SIGNS YOU HAVE POOR BOUNDARIES // Can Better Boundaries Help You Feel Less Guilt & Anxiety?

When we don't have healthy boundaries, people tend to take advantage of us. Not because they're being malicious, but because we let them. Because we haven't defined our boundaries with that person and we have not told them otherwise. So people are just, again, not because they're being malicious, but because we get what we tolerate. They're going to do whatever they're going to do. They're going to treat us however we let them treat us. If we stop tolerating it, they'll learn they a can't do it and we're not going to tolerate it, or they'll continue to do it. And it's going to be up to us to determine if we're even going to have that person in our lives because they absolutely will have zero respect for our boundaries. Boundaries are just a marker that help you limit your life and not limit in a bad way, like not living up to your potential, but, but limit in the sense of like having a fence around your property to keep animals or people out, or having a gate to your backyard. It limits the interactions based on who you do and don't want to let in to your personal property. So that's the same thing with boundaries. Boundaries are just markers. They're limits. They're like stop signs in our personal lives that we use to limit our interactions or relationships or things that we will or, or won't tolerate. Now, they come from the framework of our core beliefs, our belief system, our opinions, our perspectives. All of that helps determine what our boundaries will look like. They're not set in stone, they can be changed and they're very individualized to you as a person because they're going to be dependent on what that person needs. Your boundaries are based on your beliefs, not someone else's. And if you think about it, if you really don't believe in something, if you're really strongly opposed to something, you will not get involved with it. There's three big things that tend to happen if you're lacking healthy boundaries. And the first one is that you really don't feel like people respect you. And that's because again, we, we get what we tolerate. People aren't being malicious when they're crossing a line for the most part, but they're crossing the line because we're allowing them to. But if we don't set those boundaries and they continue to cross that line, we as a person, as an individual and a human being feel disrespected. But we don't realize that that can come from a lack of Healthy boundaries. So if you kind of have this feeling, whether it's in one relationship or in your entire life, or anywhere in between, if you kind of secret feel like people disrespect you, it could be because you lack healthy boundaries within relationships and your personal life. The second big thing that happens is that we tend not to have a strong sense of self. When we lack boundaries. We usually do a lot of people pleasing. We try to make other people happy, we feel responsible for other people's happiness, and we tend to do a lot of what other people want us to do, not necessarily what we want to be doing. So what happens over time is that we don't set meaningful goals in our lives or goals that are meaningful to us. We start to lack a sense of purpose because we're living constantly for other people. And that can lead to a lack of sense of self. So if you're struggling with your place in life, or what you want to do, or your future, or your big vision for your life, or you know you're lacking a sense of who you are, think about the things that could be contributing to that. Is it because you are constantly people pleasing or that you've lived a lot of or some of your life for other people? And that could be a sign that you need to set some better boundaries or you're just overall lacking healthy boundaries again within your life and your relationships. And the third thing I see when people lack healthy boundaries is a chronic sense of guilt or anxiety. This comes from again, that desire to people please and living for other people. Always having people infiltrate your personal sense of self or your decision making or influencing your life because you haven't put that fence around your beliefs, your values, around what you really want to do or your goals. So people are constantly coming into your backyard and having a party and you really don't want them there. So this feeling of guilt or anxiety because you don't want to kick them out of your backyard, you want them to have a good time and you feel responsible for their feelings, especially their happiness. So it's not about being mean and telling everybody they're never welcome. But you need that fence. You need to tell people what you will and won't tolerate and how you do that is going to be dependent on your personality. And again, all of this takes place practice. But when we don't have healthy boundaries, we often have this chronic feeling of guilt and anxiety because we feel responsible for other people's feelings. This could even be something as small as when you walk into a meeting and you ask somebody to move over so you can sit down, you feel guilty for even doing that. Those little things add up and can have an impact on our overall mood and can leave us feel feeling concerned, worried, fearful, guilty, anxious and all of the things that are kind of wrapped up into that. Boundaries are something that we need to practice. They're gonna change over time and they're going to evolve with your needs. So don't feel like if you set a boundary or you start working on it that this is the decision that I've made and I have to stick with it. They're not set in stone, they're not concrete, but you have to start somewhere. And if you're feeling any of those three things, the guilt and anxiety, the lack of sense of self or the feeling that people don't respect you, it could be a sign that you're lacking healthy boundaries in your life.