Category: chronic stress

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Boundaries – Physical, Emotional, & Psychological

 

Boundaries define us.  They define what is me and what is not me. A boundary shows me where I end and where someone else begins, leading me to a sense of ownership.  Knowing what I am to own and take responsibility for gives me freedom. ~Henry Cloud

Boundaries.

We talk about them a lot.  In fact we talked about them as part of self-care on the Open Office Hours call on Sunday.

We talked about what a boundary is.  What they mean to us.  What some of our “obstacles” may be in honoring or defending our own boundaries.  What some of our stories are when others honor their own boundaries. How boundaries run both ways.  How they are fluid.  How they are complex.

There are many things I believe about our boundaries.  One is that they are fluid and living and breathing; they change from day to day and person to person.  In a phrase, what our boundaries actually are depends on All The Things.

In my experience there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to boundaries.  What may be a firm boundary with person A today may not be a boundary at all tomorrow with person B.  Many of our personal boundaries change with time, and some never change at all.  This is part of life – we all change and grow and it makes sense that our boundaries would do so too.

I also deeply believe our emotional and psychological boundaries,are directly tied to our bodies and our physical boundaries.  What I mean by this is that I believe we can sense when a boundary is being violated long before we are fully consciously aware of what it happening.  Our body reacts, in one way or another, to this intrusion.  It could show up as a knot in our stomach or literal pain in our neck.  It could show up as suddenly feeling agitated or anxious, without any “real” or “logical” explanation.  It could show up in any number of ways.  The point being, our body is giving us information, long before our brain can comprehend what is going on.

Our boundaries are also tied to our histories.  If we have trauma in our past, how our caretakers modeled boundaries when we were children, both inform what our boundaries are as well as how we react when our boundaries have been violated.

Our culture also informs our boundaries, and more importantly, how or if we defend them.  We all have messages about “being nice” and “not hurting people’s feelings” in our psyches and bodies to unravel.

We have all been told in one way or another that our Noes don’t matter, aren’t valid, and should never be voiced.

Most of us learned at a young age that when we say no to someone or something we are giving them a message that we don’t love them.  And of course, while we internalized this direct message, we also internalized the reverse :: that if someone says no to us it means they don’t love us.

Again, boundaries go both ways.  There are our own boundaries for us to connect to and consciously and intentionally decide to defend (or not!) and there are the boundaries of others that may stir up some of our own stories of worth and value and instigate an unconscious response from us.

There is so much for each of us to unravel around our boundaries, including becoming consciously aware of where they come from and when and if we want to honor  and defend them (and I’ll tell you now, the answer isn’t always yes, there can be many different reasons why we don’t defend our boundaries and none of them have to do with us being “weak” or having “poor judgement.”)

I talk more about this in this 7 minute video below.

This essay is the second in a three part series I have put together to introduce some of the topics we’ll be exploring in my winter self-care circle, Self Care for the Holidays.  If you’d like to learn more and possibly join us, you can click right here.

To read the other essays in this series click on the links below ::

The Holidays, Trauma, & Our Nervous Systems 

Boundaries: Physical, Emotional, & Psychological (this essay)

Stress, Grief, & Embodiment

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The Holidays, Trauma, & Our Nervous Systems

When we self-regulate well, we are better able to control the trajectory of our emotional lives and resulting actions based on our values and sense of purpose. ~Amy Leigh Mercree

We are entering into that time of year again.  That time here in the northern hemisphere where the light recedes and we enter into more and more darkness as each day passes.  It is also the time of year of the fall and winter holiday celebrations, which can for some of us, bring their own darkness with them.

I have always declared that the winter holiday season begins with my birthday in mid-October.  Then quickly follows Halloween and All Souls and All Saints Days.  Next is Thanksgiving.  And then we move into December when most religions and spiritual traditions have a festival of lights celebration of one kind or another.  With all these holidays often comes gatherings with family – ones that we either attend or avoid.  With these gatherings come all the stresses of connecting with our families, be that in person or in spirit.

There is also the truth that for many of us this time of year is a painful reminder of the people we have lost in our lives, either through death or severing of ties.  It can be a reminder of those we loved who aren’t here to celebrate with us, and the grief that comes forward has its own way of showing up at a time of year we are told over and over we need to be joyous.

There are a million plus different reasons why this time of year can be challenging in many ways and why we all need to remember self-care, real self-care, during the coming season.

One of my frustrations with our current culture is how the term self care is defined. For many this term has a very white, privileged look to it.  It looks like spa days or mani-pedis, or days at the salon, or weeks at some tropical local.  It’s looks like, according to many, something only the wealthy can afford.

I have a very different definition of self care.

For me, self care is first and foremost about calming and soothing our nervous systems.  It is self-regulation and being able to bring ourselves back from a “triggered” or highly emotional state.  This can look like many different things, including drinking water, getting sleep, any of the numerous Nervous System Soothing tips I share with you in the weekly love letter and on social media, drinking herbal tea, locking ourselves in the bathroom for five minutes of solitude… all of those things are self care. These are the small, non-glamorous things that keep us going and keep us feeling calm and sane.

And, self-care isn’t 100% regulating our nervous systems.  Another big piece of self care, for me, is boundaries.

You know, that whole being able to say No thing.  (I’ll talk more about boundaries as self-care next week.)

However, I do believe that before we can really connect to, and then honor and enforce, our boundaries, we need to be able to connect to our bodies and calm and regulate our nervous systems.

What do I mean by “calm and regulate our nervous system,” “triggered state,” or “activated nervous system”?

I deeply believe that all of us have trauma living within our bodies.  It could be a trauma (or multiple traumas) of our personal lived experience.  This could look like abuse, neglect, rape, or car accidents, surgeries, living through natural disasters.  Any and all of those events that we may personally experience our bodies can experience as traumatic events.

In addition, we have ancestral trauma living in our DNA. Epigenetics has shown us how these “trauma markers” are passed down through the generations and how they are “mutable” or “reversable”.  This means that the unresolved, unprocessed traumas of our parents, grandparents, and back to the beginnings of time, live in our bodies today.

Finally, there is what I call Cultural Relational Trauma.  This is the trauma we experience living in a white supremacist, capitalistic, misogynist, patriarchal culture.  This is the trauma of isolation, of being told we are less than, not enough, too much, that we should feel shame for who we are and for existing at all.  This is the trauma that tears us from our communities and teaches us that one “group” is somehow superior to another.  It is the trauma we hold in our bodies that is put in us every day.

Because we all carry trauma in us, our nervous systems are generally all out of sorts.  What this looks like day to day is that we are easily irritated, or anxious, or depressed, or have rapid and far ranging mood swings, or feel like we want to crawl out of our skin on a regular basis – but with all of these things happening we can’t always pinpoint the why or what actually caused the dysregulation or what is also called an “activated” nervous system or a triggered state.

Calming or soothing our (sympathetic) nervous system brings us out of this activated state.  It allows us to feel good in our bodies, to be in our frontal lobes (where empathy and logic live), and eventually to respond to stimulus (or triggers) in a way that isn’t harmful to ourselves or others (and by harmful I mean not only physically, but also emotionally, psychologically, and physiologically).

I talk more about this in this 7 minute video.

This essay is the first in a three part series I have put together to introduce some of the topics we’ll be exploring in my winter self-care circle, Self Care for the Holidays.  If you’d like to learn more and possibly join us, you can click right here.

Other essays in the series:

The Holidays, Trauma, & Our Nervous Systems (this essay)

Boundaries: Physical, Emotional, & Psychological

Stress, Grief, & Embodiment

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Fluffy Positive Thinking

I’ve been feeling annoyed lately. Like really annoyed. Hell, let’s just name it: I’m angry. Pissed off even. And yes frustrated, disgusted and annoyed too.

Mostly I’m angry though.

I’ve been doing my thing, my work, guiding people to connect to their own embodied wisdom; to shedding their shoulds; to connecting deeply to their whole Self, the Light and the Shadow. I talk about the ebb and flow of this work and how sometimes we are deep in it and sometimes we aren’t. I discuss the importance of rest and replenishing and nourishing and allowing our Self to be.

I talk a lot. I do my best to model this way of being by doing my best to live it myself. Which means sometimes I’m deep in the work and sometimes I’m not, and sometimes I’m deep in my practices and sometimes I’m not and regardless of where I am in my journey or what I am or am not doing, I try to be gentle with me and to allow the space for me to be right where I am.

I’m not perfect. I fail all the time. Well, maybe not all the time, and enough to remember why I have my practices and so I pick them up again and they drop off and so it goes.

I’ve become acutely aware lately of pithy quotes and fluffy positive thinking and this idea that our thoughts create our world and if we only think the right thoughts then all the things will perfect and great.

And it’s pissing me off. And it’s time I publicly call bullshit.

First of all let’s break (ha! I first typed “breathe”!) down this idea of thinking the right thoughts. What the hell are the “right” thoughts? If I have the “right” thoughts that does mean I can magically prevent a loved one from dying? Myself from having cancer? A hurricane from devasting the lives and homes of people I know and love (and even the ones I don’t)? If I think the right thoughts does that mean that life stops and nothing bad will ever happen to me? Will I never trip and break a bone or get in a car accident or catch the flu?

Because if thinking the “right thoughts” means all that, then please, will someone tell me what the Right Thoughts are? What are the exact words I need to be thinking? What is the exact mantra I need to have on repeat on my mp3 player and posted on post-its all over my house?

I’m sure there are plenty who will jump in and tell me what some of my “Right Thoughts” could be. And I also bet they won’t own that and allow themselves to be held accountable for what happens when I do every thing that lets me think the “right thoughts” and then still something bad happens.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for gratitude. I’m all for appreciating all that we have. I’m all for seeking and seeing beauty in the world. As long as we don’t shut our eyes to the Shadow, the darkness, to the really shitty parts of being human and living life.

As long as we don’t blame people (and not thinking the right thoughts) for things like cancer and accidents and layoffs and hurricanes, then yes, let’s all do look to the light – BUT let’s not forget for one moment that there is Shadow right behind us and sometimes we need to turn around and have a dance or three with it.

As long as we allow ourselves and others to grieve, to sink into despair, to speak out about how hard life/parenting/partnering/living/being can be.

Also long as we don’t offer “at leasts” and “look on the bright sides” and “silver linings” and the one I hate the most “well if this shitty thing didn’t happen then you wouldn’t have the fabulous life you have today!”

As long as we don’t try to fucking constantly fix it. And by it I mean the dark, the Shadow, the shitty parts of our Self and life.

As long as we can allow ourselves and others to be right where we are, whether that’s in our deepest Shadows or our brightest lights.

Then yes, I’m all for practicing gratitude, seeking beauty, appreciating what we have and who we are.

…

 

Something has shifted in me. Perhaps it’s connecting to the women who came before me and all their (righteous) anger that lives in my bones and muscles and womb. Maybe it’s that I’m going out into the world more, expanding my circles and seeing more and more of this Positive Fluffy Thinking because of it. Perhaps it’s because three different people have mentioned the Law of Attraction to me in the last 48 hours and now my head just wants to explode.

Bad things happen to good people.

Your thoughts do not control reality.

Focusing only on the positive and ignoring and stuffing down the negative only causes imbalance and dis-ease within. It’s makes us ill, physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually.

I invite you to step into your anger. To open your throat to your roars.

I invite you to sink into your grief. To open your self to body-wracking wails.

I invite you to stumble into your sadness. To open your being to your most guttural moans and howls.

I invite you to dance with your Shadow. To wrestle with her. To play with her. To fight with her.

I invite you to acknowledge and accept your darkest self. To allow this part of you to be. She is not all of you. And she is part of you. I invite you to open your arms to her, and to weep together for all that could have been, all that was lost and all that will never be.

I invite you to be fully and imperfectly human. To connect with all your parts and pieces. To love them all: your Light and Shadow. To allow your Self to be exactly where you are, right now.

 

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