Setting boundaries: Important for your well-being
Setting boundaries is incredibly important for your well-being. If you do not set boundaries and indicate limits, you are more likely to develop overstrain and burnout than if you do. So your well-being definitely benefits when you set boundaries. In this blog I will discuss what you need for indicating your boundaries and what you can do in certain situations where boundaries need to be indicated
Setting boundaries
When setting boundaries, it’s important to accept that there are only 24 hours in a day and that there’s a limit to the amount of energy you can devote to work[1]. Without this awareness, it’s very difficult to set boundaries and communicate them.
With modern technology, it sometimes seems like you have more time to spend than before. Especially since you are always accessible through cell phones, your time is also more likely to be claimed. If only to speak to you to ask where you are.
In Germany, they have even legislated that your boss cannot call you outside working hours. There, due to the hierarchical culture, things got out of hand pretty quickly with bosses and employees suddenly being reachable 24/7.
However, things aren’t much better in the Netherlands, because due to the crisis, many people feel they need to be more available and continue working from home in order to keep their jobs. This is a surefire way to drain your energy and end up with burnout.
So decide for yourself how much time and energy you can devote per day to your work or to other parts of your life and where with you the limiter should be on.
Learning to set boundaries
Now that you know you have a limit, the trick is to signal that limit to those around you. Sending the message that you can go as far as here and no further.
Setting boundaries can be incredibly exciting. It may start with saying "no" here and there, but eventually you may actually go to your boss and indicate that you can no longer pull the overtime.
Or you can go to your partner and state that surely you want to spend at least 1 evening a week with him/her for having a healthy relationship.
Learning this skill is something a hypnosis expert can help you with. For example, you can practice step by step how to set your boundaries without fear —or at least while keeping your nerves under control.
This can include guided visualization so that you first see or feel clearly in front of you the behavior and your feelings during the behavior. This increases the likelihood of success in actually stating your boundaries.
Setting boundaries in a relationship
Sometimes it’s necessary to set boundaries in your relationship. Of course, there are boundaries like not cheating and perhaps how much clutter you’re willing to tolerate in the home you share, but sometimes other boundaries are needed.
For example, if someone in your relationship becomes ill, that person may become very dependent on you or start behaving that way. The role of caregiver that you then take on can have a tremendous impact.
There are multiple ways to set boundaries within your relationship namely:
- Encouragement of desired behaviors.
- Indicating what unwanted behavior is[2].
Encouraging desired behaviors involves, for example, encouraging your partner to look for a job when you are currently struggling to make all the ends meet in a one-earner home. Or that your partner calls his/her own doctor in case of illness, mental or physical.
So in addition, you can also indicate when behavior is undesirable. For example, when someone has a big mouth against you when it doesn't help solve a problem at all.
Indicating appropriate behavior or setting boundaries can sometimes be difficult because you may feel that you cannot do so with a person your own age with whom you are in a relationship.
In that case, a hypnosis expert can help you identify the beliefs you hold about setting boundaries within a relationship. This can be done, for example, through regression.
Through regression, you go back to the moment when your subconscious decided that setting boundaries was wrong or unnecessary in your relationship. This is often a moment during your childhood, around elementary school age, because that’s when you form many beliefs about how the world works and how you can function within it.
As a child, however, you don't know everything either, and as an adult, you can do a good job of evaluating these types of unhelpful beliefs for logic, allowing you to be less bothered by them fairly quickly and naturally set your boundaries better.
Setting boundaries with your child
Setting boundaries for your child is done primarily because you want your child to grow up healthy. For example, children are very fond of sweets and generally less fond of healthy food, but still need to eat healthy.
Research shows that parents find it very difficult to set boundaries regarding nutrition[3], brushing teeth and other daily issues necessary to develop a healthy body and mind.
Making a lesson out of when to set a boundary is more likely to be successful than simply setting a boundary[4]. For example, you then explain why it is so important to eat the vegetables, brush your teeth and go to bed on time.
If you find it difficult to set boundaries in this way as well, it is wise to look at your beliefs about what your job as a parent is toward your child and how much effort you are allowed to put into it. A hypnosis expert can help you figure out why you find it difficult to set boundaries. He can help you find a way that suits you better than what you currently have in your head about what is involved in setting boundaries and what you therefore don't want to do or can't do.
If you were raised in a fairly authoritarian manner and don’t want to repeat that, it can make it harder to set boundaries. Mindfulness, for example, can also be a good way to do this.
Setting boundaries at work
As mentioned at the beginning of the article, there is already legislation in our neighboring country that puts your boss on a leash so you can't be bothered in the evening to complete some task.
Do you suffer from constantly having to do tasks that cost you energy. That spoil your job satisfaction and disrupt the balance in your business and personal life? Then it is important to set boundaries at work.
Especially when working in a team, you may feel guilty about setting boundaries. You don’t want to burden your colleagues with the extra work that piles up if you don’t work overtime. Take a good look around you. Is everyone as busy as you are? Does everyone have the same personal situation as you?
When you have blockages that prevent you from expressing your boundaries, healthy beliefs can help break down those blockages little by little. Self-hypnosis in combination with other hypnosis techniques can play an important role in this.
In the case of self-hypnosis, your hypnosis expert gives you suggestions to take home that you can listen to at home. This ensures that what happens next during the hypnosis sessions have a faster effect and that the effect stays with you longer.
You then sit or lie down in a comfortable place at home, and during a moment where no one is going to disturb you (because you have stated your limit for a moment) you listen to the hypnotic suggestions. Often on such an mp3 there is also an induction that helps you get into hypnotic state without the hypnosis expert being with you.
In the case of setting boundaries, suggestions can take the following form:
"You have a right to live your own life."
"You can say no."
"Overworking is the exception, not the rule."
"You need rest and regularity."
"You get to ask colleagues for help," says Mr. K., who is a member of the community.
"You're also nice when you can't for once."
These are just examples of hypnotic suggestions for setting boundaries. Depending on your beliefs and issues you face in setting boundaries, you may receive other suggestions from your hypnosis expert.
Setting boundaries occurs in all parts of your life. Your relationships, your work and your family. For each part of life, there are different reasons and different ways to set boundaries while maintaining a good relationship. Hypnosis can support you with setting boundaries.
Would you like to know exactly how hypnosis works and what it takes to help yourself or others? Then come to a hypnosis workshop or sign up for one of our training programs.
[1] https://www.healio.com/nursing/journals/jne/1990-3-29-3/%7Be659d00e-e66e-48d3-93e7-0552e53d2b55%7D/setting-limits
[2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11126-015-9400-4
[3] https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/IJMHSC-07-2015-0023
[4] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0192513X13515883