The Importance of Healthy Boundary
A boundary is defined as anything that marks a limit. Psychological boundary marks the distinction between behavior that does not cause emotional harm and behavior that causes emotional harm.
For healthy boundary, you need healthy self-esteem and for that you need a security system that alerts you when your boundary has been breached. Your alert mechanism is your emotional system, and anger is a one of the main protector of your borders.
Imagine that your body is like a car, with a dashboard full of warning lights. The warning lights are your emotions. Every time, you feel, uncomfortable emotions, including stress or anger, it is your security system warning that your personal boundary and energy field has been breached, and you’re letting in stuff that isn’t yours.
The result of healthy boundaries is to preserve psychological durability and advance relationships, while having healthy sense of control, acceptance and overall well-being. Boundary is your first self-defense again stress. When you are able to say “NO” and hear “NO,” and accept it, you move with the flow of life, learning, experiencing and evolving.
Have you ever heard the statements “You are getting under my skin.” or “You are pushing my buttons.” If you say such things, it means that you allow others to control you and it is means you have “holes” in your personal boundary. The end results of lack of boundary is anger, stress and worry.
One of the reasons for distorted boundary is inability to look at the situation objectively. Rather than looking at the situation as an objective observer; from the outside, you see it directly through our holes, which elude you to believe that you can control outside situation or other people. This is very subjective and inaccurate view of reality and ourselves (or a denial of our limitations), which again leads to suffering.
When you experience anger and pay attention to it, anger indicates that your boundary has been violated and you must do something to deal with it. You can’t ignore anger and you can’t let it deteriorate into resentment, rage, and hostility. If you ignore them, you are in danger of being enmeshed and swallowed, or so disconnect and withdrawn that they don’t exist. The key to emotional intelligence is to understand anger, recognize it when it occurs, and use it as an opportunity for building healthy boundaries, and creating growth and transformation.
Healthy boundaries allow you to master your inner domain. You can master your control over your respond to others, rather than focusing on changing other people. While keeping that in mind, it is clear that you can still influence and motivate others, but this strategy can be accomplished effectively when coming from a place of love, care and compassion rather than from a place of anger and control.
Personal boundaries that is maintained with assertive communication and compassion is almost always more effective than anger that is expressed from a defensive position. Responding from a position of strength produces more long term positive results.
