Emotional Boundaries

Once I reconnected to my emotions, I could discern the thoughts I was thinking to trigger my emotions. I noticed that I allowed others’ negativity to influence my response and mood. I also based my actions on what I thought may upset someone, so was not authentic in communicating my true feelings/desires. I did not have efficient boundaries. So I was tossed about emotionally based upon how another person in my life was behaving, giving my power away by not managing my boundaries and emotions intelligently. I lived in fear of upsetting others at the expense of myself. I learned about codependency through educating myself and realized I had a lot of work to break through and change my conditioned patterns of behavior and regain emotional stability. To have power over my day-to-day experience. Hopefully to promote joy and wellbeing.

I discovered I had to allow my feelings and then see if this was really in response to what was true for me? Or was I reacting in fear? I had to become the observer by not taking things personally. A person could be angry & upset and it wasn’t up to me to make it better or if a person was upset with me it didn’t mean I was a horrible person and had to atone, but maybe they were having a bad day or were actually being unreasonable and controlling. How to tell what was my emotional stuff and what was theirs? Who’s responsible? I was hearing… you made me feel bad, or you shouldn’t feel that way, that somehow everything was always my fault, that I was at cause and wrong when having conflicts? Could this be true? Was I always the cause? Or just maybe I was dealing with people who also had deficient emotional boundaries? Something had to change. I couldn’t go on like that, so I changed, to be responsible and do something different. To be open and willing to try a new and better way.

What are the boundaries with emotions? What is within my power? The only things within my power are my thoughts, feelings, and actions. What someone else thinks, feels & does is beyond my control and I am not responsible for them. These are the boundaries. Each person gets to choose their own thoughts, feelings and responses/actions. I may influence, but not control. Makes sense to me.

Hmmm…of course, there are appropriate and sensible responses in healthy relationships which are pretty much universal if you are following your heart and not your social conditioning. Yes, I believe in universal. Some call it divine truths which we are gifted with and always have at our access if we can keep in tune with them. It is the oneness that animates everything and it is a deep, inner, intuitive, wise, soul knowing of love that innately embodies us. Our logical hearts.

Know thyself, love thyself, to thine own self be true. To cultivate loving boundaries requires clarity, a conscious knowing of self. A steady mindfulness, to pause, reflect, checking deep within before reacting. To build a reliable connection with our gatekeeper, the heart, we must know ourselves, where we begin and end. What is mine, what is yours? So I had to get reacquainted with the real me before I could know my boundaries. My heart was buried in emotional chaos & debris….how to find my way back home?

I educated myself on healthy relationships and how to maintain my emotional health and learned that I am the one in control of my emotions and how I respond to the external world. I have all the power. I get to choose what I allow to bother me. Yes, our emotions arise in response to situations, yet it is up to me to decipher what is true for me and I get to choose to a large extent, my emotional response and the quality of my experiences.

I always have choices I saw. It was really all up to me…to be responsible for myself and no one else, with my thoughts, feelings, and actions. Everyone has free will. We are all one and inherently worthy in spirit, but each person is free to choose what they are creating, being, by their thoughts, feelings, and actions. What was true for me, though? I had lost myself along the way.

Reconnecting with your truth. I will share the methods I used to rediscover self in my next post.