Creating Healthy Boundaries

Healthy boundaries are important in both the personal and professional realms of our lives. If you’re like me, you find it difficult to know what is and is not a healthy boundary, let alone how to set and stick to them.

The aim of creating boundaries for yourself is to protect your mental health, they help establish your identity, and are essentially promises to yourself on what you will and will not be responsible for. These promises also lead to enhanced self-confidence, if you keep breaking promises to yourself, it slowly erodes self-trust. Contrary to feeling like you are being demanding, you are setting a standard for yourself and others so that you can thrive, preventing burnout, anger, and resentment.

Let’s start with examples of some boundaries in a professional sense, to gain perspective of what a healthy boundary looks like, while not feeling or seeming demanding.

Professional health care providers have several boundaries – they do not have extended contact with their patients outside of their appointment hours, they do not follow their patients on social media, they have time limits with their patients etc. If they didn’t instill these boundaries, it would become extremely messy and would result in dissatisfaction on both sides.

Teachers tend to implement rules in their classroom – no talking while others are talking, they keep their private lives separate, and they don’t allow swearing or mobile phones in class. If someone is caught with their phone, it may be taken away and they may be given a detention. Logically these all make sense, there are clear rules, reasons for those rules as well as consequences if the rules are broken.

The same can be done in our personal lives. For example, if you interact with people all day in your job, you may need one day a week all to yourself. They can also be reciprocal for example, parents can ask children to knock before they enter their room, and children can request that parents don’t read their diaries - both instances maintain privacy for each party.

Now that we have a better understanding and positive outlook toward boundaries, let’s go through the steps on how exactly to set them.

Step 1. Define your boundaries.

It’s important to first analyse what boundaries you currently have in place if any.

Step 2. Communicate effectively

When you are setting them, ensure you use positive language and pull the focus towards yourself for example: Instead of saying: “You need to stop speaking to me like that.”, you should say: “I don’t respond well when someone is rude to me.”.

Step 3. Don’t Over Explain

Contrary to popular belief, a boundary does not require a reason, you can say no because you don’t want to do something and it's very important not to overexplain. For example, if someone invites you on a night out and you don’t want to go you could respond: “No thank but I hope you have a wonderful time!”

Step 4. Set consequences

The last facet of setting your boundaries is ensuring there are consequences. If we take the example of something speaking to you in a rude manner you could state that if they continue to speak to you in that way, then you will have to escalate it to your superiors. If they are your superior, you could say that it will no longer be possible for you to work for them as you want to work in a respectful environment. Logical right?!

When you’re going through this process you need to start with what you want out of your relationships, setting boundaries that are going to help you achieve those aspirations, and then stating your boundaries clearly for yourself and others. Remember that other people may have set boundaries for you and that you may not always understand them, but it’s important to observe those too as it works both ways. With healthy boundaries in place, not only will people respect you more, but you will also feel a lot more in control of your life and your time – leading to a happier, healthier lifestyle and the capability to focus on what is really important.

*IPFW/Parkview Student Assistance Program. (n.d.). Setting boundaries with difficult people. Retrieved from:

http://new.ipfw.edu/affiliates/assistance/selfhelp/relationship-settingboundaries.html