Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Support Group
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personally, i prefer rigid walls, reinforced with clever sarcasm, moats, barbed wire, ramparts and armed guards, but i am working the leap of faith that boundaries are healthier than reinforced isolation. works in progress. . . today's read from "hope for today" is resonating loundly enough to feel worthy of the reinforcement of sharing.
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one of the most valuable skills i've learned in therapy is to discern acceptable behavior and to set limits with others. setting boundaries helps me take care of myself in relationships and keeps me from being a victim. responses to boundaries help me evaluate the quality of my relationships.
nevertheless, i still feel some trepidation when i set limits. i fear the other person may become angry and end the relationship. i experienced different forms of abandonment in my dysfunctional upbringing and it's not a feeling i relish reexperiencing. sometimes dread prevents me from setting limits. other times i state my boundaries in overly rigid terms, hoping i'll never have to deal with the problem again. my best success comes when i set my limits one day at a time.
for example, my spouse watches television late at night and often unintentionally wakes me when he comes to bed. depending on how my day went, sometimess this bothers me and sometimes it doesn't. i no longer set a global, black-and-white boundary with my spouse. instead of saying, "from now on when you watch tv after 11 pm, i'm going to sleep in the guest room," i ask him, "are you going to watch any more of that show?" if he responds affirmatively, i tell him i'm going to sleep sleep in the guest room and bid him a pleasant evening. in this way, i care for myself and i don't set myself up for resentment. i leave options for both of us, which makes our relationship run more smoothly.
thought for today
boundaries don't help me when they're too loose or too rigid. if i set them flexibly --one instance at a time-- they can help improve my relationships.
therapy taught me the difference between walls and boundaries.
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why does life have to be so complicated? walls would be so much simpler if not for those pesky psychoticks that result from isolating.
sigh. . . onward through the leap of faith.
open discussion
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Hey All...I hope that you have a lovely, peaceful beginning of your weekI have a bunch of chores that need doing but may put them off til tomorrow and just hang out with my landlord/roomie todayWhat about you?...Anything special going on?Have a great day and take good care of you!!..Xo
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Once again I've had a fever today. I'm not going to the hospital because that's a huge waste of time but I did schedule a dr appointment for Wednesday afternoon.
Yeah.
I serve as my own armed guard and it's rather exhausting.
yes, it is exhausting and a massive drain of resources to maintain those levels of security, to say nothing of how much fun and love i protect myself from. plying therapy tools. . .
muji, one of the things i admire about mandarin is that tones are a formal part of their language, and many of the other asian languages, as well. i need more than four tones, but let's not pick nits. i, too, have found that tone makes a huge diff. i also benefit by setting my boundaries case by case. as the anonymous author here points out, some days certain things irritate me more than other days. setting my boundaries case by case makes it easier to go with the flow.
Maybe I put up walls
Big hugs <3
Good for you for trying Arf..... Big hug.... xo
The only place my boundaries are some what rigid is in what I allow physically. And even those are often crushed. Im often told I'm too nice. The reality is I just value other people so highly above myself that I'd rather let them destroy me slowly than say no.
I'm getting better at it. As is evidenced by the friendships i ended. That situation was making me mentally and physically unwell. I feel like its the first real boundary I set and have stuck to...
At any rate, I admire people who are able to set healthy, reasonable boundaries with out feeling guilt. Maybe some day I'll get there.
Thanks for sharing.
in my strictly personal herstory, ending relationships is clearly on the walls end of the spectrum. to this day, i don't have the social skills to be a people pleaser and ending relationships was my primary coping mechanism. one strike and you are "out." softening those walls into flexible boundaries remains an ongoing challenge for me.
works in progress. . .
i have actually lived in the flatland woods, totally off-grid. the desert, as well. i don't do well with high altitudes. i'm a flatlander, bred, born and raised.
alas, those people who habitually caused me that unbearable trouble followed me as puppets in my head. i do believe i fought with them more viciously in the wilderness isolation than i did when they were physically present. damned flashbacks. learning the diff between walls and boundaries was far easier than containing the ptsd symptoms.
the study i'm currently working for the folks who cannot understand, much less respect boundaries is walking away after i have set the boundary. the boundary is for me. they can go there all they wish. i choose to let them go there without me. i seem to hold on to much more of my personal serenity on the occasions i can accomplish that trick.