- What boundaries should you have in a relationship?
How do you even know?
How do you set them?
And is it too late?
- Boundaries, Liv.
- Stressing and boundaries.
- Hi, I'm Alicia Decker, co-founder of Mended Light.
Let's talk about boundaries.
(uplifting music)
So, here's the thing about boundaries,
we all have different boundaries,
because we all have different needs and life experiences.
Let me talk about this a little bit.
So, depending on your personality type,
you have different things you value,
and because of those different values,
you have different needs.
And therefore, you're gonna to have boundaries
that are different than someone
who has a drastically different needs than you do.
So, whether you are familiar with the color code
or Meyer Briggs or personality types 1, 2, 3, 4,
each one of those has different needs.
- Colors, different shapes, different sizes.
- We have a personality type program in our therapy clinic,
and we call them closers, dreamers, healers, and thinkers,
and let me give you a couple of examples.
So, your closers are going to value accomplishment
and getting things done and having priorities.
Like, they are the go getters.
They are going to feel frustrated
if anybody is standing in the way
of their accomplishments or goals.
- Get out of my way.
- They also have a tendency to not be as considerate,
not worry as much about other people's feelings,
and sound a little bit more harsh,
or a lot harsh, in their tone of voice.
- Slightly whiny voice,
and you sound like you've got a really bad cold.
- Now, contrast that to the healers,
who are basically your quintessential mothers.
Now, this is quite often seen
as a female personality trait, but it's not.
There's plenty of men out there who are healers,
my husband being one of them.
And these healers, they value connection.
They value closeness.
They value comfort and the comfort of those
they care about most in their lives.
So, what's going to be really important to them
is that they feel comfortable in a situation
and that the people around them feel comfortable.
And when you have a closer
that just wants to get things done and take action,
and you have a healer that has to feel comfortable
before they're going to move forward,
you are going to create drastically different needs,
and they're going to have drastically different boundaries.
And so, when a healer says to a closer,
you know, the way you're talking to me
and that tone of voice that you are using
is really hurting my feelings,
that is very true for the healer,
and that is a boundary they need to express
and they need to set,
and that the closer needs to be aware of.
And if the closer isn't understanding of a reality
different than their own, they're not gonna understand.
They're gonna say, I talk to everybody this way.
It's not a problem.
This is the way I talk to my buddies,
or this is the way I talk to my coworkers.
But in that interpersonal partner/spouse,
parent/child relationship, whatever it may be,
that close personal relationship,
those are gonna be two drastically different boundaries,
because there are two drastically different needs.
And so, being aware of your needs and what they are,
and then being able to express them
in a non-confrontational manner
is challenging for all of us.
- Manners maketh man.
- Now let's talk about the thinkers and the dreamers,
also drastically different personalities.
So, the thinkers value respect.
What's important to them is knowledge,
understanding, logic.
They are the ones that are going to read
the instruction manuals,
they're going to follow the directions.
It has to make sense.
They have very clear black and white guidelines in life,
and they follow those.
- They had a pattern to follow.
- Indeed.
- Now, dreamers, they're the life of the party.
They are everybody's best friend.
If you want to have a good time, you call the dreamer.
These personality types are quite often not child-ish,
but even as adults, child-like.
They're lighthearted, they're fun, they're bubbly.
They value acceptance.
They value fun.
They have a tendency to avoid anything
that feels heavy or burdensome,
and sometimes that can look like work and responsibility.
- We're dreamers.
- You guys know what I'm talking about.
So, the thinker, they need the boundaries
of being able to depend on someone,
that people are going to do
what they say they're going to do.
There is always a plan with the thinker.
- I have a plan, I have a plan.
- And with the dreamer, everything is a possibility
until it happens, up until that last second.
And so, there could be a conflict,
and quite often is between the dreamer and the thinker,
where the thinker thinks they have a plan.
This is what they're going to do,
and the dreamer's like, hey, what about this?
What about that?
Maybe we could do this instead.
And it feels very confusing
and disrespectful to the thinker,
while the dreamer can feel claustrophobic
and held down and almost like their wings
are cut off by the thinker.
Now, these are just two examples
between two different personality types
of needs and boundaries, and there are tons and tons more.
And what happens in our personal relationships,
especially with our spouses, our partners,
or between a parent/child, even as adults,
is those lines get crossed
and they get crossed over and over and over again,
and then we get into patterns of behavior,
and then we get into beliefs
about what the behavior of the other person means.
And then those beliefs are solidified over time,
and that's where we ask ourselves,
is it too late to set boundaries?
It's never too late to set boundaries in a healthy way,
but it is important to recognize the patterns of behavior
that have come before
and how that's gonna affect you in the future,
and quite often how it's gonna be triggering.
Unless there's cases of abuse,
these challenges can always be overcome, but quite often,
if you've had these patterns of behavior for a long time,
and you're not even aware, maybe,
of all of them between the two of you,
that's where you need the support of someone else,
a therapist, a clergyman,
someone with an outside perspective
that can see what's going on and can support you
through those times of understanding what your needs are
and what the needs are of the other person.
- I'm here to help.
- So often, when it comes to setting boundaries,
there is always a point of conflict,
something that comes up
where you need that boundary to be set.
And none of us really learned how to address conflict
in a healthy way.
See, conflict isn't a bad thing.
It helps us grow as people and in our relationships.
But so many of us haven't learned
how to handle it in a healthy way.
So, here's the thing about conflict,
you have three types of ways you can resolve conflict.
You can be an avoider, this looks like avoiding conflict,
and quite often this behavior
comes up as passive aggressive.
You don't really say what's going on for you.
You don't really address what upset you in the moment,
but you might later make little digs,
or you take complete responsibility for all conflict,
just to avoid any heated arguments
or discussions or blow ups.
- [Summer] And you're the one that's avoiding, avoider.
- And when you're an avoider, nothing truly gets resolved,
and so often, the other party isn't taking responsibility
for their part of the conflict.
And when that doesn't happen,
when both people or both parties
don't take responsibility for it,
nothing can truly ever change.
Okay, so we have avoiders and then we have attackers,
and attackers sound just like what it is.
Once again, they're not taking any responsibility
and they're attacking.
They're chewing you out, they're yelling.
It can sometimes look like a volcanic explosion.
And sometimes people aren't always avoiders and attackers.
People can be avoiders,
and they avoid and they avoid and they avoid,
and then they become an attacker and they blow up.
(Anger yells)
So it's not a matter of being one or the other.
People switch in between them.
And what we really want to be is affirmers,
and what this looks like is taking responsibility
for how you feel and any behavior that you caused
that led to the conflict.
So, for example, with my kids, right,
we're teaching this to them, and this is so much fun,
because they're five to 15 years old.
So, everything from they took my LEGOs
to much bigger problems and challenges
for the teenager, right?
So, I just had this conversation with my kids, right?
So, my 11-year-old, she can be kind of clumsy,
and I guess she accidentally tripped
or pushed her nine-year-old brother,
and he is a closer, closer.
He can be a volcano.
He's very aggressive, incredibly loving,
but his tendency is always retribution.
And so, of course, his sister did something by accident.
She's a healer and she's kind of clumsy and very sensitive,
and so he turns around and goes to hit her.
And so, we have a conversation about conflict resolution,
and he's upset because of the way he was treated.
And I said to him, okay, look,
even if she did it on purpose,
turning around and hitting her is not the solution.
And we all learn this as children,
but sometimes, in those moments of passion,
in those moments of anger,
and those moments of patterns of behavior
where we're triggered, that feels like the solution,
even as adults, to swing at a person,
either verbally or physically, right?
Because we are so frustrated.
And so, there's a key phrase,
there's a key sentence you want to use
in those moments of frustration, aggression, or arousal,
and this isn't sexual arousal.
This is heated emotion,
and for me, when I get aroused, I feel hot.
My hands get tingly
and I can feel, like, the heat coming up through my head.
And so, the first thing you need to do
in those moments of conflict
is you need to stop and calm down.
If you do not stop calm down,
you cannot think clearly.
You need to bring that arousal, those emotions down.
You can do it by taking a walk,
some deep breathing exercises.
It can even be just 30 seconds,
and the breathing is what I utilize the most in my own life
and between my children, and with my spouse.
Don't tell Jonathan.
- What, are you Lamaze breathing?
- It helps.
- Okay, so after you've stopped and calmed down,
the key phrase or sentence or something like it is,
when you do blank, I feel blank.
And what that means, so when you push me,
I feel like you don't care about me.
When you yell at me,
I feel like you don't really want to talk to me.
All those things that come up for you
when you're in that point of conflict,
and the reason that sentence is so important
is because you're taking responsibility for how you feel,
and your perspective is valid.
Whatever that perspective may be,
feelings aren't right or wrong, they just are,
and we all have the feelings that we feel.
And we so often don't want to keep those feelings
that we have, especially when we're feeling that conflict,
that aggression, that hurt.
If we don't express them
and we don't feel heard and seen and understood,
there's no way to move through those feelings,
which is very different, so when you push me,
I feel like you don't care about me
is very different than when you push me,
it's because you're a jerk or because you're an idiot
or because you don't understand.
In learning to set boundaries and to handle the conflict
that comes up when setting boundaries,
it's so important to take responsibility for our feelings
and not express our needs in such a way
where we victimize ourselves
or take the responsibility for how we feel
and project that onto the other person.
I know it can be so challenging,
and we are here to help and support you through it.
Now, if you've had some pretty serious boundaries crossed
in your personal relationship with your spouse
or your partner, such as infidelity
or lying or cheating or hiding,
those are so often boundaries and challenges
that you can't address on your own,
that you need support, and you need help.
If this has happened to you,
check out our video, Considering a Divorce After Infidelity.
Thank you for being a part of the Mended Light community,
and remember to keep shining.
We need your light.
(uplifting music)