 Tools
for Relationships
LET GO Process in Establishing Healthy Boundaries in Relationships
Content:
Step 4: Exercise your rights by identifying boundaries
for your relationships
You next need to exercise your
rights to set up your boundaries. This is essentially to say "NO"
to those hooks which keep you boundary-less. You also need to identify what
boundaries you want to set up so that you do not lose yourself in your
relationships. To help you exercise your rights, here are some boundaries you
need to establish if your relationships are be healthy:
Boundaries
Needed in Healthy Relationships
1. You need to put limits on your time in relationships.
You need to establish a good sense of
time management so that you do not give all of your time over to the
establishment and maintenance of your relationships with your relationship
partners. You will need to develop a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly schedule
for your time. You will need to set aside time enough for your work, sleep,
self-nurturing activities, relationship nurturing times, family involvement,
friends involvement, support group(s), recovery work, spirituality endeavors,
exercise, having fun, leisure time, vacation times, alone time and relationship
partners time. You cannot afford to give away precious time to your
relationships which needs to be spent in the necessary activities which insure
that you are not lost or swallowed up in them.
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2. You need to put limits on the money you spend in your
relationships.
You need to establish a budget for
your money so that you do not spend inordinate sums of money in the establishing
or maintaining relationships. You need to be clear that your money will not be
used to rescue or save your partners from fiscal irresponsibility. You need to
be clear that your money will not be squandered on high risk activities such as
gambling or "get rich quick" schemes. You need to be clear that you
will not foot the bill to support fully partners who are not willing to take
responsibility to find a job or get a better paying job for which they are
qualified. You need to set limits as to how long you will fund your relationship
partners who are out of work before the funding is pulled. You will need to be
clear that your money will not be spent to cover legal costs if your partners
are purposefully involved in illegal activities. You will need to maintain a
budget so that you do not over spend and get yourself into unreasonable debt.
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3. You need to set limits on your external resources in
your relationships.
You need to set limits for the use of
your house, car(s), or other pieces of property you own. If you own a business
or have a supervisory position on your job you need to set limits on how much
your partners can become involved in your work. You need to set limits on how
much you will have to do in terms of chores or work load to take care of your
partners' needs. You need to set limits on how much your partners will have
access to your family, friends and support system. You will need to set limits
as to how involved you will allow your partners to become in your individual
recovery and spiritual renewal support group(s) activities.
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4. You need to set limits on your internal resources in
your relationships.
You will need to set limits on how
much of your talents, skills and abilities or internal resources you are willing
to expend on your relationships. You need to be clear with your partners how
much of your internal resources you are willing to share or give away to
establish or maintain the relationships. You need to be clear with yourself that
your skills and abilities are commodities which others pay for (be it on the job
or in the market place) and that you do not have to give them away for free just
to keep partners in relationships. You are not required to give and give in
relationships of your talents, skills and abilities without expecting something
substantial in return. You need to set limits on how much you will give before
you will stop giving of yourself.
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5. You need to set limits on your emotions in your
relationships.
You will need to set limits on how
much you will emotionally invest in your relationships. You will need to
recognize the emotional hooks which keep you stuck in your relationships. You
will need to set limits on how "hooked" you will allow yourself to
become. You will need to set time limits on how long you will allow a hook to go
on in relationships. You will need to develop a sense of emotional detachment so
as not to get hooked and drowned in an unhealthy enmeshment in relationships.
You will need to develop emotional limits so that you will be able to figure out
where you begin and end and where your relationship partners begin and end.
To assist you to develop healthy
boundaries read Establishing Healthy Boundaries in Growing
Down-Tools for Healing the Inner Child Once you have
identified the five areas of boundaries you need for healthy relationships then
you are ready to proceed to the next step in boundary development.
Step 5: Take steps to set boundaries in your
relationships
You are now ready to take the
steps to establish healthy boundaries with your relationship partners. This
involves actualizing the 5 areas of boundaries for a healthy relationships. You
will need to do the following boundary development tasks.
Boundary
Development Tasks
1. Establish a Calendar
Relationship partners need to set up
a schedule for themselves by day, week, month and year and keep to it. Be sure
all the essential components: need to have a nurturing environment,
self-nurturing, partner nurturing and self-esteem enhancement, are put in the
calendar. Make sure that spending time on enrichment
is included in the calendar. Present your calendar to your relationship partners
and then set up a relationship partner's calendar based on the combination of
the two.
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2.
Establish
a Budget
Set up a budget of how you would
spend the money which you and your relationship partners bring into the
relationships on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis. Make sure you are realistic
about your actual income and do not depend on credit as a source of income.
Limit your expenditures on relationship establishment and maintenance activities
so that you are not irresponsibly squandering your money. Once you figure out
your budget then compare it with your actual expenditures over a week, month or
year and then develop a final budget which meshes this reality with sound fiscal
responsibility taking.
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3.
Establish
Rules about Use of External Resources
Set up a set of rules and regulations
about use of your external resources.
Be clear about rules about use and misuse of them. Set up chores and work
schedules (if the resources are involved in the relationship) to insure that all
of the resources are taken care of in a responsible way.
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4.
Establish
Rules about Use of Internal Resources
Set up a set of rules about what you
will and will not do in your relationships with your talents, skills and
abilities so that you will not feel raped or violated because you have
squandered your internal resources on your relationships.
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5.
Establish
Emotional Limits
Identify what you are willing to do
and not do with your emotional life in your relationships. Identify when, where,
how and why you are willing to do what you will do. Set goals for the
relationships which fairly protect the partners. Develop open lines of
communication so that all problems are openly discussed and creatively resolved.
Learn to say "NO" over and over again until it becomes a habit and you
feel no more guilt after saying it.
Use the Tools for a Relationship
and
the Tools for Communication and Pathfinder:
Tools for Effective Parenting to assist you to take the steps necessary to develop
healthy boundaries in your relationship.
Once you have TAKEN STEPS to establish boundaries then you are ready for the
next step in the Boundary Development Process.
Step 6:
Give up the need to have control in intimate relationships
You now need to insure that the
boundaries you establish are maintained in your relationships. To do this you
will need to give up the need to have control over your relationship
partners as well as with other people, places, situations and conditions. To do
this, you will need to stop doing the following control behaviors which weaken
your boundaries.
Control
Behaviors Which Weaken Boundaries
1. Need to Fix
You will need to LET GO and GIVE UP
THE NEED to fix your relationship partners when you see that they are hurting or
in need. If you get caught up in the compulsive need to fix, you will weaken
your boundaries and become lost in trying to fix your relationship partners to
the exclusion of taking care of yourself.
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2. Need to be a Caretaker
You will need to recognize that you
have a compulsive trait of needing to take care of people in need because you
have a severe case of the "need to be needed" syndrome. You will need
to recognize that the more you give and take care of your relationship partners,
you perceive to be needy, the more your boundaries disappear and the less of you
is left.
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3. Unchecked Idealism
You will need to recognize that you
cannot control how you relationships should be. You can only accept how the
relationships actually are. You will need to work at tempering your idealism so
that you do not exhaust yourself, after allowing all of your boundaries to
collapse around you as you pursue your fantasy idealized relationships with your
partners.
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4. Non-acceptance of Powerlessness
You need to work at accepting that
you are powerless to control and change your relationship partners as well as
other people, places, things, situations and conditions. You are competing with
God if you hold to the belief that you can control and change your relationship
partners. You will lose in the long run and you will be boundary‑less and
defenseless from the onslaught of needs of your relationship partners, whom you
believe you can change and control.
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5. Lack of Belief in God
You will never be able to maintain
your boundaries with your relationship partners if you do not have a belief in
God. You need God over to whom you can let go of the uncontrollables and
unchangeables in you life. Without God as a resource to hand over these things
to, you will be exhausted. In trying to meet your relationship partners' needs,
your boundaries will be non-existent and you will be ultimately lost in the
process.
To learn more about control issues
and to develop tools to GIVE UP THE NEED to control others, read the Tools
for Handling Control Issues . Once you have GIVEN UP THE NEED you are then ready for the last step in
boundary development.
Step 7 Order your live with healthy boundaries in your
relationships
First you have done the ALERT, ANGER
and CHILD work about emotional hooks in your relationships, You have gotten out
your anger responses to those hooks. You have self-nurtured by recognizing your
rights to have healthy boundaries. You have LIGHTENED THE PRESSURE to control
your relationship partners. Then you EXERCISED YOUR RIGHT by identifying what
boundaries you wanted to set up for yourself in your relationships. Then you
TOOK STEPS to establish the boundaries. Finally you GAVE UP THE NEED to control
your relationship partners and others by recognizing the control issues which
keep you boundary-less. Now you need to make a commitment to ORDER YOUR
LIFE so that you will continually be on the lookout for your boundaries being
violated, ignored or dropped in your relationships. You will need to designate
as part of your boundaries, that recovery programs, spiritual renewal and
personal growth efforts are an essential part of your life and all aspects of
them must be respected and not altered. You will need to state that you will not
allow your relationships to
interfere with your efforts at personal growth and recovery and that you will
allow no one the power to divert you from this important project in your life.
You will need to ORDER YOUR LIFE to
recognize that you cannot have a healthy intimate relationships with your
relationship partners unless you have established and maintained your boundaries
in a healthy way. You will need to be on ALERT to recognize if you are being
hooked into your current relationships
because your giving and giving of yourself and your resources is the only
economy exchanged in them. You will need to do ANGER work if all you have in
your relationships is the physical act of your unselfish giving and lack all of
the other essential components to make it healthy and enriching. You will need
to do CHILD work to nurture yourself to let you know that you are OK just the
way you are to give you the courage to face the fact that you need to alter and
address your boundary-less relationships which are not healthy or emotionally
rewarding. You will need to do more LET GO work to get back on track to
re-establish healthy boundaries if you relapse and allow yourself to be consumed
in your relationships which provides you the "need to be needed" but
no emotional or intellectual nourishing. You will need to allow your support
system to call you on it if you relapse into being boundary-less, so you can
alter your relationships which are not healthy for you.
You will need to work at preventing
relapse by working hard at your recovery program so that you have enough people
in your life to "call you on it," if you begin to isolate yourself and
become a hostage in your relationships. You will need to work at being open to
others about the need for their feedback if they see you sacrificing your
internal and external resources just so that you can remain in relationships.
You will need to have support people prepared to call you on it, if you drift
away from your program of recovery, growth and spiritual renewal. You will need
to give permission to people to "call you on it," if they recognize
that you are deteriorating in your health, happiness and energy levels because
of your relationships.
You will gain the health, happiness
and increased energy, if you are able to deal with your intimacy a healthy way
in your relationships and are able to maintain your healthy boundaries in the
process. You have much to gain by establishing healthy boundaries with your
relationship partners. It is up to you to be vigilant and on guard for any
relapse in maintaining healthy boundaries. Lastly you need to make a concerted
effort to adopt the words of Reinhold Niebuhr as a daily affirmation for
yourself to insure you do not relapse into a boundary-less life in your
relationships:
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Serenity Prayer
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God grant me the serenity
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to accept the things I cannot change
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Courage to change the things I can
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And wisdom to know the difference.
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Living one day at a time,
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enjoying one moment at a time,
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accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
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taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is,
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not as I would have it.
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Trusting that You will make all things right,
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if I surrender to Your will.
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So that I may be reasonably happy in this life
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and supremely happy with You forever in the
next.
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AMEN
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of Establishing Healthy Boundaries in Relationships
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