“Yes,” I said, “I’ve watched you make a lot of progress.”
“Maybe. But now I feel like I’m moving through the world, braced for battle all the time, constantly on the lookout for people who are being disrespectful to me and feeling like I need to say something each time “as part of my healing work”. It’s exhausting. I don’t feel taken advantage of, but I feel tired. Are those my two options?”
She shared this all with me, sounding dejected.
This conversation is an amalgam of conversations I’ve had with therapy clients over the last decade who, like with most of my relational trauma clients, is re-learning what it feels like to hold and assert healthy boundaries.
It’s a common experience in this re-learning. Feeling like you can either not set boundaries and be taken advantage of. Or hold boundaries at every turn and feel like a little battle-scarred and weary of it all.
But, as I tell my therapy clients, I think there’s a very valid third option. And there’s one specific question and tool I use to arrive at that third choice.
Boundary setting: “What’s your level of investment?”
For most individuals who come from relational trauma backgrounds – backgrounds in which they were raised by personality- or mood-disordered parents resulting in a childhood that didn’t meet their emotional and psychological developmental needs – boundaries can, at the beginning of the healing journey, feel like a little bit of a mystery.
And what’s also true is that as you start to learn and relearn what healthy boundaries look like, you may start to feel like you swing to the extreme opposite end of a pendulum.
What do I mean by this?
Someone who never spoke up, asserted herself and confronted anyone about anything may, in the course of trying to overcome her past and esteem herself, now feel compelled to speak up whenever she feels slighted.
She swings from one end of the pendulum – not holding any boundaries – to the other. Holding boundaries about everything with everyone.
And this swing – living at either end of the spectrum – can feel draining and exhausting.
But also, this same person may imagine that, if she doesn’t confront and speak up, she will be “tolerating poor behavior” or “not acting in integrity” – things which she refuses to do anymore.
So what options does this leave?
