guidelines, rules or limits that a person creates to identify reasonable, safe and permissible ways for other people to behave towards them and how they will respond when someone passes those limits.
As survivors with dissociative identity disorder, our boundaries were violated again and again, enabling a tangled mess of weeds to take over our gardens, choking and stymying the growth of our healthy selves. Now, as adults in recovery, we are learning how to set personal boundaries that we deem reasonable, safe and permissible. We are cleaning out the overgrowth so we can be healthy and strong.
Growing Healthy & Strong
It’s not only acceptable that we set boundaries, it’s critical. How else will the people around us know what they can and cannot do in our midst? How else can we keep ourselves emotionally and physically safe? Often, setting personal boundaries can lead to misunderstanding, conflict, or even disruption in relationships. As hard as that may be, it's the price all healthy people pay to be healthy. After all, we are the gardeners of our own lives; it’s our job to protect our healthy selves.
Self Care
If someone is making you feel uncomfortable, they are probably crossing your personal boundary. If you are uncertain, journal about it and talk to your therapist. Once you are clear the behavior is inappropriate for you, speak kindly and firmly to the person. Say something like, "I'm uncomfortable when you do X. Please do Y or Z instead." Stand tall. Take care. You are worth it.
As winter changes to spring, let’s all go out there and tend to our beautiful selves. We may get dirty hands and knees along the way, but it's worth the effort!
Invitation
Check out my website at www.lynbarrett.com where you can download my free ebook called DID Unpacked. You can also sign up for notification of the release of my memoir, Crazy: In Search of a Narrative and learn more about writing opportunities.
What questions do you have about DID? Any topics you’d like me to cover? I’ll look forward to hearing from you!
You are a garden fountain,
a well of flowing water streaming down from Lebanon.
Song of Songs 4: 15
Lyn