When someone crosses your boundary, you lose your sense of security. How to learn to say “stop”?

How close can you get to another person? And how close do you let others get to you? Do you know when to say stop? What to do if you feel someone is crossing your boundaries? These are just some questions related to the topic of human boundaries. We need them to feel safe, which is why it’s worth setting your own boundaries and respecting those of other people. How do we do it?

 

Family time
How to set boundaries? (Frank Merino / pexels.com)
How to set boundaries? (Frank Merino / pexels.com)

Watch and talk 

It’s worth looking at how you all feel staying at home together and how it affects your existing boundaries – both physical and mental. A good introduction to training assertiveness can be exercising setting your own boundaries at home, with your loved ones. And ensuring that they are respected. Assertiveness is nothing but expressing one’s own emotions and opinions while maintaining respect for oneself and for other people. Maybe now is the right time to talk about it directly. How? You can start with a simpler exercise and then continue the topic in a quiet moment convenient for you. 

Visualisation of boundaries 

We can only protect our boundaries if we are aware of them, i.e. we know what causes our (mental and physical) discomfort. And, as a result, we can say that someone is violating our boundaries. Imagine that each of you are in the middle of a balloon, which by expanding or contracting determines your physical boundaries. Now take turns describing the situations in which your balloons expand and contract. How do you react when someone presses your balloon, i.e. crosses your boundaries? Which reactions are clear information for all of you? And which need to be changed? If you need more time to reflect, first write your answers down and then discuss them. 

My boundaries 

Intimate zone, personal zone and social distance – to what extent do we allow the physical presence of another person and when does it become uncomfortable for us? In general, this distance is definitely smaller for our loved ones than for strangers. However, being forced to be with your loved ones in often very limited space, could be becoming difficult for us? Will the constant violation of personal space we need for ourselves begin to generate tension and conflicts? 

 

Come up with a safe word

Together, think about how to take care of your boundaries in this situation. Are there any behaviours that make you feel like you’re under attack? Are any of your reactions perceived by other household members as crossing their boundaries? Or maybe one of you has the impression that they’re being used? These are all signals of crossing the boundaries. Why don’t you, as a family, come up with a safe word that you’d use to communicate that someone’s crossing your boundaries or is close to crossing them? The safe word would allow all of you to react more quickly and safely when the situation becomes uncomfortable for any of you. Such a magic word can prevent you from “hounding each other out”, annoying each other or distancing yourselves from one another, which often cause silent grievances to build up.

 

All source materials are prepared by the team of Kulczyk Foundation’s Education Department in cooperation with teachers and experts – pedagogists, psychologists and cultural experts – and verified by an experienced family therapist Kamila Becker. Kinga Kuszak, PhD, Professor of Adam Mickiewicz University, Faculty of Educational Studies, provides content-related supervision over Kulczyk Foundation’s educational materials. All materials are covered by the content patronage of the Faculty of Educational Studies of Adam Mickiewicz University.

The article was published on 30.03.2020 on the website of Instytut Dobrego Życia (Good Life Institute)

Authors: Dorota Szkodzińska (Kulczyk Foundation) and Anna Woźniak (Instytut Dobrego Życia)