Boundaries and Borders.
Psychotherapists talk about “boundaries” in relationships. What does it mean when someone says, “So-and-so has good boundaries?”
Boundaries are apparently something good to have. In many instances, the person with good boundaries is the one capable of saying “no” to something (or someone). An autonomous statement of refusal seems among the hardest for people in our culture to make freely. “We invited Sally to join us for dinner, but she refused and said that she needed to have a night at home alone. She has such good boundaries.”
“I know: she’s amazing.”
Boundaries define, distinguish, and protect. Boundaries in the above example refer to protection against invasion, specifically the protection of rights and acts of self-expression against the invasion by other people’s wishes and influence. Sally could refuse the invitation to dinner only if she i) knew clearly that she didn’t want to go, and ii) was capable of declaring the fact: both of these in the face of other people’s expressed wishes to the contrary. We should pause over each of these two steps.
Parents hold the virtual outline of their child’s future boundaries
Our experience of boundaries begins in childhood. Boundaries are embedded in culture, and they will only develop in children if they are first held by the parents. Parents hold the virtual outline of their child’s future boundaries, and the child has to grow into that negative space. For example, boundaries around physicality are shaped decisively by parental behaviour; children who are accustomed to parents walking into their bedroom at any time, without warning, knocking, or asking any permission, often become adults who don’t flinch when an authority figure breaches their privacy. They didn’t develop the boundary that would be necessary in order to detect the breach at that same moment when other adults might. When it comes to the first of our two steps listed above, parents deeply affect the child’s ability know securely what s/he wants. If parents do not hold a boundary that creates a space around the child to feel and express his/her Will, it will be difficult for the child to develop into an adult who knows what s/he wants. Knowing what you want as a child can sometimes take a moment, and if your parent rushes in tell you want you ‘want’, this invasion can pollute the space of fledgling-volition with the troublesome preferences of another person. For example, if Sally wanted to wear a blue dress to her friend’s birthday in primary school, and her mother said, “No, you want to wear the pink dress, darling,” Sally would have been at risk of confusing the internal feeling of knowing securely what she wants with a different feeling of having to match somebody else’s wishes for her1. This is another way of saying that it would have made it harder for the child to recognise her own voice and own feelings. If mum told me what I wanted every time, how would I ever learn what it felts like to be sure I know what I want for myself? Like if mum answered every maths problem in my homework, I would never had had the very chance to learn to do it myself. This holds equally for our second aspect of boundaries outlined above: self-expression.
“Upon my word,” said her Ladyship, “you give your opinion very decidedly for so young a person. Pray, what is your age?” (Jane Austen, “Pride and Prejudice”).
Self-expression is the second important step, and we usually use the word “assertive” to refer to people capable of giving voice to their opinions. Assertiveness sits between behaviours of aggression (imposing on others) and acquiescence (yielding pre-reflectively to whatever others want). You can see how the previous step of knowing what one feels and desires is a necessary precondition to assertiveness, while assertiveness may yet be absent even in the presence of this precondition. Speech or action that affords self-expression extends to include creative acts of all kinds, from setting a table beautifully through to creating masterpieces of art. The impulse felt within is carried and protected through to the manifest world, where its physical consequences serve ultimately to show us something (hopefully new) about ourselves. My patients usually give clear reasons for the places where they are unable to speak openly in their relationships; these reasons are typically centred on expectations of bad responses from others. While there is usually some validity to their negative expectation of the reactions of others, something much more important (and often harder to find) is also usually at play. Their very centre of initiative itself often carries its own traumatic conditioning whereby the functioning of their expressive centre is compromised. In these cases, the act of self-expression triggers an internal negative response, making it harder to hear clearly the voice of the deeper self. It’s like playing a poor quality musical recording through an old speaker and taking for granted that the speaker alone is responsible for the result. These patients usually need to begin by facing their fearful expectations of others before being able to address the damaged child trying to speak from within. Again, childhood experiences have their effects on the expressive centres, especially whenever children speaking the truth are suspected or accused of lying by adults.
So when people want things of you, or tell you what you should feel, they are inviting you to be confused about your actual feelings and desires. You are not obliged to accept the invitation, not even from those who love you. When we are anything less than clear about our feelings and desires, we are at risk of responding with either defiance or compliance. This is a common dilemma seen clearly in many teenagers reacting to their parents. If their parents want them, say, to study and do well at school, they can fear that doing well at school proves they are just complying with their parents’ wishes; the prospect of that feels (correctly) disgusting. And would the (healthy) distaste for the possibility of compliance mean that defiance is the only safe option?2 And what if your parents want you to do well at school and you, yourself, (truly) want to do well at school? Any lack of clarity about feelings and desires will only add to the confusion over how to avoid the Scylla and Charybdis of defiance and compliance. Defiance and compliance are two forms of a failure of autonomy.
In such cases, we need to step back from external reactions, silence the advice and recommendations of others, and sit in silence until the true voice within dares to try speaking clearly again.
Healthy boundaries function like customs departments at airports: Something arrives from another person, something from a foreign shore (like a request or invitation). It has to be held out at the border, not just let in indiscriminately. Then it has to be examined there and a determination made about what is to be let in, and what has to be sent back. And all this requires a clear policy of what we do and do not want to let in, which in turn can only be drafted once we know what we really feel and really want. This is a process permanently open to revision and correction. We are all capable of achieving a point at which we have become so practised at hearing our true feelings that we never go offline from the moment-to-moment messaging from our heart. From that position, other people can send as many invitations, requests, suppositions, assumptions, and even directives about us, and we remain unperturbed.
Dr Giac Giacomantonio, PhD.
Some of my patients grew up like this and became Gold Medal champions at accommodating another person’s feelings and wishes. It prepared them for their future careers as psychotherapists, but it nearly killed their spirit.
The fear of compliance and the subsequent swing to defiance is captured beautifully in the song “Killing in the name of” by Rage Against the Machine.