I Am Always Trying to Improve Myself
I've been doing a lot of inner-work lately. My latest foci are: childhood trauma and establishing healthy boundaries. In this post, I will focus on healthy boundaries.
Every time one speaks their boundaries, it causes an ultimatum: will the other receive the boundary? Will they respect it? If they do not, the healthy option is to cut ties, but this can be hard to do when so much time and emotional investment have been spent on that relationship. At the same time, establishing healthy boundaries creates the foundation for healthy relationships. It's never too late to express boundaries. People change, after all. Though it may be daunting to change a dynamic, make oneself vulnerable, and risk stirring up what only appeared to be a stable foundation, it is ultimately worth it because healthy boundaries lead to deep self-respect, deeper connections, and a truer existence.
What this means for me is stepping out of my comfort zone and taking risks that feel really uncomfortable and almost wrong because it was so out of my nature to communicate what my boundaries were when they were previously crossed. Often times, I don't realize what my boundaries were until I felt inauthentic, and by that point I felt a sense of guilt for expressing it after the fact. I imagine that, as I grow more accustomed to identifying my boundaries and expressing them, it will become more intuitive and appropriate. I must acknowledge that, at least for now, I'm going to "mess up" and present my boundaries out of the blue; since I wasn't expressing them to begin with, I have to start somewhere! Even though it feels like I'm overturning pretty rocks, leaving their less aesthetic underbellies up and exposed, I can trust that the rain of time will wash away that dirt and reveal beauties untouched by past skies.
Every time one speaks their boundaries, it causes an ultimatum: will the other receive the boundary? Will they respect it? If they do not, the healthy option is to cut ties, but this can be hard to do when so much time and emotional investment have been spent on that relationship. At the same time, establishing healthy boundaries creates the foundation for healthy relationships. It's never too late to express boundaries. People change, after all. Though it may be daunting to change a dynamic, make oneself vulnerable, and risk stirring up what only appeared to be a stable foundation, it is ultimately worth it because healthy boundaries lead to deep self-respect, deeper connections, and a truer existence.
What this means for me is stepping out of my comfort zone and taking risks that feel really uncomfortable and almost wrong because it was so out of my nature to communicate what my boundaries were when they were previously crossed. Often times, I don't realize what my boundaries were until I felt inauthentic, and by that point I felt a sense of guilt for expressing it after the fact. I imagine that, as I grow more accustomed to identifying my boundaries and expressing them, it will become more intuitive and appropriate. I must acknowledge that, at least for now, I'm going to "mess up" and present my boundaries out of the blue; since I wasn't expressing them to begin with, I have to start somewhere! Even though it feels like I'm overturning pretty rocks, leaving their less aesthetic underbellies up and exposed, I can trust that the rain of time will wash away that dirt and reveal beauties untouched by past skies.
31-35, T
