What are healthy personal boundaries?
From a psychological point of view, boundaries are the awareness of oneself as a separate person from those around him with his own emotions, values and physical personal space.
Personal boundaries have several components:
- emotional boundaries - the ability to distinguish your emotions from the experiences of other people;
- physical boundaries - a sense of personal space that you protect and do not allow to be invaded without permission;
- value boundaries - understanding one’s own value system. This helps you distinguish values that are close to you from those that are alien to you and follow them.
A person with healthy personal boundaries understands that he is fully responsible for his emotions, desires, words and actions, just like other people - and clearly sees where the boundary lies between his self and others. Such a person does not shift responsibility for his feelings onto others (“I am ashamed that my son chose the wrong profession. He makes me unhappy!”), and does not believe that he should or can control the behavior of other people (“If I will pay more attention to my beloved, she will stop drinking”).
The practice of “verbal interventions”
On the other hand, develop the practice of “verbal interventions”. You can take care of the baby and say that you see your son. “I’m busy right now, you can draw, wash your dishes or play with the construction set. What will you choose?
When the boy begins to do something on his own and does not distract you, do not leave positive behavior unattended, describe it from time to time:
- Wow, I see you draw great lines: they're long and bright.
- Look how much foam you have on your sponge. I wonder if it's possible to soap a plate as much as your hands?
- Your tower is very high and level
You can show that you see emotions and appreciate how he copes with them and how he behaves when he manages to behave well: “I noticed that you miss you. Come on, I'll change the baby's clothes and we'll choose a book for you together. You can sit and wait for me (if the boy chose this, point out that you are glad how patiently the person sits and waits) or play with the cars (show interest: “You chose the red one. How fast does it go / how high does it climb in the garage “)” And so on without end and edge.
Not only a description of feelings, but also a statement of what the boy is doing shows that you notice him, that you are to some extent with him even when you do your own things with him. It happens that it brings relief to a person when someone is grieving or angry with him.
How boundaries appear
The world around us constantly tests our strength: at work there is always a colleague who is ready to shift his responsibilities onto others, in companies there is an annoyingly frank friend, and even some friends tend to sit on our necks. But the most difficult thing to build healthy personal boundaries is in your own family.
A person is not born with ready-made boundaries. On the contrary: first the baby develops as a part of the mother’s body, and then, in the first months of life, he is in complete psychological fusion with her. Gradually, until the age of 17–20, the new person gains independence.
For a child to become a full-fledged adult, not only his efforts and time are required, but also the active assistance of his parents. But they do not always play a constructive role in this process, and sometimes they actively interfere with healthy growing up.
Toxic parents are not called toxic because we don't like them. Most of them - controlling, helpless, drinking and using violence - are united by an unconscious desire to keep the child with them at all costs in a state of codependency and submission.
Personal boundaries are a relatively new concept born out of a culture of individualism. They were widely discussed in psychology only in the 1960s–1980s. Just two or three generations ago, an extremely close-knit family, closed from external interference, was considered an excellent survival strategy, and not at all a pathology.
