Do you find that in your friendships and romantic relationships you are always giving in to other people? Do you do this to avoid conflict? Or perhaps you are afraid the person would be angry or maybe even leave you if you didn’t give in to them? Are you not even sure what a boundary is or what you are able to set? Do you experience other people’s boundaries and follow them, but when you try to set one, no seems to follow your boundary?
Well, this is really an important thing to address. If you are someone who struggles to set boundaries or enforce your boundaries, you are at risk at being in toxic or abusive relationship. You may feel like you are getting taken advantage of in friendships, romantic relationships and even at work. Boundaries are really important for indivdiuals to tell the world how they need to be treated.
If you can’t hold a boundary or set a boundary, this may be due to a lack of self-love and self-esteem and care. We only set boundaries or fences to protect things we love and value. Unfortunately, people who don’t know how to set boundaries or enforce them often lack self-love, self-esteem and self care. This can have deep roots into childhood.
Worse, people with weak or non-existent boundaries can get into toxic and dangerously abusive relationship. There are unfortunately many unhealthy boundary-breaking people looking for those with weak boundaries to control and use for their own purposes.
If you find any of the following to be true you may need help setting boundaries:
- Your joy of finding love has turned into the fear of loosing it.
- Your mood depend entirely on the state of the relationship, so you can go high to low depending on the other person
- You’re unhappy in the relationship and uncertain about it much of the time, yet you dread or fear loosing it because you do get to be happy or blissful every so often
- You feel like you are responsible ruining things in the relationship yet you are never clear why this is so
- You feel the relationship is so complex, has special rules and exceptions that you struggle to article to yourself or friends yet you persist to make it work and feel responsible. You often find yourself saying to your friends “it’s just to complicated”
- You continually obsesses about the relationship and analze every details spending hours thinking, talking and google aspects of it. Never feelings secure or stable
- You never feel sure of where you stand in a relationship, especially the more intimate the relationship like in romantic partnerships
- You frequently need to ask your partner if something is wrong. You may feel something is wrong but not sure what it is and can’t ever resolve this feeling’
- You seem to have developed a problem with trust, jealousy, insecurity, anger and over reaction. This is becoming more and more pronounce, especially if you are in a romantic relationship.
- You have a become a detective. Always searching out and verifying things your partner tells you. You can never just take them at their face value. You worry about where they are to the point of distraction and dissatisfaction .
- You feel responsible for your partner’s happiness and don’t know how to make them happy.
These are some common signs you are struggling with setting boundaries. These are also signs of an unhealthy relationship that results from lack of boundaries.
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