No Longer Surviving

So you are mad that they took the day off of work and now you have to cover for them. Or you are mad that you felt like you were being taken advantaged of when you tried to do something nice. A even better one is that the guy that you did not want to go out with at first ended up breaking your heart. You shouldn’t be mad at anyone, but just know that you have no boundaries.

I have found myself in this situation many times and it caused me many depressing days, frustrating and mainly anger. I would be very upset when people called off of work because I worked through being sick. There was even a time that I could not walk for three months and I had to roll myself to my workstation in mortal pain. I refused to take time off and fought through the tears trying to stay at work. I had PTO but did not want to use it and let everyone down.

Or the time that I wanted to help any and everyone that needed help and I was the first to volunteer. I ended up stretching myself so thin that I started to harbor resentment because I was doing so much and no one was trying to help me. Not minding the fact that I did not at any point state that I needed help or I couldn’t do it, but they should already know because I know.

Or the time that a guy that I was not interested in, kept pursuing me. I knew that I was not interested but kept skirting about the issue to finally giving in, only to find that I was girlfriend number 3. Now I am hurt and angry and feeling foolish because my intuition told me something was off.

I had no boundaries in all of those situations and I allowed these experiences to frustrated. Now it took me a while to figure that out until I was almost 40 years that I was the problem. And at first I did not know how to fix it. I started reading all of the books on boundaries and I was still not making any progress in life at all. So what was the issue? How can a grown woman not know how to set boundaries?

Then I found out I was a people pleaser and at first I rejected it because that does not sound like me at all. I was looking at people pleasing like a person who brown noses and that is not what I do. I want to help people or give people a chance.

Ding, ding, ding. There it is. I was reaching out to people to help them because in turn they will help me and I would feel satisfied. As the oldest child with 3 younger siblings in a chaotic household, I always wanted the help as I had to manage too much while I was young. I had to help cook, help my sisters with their homework, get them to school on time, play with them to distract them from the chaos going on around them, even going to parent-teacher conferences and the teacher actually talking to me about my sisters.

I was screaming for help, relief and since that little girl did not get it, the adult was trying to create situations, where she could get the help that she needed. I had no idea what boundaries were because I was not taught or encouraged to have boundaries. I had to be everything to everyone in my household and I became a chameleon.

Once I figured that out, my perspective changed and I have to take care of myself and it is ok to be selfish sometimes. At first saying no was foreign and it brought me a lot of anxiety as I did not say the word no except to my children if they were doing something that could hurt them. Well let me be honest what ultimately led the perspective change was when I was diagnosed with Lupus almost 2 years ago.

With that diagnosis, I had to change my stress levels and have no boundaries created that. I started considering how it would affect me without placing my expectation on other people. Like I have said before God has given us an intuition and if I am not feeling it, I am not doing it.

I have the benefit of PTO and I work hard and need to have time off so I will not get burned out or become resentful of my job. I do not volunteer to do everything anymore and will say no, I cannot do it if I am unable to do so. I have learned to walk away from people that I was not interested and would stately firmly and politely that I am not interested and follow up with the not interested action.

According to Matthew 5:37, it states that whatever you communicate let it be so, let your yes be a yes and your no be a no. Many times our boundaries are already there but we end up changing our mind to avoid conflict or making the other person upset. So in my new way of living, I respect my boundaries and I enforce my boundaries because I am no longer surviving.