The Strength to Set Boundaries

People get taken for granted.

It’s true. Being taken advantage of is common, and many people don’t realize that it’s happening to them, or try to rationalize why it’s okay even if they’re uncomfortable. I can’t speak for everyone, but I’m sure that many people have done the latter at least once if not more. This is where boundaries come in and why they’re important. Out of the many things that setting boundaries do, the three I’m going to list here are:

It helps grow confidence.
It protects us and promotes communication.
It reveals the people who should, and should not, be in our lives.

With establishing boundaries also comes change, and that is what these three things I’ve listed above are. They are aspects of our life that are either new and we’ll have to experience a change in values, or they are things that are already present in our life but we’ll have to enforce it more so than before. Either way, change comes with boundaries. That can be uncomfortable, so uncomfortable that sometimes people decide it’s not worth it. That it’s not worth establishing new boundaries, enforcing current boundaries, or upsetting people around them.

I was one of those people.

Key word: was.

Through my own struggles and experiences I came to learn the importance of establishing boundaries, and the importance of valuing. That was my biggest issue, I didn’t think much of boundaries. I hadn’t even learned how important boundaries were to have in life until I almost graduated high school, and even then I didn’t start enforcing boundaries until some time after graduating. Looking back, I wish I had learned about boundaries. That someone had told me how important they are, or that I had come across a book or post just introducing what boundaries can do and how valuable they are. It would have helped a lot, but I can’t change that.

I was a people-pleaser. I wanted to make others around me happy, or at the very least feel okay. If I were to rank things from most to least important my family and friends were first, school was second, and I was last. The way I saw it was that as long as they were happy, as long as they were taken care of, then so was I.

Even if it cost me.

I was okay.

That’s what I would tell myself.

Someone needed help with an assignment and wanted to see my work? That’s okay, they need the help. Short on cash and need food? That’s okay, they need help. Say something that makes me uncomfortable? That’s okay, I misunderstood. Say or do something that hurts my feelings? That’s okay, they didn’t mean it.

I always made an excuse. These are only a few moments I’ve experienced a few times in my life that I had made an excuse for why it was okay. And just these memories alone are exhausting to look back at. I had no boundaries, I thought I was doing the right thing by helping everyone around me. I thought I was learning what was right by letting other tell me what was normal, what to do, and what I should be okay with.

I lost myself. I didn’t know who I was anymore other than the nice girl everyone could rely on. I fell into a dark hole, face first, and didn’t know how I was going to climb out. I was content being the nice girl. I was content being taken advantage of, and desperately seeing it as anything but that. That’s who I had become, and as easy as it was to be angry at everyone around me I couldn’t.

Ultimately, I was responsible. I had come to teach myself that I was okay with this.

And eventually I reached a point where I had two options. I could acknowledge that I wasn’t okay and move forward, or keep doing what I was doing and stay content. I clawed myself up that hole I fell in, and chose to move forward.

Now lets get this straight. I didn’t just gain random mental strength and the motivation to learn everything in one day, and suddenly became a boundary-loving woman who took no crap. It took time just to make the choice to change for myself, time to actually set those boundaries, time to enforce those boundaries, time to cut people out of my life who were hurting me, and time to learn to value my boundaries more than I had before. This all took time.

But it all started with choosing to learn how valuable it is it to have boundaries, and learning to take care of myself.

My experience is one story out of thousands that show the importance of setting boundaries. One story that shows the importance in valuing our boundaries and sticking by them. It’s learning to be okay with others not being supportive of what we decide we are okay with, and what we’re not okay with. It’s coming to terms that we need help, or that we’re not okay. And it’s watching ourselves grow in confidence and be who we are unapologetically.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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