By: Gabriel Garza
Boundaries are essential for everyone to understand, create, and get used to using in life. Since COVID-19 hit us, some individuals’ boundaries have worsened after moving in with family, losing jobs, becoming ill, etc. If this has happened to you, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Creating boundaries is a very important topic that should be discussed and used more often. Liz Adeseko, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) and a Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor (LCDC), helps patients create boundaries for the people in our lives such as our family, friends, coworkers, and even our significant others. Some of the boundaries that we might consider across ourselves are “how can I have better boundaries with my family and friends?” or “how can I say NO when I want to?”.
According to Liz Adeseko, boundaries can be best defined by author: Nedra Glover Tawwab from her book “Set Boundaries, Find Peace (a guide to reclaiming yourself).” In her book, she discusses that boundaries are expectations and needs that make you feel safe and comfortable in a relationship. These boundaries can make you feel safe and comfortable in any relationship you may be focusing on or developing.
Once you know what boundaries are, then you want to look at what your values are. Doing this helps you find why you want to create these boundaries and what type of boundary you want. Knowing your values allows you to draw your attention to what limitations you want to have with family, friends based on what is most important to you.
Nowadays, the internet has brought a lot of information to the palm of our hands. Adeseko states, ‘one resource is a website called Theripistaid.com, where you can plug in info about yourself and make a values clarification list. With this list made, it will show you which values are most important to you and rate them top to bottom. These values can vary from person to person and can be such things as love, family, friends, etc. With your values discovered, you will see what kind of boundaries you would like to set up for yourself and others.”
Now that you have set up your boundaries, you must know how to communicate these new boundaries. This brings us the three types of communication:
- Passive communication: can be described as not being very loud, it can be very hard for us to talk about our needs, we do not have a lot of eye contact, we may look away, look down, and sometimes we can allow others to take advantage.
- Aggressive communication: can be described as much more vocal; when someone is easily frustrated, they may be unwilling to compromise. They may be disrespectful, interrupt the other person, and only focus on a person’s own needs.
- Assertive communication (is also what we want to focus on when it comes to boundaries): the type of communication that we can listen to, we can listen to the other person’s needs, we can clearly state our own needs and wants, which is very important, willing to compromise, where we can stand up for our rights, can have confident body language, we can look at a person in the eye during a conversation.
Adeseko informs us that “communicating is different for everyone. Some find it easy, and others find it the most challenging thing they can do. Getting your point across with what you are feeling and thinking is important for your mental health and life in general. One problem someone might have is having trouble saying NO.”
Here are some examples that could help you next time you are trying to say NO to a person or situation in an assertive way:
- That sounds great, but….
- I’m not available then.
- I just can’t do it. I’m honored that you would ask me, but I’m not able to do it that day.
- I’m sorry, but I can’t help you at this time.
- Unfortunately, I’m not available, maybe another time.
Creating your personalized boundaries is essential for you and your happiness. Establishing boundaries will help you take control of your relationships and communications with others.
