When we feel depressed or anxious, it’s normal for us to drop into black-and-white thinking, especially when it comes to relationships. We place things in categories to keep our life safe and predictable. This includes the people in our lives.
We place people we’re comfortable with in the “safe box”, and we place people we’re challenged by in the “unsafe box”.
This would be highly adaptable if people were that simple. But none of us are perfect. We make mistakes. We let each other down. We drop the ball.
If we place everyone in our life who has ever wronged us in the “unsafe box”, we will be left feeling unsupported and alone. Lack of social support is the last thing we need when we’re feeling depressed and anxious.
There must be a better way. A better way to maintain safe AND realistic relationships.
This is where the work comes in. We need to toss the streamlined process of categorizing we’ve developed to protect ourselves and begin practicing...you guessed it...setting boundaries.
Setting boundaries involves effective communication about our needs and feelings in relationships. No wonder our culture would prefer the boxes. Knowing our needs and feelings, much less communicating them, can be so hard!!!
If we start small and mindfully, we can begin noticing what NEED we’re missing when we feel that urge to push someone away and put them in the “unsafe box”.
Do we need to feel listened to? Do we need space? Do we need connection?
What would it be like to communicate our needs and see what happens? Is it possible this mending of relationship--this sharing and being responded to--could feel even more safe and healing than someone getting it perfectly right in the first place?
After we set boundaries, we can look for evidence to support a person’s place in the “safe box” or “unsafe box”. We can observe whether the other person behaviorally respected our boundary request.
In this way, setting boundaries cuts down on our urge to mind-read or fortune-tell--both unreliable sources of information. We can instead perceive behavioral evidence that we are safe or unsafe.
Setting boundaries then creates self-trust and safety rather than feeding the fear that comes with the unpredictability of people and relationships.
If you’re interested in working with me personally to overcome your unique challenges related to boundary-setting and begin replacing your fear with safety, I invite you to contact me here.