NLP Technique: Pattern for Setting Healthy Boundaries with Others

We develop codependent relationships when we become overly emotionally attached to other people. This happens because we take responsibility for things that should be the responsibility of someone else.

Codependency involves poor personal boundaries and an inability to take appropriate responsibility. People who tend to think and feel this way usually struggle to set boundaries properly. This pattern helps us establish personal boundaries that strengthen our sense of personal power, safety, and focus.

Personal boundaries create a sense of “self” as distinct from “other.” Within these boundaries, we experience our own values, beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and sense of identity.

Pattern for Setting Healthy Boundaries

1. Identify the boundary issue.
   • What problems do you have that result from a lack of good, firm, and stable boundaries?
   • Do you ever feel responsible for how someone else feels?
   • Do you ever feel like you’re rescuing someone from problems they create, or worry about something happening in someone else’s life more than they do?
2. Create a sense of your personal space and its boundaries.
   • Using a physical sense of your territory, your “space,” imagine this space and feel it extending around you at arm’s length. Notice all the space within this area.
   • If this is your zone of power, what qualities and resources would you like to fill it with?
   • Begin to fill this space with qualities, thoughts, feelings, resources, values, etc., that belong exclusively to you (such as self-confidence, faith, dignity, love, reliability, etc.).
   • Anchor this state with a color, word, or object.
3. Strengthen the boundary.
   • At the edge of your personal space, imagine an invisible boundary. You might picture it as a force field from “Star Trek,” a sheet of plexiglass, or any other boundary that gives you a special sense of “self,” distinct and separate from anyone else.
   • Fully experience this sense of individuality from the first-person perspective. When it feels convincing, anchor it.
4. Take the second-person perspective.
   • For a moment, step outside yourself and take the perspective of someone who respects you and your boundaries. Through their eyes, see yourself with healthy and ecological boundaries. From their point of view, hear affirmation and recognition of these boundaries. How does that feel?
   • Is there anything you need that could make this resource even better?
5. Return to the first-person perspective.
   • Identify and strengthen each personal value, belief, and understanding that makes you unique. Do you allow yourself to affirm them? How do you feel when you do this?
   • When you project this perspective into the future, what does it remind you of? Does it fit you well? Would you like to keep it?
6. Address shortcomings.
   • Now imagine meeting someone who does not respect your boundaries, who speaks and acts in ways that try to violate them.
   • How do you feel when you see them trying to do this, while your resourceful “self” expresses itself in ways that support healthy boundaries?
7. Check ecology and future pace.
   • Imagine using these boundaries as you move into your future. Now, picture how you would feel if you went out into the world with these boundaries in place…