As someone who works in the mental health space, one of the most commonly asked questions is how I maintain my own. There’s a lot of different factors involved, from making sure I get enough sleep to exercising, but the biggest thing that has made me less anxious about my life in the past 12 months has to be identifying my boundaries – and sticking to them. Although I think New Year’s resolutions are terrible (renewal happens constantly, not just once a year), it’s the one thing I’d recommend adding to the list.
Setting boundaries might sound ambiguous, but they are guidelines created by a person to identify positive, safe ways for other people to behave towards them, followed by a set of rules around how to respond if someone breaks a boundary. While it’s different for everyone, I’ve had to set a lot of boundaries after coping with a spouse who had addiction issues, a couple of toxic friendships and generally, I tend to grapple a lot with anxiety.
This can sometimes be low-level anxiety – worrying about being an imposter, whether people hate me or I’ve done something wrong without realising it – or a full-on tornado that deafens me and turns me into a wreck. As with a lot of things that affect a person’s mental health, a big part of what makes it worse, is the feeling of being out of control around things. Boundaries give you back that control. Even though they can be hard as hell to implement – mainly because other people don’t understand why you’re doing it and aren’t always receptive to change – I’ve found them to be fortifying to my mental health. And conversely, when I have poor discipline around my boundaries, I'm also likely to be the most stressed out and anxious.
Setting boundaries is a mucky business because people may perceive it as rejection.
The easiest boundaries are the ones that are practical, but feed into a better sense of wellbeing. For me, that includes not over-committing to friends whether that’s going on holidays I can’t afford, or social events. Sometimes I can verge on being an introvert, and it’s OK to say I need to go home early, or say no altogether. The easiest time to do this might be Friday drinks, while the toughest might be someone’s hen do.
Others include not drinking too much. So for instance, while it might not be a popular choice with friends, sometimes boundaries have included only drinking one night of the week or even not drinking for months at a time.
The slightly harder ones are usually those that involve dealing with other people’s behaviour and how that might make you feel. A classic example are flaky friends – those who’ll either cancel, be late, not turn up or invite their partner along without telling me. Increasingly, as time has gone on, this has become a harder boundary and one that I am less willing to bend. Like most people, I have a busy calendar, and my stress levels fluctuate depending on how hectic work is. One of my boundaries is to eliminate unnecessary stress, particularly people who cause it. It may sound harsh, but in stressful weeks, I don’t meet my flaky friends because I don’t trust them to not cancel, and I don’t have the extra flexibility or the understanding required to deal with them during that time.
The hardest boundaries however, are when you’re in direct conflict with someone, or you’ve got a toxic relationship with someone, whether it’s romantic or platonic. I learned this year that I’m actually co-dependent, which is a term used to describe a person who bases their entire life around pleasing or enabling the other person in the relationship, often at great cost and sacrifice to their own wellbeing. A co-dependent person generally gets their worth from being needed, and tends to not view their own needs as important as the other person’s.
I started engaging in the Al-Anon 12-step program to help unravel some of the issues I’d dealt with around my late husband who was an addict, but it ended up teaching me so much more. Boundaries was a huge one, and not just the lack of boundaries I had around him, but was also applicable to certain friends and family.
Whenever there was a problem, I felt I needed to mediate and fix it without being asked. I would often shelve my own discomfort or views to keep the peace. If someone was angry at me, I wouldn’t question whether the anger was justified, I would just accept it as a given. And until the person had forgiven me, my mind was cataclysmic – turning over every detail over and over again, trying to get a resolution as quickly as possible.
In several situations in the last month, rather than rushing for forgiveness, I’ve taken my time to think about how I feel. I’m usually always the person on WhatsApp who feels they have to message back instantly and after an argument with a friend, I actually left it a day before replying and it made me feel much calmer.
That’s not to say it has gone down well with everyone. Setting boundaries is a mucky business because people may perceive it as rejection if you’re pulling away, or may think you’re behaving in a callous way. But once those boundaries are created, they get stronger with time, and actually allow you to be a better person to the people in your life. If you’re like me, it will make you less frantic, reactive and more thoughtful.
It’s not much of a life if you’re always trying to please people or wait for their validation to give yourself a sense of self worth. Boundaries give that control back to you, and that’s definitely a change worth making.
Let’s Reflect: As 2019 comes to a close, Grazia writers are looking back and looking inward to reflect on the last year.
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