Healthy Boundaries Series 4: Thoughts and Feelings

This is a series about 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

Healthy Boundaries Series Article 4: Thoughts and Feelings

This article might be the most immediately applicable and needed in the world today, given how much of our communication online is fraught with tension and poor behavior. 

Do not speak with authority about anyone else's thoughts, feelings motives, intentions, or desires. 

As this boundary is crossed regularly and egregiously in much of our public discourse, it is no wonder we may believe it is acceptable.  If everybody does it, then maybe it is something that is okay to do.  Unfortunately, jumping to conclusions about other people's thoughts, feelings, and intentions is one of the first weapons of the weak.  Yet, it is modeled everywhere, so we all tend to do it.

This is where I point once again to the Golden Rule.  If you don't like it when someone does it to you, don't do it to them.

Do not speak with authority about anyone else's thoughts, feelings motives, intentions, or desires. 

If you want any discussion to devolve quickly into defense and attack rather than productive dialogue, go ahead and tell someone else what they are feeling, meaning, or intending. Even if you are sure you know what is going on inside someone else's head, announcing it as fact is a violation. It is deeply disrespectful. It will get you in trouble.

This is a very hard boundary to honor, particularly when we feel ill-used or deceived. "You are lying to me!" crosses the boundary. "I do not trust your words," keeps you firmly in what you can actually know.  Then, if they come back at you with, "Are you calling me a liar?" The answer is, "No. You might be lying to me. You might not. I can't know. Only you know if you are lying.  But I do know I don't trust your words."

Can you see the difference?  You will be keeping your conversational boundaries clean when you stay out of the other person's business (thoughts, feelings, intentions) and in what you can genuinely know, which are your own thoughts, feelings, and intentions.

It is not easy. It takes practice.  It can be especially frustrating when the other person is not abiding by the same rules.  But it will leave you in integrity.

I know what you are thinking. "This is crazy!  This is too hard!" (Actually, I can't possibly know what you are thinking.  I can guess. I might guess fairly accurately. But only you get to be the authority on what is going on in your own head and heart.)

Here are examples of the sorts of statements one might find on the internet or in life. Can you pick out which ones cross a boundary, and which ones stay respectful?

1. "Releasing that news item today was politically motivated. The other party only did it to ruin our chances."
2. "Wow. That is not at all what I got from reading that article."
3. "If you think you have a right to have a gun, you are selfish."
4. "If you believe in taxation, you believe in theft."
5. "I cannot understand why you voted for Trump. Do you want to try to explain your thinking?"
6. "You forgot my birthday. You must not love me."
7. "What you just said made me uncomfortable. I need some time alone."
8. "You voted for Obama, therefore you are a white-hating, man-hating baby killer."
9. "I don't actually feel safe answering you right now. I need time." 
10. "If you would just do a little research you would know I'm right."

I hope that was easy. If it was, I suspect you are on the road to learning better civil discourse and healthier communication skills.

(Or maybe you already were. I can't know. But it sure made a snappy ending!)

Following are the other entries in the series:
Money
Health
Family of Origin

Healthy Boundaries Series: 3. Family of Origin

This is a series about 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

3. Family of Origin: Do not comment on someone else's family of origin, even if you are repeating something you heard an actual family member say. This applies to hometowns and countries too.

The boundary around comments on someone else's family can be a baffling one.  The clue that a boundary is being crossed is if an actual family member feels offended or irritated by our comment.

"I know I said that my brother is a jerk, but that doesn't mean you get to say my brother is a jerk."

You get to have your experience of your family. I get to have my experience of my family. Neither of us gets to comment with any authority on the other one's family without treading on thin ice. Outsiders do well to leave all commentary on what it is like to belong to a family to those who belong to it. This goes for hometowns and countries too.

This boundary springs from our sense of belonging and ownership.  It may even speak to a sense of identity.  If you criticize my roots, even if I also criticize them, I likely will feel a need to defend the place, because I once belonged there and come from there. It is part of me, even if I may have separated myself from much of what it stands for. Unless you come from there too, be careful what you have to say.

Do not comment on someone else's family of origin, even if you are repeating something you heard an actual family member say. 

The application of this boundary even to one's country became very clear to me yesterday. Apparently I "constantly" criticize the US, and often say how much better my experience as a Canadian has been than my experience as an American. (This is true.)  Apparently, this is very irritating to Americans.


But I am an American!  Why don't I get to comment?

I think I understand why, now.  I am "not allowed" to criticize the US though I am a US citizen because I am also a Canadian citizen.  In fact, I identify more as Canadian, which lands me firmly in the outsider category.  I no longer get to criticize the US as an insider, even though I was born in the US and currently live in the US. Because I identify as Canadian, my comments still come across as criticism from an outsider, which is absolutely offensive.

I'M SORRY!!!!!

My endless "negging" comes from grief and loss. In the public discourse, it just comes across as offensive. It belongs in my therapist's office or with close friends. That was very hard to hear at first because it came across as saying that the grief and loss and disillusionment were themselves shameful or invalid.

I needed to understand the dynamics of the boundaries and how my belonging/not belonging was perceived before I could see why others got to comment and I didn't. I needed to understand that I still get to have all my feelings, I just need to be more judicious in how and where I express them. Lesson (FINALLY) learned.  I am indeed sorry for how offensive my words may have been to those who have had to put up with them.

I put all of this here to show that we all make mistakes.  I put this here to articulate the "why" of these social dynamics, especially for those who are helped by understanding why.  May the naming of these boundaries make a difference in our shared communication.


Following are the other entries in the series:
Money
Health
Thoughts and Feelings