IV. A LET GO Workout in Establishing Healthy Boundaries
Cavepeople protected themselves from being invaded physically by attacking or fending off the invading party. They were literal in their need for self-protection and did not worry about the feelings of the other party because personal survival was the name of the game. Unwanted sexual advances towards another caveperson would get not only the negative response from the person but also from the other dwellers in that person's cave community. Sexual indiscretion or violation of others was not tolerated in such communities. Cavepeople had no problems in establishing and maintaining physical, emotional and social boundaries which dictated how people treated one another in the cave community. Since their boundaries were so well known and respected there was little need to worry about sexual violation from the unwanted crossing over of the established boundaries. How about your life situation? How well are your physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual boundaries established and maintained? How successful are you in protecting and maintaining your boundaries when someone is highly intrusive and persistent? How hooked are you by others manipulations to lower your boundaries with them? Do you use your weight or food as a boundary to protect yourself from intimacy or sexual relationships with others? How well do you stay unhooked and detached when someone is working you over to lower your boundaries with them? Does your inability to maintain healthy intellectual, emotional, physical and spiritual boundaries with others frighten you? When you consider trying to maintain healthy boundaries sexually with others without the use of body weight, food or some other compulsive behaviors to protect and medicate you in the process, are you scared? Would you prefer to stay fat than to work on learning how to establish healthy boundaries with others?
To maintain your new Balanced Lifestyle Program you will need to first establish healthy intellectual, emotional and physical boundaries with all people in you life. Once you have been able to do this then you will be able to establish healthy boundaries around your sexuality and sensuality. With healthy boundaries established then you will be able to establish and maintain healthy intimate relationships with people which will ultimately result in your establishing and/or maintaining a healthy sexually intimate monogamous relationship with someone special to you. First you need to identify if you have healthy intimate relationships with people at this time. Consider the following description of a healthy intimate relationship.
Characteristics of a Healthy Intimate Relationship
The goal in an intimate relationship is to feel calm, centered and focused. The intimate relationship needs to be safe, supportive, respectful, nonpunitive and peaceful. You feel taken care of, wanted, unconditionally accepted and loved just for existing and being alive in a healthy intimate relationship. You feel part of something and not alone in such a relationship. You experience forgiving and being forgiven with little revenge or reminding of past offenses. You find yourself giving thanks for just being alive in a healthy intimate relationship. A healthy intimate relationship has a sense of directedness with plan and order. You experience being free to be who you are rather than who you think you need to be for the other. Such a relationship makes you free from the "paralysis of analysis" needing to analyze every minute detail of what goes on in it. Such a relationship has its priorities in order with people's feelings and relationships coming before things and money. A healthy intimate relationship encourages your personal growth and supports your individuality. This type of relationship does not result in you or the other becoming emotionally, physically or intellectually dependent on one another.
Are you able to establish this type of relationship? What factors impede your ability to have this kind of relationship with others? If you are not able to establish healthy intimate relationships then you run the risk of not being able to establish a healthy sexually intimate relationship with another person. Most probably what keeps you from having a healthy intimate relationship with people is your inability to establish and maintain healthy boundaries with them. What you need to do is to do a LET GO workout to identify how to establish healthy intellectual, emotional and physical boundaries with others so that you can use this skill in establishing and/or maintaining a healthy sexually intimate relationship with a significant other.
LET GO STEP 1: LIGHTEN THE PRESSURE
The first thing you need to do is to LIGHTEN THE PRESSURE to control people in relationships so that you can have healthy boundaries with them. To do this you have three substeps to accomplish to LIGHTEN THE PRESSURE.
Substep 1: Get ALERT to the hooks in a relationship which keep your boundaries down.
You first must ALERT yourself to what irrational messages you have about relationships which get you stuck boundary-less with others. You need to identify the irrational emotional hooks which prevent you from having healthy boundaries with others. Consider these emotional hooks as examples for your ALERT work.
10 Emotional Hooks in Relationships
1. Maybe you are hooked by the irrational belief that: "I am a nobody without a somebody in my life." If you are, you maintain no boundaries with people because you are very dependent on getting involved with someone to make you feel like a somebody. You are willing to do whatever it takes to make the relationship happen, even if you have to give up your health, money, security, identity, intelligence, spiritual beliefs, family, country, job, community, friends, values, honor and self-respect. The rational message needed to establish healthy boundaries from this hook is: " I am a somebody, just by being who I am. I am OK just the way I am, even if I do not currently have another person in my life. My value and worth as a person is not dependent on my having a significant other in my life. It is better for me to be on my own and healthy than to be with another person and be sick intellectually, emotionally and/or physically."
2. Maybe you are hooked by the scarcity principle of feeling happiness: "because this relationship I have is better than anything I have ever had before." The problem is that the relationship you have might be better than what you have had in the past, but it might not really be a healthy intimate relationship as described earlier in this section. You may be so happy with your relationship that you are willing to give all of yourself intellectually, emotionally and physically with no regard for what you need to retain for yourself so that you do not lose your identity in this relationship. If you are in a recovery program like the Balanced Lifestyle Program and have a support system and a plan of recovery and you find that in your relationship you have no time to do the "recovery activities" of maintaining contact with your support system, going to 12 Step meetings, reading the Tools for Coping Series Books or other recovery literature, maintaining your new relationship with food and exercise and handling your emotions in food-free ways, then your relationship is not supportive of your recovery and is not healthy for you no matter how happy you are in it. If in your relationship you have no time to spend with your children, family or friends then it is not healthy no matter how happy you are in it. If in your relationship you have no time, energy or resources to put into your career, education or current job then it is not healthy for you no matter how happy you are in it. If in your relationship you are finding it difficult to maintain your own spirituality and connection with your Higher Power then it is not healthy no matter how happy you feel in it. A relationship which requires that you sacrifice all of you for the sake of the happiness you feel, in it, is not a healthy intimate relationship. A healthy intimate relationship allows you to make time, space and allowance for you to focus on yourself, your own needs, your children, your family, your friends, your recovery program, your support system, your career, your education, your spiritual beliefs and your personal integrity, individuality and identity. The rational message needed to establish healthy boundaries from this hook is: "I will focus on my needs, my identity, my individuality and my personal integrity in any relationship I engage in . I will set aside my time, resources and energy to give to my children, my family, my friends, my support system, my recovery program, my spirituality, my career, my education and my community involvement while maintaining healthy intimate relationships with people. I will insist that I have the time resources and energy to focus on all aspects of my life in any(or present) healthy sexually intimate relationship I have with a significant other."
3. Maybe you are hooked by irrational guilt that you must think, feel and act in ways to insure that your relationship with another person is preserved, secured and nurtured no matter what personal expense it takes out of you. You feel guilty if the other person is not succeeding or thriving without your personal resources, energy, money, time and effort going in to making such success happen. You have a problem in feeling over-responsible for the welfare of the other person and cannot allow that person to accept personal responsibility to make choices and live with the consequences of these choices. This irrational guilt is a driving motivation to keep you tearing down your boundaries so that you will always be available to this person at any time, in any place for whatever reason the person "needs" you. The rational message needed to establish healthy boundaries from this hook is: "People are responsible for accepting personal responsibility for their own lives and to accept the consequences for the choices they make in taking care of their own lives. I am not responsible for the outcomes which result from the choices and decisions which others make. People are free to make their own decisions and no one is forcing them to make bad ones which will result in negative consequences to them."
4. Maybe you are hooked by the inability to differentiate the difference between love and sympathy or compassion for another. You find yourself feeling sorry for another person and the warm feelings which this generates makes you think that you are in love. The bigger the problems the other has, the bigger the "love" seems to you. Because the problems can get bigger and more complex, they succeed in hooking you to lower your boundaries so that you begin to give more and more of yourself to this "pitiable" person out of the "love" you feel. The rational message needed to establish healthy boundaries from this hook is: "It is OK to have sympathy and compassion for another, but that does not mean that I have to sacrifice my life to "save" or "rescue" this person. Sympathy and compassion are emotions I know well and I will work hard to differentiate them from what love is. When I feel sympathy and compassion for another person, I will remind myself that it is not the same as loving that person. The ability to feel sympathy and compassion for another human being are nice qualities of mine and I will be sure to use them in a healthy and non-emotionally hooked way in the future."
5. Maybe you get hooked by the neediness and helplessness of others. You find yourself hooked when the other person gets into self-pity, "poor me" and "how tough life has been." You find yourself weak when this person demonstrates an inability to solve personal problems. You find yourself wanting to teach and instruct, when this person demonstrates or admits ignorance of how to solve problems. You find yourself hooked by verbal and non-verbal cues which cry out to you to "help" this person. You find yourself feeling warmth, caring and nurturing feelings which help you tear down any shred of boundaries you once had. This sad, weak, distraught, lost, confused and befuddled waif is so needy that you lose all concept of space and time as you begin to give and give and give. It feels so good. The rational message needed to establish healthy boundaries from this hook is: "No one is helpless with out first learning the advantages of being helpless. Helplessness is a learned behavior which others have quickly learned to use to marshal others to give of their resources, energy, time, effort and money to fix. I am a good person even if I do not try to fix and take care of the next helpless person I meet. I cannot establish a healthy intimate relationship with someone I am trying to fix or take care of. I need to put more energy into fixing and taking care of myself if I find myself being hooked by another person's helplessness."
6. Maybe you get hooked by the sense of being depended upon by others. Unless these people are your children under the age of 18, there is no reason to feel responsible for them if they let you know that they are dependent upon you for their lives to be successful and fulfilled. This is over-dependency and is unhealthy. It is impossible to have healthy intimacy with an overdependent person. This person is a parasite sucking you dry of everything you have intellectually, emotionally and physically. You get nothing in return except the "good feelings" of doing something for another person. You get no real healthy nurturing, rather you feel the weight of this person on your shoulders, neck and back. You give and give of yourself to address the needs of this person and you have nothing left to give to yourself. The rational message needed to establish healthy boundaries from this hook is: "It is unhealthy for me to be so depended upon by another adult. There is a need for me to be clear what I am willing and not willing to do for this person. There is a need for this person to become more independent from me so that I can maintain my own sense of identity, worth and personhood. It would be better for me to lose this person than to continue to allow such dependency on me. I am only responsible for taking care of myself. Human adults are responsible to accept personal responsibility for their own lives. Supporting another person intellectually, emotionally and physically where I have nothing left to give to myself is unhealthy and I will be ALERT to when I am doing this and try to stop it immediately."
7. Maybe you get hooked by the belief that: "If I give it enough time things will change to be the way I want them to be." You have waited a long time to have a healthy intimate relationship, you rationalize don't give up on it too soon. Since you are not sure how to have one or how one feels, you rationalize that maybe what the relationship needs is more time to become more healthy and intimate. You find yourself giving more and more of yourself and waiting longer and longer for something good to happen and yet things never get better. You find that your wait goes from being counted by days, weeks or months to years. Time passes and things really never get better. What keeps hooking you are those fleeting moments when the relationship approximates what you would like it to be. These fleeting moments feel like centuries and they are sufficient to keep you holding on. The rational message needed to establish healthy boundaries from this hook is: "It is unhealthy for me to sacrifice large portions of my life, invested in a relationship which is not going anywhere. It is unhealthy for me to hold on to the belief that things will change if they have not in 3 or 6 months. It is OK to set time limits on relationships such as: if in 3 months or if in 6 months things do not get to be intimately healthier then I am getting out of it. It is OK to put time demands on relationships so that I do not waste my life away waiting for something which in all probability will never happen. It is not OK for me to blow out of proportion those fleeting moments in a relationship which make me believe that there is anything more in it than there really is."
8. Maybe you get hooked by the belief that: "If I change myself more things will change to become more like I want them to be in this relationship." You reason that maybe the reason things are not getting healthier and more intimate is because you need to change more to be the person the other person wants you to be. You feel blamed and pointed out by the other person as the reason why things are not healthier or more intimate in your relationship. You find yourself having to defend yourself from attack from the other for "not being good enough" or "doing enough" to make the relationship work. You find yourself with a mounting list of expectations, duties or responsibilities, given you by the other person, which must be accomplished if the relationship is ever to become what you want it to be. You find yourself needing to change the ways you think, feel, act, dress, talk, look, eat, work, cook, entertain, have fun, socialize, etc before you will be "good enough" for this relationship to work. You find that you will have to basically give up "who you are" for "who your partner wants you to be" if this relationship is ever to work with this person. You find yourself hooked by the challenge to change and you find yourself working harder and harder to effect the change. What keeps you hooked is the affirmation and reinforcement you get from the other person when you effect a small change. The only problem is that there is always something else identified which needs to be changed after the last change has been accomplished. You are in a never ending loop of needing to change and unfortunately there never seems to be a end to it. The rational message needed to establish healthy boundaries for this hook is: "I have to be real to myself and be the person I am rather than to be the person someone else wants me to be. It is not healthy for me to give up my personhood and identity to please someone else just to have a relationship with that person. I have a right to my own tastes, likes and dislikes, personal style, beliefs, values, attitudes etc. I am in control of my own thinking, feelings and actions and I will allow no one to take control of these basic rights of mine."
9. Maybe you get hooked by the fear of the possible negative future outcome if you are not deeply involved in taking care of and fixing another person. You may be aware of the hooks which keep you boundary-less with a person. Yet you are afraid to LET GO of the control you have with this person for fear something very negative might happen to this person. Maybe the person will be homeless, hungry, jobless, poor, in jail, lonely, scared, or worse yet dead if you do not continue to fix and take care of the person's needs. This fear of the possible negative future outcomes is so debilitating, that it feels better being sucked dry intellectually, emotionally and physically than to LET GO and watch this person suffer this feared awful negative outcome. You find yourself powerless to keep from doing the healthy thing because of the intensity of this fear. You have become a prisoner in the prison of this relationship. You have become a hostage by a very powerful, needy, helpless, manipulative "hostage taker." You are a possession of this person and you find yourself doing all you are asked to insure that this possible negative dreaded outcome does not happen. You are being emotionally blackmailed in such a relationship and may even have heard threats of suicide from this person if you say you want out of the relationship the way it is. The rational message needed to establish healthy boundaries from this hook is: "I am only responsible for my life. No one can make me responsible for that person's life. I can choose to feel responsible for another person's life, but I cannot control or determine the outcome of this person's life no matter how hard I try. I am powerless to control other people, places, things and conditions. The only thing I can control is my own thinking, feeling and actions. I need to hand this person, this person's problems and needs and the outcomes of this person's life over to my Higher Power. I cannot carry this person's possible negative future outcomes on my body or I will experience failed emotional and physical health. It is OK for me to make other people accept personal responsibility for their own lives and to accept the consequences for their own actions, choices and decisions which they make."
10. Maybe you are hooked by the fantasy of the way it is supposed to be. You have an ideal, dream or image in your mind of how a relationship is supposed to be or how it should be and you have a difficult time accepting it the way it really is. You work hard at making the relationship approximate your idealized fantasy and put a great deal of time, energy and resources into making it become a reality. Unfortunately the more you give and give and give the fantasy never becomes the reality you are wishing for. The pull to make the fantasy become real is so powerful, that you are almost brainwashed into believing that it is possible even though all of your efforts have not made it happen even after years and years of effort on your part. You get hooked by the delusion of the fulfillment of the fantasy and live as if the fantasy has become reality. You are sometimes so out of touch with reality that you appear to be psychotic to others when you discuss your relationship, because they know that what you are saying about your relationship is not real and in some cases does not even closely approximate what you are saying about it. You keep pouring your resources, energy and time into an empty pit which seems to never get filled and you become obsessed into giving and giving to make the fantasy become real. You get hooked into waiting for the "big pay off" down the road if you just stick with this relationship and remain loyal to the belief that it will happen one day. "Wake up and get off the fantasy train before it runs off the track!" you hear people saying but you ignore their warning and keep blindly on, in search of your quest. The rational message needed to establish healthy boundaries from this hook is: "I must accept reality the way it is rather than how I want it to be. I will give my support system in my recovery program permission to call me on it if I am hooked into a fantasy relationship and losing myself in it. I will work hard to stay reality based and keep myself from losing my objectivity and contact with the way things really are. I will make every effort to accept life the way it is rather than how I want it to be. I know that people are human and subject to making mistakes and failing and I will forgive myself if I make a mistake in my efforts to establish intimate or sexually intimate relationships with others."
Use the tools in the Tools for Handling Control Issue (Messina, J.J., Kendall/Hunt, Dubuque, Iowa, 1992) to get yourself unhooked and detached from unhealthy relationships.
Substep 2: Do ANGER Workouts on the lack of boundaries in your relationships.
Once you have ALERTED yourself to the emotional hooks in relationships which keep your boundaries down then you need to do ANGER work about how angry you are that there are these hooks out there which are so subtle and powerful. You need to get your anger out about: why can't relationships be like the ideal fantasy you always dreamed them to be and how hard they really are to maintain. You need to do your anger work about how unfair it is that nothing in life comes easy and how you have to work so hard to be healthy and ALERT to all of the hooks which keep you unhealthy in relationships. To do your ANGER work you must be sure to address the different faces of anger which the lack of boundaries in relationships bring on.
Anger Issues Resulting from a Lack of Boundaries
1. As a result of getting hooked into a relationship and having no boundaries in it, you might become invisible. This comes from your needs being ignored, your being socially isolated and being made to deal with the relationship on your own, alone and away from your family, friends and support system. You need to get out your anger over your rights being ignored. You need to get your anger out over your fear of not speaking up lest you "cause waves" or start a conflict. You need to get your anger out that you are not seen, heard or considered in the relationship. You need to get your anger out that you stopped thinking, feeling and acting on your own lest you were seen and problems resulted from such independence of action on your part.
2. As a result of getting hooked into a relationship and having no boundaries in it, you might experience major silent withdrawal. This withdrawal involves not allowing yourself to feel feelings of anger or disappointment because things are not going well in the relationship. You might even be driven to use your compulsive behaviors to medicate your negative feelings. You might become more compulsive in your overeating or in other addictive like behaviors (eg.: drinking, drugs, shopping, gambling, credit car use, risk taking etc.). This is the act of holding in your anger about the fact that your relationship is not giving you what you wanted and is not as healthy and intimate as you had hoped. If you continue to hold your anger in, you will became more and more depressed which feeds the need to self-medicate and withdraw more from others. By this action you pull away from family, friends, support networks and life in general. You need to get your anger out about how hurt you are that the relationship is not what you wanted. You need to get your anger out about how you have given and given in this relationship until you have no more to give. You need to get your anger out that you have lost yourself in the relationship because you have no boundaries between you and the other.
3. As a result of getting hooked into a relationship and having no boundaries in it, you might experience rage which comes as an over-reaction to your hurt and pain. You might finally realize that you have been conned and duped by the other in an unhealthy relationship and get so angry that you fly off into rages. You need to get your anger out in healthy ways so that you do not feel guilt after these rages. The guilt will only hook you back into the unhealthy relationship. You need to get this rage and anger out in healthy ways so that it does not turn into anger-in which results in your becoming depressed which feed your compulsive behaviors of overeating etc. You need to get this anger and rage out so that it does not turn into self-anger and self-destructive rage. You need to get this anger out so that you can forgive yourself for "being so stupid" or "being so naive" that you could have been "conned and manipulated" so by such a person. You need to get your anger and rage out in a healthy way so that you do not act "crazy" in front of this person which then can be used against you later. You need to get this anger and rage out of your system in healthy ways so that you can be "squeaky clean" in front of this person as you confront the problems in the relationship.
4. As a result of getting hooked into a relationship and having no boundaries in it, you might want to run away. You might find yourself wanting to get away with this person and create a "geographic change." This is thinking that in a different place you can work out the relationship in a better way. You need to recognize that this is just holding in your anger and things won't be any different in a new place. You might be repressing your emotional response to the relationship and find yourself running away from the relationship itself. The chances are that you will get out of this bad one but in a new place will probably find another bad one to replace it with. You might be so wrapped up in your fantasy and ideals of how relationships are supposed to be, that you find yourself running away from this bad one only to fall into the trap of a new one which more closely approximates what it is supposed to be and yet it is not. Running away from problems is only to run right back into them in a different formate, place or time. You need to get your anger out about your bad relationship so that you do not repeat the same pattern in the future. You need to rid yourself of all of the negative feelings and emotions which come from an unhealthy relationship so that you are free to experience healthier, more positive feelings in the future. You need to confront head on the anger and rage you feel about being disappointed, duped and conned in a boundary-less relationship so that you do not repeat the pattern in the future. To run away from it and not to face it, is a guarantee of repeating the pattern in the future.
Use the tools in the Tools for Anger Work-Out (Messina, J.J., Kendall/Hunt, Dubuque, Iowa, 1992) to get your anger out in healthy ways.
Substep 3: Doing CHILD work to nurture your right to have boundaries in relationships.
Once you have done your ANGER work then you need to self nurture yourself with CHILD work focused on how you deserve not to be hooked by the pitfalls in relationships and how you deserve to establish healthy boundaries between you and others to protect yourself intellectually, emotionally and physically. To do this CHILD work you first need to recognize what your rights are in a healthy intimate relationship.
Personal Rights in a Relationship
1. I have the right to expect a nurturing environment in a relationship. I deserve to be recognized and accepted by others for who I am unconditionally. I need the environment in which my relationship exists to have clearly defined and enforced limits and boundaries so that I do not get lost or used up in it. I deserve to have respect and latitude to be an individual in this environment so that I can retain my individuality and personhood. I deserve to have an environment which has structure so that I know what are the expectations and obligations expected of me. I deserve to have freedom within the established structure so that I am not penned in or limited so much that I can no longer be the person who I am in this environment. I deserve to maintain open, honest and feelings based communication with my family, friends, support system and recovery colleagues so that I can receive feedback if I am falling back into a "hooked" relationship in which I am losing all sense of my personal boundaries.
2. I have the right to be self-nurturing in a relationship. I deserve to love myself unconditionally. I deserve to take care of my own intellectual, emotional and physical needs with no need to become dependent on an other person to meet these needs for me. I deserve to accept myself as a unique person who is different and separate from my partner in a relationship. I deserve and need to be open and honest with myself so that I am constantly in touch with my feelings and emotions so that I do not slip into fantasy or delusion about what is happening in the relationship with another. I have the need to be open to my inner voice which is the source of my instincts and intuitions so that I can hear the Alarm Bell if the relationship, I am in, is unhealthy for me.
3. I have the right to expect to be nurtured by a partner in a relationship. I deserve unconditional love and acceptance from an other person in a relationship. I deserve to receive warmth, caring and affection from my partner. I deserve to be accepted as the unique individual I am in this relationship. I deserve good open and honest communication with my partner. I deserve to have open and straight forward problem solving with my partner so that all issues which come up can be handled in healthy logical, emotional and physical ways.
4. I have the right to expect the relationship I am in to support my healthy self-esteem. I have a right to expect that my relationship will be supportive of me so that I can grow in my self-worth, self-concept and optimism. I have a right to expect to become a more productive person in a relationship. I have a right to become a better creative problem solver and experience improved coping skills in a relationship. I have a right to expect respect for my leadership capabilities by my partner. I have a right to expect that my self-deservedness and self-confidence will grow in a relationship. I have a right to expect that I will grow in altruism and personal responsibility taking in a relationship.
Use these four personal rights in a relationship as affirmations and visualizations to nurture yourself in CHILD work to give yourself permission to establish healthy boundaries so that you are not hook in an unhealthy way in future or present relationships. To read more about what you have a right to expect in your relationships read Section 1: An Overview of Self-Esteem in Self-Esteem Seekers Anonymous - The SEA's Program Manual (Messina, J.J., Kendall/Hunt, Dubuque, Iowa, 1992). Use the tools in Tools for Relationships (Messina, J.J., Kendall/Hunt, Dubuque, Iowa, 1992) to develop healthy intimate relationships with others.
Once you have completed the 3 substeps of LIGHTEN THE PRESSURE about the hooks in relationships which keep your boundaries down then you are ready for the next step in the LET GO process.
LET GO Step 2: EXERCISE RIGHTS
You next need to EXERCISE YOUR RIGHTS to set up your boundaries which is essentially to say "NO" to those hooks which keep your boundaries down. You also need to identify what boundaries you want to set up so that you do not lose yourself in future intimate or sexually intimate relationships. To help you exercise your rights here are boundaries you need to establish in a relationship if it is to be a healthy one.
Boundaries Needed in a Healthy Relationship
1. You need to put limits on your time in a relationship. You will need to establish a good sense of time management so that you do not give all of your time over to the establishment and maintenance of your relationship with a person. You will need to develop a schedule daily, weekly, monthly and yearly for your time. You will need to set aside time enough for your work, sleep, self-nurturing activities, family involvement, friends involvement, support group(s), recovery work, spirituality endeavors, Balanced Lifestyle activities, exercise, having fun, leisure time, vacation times, alone time and couple time. You cannot afford to give away precious time to a relationship which must be spent in those necessary activities which insure that you are not lost or swallowed up in a relationship.
2. You need to put limits on the money you spend in a relationship. You will need to establish a budget for your money so that you do not spend inordinate sums of money in the establishing or maintaining of a relationship. You need to be clear that your money will not be used to rescue or save your partner from fiscal irresponsibility. You need to be clear that your money will not be squandered on high risk activities such as gambling or "get rich quick" schemes. You need to be clear that you will not foot the bill to support fully a partner who is not willing to take responsibility to find a job or get a better paying job for which the person is qualified. You will need to set limits as to how long you will fund a partner who is out of work before the funding is pulled. You will need to be clear that your money will not be spent to cover legal costs if your partner is purposefully involved in illegal activities.
3. You will need to set limits on your external resources in a relationship. You will need to set limits for the person in a relationship, on the use of your house, car, or other piece of property you possess. If you have a business or have a supervisory position on your job you will need to set limits on how much involved your partner can become involved in your work. You will need to set limits on how much your partner will have to do in terms of chores or work load to take care of the "shared space" in your house or other property you own or share with your partner. You will need to set limits on how much you will allow your partner to have access to your family, friends and support system. You will need to set limits as to how involved you will allow your partner to become in your recovery and support group(s) activities.
4. You will need to set limits on your talents, skills and abilities in a relationship. You will need to set limits on how much of your talents, skills and abilities or internal resources you are willing to expend on a relationship. You need to be clear with your partner how much of your internal resources you are willing to share or give away to establish or maintain the relationship. You need to be clear with yourself that your skills and abilities are commodities which others pay for (be it on the job or in the market place) and that you do not have to give them away for free just to keep a partner in a relationship. You are not required to give and give in a relationship of your talents, skills and abilities without expecting something substantial in return. You need to set limits on how much you will give before you will stop giving of yourself.
5. You will need to set limits on your emotions in a relationship. You will need to set limits on how much you will emotionally invest in a relationship. You will need to recognize the emotional hooks which keep you stuck in a relationship. You will need to set limits on how "hooked" you will allow yourself to become. You will need to set time limits on how long you will allow a hook to go on in the relationship. You will need to develop a sense of emotional detachment so as not to get hooked and drowned in an unhealthy relationship. You will need to develop emotional limits so that you will be able to figure out where you begin and end and where your partner in a relationship begins and ends.
To assist you to develop healthy boundaries read Chapter 12: Establishing Healthy Boundaries in Growing Down - Tools for Healing the Inner Child (Messina, J.J., Kendall/Hunt, Dubuque, Iowa, 1992). Once you have identified the five areas of boundaries you need establish so that you can have a healthy relationship then you are ready to proceed to the next LET GO step.
LET GO Step 3: TAKE STEPS
You are now ready to TAKE THE STEPS to establish healthy boundaries with others. This involves actualizing the 5 areas of boundaries for healthy relationships. You will need to do the following:
Boundary Development Tasks
1. Establish a Calendar
Set up a schedule for yourself by day, week, month and year and keep to it. Be sure all essential components need to have a nurturing environment, self-nurturing, partner nurturing and self-esteem enhancement are put in the calendar. Make sure that spending time on the Tools for a Balanced Lifestyle is included in the calendar.
2. Establish a Budget
Set up a budget of how you will spend your money. Make sure you are honest with yourself about your actual income and do not depend on credit as a source of income. Limit your expenditures on relationship establishment and maintenance activities so that you are not irresponsibly squandering your money.
3. Establish rules about use of your external resources
Set up a set of rules and regulations about use of your resources. Be clear about getting reimbursed for any damages or misuse of them. Set up chores and work schedules to insure that all of the resources are taken care of in a responsible way.
4. Establish rules about use of your talents, skill and abilities
Set up as set of rules about what you will and will not do in the relationship with your talents, skills and abilities so that you will not feel raped or violated because you have squandered your internal resources on the relationship.
5. Establish emotional limits
Identify what you are willing to do and not do in the relationship. Identify when, where, how and why you are willing to do what you will do. Set goals for the relationship which fairly protects each person. Develop open lines of communication so that all problems are openly discussed and creatively resolved. You will need to learn to say "NO" over and over again until it becomes a habit and you feel no more guilt after saying it.
Use the Tools for a Relationship (Messina, J.J., Kendall/Hunt, Dubuque, Iowa, 1992), Marriage Workout - Tools for Marital Enrichment (Messina, J.J., Advanced Development Systems Inc., Tampa, Florida, 1986) and Pathfinder: Tools for Effective Parenting (Messina, J.J., Advanced Development Systems Inc., Tampa, Florida, 1993) to assist you to take the steps necessary to develop healthy boundaries in your intimate and sexually intimate relationships.
Once you have TAKEN STEPS to establish boundaries then you are ready for the next step in the LET GO Process.
LET GO STEP 4: GIVE UP NEED
You now need to insure that the boundaries you establish are maintained in your relationships. To do this you will need to GIVE UP THE NEED to have control over other people, places, situations and conditions. To do this, you will need to stop doing the following control behaviors which weaken your boundaries with others.
Control Behaviors Which Weaken Boundaries
1. Need to Fix
You will need to LET GO and GIVE UP THE NEED to fix other people when you see that they are hurting or in need. If you get caught up in the compulsive need to fix you will weaken your boundaries and become lost in trying to fix the other to the exclusion of taking care of yourself.
2. Need to be a Caretaker
You will need to recognize that you have a compulsive trait of needing to take care of people in need because you have a severe case of the "need to be needed" syndrome. You will need to recognize that the more you give and take care of a needy person the more your boundaries disappear and the less of you is left.
3. Unchecked Idealism
You will need to recognize that you cannot control how the world should be. You can only accept how the world is. You will need to work at tempering your idealism so that you do not exhaust yourself after allowing all of your boundaries to collapse around you.
4. Non-acceptance of Powerlessness
You need to work at accepting that you are powerless to control and change other people, places things, situations and conditions. You are competing with your Higher Power if you hold to the belief that you can control and change others. You will lose in the long run and you will be boundary-less and defenseless from the onslaught of needs of others, which you believe you can be change and control.
5. Lack of belief in a Higher Power
You will never be able to maintain your boundaries with others if you do not have a belief in a Higher Power or God as you understand it to be. You need a Higher Power over to whom you can let go of the uncontrollables and unchangeables in you life. Without this resource to hand over these things to you will be exhausted trying to meet everyone's needs and your boundaries will be non existent and you will be ultimately lost in the process.
To learn more about the control issues and to develop tools to GIVE UP THE NEED to control others read the Tools for Handling Control Issues (Messina, J.J., Kendall/Hunt, Dubuque, Iowa, 1992). Once you have GIVEN UP THE NEED you are then ready for the last LET GO Step.
LET GO Step 5: ORDER LIFE
Once you have done the ALERT, ANGER and CHILD work about emotional hooks in relationships, and anger responses to those hooks and self-nurturing by recognizing your rights to have healthy boundaries you had LIGHTENED THE PRESSURE to control others. Then you EXERCISED YOUR RIGHT by identifying what boundaries you wanted to set up for yourself in relationships. Then you TOOK STEPS to establish the boundaries. Finally you GAVE UP THE NEED to control others by recognizing the control issues which keep you boundary-less. Now you need to make a commitment to ORDER YOUR LIFE so that you will continually be on the lookout for your boundaries being violated, ignored or dropped.You will need to recognize that as part of your boundaries, you need to be clear that the Balanced Lifestyle Program is an essential part of your life and all aspects of it must be respected and not altered. You will need to state that you will allow no relationship to interfere with your recovery efforts and that you will allow no one the power to divert you from this important project in your life.
You will need to ORDER YOUR LIFE to recognize that you cannot have a healthy sexually intimate relationship with a significant other unless you have established and maintained your boundaries in a healthy way. You will need to be on ALERT to recognize if you are being hooked into a relationship because sexuality and sensuousness is the only economy exchanged in it. You will need to do ANGER work if all you have in a relationship is the physical act of sex and lack all of the other essential components to make it healthy and enriching. You will need to do CHILD work to nurture yourself to let you know that you are OK just the way you are, if you need to drop out of a sexual relationship which is not healthy or emotionally rewarding. You will need to do more LET GO work to get back on track to re-establish healthy boundaries if you relapse and allow yourself to be consumed in a relationship which provides you physical sexual contact but no emotional or intellectual nourishing. You will need to allow your support system to call you on it if you relapse into being your boundary-less, so you can cease a relationship which although sexual is not healthy for you.
You will need to work at preventing relapse by working hard at your recovery program so that you have enough people in your life to call you on it, if you begin to isolate yourself and you become a hostage in a new relationship. You will need to work at being open to others about the need for their feedback if they see you sacrificing your internal and external resources just so that you can have a sexual relationship with a partner. You will need to have support people prepared to call you on it, if you drift away from your new program with food, exercise and food-free ways of dealing with emotions. You will need to give permission to people to call you on it if they recognize that you are deteriorating in your health, happiness and energy levels since you got involved in a new (or altered) relationship.
You will gain the 3 Increases of Health, Happiness and Energy, if you are able to deal with your sexuality and sensuality in a healthy way and are able to maintain your healthy boundaries in the process. You have much to gain by establishing healthy boundaries with others and it is up to you to be vigilant and on guard for any relapse in keeping your boundaries up and healthy. Lastly you need to make a concerted effort to adopt the words of Rheinhold Neibuhr as a daily affirmation for yourself to insure you do not relapse into a boundary-less life:
Serenity Prayer
by: Rheinhold Neibuhr
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change
Courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time,
enjoying one moment at a time,
accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is,
not as I would have it.
Trusting that You will make all things right,
if I surrender to Your will.
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with You forever in the next.
AMEN
Tools for Coping Related Readings:
1. Self-Esteem Seekers Anonymous - The SEA's Program Manual
- Section 1: An Overview of Self-Esteem
- Section 2: The SEA's Tools for Recovery
- The LET GO System
- The RELAPSE System
- The SEA's Program of Recovery
2. Tools for Personal Growth
3. Tools for Relationships
4. Tools for Anger Work-out
5. Tools for Handling Control Issues
6. Growing Down - Tools for Healing the Inner Child
- Chapter 5: Letting Go of Shame and Guilt
- Chapter 6: Self-Forgiveness
- Chapter 7: Unconditional Self-Acceptance and Self-Love
- Chapter 10: Re-Parenting for Growing Down
- Chapter 11: Overcoming Invisibility
- Chapter 12: Establishing Healthy Boundaries