Of Borders And Boundaries
Asserting personal boundaries can feel so ambiguous and confusing because our instinct to seek attachment is so strong.
And verily! In the cattle, there is a lesson for you. We give you to drink of that which is in their bellies, from between excretions and blood, pure milk; palatable to the drinkers.
(Quran 16:66)
For two things to mutually coexist, a certain barrier must stand between them. It may be thinner than skin or even abstract like the lines on the map, just as it may be hard as concrete and sharp as razor wire. Nations have borders like people have boundaries, and though the former take great pains to defend and secure theirs, the latter is more commonly a work in progress. Should one nation breach another’s border, a host of escalatory measures is deployed to meet the threat. When a personal boundary is violated, it is not uncommon for people to ignore the sirens ringing throughout their bodies, as doing so seems safer than confronting the threat.
Ignore the sirens long enough and pretty soon they’ll fade into the background. One may even come to interpret the siren as the threat. This pattern develops early on and is rehearsed to the point of mastery (meaning it becomes like second nature), unless the opportunity and the wherewithal to break that pattern are found.
Asserting personal boundaries can feel so ambiguous and confusing because our instinct to seek attachment is so strong. Take the child who, not wanting to disappoint her parents, acquiesces to their insistence that she allow strangers to touch and hug her; “just be nice”. Take the young teen who gives more than he’d like to peers, to be liked, though he knows they're just taking advantage of him. Take the countless encounters of an intimate nature, not born of desire, but because one or the other thought it was expected of them.
Personal boundaries are not merely physical, just as we are not merely physical. Our sense of self stretches beyond our skin to the interpersonal relationships within which we are embedded. We have moral boundaries, and repeated violations of these can result in what is sometimes referred to as a moral injury, characterized by a lack of trust, most pointedly in ourselves.
Anger arises to defend our moral boundaries, but anger is often maligned and misunderstood. For a child, preserving the bond with caregivers is paramount, and if expressing anger could jeopardize it in any way, that anger is redirected or repressed, and a person can even grow to be afraid of feeling angry in close relationships. It will come out instead as sarcasm, cynicism, or passive aggression, slowly eroding the bond of trust in that relationship.
Maligned anger can turn malignant in the way that regret can devolve into resentment. In the bestselling book When The Body Says No, Dr. Gabor Maté makes the case that repressed anger can even contribute to a cascade of physiological symptoms and chronic conditions. He argues, and I think rightly so, that between body and mind, there is no boundary.
Part of setting boundaries is learning to say no. Part of doing that is learning to allow yourself to feel your anger, your sadness, your fear, your pain. Anger can feel scary, it can so quickly get ugly, but as Aristotle teaches, most of our problems with anger arise due to an excess or a deficiency of it, and that when rightly balanced, anger can lead to courage.
May we all have the courage to be honest with ourselves and set boundaries when and where it is appropriate.
Some prompts for introspection:
Pay attention to the thoughts and feelings that arise in response to each question.
What is your relationship with anger?
When was a time you compromised with yourself to avoid upsetting others?
Where do you need to stand up for yourself a little more?
To take it further, document your experience in a journal and repeat the exercise in a few weeks or months’ time.
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