Often times we do not take our boundaries seriously. We give people all sorts of unspoken or blantant permission to cross our boundaries to our own detriment.
Read Mercy Praise as she demystifies boundaries and how it affects our lives as a whole.
“It’s painful to know that 85% of the troubles we face in life arise as a result of personal boundaries violations.
Let’s just mention a few.
1. Husband and wife quarrels
2. Parents and adult children fights.
3. Siblings fights
4. Extended family members’ fights
5. Mother in-laws and daughter in-laws fights
6. Co workers fights
7. Friends fights
The list is endless.
Some people’s faulty upbringing give them a lousy idea that they must have a foothold in someone’s life, take and exercise right of ownership of other people’s lives.
Therefore, they want to know everything about them.
Unfortunately, the more they know the more they think that they have to control things around the person. When their victims resist such violations, a misunderstanding will occur instead of backing off the offender.
Many lives have been wrecked through personal boundaries violations. Marriages and relationships ruined for the same reason. Co workers, siblings, neighbours at dagger drawn battles for this same reason.
Consequently, mental health have been damaged due to traumas arising from personal boundaries violations. Physical health and general well-being suffer because of exhaustion from constant fights.
The other side of the coin, success, promotions, breakthroughs, great opportunities lost for this same reason.
How?
The ears and eyes that saw and heard of their coming thought the individual they are meant for are not worthy to have them and should not have them.
Have you forgotten our proverb that says mind and hand can’t destroy what eye and ear didn’t see or hear. This is what is behind the ‘evil eye’ idea.
I am a strong believer in respect and protection of personal boundaries. Once it’s not on the table I RUN no apology. Respect for personal boundaries make for peace , health, comfort and other great blessings.
1. Mental
2. Physical
3. Emotional
4. Spiritual
It’s our individual responsibility to ensure that our personal boundaries are not violated no matter what. And we must resist any attempt to violate it forcefully to avoid the terrible consequences that follow such violations.
In other words, maintaining proper personal boundaries will screen out the toxic people from our lives and the toxicity that comes with them.Women seem to have serious boundaries issues essentially because of their natural wiring and faulty upbringing that was tailored to harness their nurturing tendency to fulfill their social roles. The problem is worse in our Nigerian patriarchy society where women are viewed as not been independent from their families of origin and or the men in their lives.
Their personal boundaries are violated with impunity because of the sense of ownership exhibited by the people who are suppose to protect them.[the_ad id=”9782″]
Worse thing is that they are dazed and confused, asking people for advice of what to do in classic case of failure of taking personal responsibility over one’s life and doing the needful. But thank God that they even remember to seek for the advice.
Remember, personal boundaries were supposed to show us where we stop and another person begins. So that we individually are supposed to take ownership of our lives. But in reverse way a violator of personal boundaries of another person is now taking that same ownership in bad faith to control, undermine, take advantage of for personal gain, damage and make nonsense of other people’s lives.
They start to make choices, plans, and decisions for other people, and in the process of shoving it down their throat fight ensues. At times this fight lasts a lifetime.
Common violators of personal boundaries are usually control freaks, covert aggressive personalities, manipulators, narcissistic and passive aggressive people (may we never meet them). Be reminded that these character disorder exist in continuum. So that their boundaries violations in victims lives will be different case by case, and also subtle to the extent that the victims of the violations may not even understand what is happening to them.
This is exactly what happened in all the cases of domestic violence of different variants. So, that the child, spouse, parents, siblings, co-workers, neighbours and strangers whose personal boundaries are violated may not readily remember that it’s their boundaries that is issue and not the object of contention.
Why are women, first born, mothers, caretakers overburdened to a point of abusiveness in our society? Who are these spineless people that cannot carry their responsibilities? Who says they must continue in that madness?
This is reason after carrying such heavy load of other people’s responsibilities, these burden carriers seems to possess right of ownership and control over the lives of those they helped. We know of some families where the firstborns rule with supreme power. Why? It’s simply because they were the sacrificial lamb for that family and they know it. The weak among these firstborns were dumped immediately younger siblings gain financial independent.
The importance of personal boundaries can’t be overemphasized. A look at nature shows great tapestry of boundaries put in place to protect us and keep us safe. Climate change is one of the catastrophic evidence of violations through human unethical exploitation of the nature. Again, Covid-19 the present day world wide pandemic is another evidence that violations of boundaries will cause trouble.
Finally, we must not shy away from our duty to protect our personal boundaries at all times for our safety, well-being and security.
In protecting our personal boundaries my number weapon is the word No. It’s is a complete sentence that doesn’t need explanation. I discovered very early in life how powerful this word is and that have been my magic wand against bad people.
Other weapons are time off, emotional distance, truth, geographical distance just to mention few.
May we borrow wisdom where and when we need it.
Article written by Mercy Praise
You can connect with Mercy Praise via Facebook where she dishes out educative piece to enlighten and liberate women.
The link to her Facebook page is
https://www.facebook.com/mercy.praise.503
