How to set healthy boundaries with your family

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Mar 7

The term “boundaries” is thrown around quite frequently in the personal development space these days. And for good reason - knowing what healthy boundaries are and how we can establish them can be a vital step on our personal healing journey.

We often instinctively know how to set proper social boundaries with a stranger on the street or a distant co-worker in the office. We understand what is disrespectful and what crosses that invisible line of being “appropriate”. But the closer we are with someone, the more our own needs become enmeshed with the other person’s needs and we start having trouble drawing a clear line.

For most of us what that means is that the most difficult boundaries to establish are those with our family members. Setting healthy boundaries with our family can be a tricky and painful process, especially when we’ve grown up in a family dynamic where those healthy boundaries were never modeled for us.

In order to help you on that journey, we’re going to cover 5 ways in which you can start establishing healthy family boundaries:

1. Give yourself permission to acknowledge your own needs

One of the things that often keeps us stuck on our personal growth journey is the fact that we don’t want to upset or cause any disruption to our family dynamics. As young children, our need to fit in and be accepted usually means that we repress any of our own needs and let our caretakers set the tone for what is and isn’t acceptable.

If we do happen to perceive ourselves as different from our parents, siblings or other family members, those aspects of ourselves usually get ignored. We often adapt to the fact that not having our own interests and needs met is just the normal way of life. In many cases, we might not even understand that relationships can function in any other way because we haven’t been exposed to any healthy alternatives.

So the first and most important step in learning how to set healthy boundaries with your family is giving yourself permission to acknowledge your own desires, interests and needs. Only once you’ve truly accepted that you are worthy enough to have your own needs and that it is okay for you to want others to meet them, can you learn when to draw the appropriate lines.

For most of us, this mindset shift alone can be a huge step. Increasing your self-worth is not something that you can do from one day to the next, it's a journey that you embark on with yourself for the rest of your life. Sometimes that journey will be messy and uncomfortable (read more about some of the reasons why here!) but in the long run you will also find it incredibly rewarding and worthwhile.

If this is the phase that you currently find yourself in, you might also enjoy learning more about shadow work and inner child work to help you along the way.

2. Identify negative cycles and trigger points

Overstepping boundaries in family relationships is usually not something that happens once or twice but rather in deep-rooted patterns that have been repeating for years. If you want to establish healthier boundaries and stop other family members from crossing them, then it can be really useful to have a good understanding of when this happens.

What kind of interactions trigger fights and arguments in your family?
When do you feel angry, sad, lonely or resentful?
What kind of conversations make you feel happy and fulfilled vs. uncomfortable and upset?

Start paying really close attention to the interactions you have with your family members. It might even be helpful to start making a list of things you notice so that you can have an easier time keeping track of the things you want to work on. Once you have a pretty good understanding of the things that you feel like are going “wrong”, you’ll have a much easier time trying to define how you want things to go instead.

3. Learn to communicate your boundaries, needs and desires

The key to improving any relationship and learning how to set boundaries is better communication. The reality is that we all overstep someone else’s boundaries from time to time and in most cases, it’s probably because we don’t even know that that boundary exists.
If you want your family to start respecting you and your needs more, the first thing you might consider is telling them that they are crossing a boundary in the first place. Depending on your family dynamic, it might be as simple as them not being aware that something is upsetting you and a genuine conversation about the matter might just do the trick.

However, long-lasting negative patterns are most often caused by every family member feeling like their own needs aren’t being met which means that just talking about your unmet needs can often be triggering in itself and lead to more fighting and dysfunction.

These cases can be incredibly difficult to deal with but you’ll want to remind yourself that the only thing you have control over is yourself and how you communicate with those around you. Remember that it is your right to have certain needs and ask other people to meet them, but what you can’t have control over is where other people are emotionally and how they respond to your requests.

4. Develop different coping strategies

Sometimes you might learn how to communicate a boundary and the other person will understand and be willing to respect that boundary. In other cases, you might find that your boundary continues to be crossed, no matter how well you try to communicate them.

In those instances where you feel like your boundaries aren’t being respected and you end up feeling violated and hurt, it can be incredibly useful to have different strategies of coping already planned out in advance.

If you know that family dinners or holidays are likely to end in disagreements or fights, make sure you prepare in advance so that it won’t take as much of an emotional toll on you as when you go into the situation unprepared.

Perhaps practicing yoga and meditation allows you to feel grounded enough to let unwanted comments bounce right off of you. Or maybe going for a run outside allows you to regulate your nervous system and clear your mind after a heated argument.

What works for you, might be completely different from what works for another person. That’s why it’s always a good idea to spend time learning how to regulate your own nervous system when you feel dysregulated.

**5. Practice, practice, practice because it will get easier!**
When you’re first starting off, setting boundaries can feel very emotionally draining and like you’re being selfish for expecting other people to meet your needs. But if you learn how to communicate authentically and remember not to control other people’s behavior, you’ll find that the more you stand up for yourself and your own needs, the easier it will become.

On the one hand, when you start communicating your emotional, physical, mental or spiritual needs and other people actually start meeting them, you’ll find that this will fill up your own energy tank in a way that allows you to feel way more grounded and fulfilled in the long-run. And on the other hand, a full tank like this will also allow you to more freely meet other people’s needs which will then make them feel more fulfilled and allow them to meet your needs, too. It’s a positive upward cycle!

If you’re looking for more practical and hands-on advice on how to get started with proper boundary setting within your family (or anyone in your life for that matter) - then we have an entire month of programming in The Self Care Space dedicated to helping you examine your family dynamics, ridding yourself of any guilt you might feel and learning how to communicate your desires and expectations.

Don’t know about The Self Care Space or not already a member?

Regardless of where you are on your self care journey, we’ve made it our mission to support you through all of its ups and downs. Our membership is filled with self-guided prompts and programs on self-love, healthy relationships, breaking free from the past and managing a healthy mindset. We have countless guided meditations, healing visualizations as well as weekly live workshops and coaching sessions.

If you want to know more or are interested in signing up , you can find out all the relevant information here.

Whichever route you choose for your personal healing journey, we just want you to know we are proud of you for showing up for yourself in the first place!

xoxo,

The Self Care Space

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