Monday’s Mantra

Are you a Boundary Maker or Boundary Breaker?

Welcome to Monday’s Mantra @ Coffee Hour with Chicklit Power and Trench Classes United.

Last week in the trenches (trench classes), we were working on a symptom that more of us have than we realize; it’s this sense of worrying about how others perceive us, what they would think of us if… You can fill in the “if” blank with so many different things. As a matter of fact, I was talking with one of my leaders as she was preparing to share in this particular symptom and she had just had a huge victory in setting a material boundary, “but it wasn’t easy,” she kept reminding me.

I assured her that it rarely is when first setting a boundary, but the more we set them…without an attitude, the easier it is. See the hard part is watching the one who is trying to cross the line struggle when you reinforce the line. We wonder if we should erase it, or move it for fear of them not liking us, which equates to worrying about how they perceive us. We can’t handle rejection, so we erase our line…over and over again and pretty soon, we disappear. Not like Houdini but emotionally, we become incapable of expressing our needs and/or wants so what’s left is really a shell.

I experienced a big a-ha when talking with my husband about this symptom. He really doesn’t worry about how others perceive him and often says if someone doesn’t want to be around me, I could care less; I won’t be around them. At first glance, that seems emotionally healthy, but – yup there’s a but in there – when we pull that back and explore it a bit by reminding ourselves of the relationship that seems to be a thorn in our side, the unlovable person in our life, the one we wish would call and make an effort, can we honestly say we don’t worry or even care for that matter about that person and what they think of us, or is that simply the wall we hide behind so we don’t have to deal with it?

As he and I dug into that a little bit, we discovered that perhaps there are those that we really do care about, wonder why they perceive what they seem to be perceiving, and as long as we have done all we can to encourage acceptance, then we are free to be free from worrying about what they perceive or how they perceive us. This is the journey to self-acceptance.

Truthfully,

Evinda