 |
 |
|||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
|||||
| Understanding Boundaries |
|
One important way to respect yourself and others is to set strong healthy boundaries around yourself and your life. A boundary is like an invisible line around you. It is what separates you from other people. It is the line between what you are comfortable with and what you are uncomfortable with, what is acceptable to you and what is unacceptable to you. Boundaries help protect not only our physical safety, but also our emotional well being. Healthy boundaries are flexible. For example, you might open your boundaries to let people you trust closer to you – you might share more information with them and feel more comfortable being physically close to them. With people you don’t know as well or people you distrust, you will probably keep your boundaries closed more tightly by not getting too personal.
Boundaries aren’t just for controlling which people we want to be close to us. Healthy boundaries allow us to control all sorts of things in our lives, including our own behaviour and which behaviours we will accept from others. For example, a person may be comfortable with kissing her partner in public, but “draw the line” at her partner touching her in a sexual way in front of other people. That “line” is her boundary. Abuse happens when one person violates another person’s boundaries.
Think about your boundaries around physical touch, sexual behaviour, language, morals and values.
|
