Once sin entered into mankind, people have had difficulty taking responsibility for what belongs to them. Boundaries define what your responsibility is and what the other person is responsible for. In the fall, boundaries were destroyed. Adam said it was the woman’s fault, not his. She “caused “him to do it. Eve said it was the serpent’s fault, not hers, because he “made her do it”. They thought they could have whatever they wanted and that God really didn’t know what was good for them. They chose to reach beyond their allotted boundaries and God held them responsible for all their choices.
Ownership is crucial in creating boundaries. On one hand, people who are not allowed to own their thoughts, feelings, attitudes, desires, behaviors, and choices never develop a true sense of responsibility. They continue to have difficulty between bonding and boundaries. They do not understand how to have a relationship and at the same time be separate. They don’t understand that each person is responsible for each of their own elements within their boundaries. On the other hand, people who own other people’s thoughts, feelings, attitudes, desires, behaviors, and choices extend their boundaries too far and trespass on other people’s property. The desire to control someone else’s life and not allow their freedom of separateness is a serious relationship killer.
Many people do not take responsibility for their own lives. They remain stuck because they want other people to change. They want other people to make it better but usually those people will not. As a result, they are in bondage to them. Freedom comes from taking responsibility and bondage comes from giving responsibility away to your abuser or controller.
It is easy to say we love others, but it is difficult to validate their freedom that comes with love. When they do not do what we want them to do, we cry, pout, send guilt messages, and attempt to control them. Love cannot exist without freedom and freedom cannot exist without responsibility. We must own, take responsibility and learn to deal with what is ours and that includes the disappointment from not getting what we want from another person. Other people’s freedom can lead them to sin against us. The pain we feel is not our fault, but it is our responsibility to deal with it. Many times people do sin against us when exercising their freedom, and we are responsible for dealing with the injury. If we don’t, we stay stuck and powerless against their sin. This “victim” mentality keeps people in pain and they stop growing, learning and loving.
We must confess how we have been sinned against in order to forgive. After an appropriate period of blame, we must begin to take responsibility for the mess that someone else’s sin has left us in. Our situation is part of our property and we must own it. We have to deal with our feelings, attitudes, and behavior so we can get unstuck even when we did not cause it. The following are steps to developing healthy boundaries.
Choose values: define, decide, and pursue who you want to be, where you want to go, and what is important for you to invest your time, energy, ability, and you’re other resources. Be honest with yourself and others, and what is working and what isn’t working.
Gain awareness: understanding who you are is becoming aware of what is your property. Your true identity is formed when you learn who you are apart from another person. Who you are, is what belongs to you including: your body, thoughts, feelings, attitudes, actions, behaviors, abilities, desires, limits, and choices.
Consequences: when we set limits with someone, we do not have to go without love. Consequences are what will motivate others to change their behavior. Confront, limit, and quarantine people who consistently make wrong choices. Do not allow or promote irresponsibility or hurtful behavior with others, as much as possible.
Set Limits: we don’t have to tolerate bad behavior with someone just because we don’t want to be alone. Stop enabling others to be irresponsible by putting limits on how their abusive behavior affects you. Learn to say no. Respect other people’s no and their limits on you.
Internal bonding: for us to learn to develop boundaries, we must have first learned to bond. We learn to bond not only with others, but to have bonding internally in us. Internal bonding is when we are able to experience ourselves as constantly loved, even when in the absence of our loved ones. We are also able to love the absent one, whom we have internalized. This gives us the sense of emotional security, even though we are alone.
External support: when we work on our lack of attachment to others and establish supportive relationships with others who are for us, we are reinforcing our ability to set limits with those whom we do not want to lose relationship with. If someone cannot attach, then separateness or boundaries will have no meaning. We must be able to be “a part” of someone or something before we can be “apart”. Attachment gives us the strength and safety to separate. In our early stages of bonding we build a foundation love and we are rooted in love. We can never really separate from someone if we have not first been bonded.
Love cannot exist without freedom and freedom cannot exist without responsibility. We must own, take responsibility and learn to deal with what is ours and that includes the disappointment from not getting what we want from another person.
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