Home > Work > Boundaries: Where You End And I Begin: How To Recognize And Set Healthy Boundaries
41 " If your parents can’t take the steps toward the relationship "
― Anne Katherine , Boundaries: Where You End And I Begin: How To Recognize And Set Healthy Boundaries
42 " Healthy boundaries protect without isolating, contain without imprisoning, and preserve identity while permitting external connections. Good boundaries make good neighbors. "
43 " you long to have with them, it will take time to get through this loss. It’s a death really—the death of your hope for family. Sometimes we have to find family among those "
44 " Increase your self-awareness. Identify childhood violations and the offenders, feel about them, and get care for that damage. Examine the state of your boundaries in your present relationships and clean them up. "
45 " She only talked to me about her worries and concerns. She never asked me about what mattered to me. She seemed unaware of me except in terms of what I could give her. "
46 " I learned very early not to talk to my mother about anything because she would cry and I’d feel responsible. I’d feel guilty for bothering her and would end up comforting her rather than getting any help. "
47 " My grandmother wanted desperately to see me, but Mom wouldn’t let me see her. So my grandmother kept calling my father and pleading with him to bring me to see her. He did. I was very excited about it. I was about 7. I didn’t know it was supposed to be a secret so I told my mom. She was so upset that she wouldn’t let me see my dad for years and wouldn’t let me stay all night at his house till I was about 13. From then on, I never told my mom anything important. Those years I couldn’t see him were horrible for me because visiting my dad was the best thing in my life. With him I was safe from being hurt. Also, he noticed me. He looked at me. He talked to me. He didn’t use me. I became very attached to his wives, trying to bond with someone, I guess. Also, I talked to my dad through them. "
48 " Children, of course, can only be aware of their limits if they are allowed to have them. So a parent is responsible for not violating a child’s boundaries even though he or she has the power to get away with it. "
49 " child can have plenty of food, warm clothes, and a clean home yet be utterly emotionally abandoned. Without parental warmth and attention, emotional development withers. "
50 " Employing a friend Selling a service or an item to a friend Buying a service or item from a friend A close relationship with both partners of a marriage. If you share confidences with both of them, can you trust one to keep what you say from the other? If one shares a confidence that would hurt the other, what do you do? "
51 " Decide what you really want. Say that. It takes honesty and courage to work out these relationship issues. If Sally is healthy and honest, you can reach a place where both of you feel good about the evolution of the relationship. "
52 " Most of us have no other frame of reference than that which we get from our parents, but Jenny had an inner voice that told her something was wrong with the way she was being treated. That so much native strength was defeated demonstrates the power a dysfunctional family can have. The disease of the parents defeated the health of the child. Jenny had drummed out of her her right to have a self. But through years of oppression, a spark in Jenny remained alive. This spark, this powerful need to become herself, got Jenny into therapy and kept her devoted to the process until that inner spark could burst into flame. "
53 " If childhood is used for survival, then little energy is left to develop a separate sense of self. "
54 " Explain that you’ve realized it isn’t good for you to mix your personal life with work. It could interfere with your effectiveness as an employee. To prevent that, you’ve decided to participate only in activities that directly relate to your job. The company picnic is fine. Lunch with an account is fine. But you’ve decided to keep personal information to yourself and to relate to your boss on a professional basis. If your boss is healthy and tuned in, she’ll get it. If she isn’t, that’s not your problem. "
55 " What strengthens emotional boundaries? The right to say no. The freedom to say yes. Respect for feelings. Support for our personal process. Acceptance of differences. Enhancement of our uniqueness. Permission for expression. "
56 " Disease in the organization. It’s a fact of life that some bosses are very unhealthy and abuse their power, sometimes unknowingly, to get their needs met. Unhealthiness in the boss shows up throughout the organization. I’m amazed that more companies aren’t aware of the pyramidal effect of their failure to select healthy managers. A non-recovering alcoholic, codependent, or compulsive manager can have a detrimental effect on subordinates she never sees. By the same token, a supervisor in therapy can lift up her entire department. "
57 " What harms emotional boundaries? Ridicule. Contempt. Derision. Sarcasm. Mockery. Scorn. Belittling feelings. Stifling communication. Insistence on conformity. Arbitrariness. The need to overpower. Heavy judgments. Any kind of abuse. Abandonment. Threat. Insecurity. On one end of the scale is the serious abuse and neglect reported in a number of the stories in this book. But what about some milder examples of ways we ruff up our emotional boundaries? "
58 " Being Someone You’re Not Think of the effect it has to pretend you’re different than you really are. Being someone you’re not lets alien behavior and attitudes enter your boundary and replace your true self. When we do this a lot, we begin to feel strange to ourselves. We can lose touch with our true selves and not know what we really want and need. "
59 " As you get healthy, the people around you may begin to relate to you in healthier ways without knowing why. With good boundaries, it’s possible to be relatively unaffected by the turmoil around you. You can be an island of calm within the maelstrom. Sometimes, however, you need to change jobs or departments. But now you know what to look for—a healthy supervisor in an organization where communication is welcome, recovery is honored, and boundaries are respected. "
60 " When you share yourself honestly, when you reveal your own thoughts and reactions, you define yourself emotionally both to yourself and to others. When you pretend to take on another’s views, when you conceal your conflicting opinion, you obscure your boundaries for yourself and for others. "