Boundaries are KIND
About garden fences, angry birds and kindness
Drawing by Tineke Tammes
Years and years ago a psychologist told me this analogy. (No, actually, he told me two, I’ll leave the second one for later).
Here’s the first one:
‘Imagine this. You’ve got a wonderful front garden. You’ve spent hours designing it. You’ve walked through garden centres. You’ve bought plants and swapped seeds with the neighbours. You dragged flagstones around and arranged your flower beds. You’ve bought bags of compost and painstakingly painted your garden fence. It’s taken you AGES! Literally. And now you’re SO proud of it. YOU made that!
Except …
There are these people.
And whenever you’re not looking - and quite frankly even when you ARE - they brazenly step over your garden fence with their size 10 boots. Into your garden. Trampling through your flower beds. Undoing ALL that work.
As if that garden fence wasn’t even there! As if they NEVER even noticed it!’
Yes. This is an article about boundaries.
My personal fight with boundaries
You see, I wasn’t just talking to a random psychologist.
I was struggling with boundaries, with asserting myself, with untangling bottled up emotions that were starting to cause extreme havoc with my body.
Waking up in the middle of the night and never going back to sleep - whilst I always was, and still am, a good sleeper. Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Exhaustion. Depression. Hopelessness.
So I was talking to someone, ‘my’ psychologist.
Because when you bottle up your emotions, when you don’t speak out, when you silence yourself, your emotions are stored inside you. They cause stress and - eventually - lead to physical symptoms and even illness.
What are healthy boundaries?
We have an instinctive knowledge of what boundaries are, right?
It’s your ability to say ‘No’ to something or someone, without feeling guilty about it.
It’s protecting your time, your space, your body, without feeling you’ve done something wrong.
It’s that garden fence, that’s SO visible to you.
But is it?
Because in that example you KNOW where your boundaries are and can quite easily indicate where they are.
But what if you DON’T know?
This is where I got myself mixed up. This is what I see in others too.
Because healthy boundaries need two elements:
Self-awareness - You need to have the emotional literacy to KNOW and articulate: 1. What you are feeling 2. Why you’re feeling it and 3. What boundary is being overstepped.
Communications - You need to be able to articulate your feelings and the boundary you believe has been violated to someone else.
I’ve seen women:
Be exhausted when they visited family. Having to bottle up their emotions for long periods, and not being able to speak their minds. Not knowing why.
Be frustrated when friends were taking advantage of them by borrowing money or overstaying their welcome.
Be absolutely OUTRAGED about work, but afraid of the consequences of speaking up.
Not able to express their emotions at home, let alone at work, for fear of being seen to be emotional, not rational, not being taken seriously and getting into conflict.
Not feel their emotions at all, feel numb, and have to rediscover their feelings FIRST, before they could even begin to set boundaries.
Simple, this boundary thing? Except, no, not simple at all!
Women and boundaries and agreeableness
Yes, I AM going to say it.
I have no figures for this, but in a man’s world, where women have to walk the fine line between appearing ‘nice’ AND confident, warm AND a leader, confident and competent, but still friendly, is it any wonder that it APPEARS that women have more trouble setting and maintaining boundaries?
In a world where women have HAD to form more social bonds, is it any wonder that our levels of agreeableness are higher?
In a world where - as Margaret Atwood says - “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”, is it any wonder that we rather silence ourselves than risk getting into conflict? (Read my blog about conflict here).
People-pleasing and boundaries
And yes, let’s spare a thought or two for the Pleaser.
The Pleaser is a Saboteur who tells you the lie that for you to be loved, for you to be liked, for you to be accepted, you’ve got to put the needs of others before your own.
Who makes you believe that - if you express your own needs - you’ll drive others away.
The Pleaser makes you resentful, because you KNOW you’re doing this. You KNOW that you’re putting others first, always, and feel resentful because of it.
How difficult will it be for the people pleaser to set - and maintain - boundaries, do you think?
(Want to find out YOUR Saboteurs? In the summer my Saboteur Discovery Call is FREE! You can book it here:)
The different types of boundaries
Time boundaries
I’m talking about this one first on purpose.
Why? Because literally ALL the women I talk to are struggling with time.
It sounds simple, right? Just say ‘At 6 pm on Fridays - come what may - I am with my family’. A great example of clear boundaries set and communicated. (Thank you Prime Minister Starmer).
Except, that was an easy one.
Because there still IS the To Do list at work, the mental to do list, the shopping to do, the dry-cleaning to collect, your mum’s birthday present and .. and ..
And how much of your time is eaten up by things you’re not even consciously aware of? Social media, TV, just that extra piece of work?
Emotional or mental boundaries
Have you ever experienced gaslighting? Where someone says ‘Don’t be silly!’, or ‘You shouldn’t be so sensitive!’
Similarly, I also see women take on the emotional world of others. Getting angry on their behalf, showing grief. Whilst the other gets to act as if the occurrence doesn’t affect them.
Everyone is entitled to their own emotions. Everyone is RESPONSIBLE for their own emotions. And how they deal with them.
Physical boundaries
We all have sat in the train or the Underground, legs crossed, making ourselves small, so that we don’t have to touch the man who sits - legs spread wide - next to you, right?
Physical boundaries help you to keep and feel safe. It helps you to meet your own physical needs. And it tells others what is OK and what isn’t.
And I’m going to say it: we’re only just starting to scratch the surface of this.
In a world where women’s rights are being eroded, where women don’t feel safe but where women are expected to claim their place - in the boardroom, at work, and - yes, in the Underground too, we still have a long way to go.
Conversational boundaries
My partner and I have brought up a now grown-up son. One of the things we’ve talked about, at length, is sex and consent. I consider it my job. And yes, these conversations are difficult, but necessary.
There ARE conversations that are off-limits. They make people feel uncomfortable. Which you can tell by their body language. (By the loud ‘Eeeeeww’ sound that only teenagers can make. Or by people actually telling you.)
What you can discuss with whom and under which circumstances is a dance, a careful dance of figuring out what the other person is comfortable with.
Which is greatly helped along if the person in question is clear on their boundaries AND communicating them clearly. Just saying.
Material boundaries
I used to have this deal going with one of my friends. We would borrow each others’ books. And give them back after we’d read them. All well and good. Except my books would come back with crumbs in them, dog-eared, with notes inside. Or would not come back at all! That scheme didn’t last long.
Or what if you are lending your friend something else? Money. Clothes. And it never was returned. You were never able to ask them for a favour. In fact, your friends started relying on you to provide them with stuff?
Yes, material or financial boundaries are important too.
Internal boundaries
‘Tolerations’ is what we call them in intolerable coach-y language. The things you tolerate. Niggles.
I used to have a truckload of them: Rudeness. People being inconsiderate and un-empathetic. Dog-eared books (grrr …).The patriarchy. To name a few.
And then me, giving myself a hard time when I did something wrong, or when I had accepted something I shouldn’t have accepted, tolerated something I shouldn’t have tolerated.
Your boundaries are what you CHOOSE to accept. From others, yes, but also from yourself.
Which ones are YOU struggling with?
Recognising your boundaries
This is what I’ve come to realise.
We don’t take ourselves seriously. We don’t take ourselves seriously ENOUGH.
We don’t TRUST our own emotions. We don’t trust our gut.
We’ve swallowed - whole - what we’ve been taught to believe: That if you’re showing - or even feeling - emotions, especially as a woman, that that’s somehow bad. That you should be accommodating, accepting, giving, pleasing even.
So, knowing where your boundaries are - a bit like the freshly painted fence in the story above - is not as easy as it sounds.
It relies on recognising the boundaries, by trusting your emotions, trusting your gut and believing what they are telling you.
THIS is why holding a journal is so useful. To use it as an ‘emotions journal’. To write down the things that are annoying you, irritating you, causing you grief and pain. So that - at one point - you will start to become more aware of your emotions as they come and start seeing the patterns in how you’re feeling and why.
Setting boundaries
But that’s not the only thing you could do.
Once you’ve realised people are trampling all over your front garden (so to speak) it’s time to be clear that there are - indeed - boundaries.
Does that make you feel uncomfortable? Have you been taught that setting boundaries is unkind?
Well, think again. Brené Brown says it in her book Atlas of the Heart:
Boundaries are a prerequisite for compassion and empathy.
We can’t connect with someone unless we’re clear about where we end and they begin. If there’s no autonomy between people, then there’s no compassion or empathy, just enmeshment.
Setting boundaries - in other words - is KIND.
Having empathy for others means that you can understand how others are feeling, whilst still realising that this is a different person, with a different background, education, upbringing, environment, traits, intelligence and ideas. And a right to their own emotions and boundaries.
Just as much as you do.
Communicating boundaries
I was going to tell you TWO stories.
Here is the second story my psychologist told me.
‘I once was on a hike, in the mountains in the USA. I was walking up this hill, grabbing plants and holding on to rocks in places.
At one point I hauled myself up onto this hill, and I accidentally stumbled upon this bird’s nest.
The mother bird was NOT happy about this. She opened her wings and CAME at me! She was ANGRY! She made all sorts of noises, clapped her wings and I RAN!’
The point of this story is this:
This bird had NO difficulties communicating HER boundaries!
What this story taught me was that it is VITAL to communicate your boundaries:
Vigorously when you have to and the boundaries are there to keep you safe.
Definitely and firmly when it comes to your family and friends, the people nearest and dearest to you.
In a professional manner, appropriate to the situation you’re in and the gravity of the transgression, at your place of work.
Because boundaries - setting and communicating YOUR boundaries, but also respecting other people’s boundaries - is KIND.
And kindness is a STRENGTH and something we desperately need in this world.
That’s what I think, anyway. You?
Tineke X
What else?
Courage and kindness:
* Natalie Fleet, Member of Parliament spoke courageously about the effects of her statutory rape, her wonderful daughter, and why she decided to stand as an MP
* Victoria Derbyshire, the presenter of BBC’s Newsnight, who I find both outspoken AND empathetic, embraced the MP after the interview and rushed back to the sofa when the credits had barely started rolling to support her.
It was both moving and encouraging, and a privilege to watch. Watch it on BBC’s Newsnight.
Hope and optimism:
My newsletter a few weeks ago spoke about hope. One of the things I mentioned was the potential for a female Democratic candidate in the USA. And here she is, Kamala Harris, female, black and Indian, yes, but also a professional with a strong track record and a LOT of support. Yes, the backlash has started and is predictably aimed at her being a woman, black and Indian. But, as Michelle Obama says, where they go low we go high. Watching with interest and, yes, hope.
Flow and creativity:
It is one of the key elements of happiness: when you’re finding yourself in ‘flow’. But what IS flow and how do you achieve it? Scientists are trying to work out what happens in your brain when you are in flow. What parts of the brain are at work. And how it all works together. The working of the brain, neuroscience, is one particular interest of mine, so to find out what parts of your brain at work to achieve that blessed state of mind? Amazing. Read all about it here in this Guardian article.
That feeling when a message pops into your mailbox to say not only that they pledge to subscribe to this newsletter (thank you!), but also that they’ve felt that being part of my community has been TRANSFORMATIVE.
That feeling!
Thank you, Denise, for your support.
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Tineke Tammes is an ICF trained career coach, who supports professional women in making successful transitions to careers of Freedom, Flexibility and Fulfilment! Besides that she is also a lifelong feminist, part-time portrait artist, never-only-read-one-book-at-any-time reader, and obsessive doodler.
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