Submitted by Naiji on
Fences make for good neighbors. When people are strangers to each other, or only share a superficial connection, a fence that establishes a border allows them to be at ease. Human interactions thrive when there are clear boundaries that ensure mutual respect.
What is a boundary? A boundary contains the being that you are, and protects the being that you are. These two functions, self-identity and protection are combined in the construction of your personality. When an individual matures they develop self-confidence, and their sense of self becomes distinct from their personality.
Self-confidence means being yourself without the need for the protection mechanism of your personality. Confident individuals are natural, authentic, and open. Their boundary is their presence. A confident individual is able to enjoy intimacy and welcome appropriate closeness.
As long as you need protection, or think that you do, you're not able to be intimate. In order to love and know love in any capacity, by definition you are required to be open and relinquish all defensive attitudes and hostility. The problem is, if you`re hostile towards you, like engaging in self-criticism, you`re bound to treat others the same way.
It takes self-awareness to be able to override your childhood memories and fears of being rejected, punished, or abandoned. When you experienced this you had to protect yourself, and you did that by adapting the same behaviors that hurt you. Children eventually learn to judge, criticize, idealize, blame, complain, control, manipulate, or withdraw. These behaviors are protection mechanisms present in underdeveloped/immature personalities. This is acceptable normal behavior.
Your childhood personality is a set of self-images, habits, beliefs and emotional reactions designed to protect your innocence, the essence of you that is pure, sensitive and curious. This type of personality keeps you imprisioned in the past in a continual power struggle with authority.
You are not a personality; you have a personality built to cope with stressful circumstances. When you heal and integrate childhood emotional wounds your sense of self is no longer defined by your past, you become stronger, and your personality evolves to be less reactive. This change in behavior from automatic unconscious reactions to conscious responses is made possible by learning to be present and accessing your inner strength in real time.
An unconscious need for protection
For a child safety is having their core needs satisfied. This includes: receiving nurturing attention, and experiencing kindness and tenderness. Protection is an action required to prevent harm or injury.
For adults the memories of not having what was needed (not feeling safe) are easily triggered. Unconscious feelings of danger activate defensive behaviors such as control, manipulation attacking, passive aggression, withdrawal, avoidance, as well as coping behaviors like pleasing and helping. These behaviors are protection boundaries that do not resolve the deeper memory of not feeling safe, so the need for protection remains.
Your subconscious mind recorded and absorbed your mother`s and father`s emotional states, attitudes and core beliefs. By the time you develop your personality much of your mother`s and father`s personality was used as a blue print to construct yours. This is why people unconsciously behave like their parents, and re-create similar circumstances over and over.
Children instinctively sense that they need to be connected to their parents, particularly mother. One way to be connected is to internalize and incorporate her behavior. This brilliant mechanism that allows a toddler to move away from mother and explore the world, has the detrimental effect of also carrying the negative feelings of the interactions with her:
- If mother constantly feared that you, or her, might get hurt, you carry that fear as your own.
- If she feared being rejected, you carry that attitude as your own.
- If she overwhelmed you by not giving you space, or ignored you by giving you too much space.
- If she failed to protect you from a hostile father, your sense of personal space is associated with not feeling safe and needing protection.
The resolution to this predicament comes with learning to dis-identify from these memories and developing the skills to take care of your core emotional needs. Thus making safety your response-ability. Knowing that you can erect strong clear boundaries that provide adequate protection, when you need it, allows you to be at ease with people.
Being willing and able to say "NO" is a clear and strong boundary. Nevertheless, as simple as this seems if you fear punishment, rejection, or abandonment the way you did in childhood, then it would seem impossible to say No. These irrational fears can be confronted and resolved with the help of a skilled and compassionate professional who can point out when you are identified with childhood images of you.
Written by Osiris Montenegro