Setting internal boundaries - part 1

If you are on a healing journey you probably have worked or will work on boundaries at some point.

More often than not, boundaries will challenge our people pleasing tendencies, that’s why it can feel so challenging to set them.

Working with clients, and within my own personal work, I have found that It’s important to shift the way we look at boundaries and the way we approach them.

It’s more productive and less threatening to first start with your own internal boundaries.

Internal boundaries are boundaries that you set for yourself. With focus on your own window of tolerance and well being. You can see it as a promise you make for yourself.

For instance, you realise you are getting too overwhelmed in the beginning of every week, as your weekends are fully packed and you never manage to find time to clean and organise your home over the weekend. You realise you need a couple of hours for yourself. You then decide to not accept any invitations on Saturday mornings to create more space to clean your home. This would be classed as an internal boundary.

With boundaries we have to start somewhere. There is nothing better than to start with ourselves.

Having internal boundaries is the baseline to establish healthy relationships with others as well. Relationships that don’t accumulate resentment over the years. You know what you can give and cannot give according to your own limits at any given moment.

This doesn’t mean you will forsake those that you care about. It’s actually the opposite. When you start to set internal boundaries you can finally connect with people from a place of integrity and not from an unhealthy people pleasing pattern.