Recovery invites me to have, recognize, and honor boundaries — my spiritual skin. I am naturally permeable, and without boundaries everything gets in and consumes me, leaving me full of other people’s information and needs, with no mental space left for God or even myself, only a need to invade someone else. My spiritual skin keeps me as me and you as you, protecting us all from the confusion of entanglement. My affiliations with my ex‑husband and my family of origin were entanglements formed before I developed boundaries — and as a consequence, they died natural deaths in response to that spiritual development.
My boundaries are dictated by my needs, limits, responsibilities, and desires. Desire I may elect to flex; I will forfeit my preference for the sake of compromise with others who are also inclined. My needs, limits, and responsibilities will be attended to. If I don’t see to them, who will. Our boundaries are our operating systems, and when two people’s operating systems are in conflict, that is evidence of incompatibility.
I feel blessed to have found someone whose operating system is compatible with my own, even complimentary.
Here: Brene Brown shares on boundary setting.
BEWARE — people struggling with control issues, narcissism, or untreated addiction will be agitated by clear boundaries that fail to properly revere them. When they can’t knock down your boundaries, they will try to knock you down. Boundary‑knocking and people‑knocking are bad and very assy.
THE UPSIDE: boundaries keep those who love you in your life, and those who love control… well, your boundaries will fuel their passive aggression, and they’ll need some space to work themselves out.