7 boundaries for empowering responsible self-care

“When we were not allowed to set limits for ourselves often enough the art of kind but firm boundary setting is an art form worth pursuing.”
—Owen Robinson

Boundaries are holistic in that people will find a multiplicity of ways to impact on our stewardship of our own lives.  Sometimes we find ourselves in relationships where boundaries are necessary to be designed and enforced.

As I’ve written about recently, those who force us to protect our time availability, mental energy, emotional resources, material resources, internal capacity, conversational safety, and physical needs will often be the ones who continue to manipulate us to break into our personhood.

It’s helpful to think about boundaries holistically, as we steward our lives for the maximum beneficence of ourselves and others.  The seven boundaries for managing our time availability, mental energy, emotional resources, material resources, internal capacity, conversational safety, and physical needs are necessary for empowering responsible self-care.  This is without doubt the most important investment we can make in the journey of becoming.

The most important thing we can do from our overall life’s perspective is to continue to stand back and view our life from the perspective of God.  That is, to have sufficient time to reflect on our life purpose(s) and to regularly review if we’re on track or not.  There’s nothing worse than that feeling of chaos in NOT doing this.

There are people who appropriately rely on us, and if there are people who steal our time, mental energy, emotional resources, material resources, internal capacity, conversational safety, and physical needs those who genuinely need us end up deprived.  And we, ourselves, are left depleted, stressed, compromised, poorer, aggressed, and indeed possibly traumatised.

If WE don’t manage our time, mental energy, emotional resources, material resources, internal capacity, conversational safety, and physical needs nobody else will.  It’s not a selfish thing to do this.  On the contrary, it’s our responsibility to cater for our self-care.  It is our responsibility, and it can’t be delegated to anyone else.  It’s our stewardship of US.

Let’s think about this according to the minutia of these identified needs:

TIME AVAILABILITY

We all have finite time, we all work on a clock that requires us to rest sufficiently, to work, to study, etc.  There are unfair demands people place on our time, just as there are unfair restrictions made by others on their time.  Ideally, we give our time to those according to their need of us in our lives, but it’s a constant balancing act apportioning time.

I like the rule of Dunbar’s Number and hold to the truth in it.  That is, we all only have so much space for so many relationships.  We’re limited, and in terms of time, we can only devote so much time to people.  Sometimes some people will demand more of us than we can give them.  This boundary is about ensuring we can maintain what we can maintain.

MENTAL ENERGY

We’re all limited cognitively no matter how ‘smart’ we are.  We all have finite resources.  It’s not good if people in our lives don’t respect the mental resources that we do have.  Very quickly we learn who we can trust because they accept our mental limitations.  They don’t blame us when we’re not able to give them what they want.  There’s a certain freedom that comes with being in relationship with such a person.

But others don’t accord to us these allowances.  They may very well set standards that are too high for us to reach.  In other words, they may expect what is beyond our ability to give, or they may expect that which would deplete us, and therefore wouldn’t be fair on us.  This comes across as a demand.

EMOTIONAL RESOURCES

I love the quote, “As much as I want to support you right now, I do not have the emotional capacity.”  This encourages people to accept what we can give them, and if they can’t accept that, it needs to be their problem not ours.  The only time this becomes really problematic is when we’re talking about intimate familial relationships where we need to be there for another.

But whenever relationships begin to resemble a co-dependent dynamic, there ought to be a warning that it’s about to become toxic.  Some people will tend to lean on anyone who shows that they care.  Empaths particularly learn early on that some people are best avoided.

MATERIAL RESOURCES

There are probably not too many more overt ways of someone breaking normal conventions of boundaries than someone asking for money or other tangible resources over and again.

It doesn’t matter who they are, if someone is reliant on others for material resources, they will never learn vital life lessons that will sustain them.  Besides, it’s not fair.  Like the other boundaries, it’s a red flag when a person continues to flout this kind of boundary.

INTERNAL CAPACITY

It’s too easy to be characterised as an introvert for not having the internal capacity to be overly social.  Actually it doesn’t matter whether we are introverted or extroverted, we all need time to self-regulate.

This has more to do with preventing burnout than our personality style.  If we can’t meet the “needs” of a person who needs our presence with them at all times, so be it.

CONVERSATIONAL SAFETY

How many situations do we find ourselves in where we aren’t allowed to disagree, or we must agree with another person in the presence of others, because they’ve manipulated the conversation this way?

I know some people who do this all the time.  It’s like it’s the only way they know how to operate.  They have no idea how unsafe they are.  I avoid these people.

PHYSICAL NEEDS

I’m the sort of person who likes to hug and be hugged, but I respect that many people don’t, just like I respect the fact that it is often safer not to.

Nobody ever needs to make any excuses for not receiving physical intimacy from anyone.  We own our bodies, and nobody has a right to touch us or be physical with us in any way that we feel uncomfortable.