
"Who would I be if I trusted my boundaries in each moment?"
My therapist asked me this question the other day during a session. I wrote it down on a sticky note and continue asking myself this question daily. Even if I don't fully know the answer or know how to trust and honor my boundaries in each moment (yet), I can trust in this quote from Rainer Maria Rilke:
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
I'm a middle-aged woman who is just now learning the importance and power of boundaries—and, most importantly, how to set them.
Boundaries involve knowing our limits, when to say no, what we need, and how to ask for what we need. Boundaries protect us and are absolutely necessary.
Boundaries have always been challenging for me. As a high-level gymnast and natural perfectionist, setting boundaries felt like I wasn't giving all that I could give. I could always give more. Saying "no" to someone or something felt like I was weak and wasn't giving 110%, and that just felt unacceptable to every cell of my being.
I pushed every boundary until I realized I had no boundaries to push. I was spread so thin, wanting to please everyone around me, to do it all, and to reference Gabor Mate's book, When the Body Says No, that's exactly what my body did.
Because I couldn't say no, my body started doing it for me.
Following my deployment to Iraq, which most certainly pushed me beyond a boundary of comfort, I noticed a slow decline in my exercise tolerance and a steady increase in things like depression and anxiety. My body started saying "no" a bit louder, but I didn't know how to listen.
In 2014, pregnancy took its toll, and two weeks after my Cesarean section, I was back to working out and walking. My legs didn't feel like they were working well, and something felt quite off in my body. Being a high-level athlete, I knew my body very well. What I felt was not normal. The "no" from my body was getting louder. I didn't listen.
I went back to work as a physician assistant and endured several days where I had to lay down in between patients because I couldn't stay upright due to weakness and some strange neuromuscular symptoms. My body was screaming at me, but I shut it down.
I kept pushing and pushed myself up a steep hill on a bike one day riding home from work. The next day, I woke up and thought I was going to die. Every muscle in my body was twitching like popcorn. After a minute of standing, I was on the verge of collapsing. Food would enter my body and send my entire nervous system into a frenzy of reactivity. I tried to get up our stairs and had to pause midway up because it felt like I had done 100 heavy squats, my legs burning, tight, and utterly fatigued.
I was forced to quit my job, a boundary I would have never placed on my own. I was forced to quit working out, taking walks, dancing...all things I loved to do but likely overdid for too long. Boundaries were forced upon me by my own body, against my will, because I didn't know how to do it on my own.
A decade later, I'm better than I was that dreadful day but still very limited. However, I feel a slight shift as I notice the signals my body sends me when it needs a boundary. It has taken years of torture to get here, but I said quite confidently to my therapist the other day, "I am beginning to notice when I need a boundary because I feel it in my body."
These are some of the signs I've noticed:
Impatience
Exhaustion
Overwhelm
Depression
A flare in symptoms
Contraction and tightening in my body (jaw, shoulders, belly)
A general sense of self-betrayal
Resentment
Rage
This last one, rage, reminds me of a recent podcast I listened to with Forrest and Rick Hanson on the Fawn Response. Dr. Rick Hanson said that when we fawn, which means to people please and sacrifice our own needs to assuage others, we often have a shadow side of rage.
It makes sense. It is exhausting to constantly try to please others at the expense of ourselves, and the body's natural response is to flip into rage. People-pleasing requires suppression and a lack of boundaries, and ultimately, I believe rage is our bodies' way of saying "no." It is a dramatic yet necessary way to set a boundary.
I have recognized this in myself, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. I'm trying to see now, however, that rage and all of these other signs of poor boundaries are not reasons to judge ourselves. Instead, they are invitations to take the courageous step and say "no" and/or stand up for our needs.
I've learned the hard way how necessary boundaries are, but I'm pleased to gain this recent clarity. It's allowing me to let go of the stories of "Setting limits means I'm not giving my all," "Saying 'no' or 'that's enough' means I'm weak," and "I can always do and give more."
Bessel Van Der Kolk reminds us that "The Body Keeps the Score," and I hope we can all begin to trust our bodies' wisdom more, heed their signals, and offer them the care of boundaries and limitations. We can learn to use our own voice to say no before our bodies demand it.
It's a lifelong process, but it's one worth nurturing.
Ask yourself, "Who would I be if I trusted my boundaries in each moment?" and allow the question to guide you into the truth.
And as we all know...the truth will set us free.
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