007 - Setting Boundaries: Your First Step to Self-Care

Mel Harrowsmith explores the practical steps for setting healthy boundaries in both your personal and professional life. Setting boundaries can feel daunting, especially if you’ve lived with rigid or porous boundaries for years, but clear limits are essential for your well-being and relationships.

Mel shares her personal journey with boundary-setting and offers relatable advice for starting small. Learn how to identify what matters most to you, overcome the fear of rejection, and take that first brave step towards setting boundaries that protect your values and mental health. 

Ready to stop people-pleasing and start setting limits? 

For more insights, tips, and guidance on living a meaningful life, visit Mel Harrowsmith Coaching. Ready to dive deeper? Reach out to book a session and start your journey towards purpose today.

Edited with finesse, transcribed and produced by Mike Roberts at Making Digital Real

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to the Life With Purpose podcast and thank you for joining me in this third episode on boundaries. In this episode we're going to look at how to set boundaries and how to do that when the thought of letting go of your existing boundaries or putting some healthy boundaries in place makes you want to hide under the duvet. Establishing boundaries in all aspects of your life is good for you and it's good for the people around you. When you're clear about your boundaries people will understand your limits and know what you are and aren't okay with. Now some of the blockers I hear when clients are reluctant to put in boundaries all relate to fear and on some level they think that having flaky boundaries is somehow kinder to the other people around them even if the poor boundaries are harming themselves. Brenny Brown is a number one New York best-selling author and research professor in studying courage, vulnerability, shame and empathy and she says that being clear is kind. When your boundaries are clear other people will adjust their behaviour to meet your boundary. So if we want healthy clear boundaries at home and work what does that involve? Let's find out. The first thing I want to say about setting boundaries is be kind to yourself. If you can recognise that what you are about to do feels difficult and it will probably feel really difficult even if the situation you are considering putting a boundary on seems with hindsight to be quite small and I'm not trivialising anything that you might be going through rather to emphasise that you feel what you feel irrespective of what anyone else might say about how big or small your situation is. Your experience is the priority and it is okay to feel that setting a is difficult. Let me give you a personal example to illustrate the point. When I really started to look at my own boundaries I came to realise that I'd spent most of my life like other people slipping between the three types rigid, open and healthy. Although on reflection most of my boundaries were either rigid or porous and this was not a good situation. When I looked a bit deeper and I didn't enjoy looking at this I'll be honest it became clear that the fear of rejection and not being good enough was behind my unhealthy boundaries and when I started noticing where my rigid and leaky boundaries were operating I realised that my fears had permeated into some surprising areas. When I was looking at some of my questionable boundaries I realised that the boundaries had become so leaky and dysfunctional that I couldn't even say what I wanted for dinner. My fear of rejection was so chronic that I was scared to say what I wanted to eat because on a subconscious level I believed that my partner or friends would think less of me or even leave me if I said what I wanted. In my now much wiser opinion I can say that this was seriously off kilter. Firstly if my partner was going to leave me because I wanted strawberry ice cream and not rum and raisin then I think we can all agree that the partner is the issue here not the food choice. Secondly living a life where my fears were operating at such a level that they were permeating simple situations like food choices when I live in a safe environment was a big wake up call that something was off. Although it was food choice that really hammered home the point about my boundaries on reflection I could see how my relationship with my boundaries had influenced decisions throughout my life some of which were not the best. I've made risky behaviour choices, questionable career choices, unhealthy relationship choices, I've hurt others and I've hurt myself. I realised I needed to sort out my boundaries if I was going to improve my quality of life but the idea was frightening even though to begin with I was only aiming to tackle being able to say what I wanted to eat at mealtimes. So I knew enough at this point that if you're going to make big changes then starting small is a good place to start. So the food choice dilemma was a good place for me to start although my subconscious my monkey mind whatever you want to call it was convinced there was a real chance I could be abandoned for saying what I wanted for breakfast. I rationally knew this was rubbish so I practiced. When I was asked what I wanted for breakfast or dinner I aimed to stop the default oh I don't mind I'm happy with whatever you want answer from blurting out and gave my honest answer. Sometimes the oh I don't mind answer would slip out before I'd realised but then I would correct and say actually I'd like pancakes or whatever it was that I wanted. Did my partner leave me? No. Did anyone have a hissy fit because I said what I wanted? No. Did my heart rate increase to 180 beats per minute, my throat go dry and my palms start to sweat the first time I did this? Hell yes! But I did it and it got easier every time I reinforced this new physical boundary and that small step helped my confidence increase so I could apply the same approach to some of the more challenging situations where I needed to be less open or less rigid with my boundaries. So if you need to work on setting healthy boundaries my advice is to start small. In the first episode on boundaries I stressed that boundaries are something you set for yourself to meet your needs and I quoted Jeff Van Bonderen who said boundaries are those invisible barriers that tell others where they stop and you begin. They are the rules or limits that you set for yourself within your relationships whether they're personal relationships or work. So your partner, family members, friends and colleagues cannot put your boundaries in place for you and they cannot maintain them. The emphasis is on you. Pretty much everyone you deal with will break or attempt to break a boundary at some point. What matters is how you react to that. If you do nothing it's you who are not upholding your boundary not them and this is just as important in your personal life as it is in your work life. If you want to set strong healthy boundaries then it might be helpful to consider some misconceptions out there around boundaries. So misconception number one. Boundaries are restricting and will make you unhappy. False. Boundaries are not there to limit your enjoyment but rather to protect your values and bring you more enjoyment and evidence shows that when you set healthy boundaries then you enable others to respect your boundaries as they know where the limits are. Misconception number two. My boundaries are right and yours are wrong. Again this is false. Boundaries are based on your values so they might be completely different to someone else's. Physical boundaries are a really good example of this. Are you a hugger? Are you comfortable throwing your arms around someone you have just met or someone you've known for a while? Does the prospect of shaking hands with a stranger make you recoil in horror? Whatever your answer is that's personal to you. If you're a hugger or not it's neither right nor wrong it's just your boundary and it's different for everyone. Misconception number three. Boundaries are set in stone. Guess what? This is also false. As you travel through life having new and different experiences, learning lessons, discovering who you are and all of that stuff it's likely that you will change and so will your boundaries. This is not the same as having open boundaries. This is about adapting from one healthy boundary to another. It's about evolving and changing your mind which you are perfectly entitled to do. This misconception leads on to something else we need to discuss in the context of boundaries in personal and work relationships and that is compromise or in other words what is negotiable and non-negotiable for you in terms of your boundaries. To give you an example of setting a boundary and then looking at what is negotiable within that boundary let's look at a common work complaint. Working long hours. Now if you love your job and you thrive on putting in more hours and you are contractually obliged to do so then I am very happy for you. However if you are not that person and working excess hours leads to feeling exhausted and stressed or just plain angry then it's possible that your boundaries are being challenged. If you value your personal time, your well-being or time with your family above all else then you will set and need to maintain boundaries to preserve your work-life balance and this is where it might feel hard because it is up to you to set the boundary not your organisation. If you have a contract with specified hours and working arrangement then they are the organisational rules within which your boundaries need to operate. So be honest, what is it that is making you put in those extra hours? What is driving you to monitor your work social media out of hours? What is it that means you are responding to emails on a Sunday morning instead of enjoying brunch with your friends? Is it really because everyone is expected to work extra hours? And who said that anyway? Can you name the person who said that? Or is the reality that you are choosing to break your own boundaries? That's not easy to recognise is it? But once you take responsibility for what is in fact within your control then you can make changes. So let's say you have set a nice healthy and firm work-life balance boundary. There may be incidences where you are willing to compromise on this boundary and incidences where the boundary will be non-negotiable. This doesn't mean you've blown apart your healthy boundary. The boundary remains healthy when you are honest with yourself about why you are willing to compromise and you can accept the terms and conditions associated with the compromise. However if you're being put in a position that involves you breaking boundaries that are non-negotiable to you then you will probably feel it. You might feel angry, anxious, stressed or resentful and you may need to consider why you're being put in that position and evaluate what you are truly willing to compromise. Earlier I mentioned that starting small is the best place to begin with when setting boundaries. But what else can you consider? Setting boundaries can be tough so be kind to yourself and choose something you feel you can achieve even if it feels daunting and difficult at first. Secondly think about the objective. What is the goal in setting this boundary? What will setting this boundary achieve? This can help incentivise you to keep going. Then focus on what you want as clearly as possible and keep it as simple as possible. You don't want to overload yourself or anyone else with too many details. And finally practice. If boundaries are really giving you the heebie-jeebies then maybe start by writing them down or saying them out loud to yourself. So you've set yourself some clear healthy boundaries. Now what? What if you're worried your boundaries will be crossed or will morph into unhealthy rigid boundaries that are as inflexible as a toddler who's discovered the word no or open boundaries that are leakier than a dilapidated flood defence? Then the next episode we'll look at how you can maintain your healthy boundaries.