Establishing Healthy Boundaries with Others

We often form codependent relationships when we become overly emotionally attached to others. This happens because we take on responsibility for things that should be handled by 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 healthy boundaries. This pattern helps us establish personal boundaries that strengthen our sense of personal power, safety, and focus.

What Are Personal Boundaries?

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

Steps to Establishing Healthy Boundaries

1. Identify Boundary Issues

• What problems in your life are the result of lacking strong, stable boundaries?
• Do you ever feel responsible for how someone else feels?
• Do you find yourself rescuing others from problems they create, or worrying about someone else’s life more than they do?

2. Create a Sense of Your Own Space and Its Boundaries

Using your physical sense of territory, imagine your personal space extending around you as far as your outstretched arms. Feel 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 solely to you (such as self-confidence, faith, dignity, love, reliability, and so on).

3. Anchor This State with a Color, Word, or Object

Strengthen your boundary by imagining an invisible border at the edge of your personal space. You might picture it as a force field from “Star Trek,” a sheet of plexiglass, or any other boundary that gives you a distinct sense of “self,” separate from anyone else.

Fully experience this sense of individuality from your own perspective. When it feels convincing, anchor it with a color, word, or object.

4. Take the Second Position of Perception

For a moment, step outside yourself and take the perspective of someone who respects your boundaries. Through their eyes, see yourself with healthy, ecological boundaries. From their point of view, hear affirmation and recognition of these boundaries. How does this feel to you? Is there anything that could make this resource even better?

5. Return to Your Own 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 imagine carrying this perspective into the future, what does it remind you of? Does it suit you? Would you like to keep it?

6. Address Weaknesses

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 going out into the world with these boundaries in place.