To assert your boundaries, you must first have a good understanding of where your inner territory lies. It helps you find out if you allow others to estimate your activities, like reading particular books, playing at a Canadian mobile online casino, or going to certain places. Then any unauthorized intrusions will trigger an internal alarm. And therefore, it will be easier to defend themselves.
How You Get to Know Your Boundaries
Feelings help us with this. And those that we used to suppress the most in ourselves:
- Anxiety, fear.
- Disgust.
- Anger.
And if many people are more or less familiar with their anxiety, then the contact with other feelings is usually severely undermined. But each of them has its function.
Disgust tells us that something (or someone) is too much, or too close. This beacon is the first to go off when the object of irritation still looms on the horizon.
As the distance to our border decreases, irritation increases. We have already been approached too close, or even trampled on the line of demarcation, but not yet roughly.
Anger and resentment appear where the boundaries have already been violated. They point out where our values reside and help us find the strength to defend them.
In the case of manipulation, feelings of guilt and shame are the brightest markers because it’s with their help that it’s easiest to put pressure on the other person. It’s as if the person is redirecting our anger for violating boundaries from himself to us.
So the next time you encounter shame and guilt, check: Are they coming from within or are they being actively fed from the outside? Have you really done something shameful/immoral/contrary to your values, or are you being persuaded to do so for profit?
What do you do if you’ve suppressed your feelings for so long that you’ve stopped noticing them?
- Allow them to happen. Realize that they won’t ruin me or those around me. Experiencing them is healthy and not embarrassing. That each of them is a necessary tool.
- Remember what they are in general. To do this, you can find any picture on the Internet with a list of emotions and mentally run yourself through it.
- Try to remember the situations in which you experienced them and how you felt at that moment.
- Slow down. Often emotions creep in. To track them, you need to bring your focus back to the here and now more often.
A Slow Down Exercise
For a week, start a few alarms every day at random times. When they ring, ask yourself: What am I feeling right now?
Try listening to your bodily sensations: they, too, can be markers of emotion. Of course, there is a chance that the alarm clock will ring at a moment when you are calm and really feeling nothing, but the skill of listening itself will help you recognize emotions more easily in life.
Reconnecting with your emotions is a lot of work that is difficult to do alone. Therapy helps a lot in this regard, because in a safe space, you can find the reasons why emotions are suppressed, learn how to notice them and show them the right way.
