Healthy Boundaries Series: 2. Health Management

This is a series on maintaining healthy boundaries within relationships.

The guidelines stated in this series may challenge a lot of long-standing habits. It is my experience that these old societal habits are unhealthy and that these new boundary markers point us to healthier ways to navigate our interpersonal dynamics and shared experience. I recommend that readers consider these guidelines and try them on before starting in with arguments. The suggested changes are nuanced and will possibly threaten our collective go-to behaviors for judging and attempting to manipulate other people's choices.

These boundaries outline what is ours to control and what is not ours to control. They keep us in our own business and out of other people's business. Poor boundaries encourage us to spend too much time trying to manage other people's lives and discourage us from the hard work of managing our own. It is a spiritual practice to move increasingly into managing our own business and to get out of everyone else's. The more we do this work, the clearer we will also become in identifying what is our shared business, and how to navigate that as well.  Without this work, we will do poorly in managing shared or public business.

Credit for identifying and articulating these boundaries goes to Mark R Carlson, MS, MDiv, Marriage and Family Therapist in Huntingdon Valley, PA. USA

2. HEALTH MANAGEMENT: Do not judge how someone else manages their body

Think of a time when someone else commented on how you manage your health or diet or experience of your body. "You should try the paleo diet." "Just take Tylenol, it helps me every time." "Yoga can fix any health problem, you just have to commit." "You can't be a lesbian, you had a boyfriend."

While these tidbits often come from a desire to be helpful, they are more often than not irritating and unhelpful, somehow requiring us to explain why we might not agree. They require a sort of defense: reclaiming what is ours, not theirs, to manage.

The wording and the tone make all the difference. If we feel irritated, it is probably because the commentary is trespassing on our business.

We are the sole managers of our physical experience, and we get to be the authorities on what works and what doesn't; on what we are ready to try, and what we are not; on what we experience and feel.

"I have found yoga to be very helpful.  Is that something you might want to try?" is far less likely to trigger irritation than, "You have to try yoga. My teacher is the best. Honestly. Only idiots avoid yoga."

More examples follow. Which ones do you find more irritating and which less?  Can you understand why?

1. "Please come to Tai Chi with me. I KNOW it will help you."
2. "I have been taking melatonin for my insomnia and it is helping. I don't know if it will help you, because our biologies are all different. I just wish it would help you too."
3. "I like the way my doctor explains everything to me and lets me choose. She isn't high-handed. She is taking new patients."
   
4. "My multi-vitamin has me feeling so much better. You have to try it!"
5. "I can't believe you are trying to treat your cancer alternatively. You might as well just burn your money and shoot yourself. It would have the same outcome."
6. "You are looking into alternative treatments for your bipolar? Huh. I feel nervous about that. I haven't seen good outcomes so far with that approach. I wish you all the best."
7. "There are only two genders. You don't get to say you are 'fluid.' You are the gender you were born. Saying you feel differently is selfish."
8. "You are my child, and you are an adult. Your choice to go off your meds makes me nervous. If you have a psychotic break, the responsibility lands on me. I don't know if I'm willing to go through that again. How can we work this out in a way that feels good to both of us?

In number eight, the example shows the speaker expressing concern about how the other person's choice could have a negative impact on the speaker's own life.  This is absolutely something we get to do. When someone else's choices affect the quality of our life, we get to express concern and name why we are concerned. We still don't (necessarily) get to control the other person's choices. We do get to set up protections for ourselves if the other person has a pattern of repeated poor choices whose consequences land on us.

Do not judge how someone else manages their body

Respecting personal boundaries around someone else's experience of and management of their own body means we are respecting the intelligence and autonomy of the other.  In terms of the Golden Rule (treat others the way you want to be treated) I prefer having my intelligence and autonomy respected.  I do not like micromanagement any more than I like a backseat driver. I think it is safe to assume we all would prefer to be treated with respect and dignity.  Please let me know if that is not your experience!

We all deserve to be autonomous.  Unfortunately, we are not all the owners of consistently excellent judgment or mental health. The big question of how we navigate our shared reality with those who make occasional poor choices, those who make repeated poor choices, and those who simply are not capable of living a fully autonomous life without oversight is another discussion for another time.

Until then, please treat others the way you prefer to be treated in relation to your experience and choices around your body. That does not mean that you get to export your experiences and answers onto others. That means that they get to name and have very different experiences from yours without either of you feeling threatened or invalidated.

Respectful questions are welcomed!

Following are the other three entries in the series:
Money
Family of Origin
Thoughts and Feelings