 Tools for a
Balanced Lifestyle
A Program of Recovery from Weight Related Problems
Going for the 3 increases: Increase of Health; Increase of Happiness and
Increase of Energy
Chapter 7: Impact of
Sexuality on Body Image and Weight
IV. A LET GO Workout on Establishing Healthy Boundaries
Cavepeople protected
themselves from being invaded physically by attacking or fending off the
invading party. They were literal in their need for self-protection and did not
worry about the feelings of the other party because personal survival was the
name of the game. Unwanted sexual advances towards another caveperson would get
not only the negative response from the person but also from the other dwellers
in that person's cave community. Sexual indiscretion or violation of others was
not tolerated in such communities. Cavepeople had no problems in establishing
and maintaining physical, emotional and social boundaries, which dictated how
people treated one another in the cave community. Since their boundaries were so
well known and respected there was little need to worry about sexual violation
from the unwanted crossing over of the established boundaries. How about your
life situation? How well are your physical, emotional, spiritual and
intellectual boundaries established and maintained? How successful are you in
protecting and maintaining your boundaries when someone is highly intrusive and
persistent? How hooked are you by others manipulations to lower your boundaries
with them? Do you use your weight or food as a boundary to protect yourself from
intimacy or sexual relationships with others? How well do you stay unhooked and
detached when someone is working you over to lower your boundaries with them?
Does your inability to maintain healthy intellectual, emotional, physical and
spiritual boundaries with others frighten you? When you consider trying to
maintain healthy boundaries sexually with others without the use of body weight,
food or some other compulsive behaviors to protect and medicate you in the
process, are you scared? Would you prefer to stay fat than to work on learning
how to establish healthy boundaries with others?
To maintain your new
Balanced Lifestyle Program you will need to first establish healthy
intellectual, emotional and physical boundaries with all people in you life.
Once you have been able to do this then you will be able to establish healthy
boundaries around your sexuality and sensuality. With healthy boundaries
established then you will be able to establish and maintain healthy intimate
relationships with people which will ultimately result in your establishing
and/or maintaining a healthy sexually intimate monogamous relationship with
someone special to you. First you need to identify if you have healthy intimate
relationships with people at this time. Consider the following description of a
healthy intimate relationship.
Characteristics of a
Healthy Intimate Relationship
The goal in an intimate
relationship is to feel calm, centered and focused. The intimate relationship
needs to be safe, supportive, respectful, nonpunitive and peaceful. You feel
taken care of, wanted, unconditionally accepted and loved just for existing and
being alive in a healthy intimate relationship. You feel part of something and
not alone in such a relationship. You experience forgiving and being forgiven
with little revenge or reminding of past offenses. You find yourself giving
thanks for just being alive in a healthy intimate relationship. A healthy
intimate relationship has a sense of directedness with plan and order. You
experience being free to be who you are rather than who you think you need to be
for the other. Such a relationship makes you free from the "paralysis of
analysis" needing to analyze every minute detail of what goes on in it.
Such a relationship has its priorities in order with people's feelings and
relationships coming before things and money. A healthy intimate relationship
encourages your personal growth and supports your individuality. This type of
relationship does not result in you or the other becoming emotionally,
physically or intellectually dependent on one another.
Are you able to establish
this type of relationship? What factors impede your ability to have this kind of
relationship with others? If you are not able to establish healthy intimate
relationships then you run the risk of not being able to establish a healthy
sexually intimate relationship with another person. Most probably what keeps you
from having a healthy intimate relationship with people is your inability to
establish and maintain healthy boundaries with them. What you need to do is to
do a LET GO workout to identify how to establish healthy intellectual,
emotional and physical boundaries with others so that you can use this skill in
establishing and/or maintaining a healthy sexually intimate relationship with a
significant other.
LET GO STEP 1: LIGHTEN
THE PRESSURE
The first thing you need to
do is to LIGHTEN THE PRESSURE to control people in relationships so that
you can have healthy boundaries with them. To do this you have three substeps to
accomplish to LIGHTEN THE PRESSURE.
Sub step 1: Get ALERT to
the hooks in a relationship, which
keep your boundaries down.
You first must ALERT
yourself to what irrational messages you have about relationships, which get
you, stuck boundary-less with others. You need to identify the irrational
emotional hooks, which prevent you from having healthy boundaries with others.
Consider these emotional hooks as examples for your ALERT work.
10 Emotional Hooks
in Relationships
1. Maybe you are hooked by
the irrational belief that: "I am a nobody without a somebody in my
life." If you are, you maintain no boundaries with people because
you are very dependent on getting involved with someone to make you feel like a
somebody. You are willing to do whatever it takes to make the relationship
happen, even if you have to give up your health, money, security, identity,
intelligence, spiritual beliefs, family, country, job, community, friends,
values, honor and self-respect. The rational message needed to establish healthy
boundaries from this hook are: " I am a somebody, just by being who I am. I
am OK just the way I am, even if I do not currently have another person in my
life. My value and worth as a person is not dependent on my having a significant
other in my life. It is better for me to be on my own and healthy than to be
with another person and be sick intellectually, emotionally and/or
physically."
2. Maybe you are hooked by
the scarcity principle of feeling happiness: "because this
relationship I have is better than anything I have ever had before."
The problem is that the relationship you have might be better than what you have
had in the past, but it might not really be a healthy intimate relationship as
described earlier in this section. You may be so happy with your relationship
that you are willing to give all of yourself intellectually, emotionally and
physically with no regard for what you need to retain for yourself so that you
do not lose your identity in this relationship. If you are in a recovery program
like the Balanced Lifestyle Program and have a support system and a plan of
recovery and you find that in your relationship you have no time to do the
"recovery activities" of maintaining contact with your support system,
going to 12 Step meetings, reading the Tools for Coping Series Books or
other recovery literature, maintaining your new relationship with food and
exercise and handling your emotions in food-free ways, then your relationship is
not supportive of your recovery and is not healthy for you no matter how happy
you are in it. If in your relationship you have no time to spend with your
children, family or friends then it is not healthy no matter how happy you are
in it. If in your relationship you have no time, energy or resources to put into
your career, education or current job then it is not healthy for you no matter
how happy you are in it. If in your relationship you are finding it difficult to
maintain your own spirituality and connection with your Higher Power then it is
not healthy no matter how happy you feel in it. A relationship which requires
that you sacrifice all of you for the sake of the happiness you feel, in it, is
not a healthy intimate relationship. A healthy intimate relationship allows you
to make time, space and allowance for you to focus on yourself, your own needs,
your children, your family, your friends, your recovery program, your support
system, your career, your education, your spiritual beliefs and your personal
integrity, individuality and identity. The rational message needed to establish
healthy boundaries from this hook is: "I will focus on my needs, my
identity, my individuality and my personal integrity in any relationship I
engage in . I will set aside my time, resources and energy to give to my
children, my family, my friends, my support system, my recovery program, my
spirituality, my career, my education and my community involvement while
maintaining healthy intimate relationships with people. I will insist that I
have the time resources and energy to focus on all aspects of my life in any(or
present) healthy sexually intimate relationship I have with a significant
other."
3. Maybe you are hooked by
irrational guilt that you must think, feel and act in ways to
insure that your relationship with another person is preserved, secured and
nurtured no matter what personal expense it takes out of you. You feel guilty if
the other person is not succeeding or thriving without your personal resources,
energy, money, time and effort going in to making such success happen. You have
a problem in feeling over-responsible for the welfare of the other person and
cannot allow that person to accept personal responsibility to make choices and
live with the consequences of these choices. This irrational guilt is a driving
motivation to keep you tearing down your boundaries so that you will always be
available to this person at any time, in any place for whatever reason the
person "needs" you. The rational message needed to establish healthy
boundaries from this hook is: "People are responsible for accepting
personal responsibility for their own lives and to accept the consequences for
the choices they make in taking care of their own lives. I am not responsible
for the outcomes which result from the choices and decisions which others make.
People are free to make their own decisions and no one is forcing them to make
bad ones which will result in negative consequences to them."
4. Maybe you are hooked by
the inability to differentiate the difference between love and sympathy or
compassion for another. You find yourself feeling sorry for another
person and the warm feelings which this generates makes you think that you are
in love. The bigger the problems the other has, the bigger the "love"
seems to you. Because the problems can get bigger and more complex, they succeed
in hooking you to lower your boundaries so that you begin to give more and more
of yourself to this "pitiable" person out of the "love" you
feel. The rational message needed to establish healthy boundaries from this hook
is: "It is OK to have sympathy and compassion for another, but that does
not mean that I have to sacrifice my life to "save" or
"rescue" this person. Sympathy and compassion are emotions I know well
and I will work hard to differentiate them from what love is. When I feel
sympathy and compassion for another person, I will remind myself that it is not
the same as loving that person. The ability to feel sympathy and compassion for
another human being are nice qualities of mine and I will be sure to use them in
a healthy and non-emotionally hooked way in the future."
5. Maybe you get hooked by
the neediness and helplessness of others. You find yourself hooked
when the other person gets into self-pity, "poor me" and "how
tough life has been." You find yourself weak when this person demonstrates
an inability to solve personal problems. You find yourself wanting to teach and
instruct, when this person demonstrates or admits ignorance of how to solve
problems. You find yourself hooked by verbal and non-verbal cues, which cry out
to you to "help" this person. You find yourself feeling warmth, caring
and nurturing feelings, which help you tear down any shred of boundaries you
once had. This sad, weak, distraught, lost, confused and befuddled waif is so
needy that you lose all concept of space and time as you begin to give and give
and give. It feels so good. The rational message needed to establish a healthy
boundary from this hook is: "No one is helpless with out first learning the
advantages of being helpless. Helplessness is a learned behavior, which others
have quickly learned to use to marshal others to give of their resources,
energy, time, effort and money to fix. I am a good person even if I do not try
to fix and take care of the next helpless person I meet. I cannot establish a
healthy intimate relationship with someone I am trying to fix or take care of. I
need to put more energy into fixing and taking care of myself if I find myself
being hooked by another person's helplessness."
6. Maybe you get hooked by
the sense of being depended upon by others. Unless these people
are your children under the age of 18, there is no reason to feel responsible
for them if they let you know that they are dependent upon you for their lives
to be successful and fulfilled. This is over-dependency and is unhealthy.
It is impossible to have healthy intimacy with an overdependent person. This
person is a parasite sucking you dry of everything you have intellectually,
emotionally and physically. You get nothing in return except the "good
feelings" of doing something for another person. You get no real healthy
nurturing, rather you feel the weight of this person on your shoulders, neck and
back. You give and give of yourself to address the needs of this person and you
have nothing left to give to yourself. The rational message needed to establish
a healthy boundary from this hook is: "It is unhealthy for me to be so
depended upon by another adult. There is a need for me to be clear what I am
willing and not willing to do for this person. There is a need for this person
to become more independent from me so that I can maintain my own sense of
identity, worth and personhood. It would be better for me to lose this person
than to continue to allow such dependency on me. I am only responsible for
taking care of myself. Human adults are responsible to accept personal
responsibility for their own lives. Supporting another person intellectually,
emotionally and physically where I have nothing left to give to myself is
unhealthy and I will be ALERT to when I am doing this and try to stop it
immediately."
7. Maybe you get hooked by
the belief that: "If I give it enough time things will change to be
the way I want them to be." You have waited a long time to have a
healthy intimate relationship, you rationalize don't give up on it too soon.
Since you are not sure how to have one or how one feels, you rationalize that
maybe what the relationship needs is more time to become more healthy and
intimate. You find yourself giving more and more of yourself and waiting longer
and longer for something good to happen and yet things never get better. You
find that your wait goes from being counted by days, weeks or months to years.
Time passes and things really never get better. What keeps hooking you are those
fleeting moments when the relationship approximates what you would like it to
be. These fleeting moments feel like centuries and they are sufficient to keep
you holding on. The rational message needed to establish a healthy boundary from
this hook is: "It is unhealthy for me to sacrifice large portions of my
life, invested in a relationship which is not going anywhere. It is unhealthy
for me to hold on to the belief that things will change if they have not in 3 or
6 months. It is OK to set time limits on relationships such as: if in 3 months
or if in 6 months things do not get to be intimately healthier then I am getting
out of it. It is OK to put time demands on relationships so that I do not waste
my life away waiting for something, which in all probability will never happen.
It is not OK for me to blow out of proportion those fleeting moments in a
relationship which make me believe that there is anything more in it than there
really is."
8. Maybe you get hooked by
the belief that: "If I change myself more things will change to
become more like I want them to be in this relationship." You
reason that maybe the reason things are not getting healthier and more intimate
is because you need to change more to be the person the other person wants you
to be. You feel blamed and pointed out by the other person as the reason why
things are not healthier or more intimate in your relationship. You find
yourself having to defend yourself from attack from the other for "not
being good enough" or "doing enough" to make the relationship
work. You find yourself with a mounting list of expectations, duties or
responsibilities, given you by the other person, which must be accomplished if
the relationship is ever to become what you want it to be. You find yourself
needing to change the ways you think, feel, act, dress, talk, look, eat, work,
cook, entertain, have fun, socialize, etc before you will be "good
enough" for this relationship to work. You find that you will have to
basically give up "who you are" for "who your partner wants you
to be" if this relationship is ever to work with this person. You find
yourself hooked by the challenge to change and you find yourself working harder
and harder to effect the change. What keeps you hooked is the affirmation and
reinforcement you get from the other person when you effect a small change. The
only problem is that there is always something else identified which needs to be
changed after the last change has been accomplished. You are in a never-ending
loop of needing to change and unfortunately there never seems to be a end to it.
The rational message needed to establish healthy boundaries for this hook is:
"I have to be real to myself and be the person I am rather than to be the
person someone else wants me to be. It is not healthy for me to give up my
personhood and identity to please someone else just to have a relationship with
that person. I have a right to my own tastes, likes and dislikes, personal
style, beliefs, values, attitudes etc. I am in control of my own thinking,
feelings and actions and I will allow no one to take control of these basic
rights of mine."
9. Maybe you get hooked by
the fear of the possible negative future outcome if you are not
deeply involved in taking care of and fixing another person. You may be aware of
the hooks which keep you boundary-less with a person. Yet you are afraid to LET
GO of the control you have with this person for fear something very negative
might happen to this person. Maybe the person will be homeless, hungry, jobless,
poor, in jail, lonely, scared, or worse yet dead if you do not continue to fix
and take care of the person's needs. This fear of the possible negative future
outcomes is so debilitating, that it feels better being sucked dry
intellectually, emotionally and physically than to LET GO and watch this person
suffer this feared awful negative outcome. You find yourself powerless to keep
from doing the healthy thing because of the intensity of this fear. You have
become a prisoner in the prison of this relationship. You have become a hostage
by a very powerful, needy, helpless, manipulative "hostage taker." You
are a possession of this person and you find yourself doing all you are asked to
insure that this possible negative dreaded outcome does not happen. You are
being emotionally blackmailed in such a relationship and may even have heard
threats of suicide from this person if you say you want out of the relationship
the way it is. The rational message needed to establish healthy boundaries from
this hook is: "I am only responsible for my life. No one can make me
responsible for that person's life. I can choose to feel responsible for another
person's life, but I cannot control or determine the outcome of this person's
life no matter how hard I try. I am powerless to control other people, places,
things and conditions. The only thing I can control is my own thinking, feeling
and actions. I need to hand this person, this person's problems and needs and
the outcomes of this person's life over to my Higher Power. I cannot carry this
person's possible negative future outcomes on my body or I will experience
failed emotional and physical health. It is OK for me to make other people
accept personal responsibility for their own lives and to accept the
consequences for their own actions, choices and decisions which they make."
10. Maybe you are hooked by
the fantasy of the way it is supposed to be. You have an ideal,
dream or image in your mind of how a relationship is supposed to be or how it
should be and you have a difficult time accepting it the way it really is. You
work hard at making the relationship approximate your idealized fantasy and put
a great deal of time, energy and resources into making it become a reality.
Unfortunately the more you give and give and give the fantasy never becomes the
reality you are wishing for. The pull to make the fantasy become real is so
powerful, that you are almost brainwashed into believing that it is possible
even though all of your efforts have not made it happen even after years and
years of effort on your part. You get hooked by the delusion of the fulfillment
of the fantasy and live as if the fantasy has become reality. You are sometimes
so out of touch with reality that you appear to be psychotic to others when you
discuss your relationship, because they know that what you are saying about your
relationship is not real and in some cases does not even closely approximate
what you are saying about it. You keep pouring your resources, energy and time
into an empty pit, which seems to never get filled and you become obsessed into
giving and giving to make the fantasy become real. You get hooked into waiting
for the "big pay off" down the road if you just stick with this
relationship and remain loyal to the belief that it will happen one day.
"Wake up and get off the fantasy train before it runs off the track!"
you hear people saying but you ignore their warning and keep blindly on, in
search of your quest. The rational
message needed to establish a healthy boundary from this hook is: "I must
accept reality the way it is rather than how I want it to be. I will give my
support system in my recovery program permission to call me on it if I am hooked
into a fantasy relationship and losing myself in it. I will work hard to stay
reality based and keep myself from losing my objectivity and contact with the
way things really are. I will make every effort to accept life the way it is
rather than how I want it to be. I know that people are human and subject to
making mistakes and failing and I will forgive myself if I make a mistake in my
efforts to establish intimate or sexually intimate relationships with
others."
Use the tools in the Tools
for Handling Control Issue to get yourself unhooked and detached from
unhealthy relationships.
Sub step in
your relationships.
Once you have ALERTED
yourself to the emotional hooks in relationships, which keep your boundaries
down, then you need to do ANGER work about how angry you are that there are
these hooks out there, which are so subtle and powerful. You need to get your
anger out about: why can't relationships be like the ideal fantasy you always
dreamed them to be and how hard they really are to maintain. You need to do your
anger work about how unfair it is that nothing in life comes easy and how you
have to work so hard to be healthy and ALERT to all of the hooks which keep you
unhealthy in relationships. To do your ANGER work you must be sure to address
the different faces of anger which the lack of boundaries in relationships
result in.
Anger Issues Resulting
from a Lack of Boundaries
1. As a result of getting
hooked into a relationship and having no boundaries in it, you might become invisible.
This comes from your needs being ignored, your being socially isolated and being
made to deal with the relationship on your own, alone and away from your family,
friends and support system. You need to get out your anger over your rights
being ignored. You need to get your anger out over your fear of not speaking up
lest you "cause waves" or start a conflict. You need to get your anger
out that you are not seen, heard or considered in the relationship. You need to
get your anger out that you stopped thinking, feeling and acting on your own
lest you were seen and problems resulted from such independence of action on
your part.
2. As a result of getting
hooked into a relationship and having no boundaries in it, you might experience
major silent withdrawal. This withdrawal involves not allowing you
to feel feelings of anger or disappointment because things are not going well in
the relationship. You might even be driven to use your compulsive behaviors to
medicate your negative feelings. You might become more compulsive in your
overeating or in other addictive like behaviors (eg.: drinking, drugs, shopping,
gambling, credit car use, risk taking etc.). This is the act of holding in your
anger about the fact that your relationship is not giving you what you wanted
and is not as healthy and intimate as you had hoped. If you continue to hold
your anger in, you will became more and more depressed which feeds the need to
self-medicate and withdraw more from others. By this action you pull away from
family, friends, support networks and life in general. You need to get your
anger out about how hurt you are that the relationship is not what you wanted.
You need to get your anger out about how you have given and given in this
relationship until you have no more to give. You need to get your anger out that
you have lost yourself in the relationship because you have no boundaries
between you and the other.
3. As a result of getting
hooked into a relationship and having no boundaries in it, you might experience rage
which comes as an over-reaction to your hurt and pain. You might finally realize
that you have been conned and duped by the other in an unhealthy relationship
and get so angry that you fly off into rages. You need to get your anger out in
healthy ways so that you do not feel guilt after these rages. The guilt will
only hook you back into the unhealthy relationship. You need to get this rage
and anger out in healthy ways so that it does not turn into anger-in which
results in your becoming depressed which feed your compulsive behaviors of
overeating etc. You need to get this anger and rage out so that it does not turn
into self-anger and self-destructive rage. You need to get this anger out so
that you can forgive yourself for "being so stupid" or "being so
naive" that you could have been "conned and manipulated" so by
such a person. You need to get your anger and rage out in a healthy way so that
you do not act "crazy" in front of this person which then can be used
against you later. You need to get this anger and rage out of your system in
healthy ways so that you can be "squeaky-clean" in front of this
person as you confront the problems in the relationship.
4. As a result of getting
hooked into a relationship and having no boundaries in it, you might want to run
away. You might find yourself wanting to get away with this person and
create a "geographic change." This is thinking that in a different
place you can work out the relationship in a better way. You need to recognize
that this is just holding in your anger and things won't be any different in a
new place. You might be repressing your emotional response to the relationship
and find yourself running away from the relationship itself. The chances are
that you will get out of this bad one but in a new place will probably find
another bad one to replace it with. You might be so wrapped up in your fantasy
and ideals of how relationships are supposed to be, that you find yourself
running away from this bad one only to fall into the trap of a new one which
more closely approximates what it is supposed to be and yet it is not. Running
away from problems is only to run right back into them in a different formate,
place or time. You need to get your anger out about your bad relationship so
that you do not repeat the same pattern in the future. You need to rid yourself
of all of the negative feelings and emotions which come from an unhealthy
relationship so that you are free to experience healthier, more positive
feelings in the future. You need to confront head on the anger and rage you feel
about being disappointed, duped and conned in a boundary‑less relationship
so that you do not repeat the pattern in the future. To run away from it and not
to face it, is a guarantee of repeating the pattern in the future.
Use the tools in the Tools
for Anger Work-Out
to get your
anger out in healthy ways.
Sub step 3: Doing CHILD
work to nurture your right to have boundaries in relationships.
Once you have done your
ANGER work then you need to self nurture yourself with CHILD work focused on how
you deserve not to be hooked by the pitfalls in relationships and how you
deserve to establish healthy boundaries between you and others to protect
yourself intellectually, emotionally and physically.
To do this CHILD work you first need to recognize what your rights are in
a healthy intimate relationship.
Personal Rights in a
Relationship
1. I have the right to
expect a nurturing environment in a relationship.
I deserve to be recognized
and accepted by others for who I am unconditionally. I need the environment in
which my relationship exists to have clearly defined and enforced limits and
boundaries so that I do not get lost or used up in it. I deserve to have respect
and latitude to be an individual in this environment so that I can retain my
individuality and personhood. I deserve to have an environment, which has
structure so that I know what are the expectations, and obligations expected of
me. I deserve to have freedom within the established structure so that I am not
penned in or limited so much that I can no longer be the person who I am in this
environment. I deserve to maintain open, honest and feelings based communication
with my family, friends, support system and recovery colleagues so that I can
receive feedback if I am falling back into a "hooked" relationship in
which I am losing all sense of my personal boundaries.
2. I have the right to be
self-nurturing in a relationship.
I deserve to love myself
unconditionally. I deserve to take care of my own intellectual, emotional and
physical needs with no need to become dependent on a person to meet these needs
for me. I deserve to accept myself as a unique person who is different and
separate from my partner in a relationship. I deserve and need to be open and
honest with myself so that I am constantly in touch with my feelings and
emotions so that I do not slip into fantasy or delusion about what is happening
in the relationship with another. I have the need to be open to my inner voice,
which is the source of my instincts and intuitions so that I can hear the Alarm
Bell if the relationship, I am in, is unhealthy for me.
3. I have the right to
expect to be nurtured by a partner in a relationship.
I deserve unconditional love
and acceptance from a person in a relationship. I deserve to receive warmth,
caring and affection from my partner. I deserve to be accepted as the unique
individual I am in this relationship. I deserve good open and honest
communication with my partner. I deserve to have open and straight forward
problem solving with my partner so that all issues which come up can be handled
in healthy logical, emotional and physical ways.
4. I have the right to
expect the relationship I am in to support my healthy self-esteem.
I have a right to expect
that my relationship will be supportive of me so that I can grow in my
self-worth, self-concept and optimism. I have a right to expect to become a more
productive person in a relationship. I have a right to become a better creative
problem solver and experience improved coping skills in a relationship. I have a
right to expect respect for my leadership capabilities by my partner. I have a
right to expect that my self-deservedness and self-confidence will grow in a
relationship. I have a right to expect that I will grow in altruism and personal
responsibility taking in a relationship.
Use these four personal
rights in a relationship as affirmations and visualizations to nurture yourself
in CHILD work to give yourself permission to establish healthy boundaries so
that you are not hook in an unhealthy way in future or present relationships. To
read more about what you have a right to expect in your relationships read An Overview of Self-Esteem in Self-Esteem Seekers Anonymous - The
SEA's Program. Use the tools in Tools for Relationships to develop
healthy intimate relationships with others.
Once you have completed the
3 sub steps of LIGHTEN THE PRESSURE about the hooks in relationships, which keep
your boundaries down then you, are ready for the next step in the LET GO
process.
LET GO Step 2: EXERCISE
RIGHTS
You next need to EXERCISE
YOUR RIGHTS to set up your boundaries which is essentially to say "NO"
to those hooks which keep your boundaries down. You also need to identify what
boundaries you want to set up so that you do not lose yourself in future
intimate or sexually intimate relationships. To help you exercise your rights
here are boundaries you need to establish in a relationship if it is to be a
healthy one.
Boundaries Needed in a
Healthy Relationship
1. You need to put limits on
your time in a relationship.
You will 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 relationship with a person. You will
need to develop a schedule daily, weekly, monthly and yearly for your time. You
will need to set aside time enough for your work, sleep, self-nurturing
activities, family involvement, friends involvement, support group(s), recovery
work, spirituality endeavors, Balanced Lifestyle activities, exercise, having
fun, leisure time, vacation times, alone time and couple time. You cannot afford
to give away precious time to a relationship which must be spent in those
necessary activities which insure that you are not lost or swallowed up in a
relationship.
2. You need to put limits on
the money you spend in a relationship.
You will need to establish a
budget for your money so that you do not spend inordinate sums of money in the
establishing or maintaining of a relationship. You need to be clear that your
money will not be used to rescue or save your partner 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 a partner who
is not willing to take responsibility to find a job or get a better paying job
for which the person is qualified. You will need to set limits as to how long
you will fund a partner who is 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 partner is purposefully involved in illegal activities.
3. You will need to set
limits on your external resources in a relationship.
You will need to set limits
for the person in a relationship, on the use of your house, car, or other piece
of property you possess. If you have a business or have a supervisory position
on your job you will need to set limits on how much involved your partner can
become involved in your work. You will need to set limits on how much your
partner will have to do in terms of chores or work load to take care of the
"shared space" in your house or other property you own or share with
your partner. You will need to set limits on how much you will allow your
partner to have access to your family, friends and support system. You will need
to set limits as to how involved you will allow your partner to become in your
recovery and support group (s) activities.
4. You will need to set
limits on your talents, skills and abilities in a relationship.
You will need to set limits
on how much of your talents, skills and abilities or internal resources you are
willing to expend on a relationship. You need to be clear with your partner how
much of your internal resources you are willing to share or give away to
establish or maintain the relationship. 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 a partner in a relationship. You are not required to give and give in a
relationship 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.
5. You will need to set
limits on your emotions in a relationship.
You will need to set limits
on how much you will emotionally invest in a relationship. You will need to
recognize the emotional hooks which keep you stuck in a relationship. 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
the relationship. You will need to develop a sense of emotional detachment so as
not to get hooked and drowned in an unhealthy relationship. You will need to
develop emotional limits so that you will be able to figure out where you begin
and end and where your partner in a relationship begins and ends.
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 establish
so that you can have a healthy relationship then you are ready to proceed to the
next LET GO step.
LET GO Step 3: TAKE STEPS
You are now ready to TAKE
THE STEPS to establish healthy boundaries with others. This involves
actualizing the 5 areas of boundaries for healthy relationships. You will need
to do the following:
Boundary Development
Tasks
1. Establish a Calendar
Set up a schedule for
yourself by day, week, month and year and keep to it. Be sure all 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 the Tools for a Balanced Lifestyle is included in the calendar.
2. Establish a Budget
Set up a budget of how you
will spend your money. Make sure you are honest with yourself 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.
3. Establish rules about
use of your external resources
Set up a set of rules and
regulations about use of your resources. Be clear about getting reimbursed for
any damages or misuse of them. Set up chores and work schedules to insure that
all of the resources are taken care of in a responsible way.
4. Establish rules about
use of your talents, skill and abilities
Set up as set of rules about
what you will and will not do in the relationship with your talents, skills and
abilities so that you will not feel raped or violated because you have
squandered your internal resources on the relationship.
5. Establish emotional
limits
Identify what you are
willing to do and not do in the relationship. Identify when, where, how and why
you are willing to do what you will do. Set goals for the relationship which
fairly protects each person. Develop open lines of communication so that all
problems are openly discussed and creatively resolved. You will need to 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 Pathfinder:
Tools for Effective Parenting to assist you to take the steps necessary to
develop healthy boundaries in your intimate and sexually intimate relationships.
Once you have TAKEN STEPS to establish boundaries then you are ready for the
next step in the LET GO Process.
LET GO STEP 4:
GIVE UP NEED
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 other people, places,
situations and conditions. To do this, you will need to stop doing the following
control behaviors, which weaken your boundaries with others.
Control Behaviors Which
Weaken Boundaries
1. Need to Fix
You will need to LET GO and
GIVE UP THE NEED to fix other people 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 the other to the exclusion of taking
care of yourself.
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 a needy
person the more your boundaries disappear and the less of you is left.
3. Unchecked Idealism
You will need to recognize
that you cannot control how the world should be. You can only accept how the
world is. 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.
4. Non-acceptance of Powerlessness
You need to work at
accepting that you are powerless to control and change other people, places
things, situations and conditions. You are competing with your Higher Power if
you hold to the belief that you can control and change others. You will lose in
the long run and you will be boundary-less and defenseless from the
onslaught of needs of others, which you believe you can be change and control.
5. Lack of belief in a
Higher Power
You will never be able to
maintain your boundaries with others if you do not have a belief in a Higher
Power or God as you understand it to be. You need a Higher Power over to whom
you can let go of the uncontrollables and unchangeables in you life. Without
this resource to hand over these things to you will be exhausted trying to meet
everyone's needs and your boundaries will be non existent and you will be
ultimately lost in the process.
To learn more about the
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 LET GO Step.
LET GO Step 5: ORDER LIFE
Once you have done the
ALERT, ANGER and CHILD work about emotional hooks in relationships, and anger
responses to those hooks and self-nurturing by recognizing your rights to have
healthy boundaries you had LIGHTENED THE PRESSURE to control others. Then you
EXERCISED YOUR RIGHT by identifying what boundaries you wanted to set up for
yourself in relationships. Then you TOOK STEPS to establish the boundaries.
Finally you GAVE UP THE NEED to control 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. You will need to recognize that
as part of your boundaries, you need to be clear that the Balanced Lifestyle
Program is an essential part of your life and all aspects of it must be
respected and not altered. You will need to state that you will allow no
relationship to interfere with your recovery efforts 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 sexually intimate relationship
with a significant other 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 a relationship because sexuality and sensuousness is the
only economy exchanged in it. You will need to do ANGER work if all you have in
a relationship is the physical act of sex 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, if you
need to drop out of a sexual relationship, which is 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 a relationship which provides you physical sexual contact but no emotional or
intellectual nourishing. You will need to allow your support system to call you
on it if you relapse into being your boundary-less, so you can cease a
relationship which although sexual is 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 you become a hostage in a new relationship. 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 have a sexual
relationship with a partner. You will need to have support people prepared to
call you on it, if you drift away from your new program with food, exercise and
food-free ways of dealing with emotions. 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 since you got involved in a new (or altered)
relationship.
You will gain the 3
Increases of Health, Happiness and Energy, if you are able to deal with your
sexuality and sensuality in a healthy way and are able to maintain your healthy
boundaries in the process. You have much to gain by establishing healthy
boundaries with others and it is up to you to be vigilant and on guard for any
relapse in keeping your boundaries up and healthy. Lastly you need to make a
concerted effort to adopt the words of Rheinhold Neibuhr as a daily affirmation
for yourself to insure you do not relapse into a boundary-less life:
Serenity Prayer
by: Rheinhold Neibuhr
-
God grant me the
serenity
-
to accept the things I
cannot change
-
Courage to change the
things I can
-
And the wisdom to know
the difference.
-
Living one day at a
time,
-
enjoying one moment at
a time,
-
accepting hardship as
a pathway to peace,
-
taking, as Jesus did,
this sinful world as it is,
-
not as I would have
it.
-
Trusting that You will
make all things right,
-
if I surrender to Your
will.
-
So that I may be
reasonably happy in this life
-
and supremely happy
with You forever in the next.
-
AMEN
Related Tools for Coping
Readings:
1. Self-Esteem Seekers
Anonymous - The SEA's Program Manual
2. Tools for Personal
Growth
3. Tools for
Relationships
4. Tools for Anger
Work-out
5. Tools for Handling
Control Issues
6. Growing Down - Tools
for Healing the Inner Child
To assist you to get to the
next section of Chapter 7: Impact
of Sexuality on Body Image and Weight
in Tools for a
Balanced Lifestyle, click on to the section below you want:
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