You have an important deadline at work, and you need take the car to the repair shop. You skip breakfast, drop off the car, and get a ride to your job. By noon your stomach is growling. Just before lunch, your boss walks up and asks you to take care of something urgent. What do you do?
We depend on our boundaries help us cope with challenges every day. They are a necessary part of life, but they can be hard to define exactly. What does it mean to have healthy boundaries, and how do you put them in place?
What Are Healthy Boundaries?
Boundaries are guidelines that you create for yourself, to manage your actions and interactions with other people. They allow you to limit how others behave toward you, and to put safe limits on yourself. They help you choose words and actions that can ensure your well-being no matter what life throws at you.
Signs of Trouble With Personal Boundaries
Personal boundaries are essential to good self-care. But most people don't realize how important boundaries are to managing the difficulties and distress they feel. It may be time to rethink your limits if:
- You constantly feel overwhelmed
- You frequently get sick
- You say yes to too many things – you are exhausted trying to deal with all you have to do
- People invade your physical, emotional or sexual space in ways that make you uncomfortable or that do not feel safe to you
- Others “cross the line” when it comes to touch or the way they enter your personal space, and you don't know what to say
- Someone is saying something that makes you uncomfortable, whether it’s about you or somebody else
- A person is asking too much of you, and you’re having trouble saying no
We want to help others, or "be a team player." But when demands grow too big, it can be hard to know what to do. How do you set limits that are reasonable when you feel pressured to keep your troubles to yourself?>
» Read more about: What Is Good Self-Care, and Why You Deserve It »
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