What to do when someone else's boundaries feel like walls.
Photo by Quinn Buffing on Unsplash
I often find people say things to me like "Oh, yes, boundaries, I need to get some of those!" as though it's something you can just go pick up at the local department store.
(spoiler alert: that's not how it works!)
One of the most confusing things people encounter once they truly pursue practicing better boundaries is that you don't get better boundaries by aiming at boundaries, and also that other people's boundaries feel like walls to people who don't have boundaries.
Last week, I wrote a short list of "symptoms" that might help you identify where you might have bad boundaries. Based on your feedback, it occurred to me that across the board we tend to have a pretty theoretical idea of what boundaries are, and that most people are unaware of what our collective, universal, basic human rights are - rights that we ought to both practice for ourselves, and honor in others, no matter what.
While I continue to write on the topic, another theme has arisen, which I wrote about months ago, which is that, while boundaries are decidedly not walls, they certainly feel that way to people who do not have boundaries.
if you're not reconciled with your own boundaries, it's pretty much a guarantee that you will experience other people's boundaries as aggression and walls even when they aren't. Because your lack of boundaries feel wide open, and so someone else being firm and drawing a line, is inevitably going to feel closed for you (even if it's objectively not). It will especially feel that way if you continue to push, because you actually can't feel or respect their boundaries precisely because you can't feel or respect your own.
And if you're also not reconciled with your own experience of aggression, you may even use manipulation and control (or other reactive behavior from the fight/flight/freeze/disassociate/befriend menu) to try to coerce other people out of or otherwise shut down and avoid your interpretation of aggression, even if all they're actually doing is firmly holding a boundary.
We could go deep into how this works, but the short of it is that we often project our repressed experiences on other people to continue to validate our version of reality, because that's what ensures that we continue to stay safe.
So what the heck are we supposed to do?
I had a mentor once who said to me very candidly as I was working through this very process myself: "Mind your own goddamn business."
You may not like how someone else's boundaries feel. You may be sure as spit that those are not boundaries and that actually this person is not letting you in.
As Donnie Brasco says, "Fuhgeddaboudit."
One thing I know for sure, is that you definitely don't build boundaries by worrying about other people's. If someone is not available for you in a place you think they should be, it's not your job to navigate that for them, or even with them. It's your job to be clear about what you want, and do the deep inner work necessary to manage your own energy with ever-increasing levels of precision.
Sometimes this means walking away from relationships. Sometimes this means drawing a firm, loving, line and not budging. Sometimes this means loving someone else in their process even if you don't fully understand what their process is, or what yours is, or how the two of you are coming together to play out those processes. A lot of times this is where people start considering hiring a coach, because it's super easier to feel disoriented here when we don't have our own anchoring and integrated discernment.
PS: I shared the below infograph a couple weeks ago on social media to help keep up with the practice of discernment on this topic with my followers there and thought you might like to see it, too.