AC 003: How poor boundaries are connected with the BIG SIX.
Welcome. Today we’re discussing boundaries, because when women have been struggling with THE BIG SIX health issues for any length of time, they often also struggle to have strong, healthy boundaries. Today we’ll be discussing why that is, and what you can you about it?
I was asked many years ago by a client, what I thought was the biggest factor that contributed to chronic health issues. What is diet? Was it neurological stress? What was it? I thought on it and found my answer to be related to the health of a person’s personal boundaries.
When we have weak or poor boundaries, our standards of what we accept are inherently low. This might affect what we put into our bodies, the people we surround ourselves with and what we feel we deserve.
When we have poor boundaries, we often position what other people want and need as more important than what we want and need. We forfeit our own needs, wants, and desires, to help other people satisfy their needs, wants and desires. Fundamentally, in doing so what we believe is that we are less important and less valuable than other people.
I’m sure you can connect with this. So, let me ask you…
Have you ever apologised for being in someone else’s way, even when you were there first?
For example: You were at the shops, and you were looking at some fruit, when someone else comes along who also wants to look at the fruit, and you said “sorry” and moved out of the way. Why was them looking at the fruit more important than you looking at the fruit? And why did you apologise as if you shouldn’t have been there?
Or, have you ever said: ‘yes’ to something even though you desperately wanted to say ‘no’?
Why is what you want less important than what you think they want?
And even when you think of the old ‘breaking up with someone’ cliché: “it’s not you, it’s me”… even when it was them. Why are their feelings more important than your feelings?
Now, I’m not saying that we should never apologise or that we should never do things we don’t want to do. I mean after all, we are part of a community, and we live in a world where there are responsibilities and where it is important to look after other people’s hearts as well as our own.
But the point of those questions is to reveal whether you place other people’s needs and wants above your own, and whether you do that disproportionately or most of the time. Do you put other people’s needs and wants ahead of your own needs and wants much more of the time, equally, or less?
If you’re being honest, for a lot of you who are struggling with THE BIG SIX health issues, you’ll admit that you put other people’s needs and wants far, far ahead of what you need and want. So much so, that you may not even know what you need and want.
This false belief that other people’s needs, wants, and desires are more important than your own has many health, relationship, and life consequences.
You see, long-term stress causes poor boundaries and poor boundaries feedback to cause more stress… it goes around and around.
Poor boundaries can be caused by and are the result of many complex factors. I’m not going to go through all those factors here, but what I am going to discuss is how poor boundaries are perpetuated by stress.
Stress has a negative impact on our ability to maintain strong healthy boundaries in two ways, that are connected.
I’m going to tell you what they are first, and then I’m going to explain each of them.
So first, when we have been too stressed for too long, it puts us into a state of feeling unsafe, and it causes us to be externally driven – what is ‘out there’ is more important than what is going on within ourselves.
And second, on a primitive level, we as humans are hardwired to be a part of a tribe, or community, and being expelled from the tribe is like death.
So, let me explain each of them…
Think of it like this… you’re in the forest and tiger is hunting you… that’s how your nervous system is set when you’ve been stressed for a long time.
When our nervous system is stuck in that state, it goes on high alert, and we shift our focus to be externally driven.
You immediately focus on how to get out of there and reach safety – where to run and hide, looking for what can you pick up to defend yourself against the tiger.
At the same time, we are also hard-wired to be a part of a community. We are far weaker than things like tigers, and so the only way we have learned to survive is by being part of a tribe or community. From a primitive perspective, being shut out of a community, forces us towards certain death – because left alone, we have no hope.
And so, the thoughts and judgements of others becomes very, very important for us on a deep subconscious level to understand and be on the good side of. Being liked and remaining a part of the tribe is vital for our existence and safety.
So, we behave and engage with others in a way that we think will keep us close to them and therefore safe. And sometimes, we become what we think other people want us to be, just to be safe and maintain our place in the herd
When you have poor boundaries, you let other people control you and use their power over you, that then leads to more stress in our brains and bodies, leading to cortisol dysregulation and THE BIG SIX.
Struggling with THE BIG SIX health issues compounds the issue, and leads to more stress in our brain and body, leading to a neurological hardwiring feeling of a lack of safety, leading to us placing an over-exaggerated weight on what other people think, feel, and believe, and what they need and want, so that we plant our safety on being a part of that herd to keep us safe.
Now, of course, this isn’t very rational at all… welcome to what happens within your mind when there has been long-term stress. It is not always rational, not always healthy.
Some of you may not connect with what I have just said, but let me ask you this… do you think it’s more important for you to be liked by others or for you to like yourself? Don’t give me the answer you think you should give, but rather what you feel deep down in your bones.
People with poor personal and relationship boundaries will generally say that other people liking them is more important than liking themselves.
So, what can you do about it?
Well, what we now know is that poor boundaries and THE BIG SIX play off one another. For people struggling with poor boundaries AND THE BIG SIX, you must address the whole picture strategically and simultaneously.
First, you need to know that there are internal boundaries and external boundaries.
Internal boundaries are what you put up with from yourself, and external boundaries are between you and your environment and other people.
Trying to go from having poor boundaries to setting stronger, healthier boundaries with your family or with your neighbour is really, really difficult, and I wouldn’t recommend it as a starting point to exercising better boundaries.
When you jump to changing external boundaries first, you’re going from zero to one hundred too quickly and there is an extremely high likelihood that you’ll not succeed in changing anything. This could send you on a downward spiral of defeatist thinking, and that’s not going to be helpful.
Where you want to start is focusing on your internal boundaries. Start with something that seems really small, but is in fact a really big deal, like how you speak to yourself in your head and when you’re alone.
Every time you hear the critic in your head start saying: “you’re such an idiot” or “no wonder no one likes you”, I want you to change the channel and instead use kinder language as though you were speaking to a friend.
Instead of: “You’re such an idiot” you could say to yourself: “Next time, I would like to do that differently”.
Instead of: “No wonder no one likes you” you could say: “I didn’t like that I just did that. What could I do differently next time that would make me feel kinder towards myself?”.
Starting to work on your internal boundaries sets the foundation of your standards for how you want other people to treat you.
Boundaries is a really big topic, and there are a lot of factors that come together in forming stronger, healthier boundaries. This is a great start.
We’ll be discussing boundaries further in upcoming posts.
Okay, that’s it for now.