Archive for October, 2010
Getting Hooked: What it Means and What to Do About It
In a recent commment on a post about gossip, Hopeful said, “…Thanks also for pointing out how it is likely bringing up old beliefs. That’s a real lightbulb for me. I never looked at it like that before! …Understanding that will help me ‘observe’ it a little more when I’m in the middle of it, rather then getting hooked and taking it so personally…”
This made me think about the importance of noticing and understanding our big reactions, most commonly referred to as overreactions. Once again, this is such an important topic, and one that causes so much needless misery when it’s misunderstood (particularly for women, who tend to delve inward and blame themselves more than men), that I don’t know why I haven’t written about it before.
What is a “big reaction”? A big reaction is when when your emotions are too big for the circumstances. For example, say you had no plans set up with your partner, but when he tells you he’s doing something with his friends, you start crying, yelling, or both. You might even know while you’re doing it that your reaction is too big, with thoughts like, “why am I crying and yelling? This is ridiculous, and I should stop.” But something drives you to keep going until you’ve created a big, nasty rift that’s going to require a significant apology to make things right. Or say somebody makes a joke about you in a meeting at work, and while you’re able to smile on the outside, inside you feel like a pool of jello, and obsess for days over why this person “hates” you and what you could have possibly done to her. Or say somebody cuts you off in traffic or jumps ahead of you in a checkout line, and you feel rage boiling up in your throat; you may or may not say something to the person, but your internal reaction is far too big for such a minor infraction of common courtesy. It just doesn’t quite match with what’s going on.
All of these are examples of a “big reaction;” I don’t like the prevailing word for this–overreaction–because it has a lot of negative connotations. To overreact is generally regarded as something done by people who are “high strung” or “oversensitive” or possess some other defect of character. And while a big reaction is indicative of something gone wrong, it’s far easier to address what that might be if you get rid of all pejorative descriptions of the behavior.
When you have a reaction bigger than a situation calls for (and we all have on occasion!), it’s always because something from the past got triggered by what’s going on in the present. Your partner making other plans probably stirs your fear of abandonment, for example, if you had an opposite sex parent who wasn’t present for you or didn’t follow through on promises. Or if you get flustered by people poking fun at you, then maybe you had a parent or older sibling who did this to you in a mean-spirited way when you were little. Or if you had a parent who simply ignored you or otherwise acted as if you weren’t important, then getting cut off in traffic might trigger that old, awful feeling that “I don’t matter.”
The term we used in my therapy group for having big reactions was “getting hooked.” It’s fairly easy to recognize when this is happening once you learn to look for it. Here are some indicators that an old, unsettled emotional issue has been brought to the surface:
- an emotional reaction unsuited to the situation
- a sense of not being able to take care of yourself
- having trouble thinking clearly about what’s going on; a sense of not being present
- feeling out of control
- a feeling of shame during, afterward, or both.
There are more, and they will vary by individual, but those on this list are almost always present. Learn to recognize your own symptoms when you get hooked, and you are halfway to changing the behavior. As always, knowledge is a powerful thing.
How do you change the behavior? Here are a few simple things that could make a big difference:
Learn to recognize the behavior. As I said, recognizing what’s going on is a critical first step. Once you understand that your reaction is about your own unresolved emotional issues, it’s much easier to behave differently.
Step back. The moment you recognize what you’re doing, step back. Whether you tell the person what’s going on or not depends on the circumstances, but it really doesn’t matter. Apologize if necessary, then remove yourself politely from the conversation. It is extremely difficult to have an adult conversation if your reaction is that of a frightened child. Give yourself a “time out” to think about what you’re doing and why, and to regain your composure.
Analyze your behavior. During your time out, try to figure out what’s going on. Explore the feelings you’re having. Try to connect them to something from the past. You can even talk to your inner child, telling her she’s safe and she can tell you why she’s so frightened (because big reactions are always about fear). Journal about it, or call a friend who understands, or just moodle on it for awhile. I guarantee you’ll be amazed at the stuff that bubbles up from the depths of your subconscious if you give it a voice. Sometimes, you’ll have a very specific memory accompanied by a huge “Aha!” moment where everything makes sense. Other times, you will just get a vague feeling of fear–but it will be a very big fear–that will require deeper analysis and perhaps working through with a therapist. In any case, if you undertake the work of this analysis, you will inevitably have some light bulb moments, and they will help you understand yourself and thus have less shame about your big reactions.
Own your behavior. Part of the reason people get stuck in a cycle of big reactions is that their sense of shame is so overwhelming, they would rather not deal with it because the prospect is just too awful. But if you want the behavior to change, you must accept it as your own, and not the fault of the person who triggered it. But this is good news! Because if it’s your own, then you can do something about it. So swallow your dread and face the truth. It will be one of the best things you’ve ever done for yourself.
Forgive yourself. One thing you can resolve to do, before you figure out the slightest thing about your past or your reactions, is resolve to be kind to yourself and to forgive yourself. We all have moments we’re not proud of, and being hard on yourself is never helpful. In fact, a rational argument could be made that you have your big reactions (or fill in the blank with any behavior you’re not happy about) precisely because you’re too hard on yourself, expect too much of yourself, and most of all, ignore the inner warning signals that something needs your attention. Stepping back, analyzing, and trying to understand where before you’ve judged are, more than anything, acts of self-love. They may save your relationships, true, but this is secondary. You do this because you want to feel better about yourself and have a good relationship with yourself. Improved relationships with others is the icing, not the cake.
Decide how you want to handle the situation. Imagine that; you have a choice! Once you free yourself of the big reactions that occur when you get hooked, or even just seek to understand rather than condemn yourself, you have an infinite range of choices available. You can be frank with the person and ask for their help and understanding. Or you can apologize, but without any explanation whatsoever. You can even decide if the person is somebody you really want to have a relationship with, and act accordingly. All that matters is that you own your behavior, treat the other person with respect, and do what’s best for you.
Know that you will still get hooked. Getting hooked doesn’t just go away once you understand what’s going on. But one major thing to remember is that just because you get hooked doesn’t mean you have to have a big reaction. Once you recognize the symptoms and know how to take care of yourself when they occur, you can excuse yourself from a situation before the big reaction occurs. It may take awhile even to get to this point, but you will if you have patience and keep at this process. And remember that even if you’re able to avoid a big reaction, if you’re hooked on the inside, you should still take time to figure out what’s going on. As always, the introspective process is an invaluable tool in changing behavior.
***
For me, understanding that 1) my big reactions were rooted in my past and 2) that they were my own responsibility to deal with, gave me a tremendous feeling of power where I had once felt powerless, ashamed, and afraid. I still get hooked sometimes, but the times are fewer and further between, and the emotional fallout when it happens isn’t nearly as devastating as it once was. Sometimes those old fears might stay with us for a lifetime, but it’s important to know that we do have a choice in how we deal with them.
Respectfulness and Values
This is my favorite quote about respect: “I don’t respect you because you deserve respect. I respect you because I am a respectful person.” Let’s think about what this means, and its significance to a person who is trying to live a value-based life.
To see the importance of this statement, let’s look first at its opposite. If you think respect is something that other people must earn, you will have the opportunity to give it only when people behave in a certain manner. That is, if people are kind, then you are kind in return, but if people are not kind, then you are free to be as rude or thoughtless as they are being.
At first glance, it might make sense that you should treat people as they “deserve” to be treated. But what such behavior really says is that respect is about circumstances rather than about a person’s values. This makes respect a reaction rather than a choice. And reactivity never feels good because it means you are not in control of your emotions or actions. More importantly, behaving rudely on whim or impulse means that respect is not part of your value system.
True respectfulness is when you are able to maintain your composure in the face of a verbal attack. Doing so says you are in control of yourself, able to act on standards rather than on impulses. This is huge, because it is the difference between emotion-based behavior and value-based behavior. Emotion-based behavior is reactive, while value-based behavior comes from having a moral compass that guides your behavior from a higher place: a place that considers how you want to treat other people, how you want to be treated by other people, and how you want to be perceived. Value-based behavior says that you’ve put some thought into how you conduct yourself and that your dignity is important to you. It says that doing the right thing matters to you and it says that you respect yourself. It short, it says that you are a person of substance.
A person’s behavior says more about themselves than it can ever say about anybody else. In fact, it says everything about themselves and nothing about anybody else. So if you want to be seen as respectful, and if you want to be respected, then behave respectfully regardless of what people around you are doing.
This does not mean that you put up with disrespectful treatment. Quite the contrary. But it does mean that you don’t stoop to a baser level of behavior simply because somebody else has. You can set boundaries, state your feelings, state your intentions, then follow through on them,all without resorting to any disrespectfulness at all. You can be calm, speak in a controlled voice, and politely refuse to engage on any other level. Even if you are seething inside, you can maintain control on the outside. This may take practice, particularly if you grew up in a family with poor boundaries and low standards of respect, but if being respectful is important to you, you can learn to behave this way.
Really, respect is just one of many entry points into a conversation about values. Anything worth having is worth working for, and nowhere is this more true than in the realm of values. If a person wants to be honest, diligent, sincere, and respectful, for example, he has to make an effort to attain these traits. Nobody is born with them. First they have to be held as important (as values), then they have to be defined in each individual’s mind, then they have to be achieved. This is how excellence, in any field, happens. But values are the most important area of all, because without them, excellence in any other field is not likely to happen, or happen by accident, which amounts to the same thing.
If behavior is tied to values, we are far more likely to behave in ways that feel good, and far less likely to say or do things we will later regret. I can think of no better definition for respectfulness, and no better way to view values in general.
Why People Gossip
Two things are bad for the heart: running uphill and running down people. — Unknown
Yet another boundary issue is gossip–sharing juicy information about people that is none of our business. We’ve all done it on occasion, but if you’ve ever been the object of gossip, then you know how hurtful it can be. To hear personal information about yourself come back to you as third- or fourth-hand information is a terrible feeling, especially when the information is distorted, out of context, or a downright lie.
Why do people gossip? One reason is that it brings about a sense of superiority. Sharing information that other people don’t yet have makes us feel important, in-the-know. Whenever you start a sentence with a phrase like, “Have you heard about…” and the other person says, “No! What?” there is always a little thrill, a little electric feeling of excitement that you are about to pass on new knowledge to someone, knowledge that they are very interested in hearing. And why are they very interested? Because most people are always looking for ways to feel better about themselves. Sharing other people’s misfortunes and mistakes is, sadly, one way to lift ourselves up. Or at least it feels like it at the time. Sort of like getting high!
Related to this sense of superiority is envy. People gossip about people they’re envious of. They like knowing that other people share their envy; it makes them feel less hopeless about it. Envy is also why tabloid newspapers can make a living off of gossip about rich people, beautiful people, and famous people. People who buy these tabloids like to read about celebrities at their worst. Whenever a celebrity is caught in an unattractive photo or compromising behavior, people are secretly pleased. And this is also true of non-celebrities who are beautiful or successful. No matter how kind, generous, and intelligent a successful person is, envious acquaintances will always find something negative to say about him or her. Envy can drive human beings to behave very badly, and to lengths far worse than gossip.
Another reason people gossip is that it creates a shared sense of a common enemy. This wording is a little too strong; the object of gossip is probably not an enemy and is actually likely to be an acquaintance. After all, if it wasn’t someone you knew (or wanted to know, I suppose, like celebrities), why would you be interested in the private details of his or her life? Sharing gossip about a person creates an us vs. them dynamic in which the gossipers are always us. That is, it puts you in an inner circle and keeps those not “in the know” on the outside of it. If you decide to share this gossip with someone, then she, too, becomes part of this inner circle, from which you can all privately snicker at, pity, or have whatever condescending emotion the gossip calls for. This idea of a common enemy has brought people together since there were people to bring together. Sadly, gossip is another form of this.
The biggest reason people gossip, though, and related to everything I’ve mentioned so far, is that we are always looking for a way to feel connected to each other. The need to feel connected is inherent; it is our spiritual calling. We are all always trying to become Whole, to remember who we really are, and to find our way back to it. But without a concerted effort to understand effective ways to do that, most of us just aren’t very good at it. Gossip, like addiction, consumerism, power-seeking, nationalism, etc., is another way of answering the calling at the wrong address. The impulse to feel connected is natural and proper, but the means of doing so are wrong, wrong, wrong.
This may sound too generous, like I am saying “forgive them for they know not what they do.” Well, in a way I am. We should all always be striving to understand and thus forgive our fellow humans their fallibility. But forgiveness is not synonymous with passivity. It does not mean that you are supposed to tolerate intolerable behavior. Quite the contrary. Forgiving and setting boundaries are simultaneously possible; not only possible, but highly desirable, for this will feel much better and have far more lasting effects than trying to lift yourself up at another person’s expense.
So if someone tries to share gossip with you, you can walk away–just walk away! Or you can listen but vow not to repeat it. Or you can tell the person you don’t care or don’t feel comfortable with the conversation. There are many firm yet polite ways to get the message across that you don’t want to engage in gossip. If you really don’t want to, you will figure out how to rise above it.
If you find yourself the target of gossip, you are likely to have a complicated problem to solve. Should you talk to the person who gossiped? Try to find the source? Quietly ignore it, knowing it will pass? Act as if you don’t care? The answers to these questions depend on many factors, including how vicious the gossip is, if it hurts others in addition to yourself, and how willing you are to confront people. There is no right way to handle gossip once it happens. The best way to handle it is to avoid known gossipers, and most of all, to avoid gossiping yourself.
Don’t gossip. It is an ineffective shortcut to a false sense of self-esteem, and it creates more divisiveness than connection, even though it may not feel that way in the moment. Always remember, if you can’t say something nice about a person, then don’t say anything at all.
Impulse Control and Boundaries
Another type of boundary issue arises from poor impulse control. This is when a person shares too much personal information or pushes other people for too much closeness too early in a relationship. Poor impulse control can also be the source of compulsive behaviors such as emotional outbursts and addiction, but here I am talking primarily about overdisclosing and/or expecting others to do the same.
I grew up with parents who had very poor impulse control. In addition to being alcoholics, both my parents had little control over their emotions or their tongues. I knew far too many things about my parents’ personal lives from far too young an age; I watched my mother tell people things that I knew even then should have been kept to herself. Then, when I grew up, I found myself doing many of the same things they did. Needless to say, this did not feel good. It took many years of hard work to stop.
Where does such poor impulse control come from? In my case, it would be easy to say it was a product of my upbringing, but I think that’s incomplete. I mean, sure it was, but what does that really mean? What roles do nature, nurture, my innate coping skills, my gender, my cultural conditioning, and who knows what else, play? Impulse control is a complicated thing, and all of these and more need to be addressed in the quest to understand it and, more importantly, overcome it.
The nature aspect would say that I have a biological predisposition to poor impulse control, either inherited or simply as part of my unique personal chemistry. I have never bought into the belief that addiction, which is certainly a problem of impulse control, is a genetically inherited illness or, in fact, an illness at all (see all of my posts on addiction for further reading). So I also do not believe that other impulse control issues are biological. Biochemistry probably plays more of a role for some people than others, but to call this issue genetic or biochemical and stop there is a profoundly incomplete view. If this were the case, then people wouldn’t be able to change without the aid of prescription drugs–yet people do so all the time. Millions of people have had epiphanies that change their worldview and thus their behavior; alcoholics call it a “moment of clarity.” So while I and many others may have a predilection of some sort to poor impulse control, knowing this does little to help me better understand myself or what might bring about change for me. In fact, it paints the problem in a rather unsolvable light, removing a sense of agency and making any sufferer a victim of his or her own chemical makeup. In the realm of human behavior, I will never ascribe to this view. But I do sympathize with those of us who struggle more than others with our impulses, which is why I think it so important to dig deeper.
The nurture aspect comes closer to an understanding that could result in non-drug-induced transformation. This is the view that we are products of our upbringing, as I already mentioned. “Nurture” is a complex mix of what we’re taught; what we’re exposed to; how our parents relate to us, to each other, and to their own parents; family values; religious beliefs; education, culture, and many, many other things. It is really the end result of all our life experiences. However, most psychologists believe that our self-image is determined by the time we’re about five years old, which would mean that when we go out into the world, how we see it is already largely set in stone. Most of what we’ve absorbed at that tender age we’ve absorbed from our parents, so it makes sense that much of their behavior becomes our behavior. And this doesn’t necessarily mean what they officially taught us. For example, if our parents tell us not to fight, but fight with each other, which do you think speaks louder? Or if our parents tell us we should love ourselves but don’t treat themselves or each other lovingly, what are we most likely to learn? It’s quite possible that we tell ourselves the messages they taught us, while we actually believe the messages they modeled for us. Since all parents are imperfect human beings, they all teach their children some degree of mixed messages. The only question is how severe this cognitive dissonance is. (In my family, it was pretty severe.) Understanding the answer (or answers) to that question can go a long way toward understanding why you do what you do, and what to do about it! 
Finding answers means unearthing truths about yourself and your past. For me, this meant facing some facts that I didn’t like very much. A few key ones were that I was like my parents, and that I had severely low self-esteem. After reading a few books and having a few years of therapy, I realized that my mother shared too much information with people because she desperately wanted approval–and I had “inherited” this trait from her, as well as the inability to deal with it any more effectively than she had. I would often hear myself saying things I knew I shouldn’t, yet feel utterly incapable of stopping myself. This was a learned behavior that I used to get my needs met; it was just a highly ineffective one.
But it wasn’t just this behavior that I learned. I engaged in the behavior because I had learned low self-esteem, that my needs weren’t important, that relationships were a win/lose proposition (which I was always on the losing end of), that respect was always up for grabs, that people would let me down, and on and on. As I said, a complex mix of thoughts and emotions which boiled down to some simple truths: I didn’t understand myself very well, and I wasn’t very skillful at getting my needs met. My best methods of doing so involved ripping my guts out and hoping for the best, then throwing temper tantrums when that didn’t work. (No wonder I wanted to be high all the time!)
Understanding this was the beginning of change. But I didn’t need to understand it all perfectly; I simply had to see how the patterns of my childhood affected the patterns of my adulthood. This awareness allowed me to think before I acted, which allowed me to start doing some things differently. And by doing things differently, like the first time I held my tongue when my instincts told me to blather away, I began to feel better about myself, which enabled me to do more things differently and feel better and better. This was that upward spiral of growth and change that I’ve talked about in many other places on this blog. What happened was that the better I felt about myself, the less need I felt to overdisclose facts about myself in the hope of closeness, or to expect it of others.
So for me, raising self-esteem was the key to stopping this impulsive behavior that felt so awful. Doing so was a complicated process of unraveling the sources of my patterns and working to change my behavior, both done with a lot of help and support from people who understood and sympathized with what I was trying to do. I’m not saying this will work for everybody with impulse control issues, but increasing understanding and building self-esteem has been a successful approach for everybody I’ve known who’s put in the effort.
Dealing With Emotional Fallout
Emotional fallout can be defined as a reaction or series of reactions after a painful awareness and accompanying efforts at change, which occurs below the level of consciousness and can cause unusual carelessness, volatility, and other unpredictable behavior. It is not uncommon for people in any stressful or frightening situation to have certain reactions. There’s even a name for it: post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. Soldiers haunted by nightmares and having trouble adjusting to civilian life are a common example of PTSD sufferers; children who grew up with violence (either inflicted on them or repeated witnessing of one parent inflicting it on another) are also strong candidates for PTSD.
This is not what I’m talking about, though (although emotional fallout is likely to happen to people dealing with their PTSD). Emotional fallout happens when a person begins to address all the long-buried emotional pain that she’s been defending herself against up until that point. For example, let’s say a woman goes to see a therapist because she keeps getting into relationships with men who don’t treat her well. This poor treatment has ranged from distance and coldness to overt physical abuse. She finally decides that she needs help figuring out why she has this unhealthy pattern. For several months, when she talks about her father, it’s always in vague terms, such as “he was a nice man” and “he treated my mother and me fine.” Then one day, as she’s talking about a memory that has always seemed innocuous, she suddenly realizes that her father hadn’t been nice; that while he was physically present, his attitude was hostile, begrudging, and cold; she also suddenly sees that her mother tried to compensate for this by being overly attentive, both to him and to her children. Most importantly, she sees that she herself has been doing the same things in her relationships that she watched her mother do with her father. The scales have fallen from her eyes and she sees the truth for the first time in her life. How does this make her feel?
If you’ve ever had an experience like this (and haven’t we all?), you know that how you feel is very complicated. The truth will set you free, of course, so you feel good on that level; truth always feels good. But you might also feel sad or foolish because it took you so long to see it. And you might feel angry that your parents saddled you with such a huge obstacle to overcome. And you might also feel afraid, either that you will never figure out how to do it differently or that it’s “too late” to try. And you might feel exhausted, like you’ve gone through a terrible ordeal (because you have–never underestimate the toll emotions can take!). And you might also feel raw and exposed, like you’ve just uncovered a horrible secret and put it on display for the world to see; you might even suspect that people are looking at you differently because you’re looking at yourself differently.
All of these feelings and more can happen when you have a breakthrough awareness. It’s a big hit to the system to suddenly see what you’ve been avoiding looking at your whole life. Far bigger than most people want to accept or admit. So unless we are on the alert for it (which few of us are), or lucky enough to have someone watching out for us (also very few of us), we often don’t fully acknowledge how big the feelings are, much less the effects they can have.
Some of these effects–carelessness, for example–are caused simply by preoccupation. The big feelings distract you because, well, they’re big, so your mind wanders back to them repeatedly as you try to understand and sort through them. This is normal and probably not a terribly helpful insight.
Other effects, though, have more serious causes. Sometimes an awareness is so unsettling and upsets a person so much (whether she is aware of it or not) that she unconsciously “punishes” herself for it. This is particularly true when the awareness is accompanied by new, uncomfortable, stress-producing behavior–such as setting boundaries or other attempts at taking better care of herself. Even though on a conscious level you have realized that setting boundaries and other self-care is no longer an option, on a subconscious level you may still very much be that frightened little girl who is terrified of losing her parent’s approval. If her fears aren’t dealt with, this little girl can go to great lengths to sabotage efforts at change, or “punish” the adult self making the effort; out of anxiety, she wants to maintain the status quo as much as the people you need to set better boundaries with do!
This may sound schizophrenic, but the truth is that all of us are the sum of each stage of life we’ve passed through. All our old selves live inside of us, and they all want and need a voice, especially if they were ever denied one. Part of taking better care of ourselves is acknowledging these earlier versions of ourselves, listening to what they want, and trying to give it to them. The frightened little girl is sabotaging you not because she’s bad, but because you are threatening the only way she knows how to get her needs met. Prove to her that you now have a better way to do that, and she will stop sabotaging your efforts.
This is, essentially, how you deal with emotional fallout. To summarize:
- When you’ve made a big stride forward, you should always take extra special care of yourself, even if you don’t want to, even if you don’t feel the need to. In fact, especially if you don’t feel the need to, because these old feelings and beliefs can be very sneaky, and you’re likely to think you’re just fine until you find yourself screaming at your partner, burning dinner, forgetting appointments, and worse.
- Indulge in something, take time to relax, have some fun. It’s important to nurture yourself now, to let yourself know that everything is okay and life is still full of promise and sunlight. Do something for the sheer joy of it, for no other purpose than to have fun. But also take care of yourself: eat well, exercise, and keep up with whatever spiritual practice you do.
- Make some space for thoughts and feelings to surface. Spend time alone. Listen to what’s going on inside, as free of judgment as you can be.
- Check in with friends and talk about what’s going on with you. But be careful here! Better to not talk to anybody than someone who might misunderstand or take your struggle personally. For this reason, it is best to not go to family with this stuff, as they are often part of the cause. If in doubt, keep it to yourself. This is a delicate time for you, and part of self-care is being very, very careful what you share and who you share it with.
- Make apologies if necessary, but most of all, forgive yourself. Having new insights and practicing new behaviors is hard (why do you think so few people do it?). Refrain from judgment, do the best you can, and have faith in your process.
When dealing with emotional fallout, what you’re really confronting is your shame, and your family legacy of shame, which, whatever form it may take, is a deeply ingrained belief system that can require tremendous effort and courage to come to terms with. That feeling of rawness or exposure is the shame being brought into to the light, and while it might not feel good initially, it is a necessary part of cleaning the wound so you can get on with the business of healing, growing, loving yourself properly, and this wonderful, wild adventure called living life.
Boundaries: Dealing With the Doormat Syndrome, Part 2
I’m afraid people will stop liking me if I set boundaries with them. What if they “go away” when I do this?
This fear is also a definite possibility. Sometimes people are so concerned with having the upper hand in their relationships that they deliberately choose friends and even a significant other (sometimes, especially a significant other) on the basis of being the one in control. They are almost always oblivious to this fact, as you are that you gravitate toward these types; as I once heard, “the knots in your head fit the holes in theirs.” That is, it is not a coincidence that poor boundary setters have people in their lives who trounce on boundaries. It’s sort of a pathological version of the yin/yang, an intuitive yet skewed attempt to seek balance where we lack it. The intuition is right, but the methodology is wrong, wrong, wrong. (And this goes for both parties, by the way, so learning to have more equal relationships helps the other person, too–if he’s willing to hang in there with you).
If people go away when you try to set healthier boundaries with them, I say good riddance! We set boundaries so we can have more honest, more respectful, and more satisfying relationships. If people aren’t interested in this, you are better off without them. This may not help deal with the sense of loss you’ll sometimes have to deal with, I know. But take comfort in doing the right thing, and knowing that you’re culling the weeds from your relationship garden–which will inevitably make room for more flowers.
What if these are relatives I still have to have a relationship with?
These are probably the hardest boundaries to set. Often what happens is that these relatives set up a vicious power struggle dynamic and never stop trying to suck you into it and make you feel bad, awful, and terrible for trying to change. The best you can do is sidestep the power struggle completely: never, ever, ever engage! Respectfully say, “I wish you felt differently” or “I’m really sad you feel that way” and nothing more. Let the dead air hang between you. Let the person’s mean-spiritedness go unanswered. You are under no obligation to defend yourself against such childish, self-centered attacks. Eventually, with luck, the struggle will stop and you will be able to rebuild the relationship. If not, you must question what you get from this person that’s good for you; no relationship is set in stone, particularly a disrespectful one, no matter what that person is to you.
What if setting a boundary escalates a confrontation or bad situation?
Chances are people unhappy with the new boundary will try to do just that. But it is not the boundary causing the conflict; it is their reaction to it. If they’ve been successful in the past in getting you to shoulder the blame for problems in the relationship, this will probably be the first thing they’ll try! And try and try!
Here is where you should remember to be respectful, to speak in a low, controlled voice, and to, once again, refuse to engage in a power struggle. When people try these tactics, you are always free to walk away, perhaps after calmly refusing to take up your role in the struggle, as in, “I am not going to fight about this. But I do want to talk about it, so let’s do that when we’re both calmer, okay?” And walk away. Just walk away! Do it a hundred times if necessary, but do it. Because as soon as you engage, you lose all credibility.
Again, also remember that old patterns are hard to break. It’s very very hard to stay calm when you’re being attacked. So if you get flustered and engage, it’s not a big deal. Forgive yourself and try again–and again and again, if necessary. You’ll get it right eventually–but only if you keep trying!
I’m afraid that I might set a boundary and not be able to stick to it. What if this happens?
Being a new behavior, this is bound to happen. Heck, it happens to people who are good at setting boundaries! Circumstances change, people change; none of us are set in stone, ever. If you don’t always stick to a boundary right away, it’s usually not that big a deal. You just pick up where you left off and try again; in some cases, you may have to provide an explanation as to what’s going on, as in, “I know I said this, and then went back on it, and I’m sorry if that was frustrating for you. This is new behavior and I’m not good at it yet.” People will usually respond well to this, but if they don’t, once again you have validation for setting the boundary in the first place.
There is one area, though, where you must follow through on any boundary you set, and that is in the case of threats. For example, do not say, “If you drink again, I’m going to leave you” unless you fully intend to do so and have formulated a plan for doing so. Or do not say, “If you don’t clean your room, no television for a month!” unless you absolutely mean to carry it out. If you’ve ever seen a child throw a temper tantrum in public, chances are it’s because he knows his mother’s threats are idle and his behavior will get her to relent and give him what he wants. If four year olds can take advantage of this, think what adults can do with it! (It’s also worth thinking about, by the way, what kind of adults such children will become, but that is another topic.)
If you want people to respect you, don’t make idle threats. If you say you’re going to do something, mean it.
Even though I know it’s not true, I feel like I’m a bad person if I set a boundary, I think because I know I’ve disappointed somebody. What can I do about this?
I struggled with this, too, and I’m going to deal with it more in my next post, which will be on emotional fallout. It should be of some comfort to know that it is very common, especially for women, to feel like they’re doing something wrong when they start to take better care of themselves; having loved ones telling us we are doesn’t help matters, either. This is where the work we’ve done to gain insight and understanding is helpful; it can keep us going in situations that feel wrong, awkward, scary, and make us want to give up. It’s also extremely helpful to have at least one person, such as a therapist, to encourage and support us in this difficult new behavior.
This is a time to buck up and be strong, despite your anxiety; to do the next right thing because you know it’s the next right thing, regardless of what your fear might be telling you. You’re not bad, you’re not selfish, and you’re not crazy. In fact, you’re good, brave, and wise for wanting to make better choices. So let the old tape run if you must, but try not to listen to it; it can’t help you anymore.
***
Setting better boundaries are basic self care decisions that are in everybody’s best interests. Remember that by setting boundaries, you are giving other people the opportunity to have more honest, more equal, and more satisfying relationships, too. As always, when you take care of yourself, the whole world benefits.
Boundaries: Dealing With the Doormat Syndrome, Part I
Part of improving your boundary setting skills is discovering what your underlying issues are, which I talked about in my last post. This is important because insight and honesty with oneself are such powerful tools in the quest for personal change (I would go so far as to say that positive change is not possible without these two elements). This next piece of the boundary setting puzzle is about dealing with what happens when we actually start doing it–and not backing down or giving up on ourselves. The goal of this post is to help you address the scary thoughts and feelings that can come up, and continue to improve your boundary setting skills in spite of them. In the interest of answering all those “what-ifs” that can come up and hold us back, I’ve done this in a question/answer format, which I hope is helpful.
I should also note that the type of boundary setting I’m addressing here deals primarily with what I would call an uneven balance of power, and how to correct it. In other words, how to stop being a doormat. There are other boundary issues, mostly centering around impulse control, that I’ll address in future posts–although some of this information should be helpful for those concerns, as well.
How do I know when I’m ready to start setting new boundaries?
Easy. You’re ready when you say you’re ready. The key to setting good boundaries is just like the key to anything else: practice. Once you decide that you want to have different relationships, you can start doing so. You don’t have to wait until you understand all your issues perfectly; if that were the case, nobody would ever accomplish anything! Perfect is the enemy of good here, and often an excuse to avoid doing this scary thing. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to do it perfectly–and you probably won’t the first few times you try. You don’t set out to, of course, but if you lose your temper or hurt someone’s feelings, it isn’t the end of the world. New behavior is just that: new and therefore awkward. So give yourself permission to fail, to dust yourself off, and to try again. And again and again if necessary; this is hard stuff. This is the stuff that apologies are made for. (And I don’t mean for trying to set the boundary! Hurtful words and actions are what require apologies; taking care of ourselves does not.)
I don’t even know where to begin. What’s the first step in setting a boundary?
The first step is to know what it is you want to accomplish. In most cases, this can be stated as, “I want to have better relationships” or “I want to stop feeling like I never have any power in this relationship.” Both fine goals. Or, you can choose one for yourself that feels right to you. But it’s a good idea to know what your goals are before you start the process. This way, there will be fewer opportunities for hurt feelings and misunderstandings.
What if I get so flustered I forget what I want to say?
This is common. Setting boundaries is scary! If you get dumbstruck in the face of conflict, or even just the hint of it, you are not alone. And if this is the case, you have several options. You can rehearse what you want to say in front of a mirror until you know it by heart. You can role play it out with a friend or therapist until you feel comfortable. You can bring someone with you for moral support, or have them waiting in the wings to hash it through when you’re done. You can even write down what you want to say and read it to the person!
Just as you give yourself permission to fail and try again and again, you must also give yourself permission to do whatever works. And the more flustered you think you might get, the more methods you should consider to feel safe and confident in the face of this brave, frightening thing you’re doing.
Are there any rules to follow?
Yes:
- Be respectful, kind, and calm.
- Don’t engage in power struggles or try to justify why your desires are “right.” Feelings are not right or wrong, they just are. Walk away–just walk away!–with or without an explanation; you certainly don’t owe one to anybody who challenges why you feel the way you do.
- Use “I” language, not “you” language, as in “I’m feeling overwhelmed and need to leave now” instead of “You’re overwhelming me.” This keeps blaming to a minimum and can also feel quite empowering.
- If you lose your temper or otherwise screw up, apologize–and mean it. Then try again. Repeat as necessary.
- Forgive yourself when you fall short of any of these.
- Don’t give up.
What if someone gets angry when I try to set a boundary with them?
I won’t lie to you; this is a valid fear and is almost certainly going to happen. Setting boundaries pisses people off. Nobody likes to be told “no” whatever the situation, but especially if you’ve been saying “yes” for years and suddenly, out of the blue (from the other person’s perspective) say “no.” Some of this anger will merely be normal surprise at the changed dynamic in the relationship. This is the easiest anger to deal with: Stick to your guns, firmly but respectfully, and the new dynamic will eventually feel normal to both of you. Some of the anger, however, will go deeper. People used to getting their way don’t like being stripped of this power; this is especially true with significant others, parents, and children, all of whom can go to nasty lengths (belittling, threatening, and name-calling, for example) to try to restore the old power dynamic. Sometimes even co-workers and friends will do this (although you have to question how good a friend is if she resorts to such means). People with the upper hand rarely welcome such change, even if it’s the best thing for the relationship.
The point is, if you want to set boundaries, you must get used to the idea that people are probably going to get angry, and sometimes in ugly ways. You must prepare yourself for this going in. Expect it! Rejoice in it, even! And rather than let their tactics dissuade you, see them as validation that you’re on the right track–that the power dynamic in the relationship is out of balance, and you’re trying to do something about it. Yay!
To Be Continued…