Why do boundaries feel like rejection?

[Intro] Hello friends, I am happy to be here with you and grateful that we have a few minutes. I invite you to put aside all the stressors, all of the concerns that you have, the disappointments. We're not minimizing them, we're not suppressing them, we're just putting them to the side for these next few minutes so that you can soak up what we talk about today.  I want to welcome you to Empowered to Thrive. I am Corinne Powell and I am so grateful, I really am, that you've chosen to join me and take out time from your busy schedule to take care of you.

Corinne Powell: That's why I'm here, because I care about you and I believe you show up because you care about you as well and I'm so happy for that. You deserve that care. So how about we get into what today's content is all about? Sometimes on the healing journey we start to set boundaries, we start to become self-aware, we do all of this inner work and we may even feel heightened emotions. We may get activated more often where we just notice, oh my goodness, I feel a rush of adrenaline, I feel a strong emotion. We may or may not know where it's coming from or why it's there, but there is always a very valid reason. 

Sometimes, you know, emotions are going to present themselves simply because they need to be felt and moved through. They don't have to be given much attention. And then there's this element, which is what we're going to deep dive into today, about boundaries that other people set - and how can we respect that. 

It can feel personal, painful, triggering to have someone else set a limitation that we feel imposes on us, limits us, restricts us, punishes us. So we're going to consider a few different perspectives. First off, let's make this a little bit less about us and more about the other person. If we go through life taking everything personally, life will be a lot more painful, a lot more disappointing, just more difficult overall. Because you see, as a child, a young child, we feel the world revolves around us. And in many ways, it does. I mean, think about an infant.

Both parents, sometimes other caregivers, all the focus is on this infant, keeping them alive and healthy, making sure their needs are met. It's a full-time, very consuming task. And that is what the infant needs. And then there comes a point as this infant becomes a toddler and then the toddler becomes a young child and they're growing up. They always have needs, but they learn how to meet some of their needs. Initially, they depend on the caregivers to meet all of their needs. And as they get older, they can go to the fridge and grab the cheese stick snack. Or they can put on their own clothes and brush their teeth.  They still need guidance. They will always, as a child, need a support. Someone to take care of them, to offer them attunement and connection, to provide for their physical needs, of course. 

But if you're tracking with me, the needs change and they become more independent. We also, as a young child, developmentally, are designed to learn that it's not all about us. Initially, it was. And then we start to learn we can receive and we can give. We don't need to learn this too early on. I often observe parents say things like, you gotta share if you want to have friends, or say please, or just all sorts of things that, yes, we learn some of these ways of socially interacting as we get older, but it can be inappropriate to expect that of an extremely young child. And sometimes that's the projection of the parent. The parents worried about their child not having friends. The parents lived a lot of life and observed that if you're not kind, if you don't share, people don't want to hang around you. If you're selfish, you might end up with less friends. But it's also developmentally appropriate that a young child is going to assume that if a toy is there, it's theirs to play with. That's a natural instinct. There's nothing wrong or inappropriate with it. 

We often are projecting onto other people. We're creating stories and then living our life based out of those underlying beliefs. If my child's selfish, they won't have friends. That's a story the adult has created, maybe based off of experience. It's still a belief, an underlying belief of theirs, and now they're projecting it onto their child. And the child may likely feel the pressure from that parent, even if they don't understand it all. I've seen people correct and discipline their children, punish their children for these very normal ways of interacting that are appropriate at certain developmental ages. 

Or the parent feels ashamed or the parent punishes the child for a meltdown that the child has when they're not ready to leave from one place to go to another. When really the child's feeling a lot of emotions in their body, they don't know what to do with them, and they're trying to process through them by rolling around on the floor, by crying, by screaming. They're expressing how their inner world feels. As the caregiver, we're there to attune to them. I understand. It's so disappointing. You're having such a fun time. You don't want to go right now. 

We recognize maybe what they're feeling, and we just stand by and we wait or we hold them and support them. We focus on regulating ourself so that our child can see something modeled. That we're not ashamed or embarrassed or feeling nervous or uncomfortable based off of their emotional expression. We're with them in it. And then, all right, I'm feeling better now. We're gonna go, and I'm looking forward to next time when we can come back here. Let's go have fun. Let's go whatever we're doing next, right? We just talk about it. We move through it. We feel emotions, and we move through them.

So, going back to what I was originally talking about, when people set boundaries and we feel like it is personal to us, an attack on us, let's start to shift the perspective and consider that maybe it's less about us and more about them. Maybe they're setting boundaries because they need to support themselves. Of course, that's how I suggest we set boundaries for ourself as a means of supporting ourselves. So, why would I not expect that's what other people are doing? They're doing what they need to support themselves, to take care of their bodies. It's less about me and more about them. 

Now, perhaps I feel it is personal. In safe relationships, you can bring that up. Hey, I know you set this limitation and it's affecting our relationship, and I was just wondering if you could tell me more about the reason behind it. What brought you to setting this boundary? Just get curious. Maybe they're going to share. Maybe they're not going to want to share. That's up to them. Even that, we can choose whether we're going to take that personally or we're just going to say they're not interested in sharing right now. They're not up to sharing right now. I would want them to give me the same respect, so I'm going to offer them what I would hope they would offer me in return. Can we look at it that way? That we would want others to do that for us. 

If we said we didn't want to talk about it, I would assume that you, I know I, would hope that they would respect that, and so I should give them what I want to receive in return. If I want to set boundaries and know that people are going to respect my wishes, and honestly that it's not always going to create drama, that people aren't going to always think it's about them, that I'm doing this because I don't want to be around them, or I'm doing this because I want to punish them, or I'm doing this because I'm selfish.

If I want other people to think differently, I will start by offering them that kindness, by offering them the benefit of the doubt. So consider the people in your life who have set boundaries. Maybe they're not able to get together as often as you wish. Maybe they aren't able to take your phone call at the time that you wish they could. Maybe you need help with something and they're not available that week, or they're not available at all. Can you step back and consider that there's a lot going on in their world, you may or may not be aware of it all, and there's really valid reasons for them why they need to establish these boundaries. 

Can you reflect on the boundaries either you already have or that you need to start setting in place? And just consider the people who have respected you in that, and how that felt to have them not push against your boundaries, not question everything, to not take it personally, when they distance themselves from you, or they get angry with you. I know that's painful, I've experienced it, and you may not be able to make sense of it all, you may not understand it all, but a part of the healing process is doing the next thing, because it feels like it's the next thing to do, even when it's not easy, when it doesn't make sense, when we can't understand it. 

To make it personal, I just want to share a story about how this has happened in my life. Several years ago, I had a really close friend put up a boundary, and she said, I'm not gonna be able to spend time with you, like I have been in the past. We used to get together and do things, and like I said, she was a close friend of mine. And I was making a decision that was affecting her, and it felt like she was then making a decision, in a sense, to punish me.

I had a lot of reasons for thinking why it was wrong, why, you know, it was inappropriate, but I remember being in a coaching session with a set of coaches who were phenomenal working with me together, and they brought up this point that, you know, maybe she made that decision because it was something she needed to do right now. The way they even worded it made me feel in that moment like it wasn't about me, it was more about her, and it felt very comforting and relieving to think she's not doing this to be harsh towards me, she's not doing this to punish me, she's doing this because this is what she needs to do in this moment for whatever reason she needs to do it. 

And when I could take the focus off of me and put it on her, it actually made it so much easier. It still hurt, but it hurt differently. I might suggest it hurt less because it hurt in this very different way, it wasn't so personal, and it's been many years since that point, I would say eight years now, and the relationship has never gone back to what it used to be, but I've come to accept that, I've come to be okay with it. Yeah, it still hurts, it hurts in the sort of way like grieving something that used to be, that I thought would always be, that I see isn't. 

It hurts a bit because I feel like I'm grieving how I thought things were and yet I hold a deep respect for her being able to set the boundaries that she needed to set. I hold an understanding that there's more to the story than I realize, and I'm not going to make it all about me because that will actually be more painful, and because it's not how it is. Things are always more complex than that. If I set a limitation within a relationship, even if I think it's because I need distance from the other person, it's always more complex than that. There is a part of it that's rooted in my childhood experiences, a part of it that's rooted in my present life, and the stressors that I have, and then yes, this other piece that I feel is about that person. 

So reflect on the people in your life that have started to set boundaries, and let's allow ourselves to take on a new perspective, to challenge the underlying beliefs, the stories we're telling ourselves, and to offer to other people what we would hope to receive in return. I really appreciate that you are someone willing to consider what I'm talking about today, because this is the hard stuff. This is the mature type of conversation that a lot of people don't have. They're just like, screw it, I won't do that difficult inner work. I don't want to have to put in the effort that that takes, but you're not like that. 

You're going to experience the benefit of being willing to do the difficult inner work. It pays off. The benefits are many. It's worth the energetic exchange that it takes. It's worth it, friend. Living with peace, living with a more expanded perspective, with less judgment and more compassion, more love. It is so beautiful. It is so worth it. 

[Outro] I hope that you'll continue on the healing journey, doing the work that may not always be easy, but reaps dividends and heals the generations. You are creating the ripple that will impact those behind you. Much love, my friends. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week.