Recently I had the privilege of hosting a group of women in a therapeutic art journalling class. This session’s focus was on our boundaries, what they are, what affects them, and how we can strengthen them. Through some visualisation meditative practices, we took a look at our boundary, how it currently looked and the learnings or challenges that we collectively were facing. Participants wrote about there boundaries, drew representations of what was occurring for them currently and used symbols to cement and finalise the work they had completed.
We talked about our boundaries and the issues that we had all been facing. Collectively we all found some similar themes occurring. When we set boundaries there are times that others push against our boundary, like it is being tested, just to see how firm we are being. This at times has us feeling like we should cave on our boundaries, because we are empathic and have compassion for others, or we think others need us to show up and be there for them in certain ways. When we back down on the boundaries, that we explicitly set, because we know it is something we need; we diminish our light, and we essentially give our power away. We found that setting boundaries was sometimes a struggle because our people pleasing tendencies came into play and we were challenged with our own sense of self-worth. We worry that if we set a clear boundary we wouldn’t be liked, and we as women were expected to be nice, kind and pleasing. This then had a knock on effect that effected our self-esteem, and confidence, not getting our needs met and has us give away our power piece by piece. Sometimes strong women can be seen as: too much, difficult, entitled or demanding. This type of thinking has us be wishy washy, and not setting expectations and boundaries, due to worry of others not respecting and or liking us. We humans have a fundamental need to be liked and loved. It is part of our make-up. However, the right people for us will love, like and respect us, we are worthy of that.
Through our art journalling practices we learnt what emotion or emotions were affecting our ability to hold a strong boundary. We learnt about what we valued as an individual and how we can tell when someone is breaching our boundary and what is important to us. When we are wishy washy, not firm or clear on our boundaries, we ourselves feel confused, and this then has those we love around us not sure were we sit, and this they themselves may struggle, to understand us and the issues that are important to us. Being clear on our boundaries sometimes mean we have to let go of others expectations so we can feel safe in our own space. Having a strong clear boundary is important, because our boundary is only meant for us, it is our own little space where we can be, breathe and process our world. We need this for our well-being, without others connections, thoughts, beliefs and emotions. This is meant to be our safe space where we can be free to be completely us. In all our human glory.
The takeaways from the session had us reflecting on:
- Values guiding our boundaries
- Working with and understanding our emotions better, helps us to strengthen our boundaries
- Our boundaries can sometimes sit to close to our bodies, when in reality it wants to be bigger. We keep our boundaries small so people will like us
- Even those of us who do regular boundary work were surprised to see there own little boundary monster, lurking in the sphere of confusion and an aspect that appeared to weaken the boundary line. This shows we always have something to learn from our experiences and areas we can grow
Our next session will be on Body Image and I look forward to the wonders of what our bodies have to show us. We will look at learning to understand: body image and societal and our own expectations, aches and pains, our feelings towards our body, accepting our body as it is and honoring our body for providing for us. Really, we will be looking at anything body related that you want to understand better about yourself. If you are interested in joining our next session, click this link.
