Let’s Change How We Talk About Boundaries
According to relational-cultural theory, boundaries don’t have to be a rigid line of separateness — they can be a tool of connection and mutuality
Everywhere you look online it seems that people are talking about boundaries. A quick search through the 1 million Instagram posts tagged with the term highlights an assortment of content with the words no, stop, and enforce somewhere in the image or the caption. From my non-scientific research aka three minutes of scrolling through the most recent images and captions, I gather that the majority of these posts typically translate into some variation of “how to say no and mean it” or “how to learn how to prioritize yourself and your needs.”
If boundaries are supposed to make our lives easier, our relationships more reciprocal, and our burdens lighter, why does this perspective on boundaries leave such a sour taste in some of our mouths?
The reality is that setting and maintaining healthy boundaries can be a difficult process and often elicits a variety of complex and mixed emotions — especially when the traditional boundary setting process is associated with negative language viewing separateness as the goal while prioritizing the self.
