“I don’t write shallow, fluffy, feel-good books where emotional wellness work is over-simplified by burying it with mantras about how the laws of attraction will create instant happiness and success (not to mention perfect boundaries).”
This is the second boundary-related book that I was suggested to read recently, the first being Patrick King’s The Art of Everyday Assertiveness, which I found to be excellent. After then moving on to this book, man I am feeling that I really have a handle on why a lot of my relationships are pretty screwed up - and I preferred this book to King’s, although they both have really different and unique perspectives to offer that were both equally helpful. The most important thing to mention is that I am not the type of person that believes in any spiritual woo-woo, and these two books really knocked it out of the park with concrete, direct, and science/psychology-based approaches to the subject matter.
UnF **k Your Boundaries is an informative, illustrated guide to the whys and wherefores of where our boundaries have gone terribly wrong, what kind of people in our lives are most likely to take advantage of them, and how to reclaim them. It is also a guide to exploring your own boundary-breaking habits, and examining the best self-reflective patters and exercises we need to fight back. The book reminds us how people of a certain high-conflict, low-boundary nature will take advantage of the low/porous boundary person and use it to coopt their kindness and malleability, and I found this to be the most illuminating part of the book to me. I found that it was generally my fault for having such porous boundaries, and also putting trust into people who have personality types that fall into the high-conflict, coercive control identity. I am a good person that people can use to meet their own needs, and in the past, I have had difficulty identifying when these things were happening until it was much, much too late.
I enjoyed this book a lot and I feel like it has given me strategies to take back my life. I have made a lot of mistakes, and it's really awful that I had such difficulty not only communicating my wants and needs, but doing it clearly and consistently. When there have been boundary violations – and there have been a lot that have affected my entire life – people have just walked all over me like they were allowed to, and it is not only their fault for being garbage, but mine for allowing it and avoiding conflict. This book outlines how that was done, how to take my life back, and how to move forward with compassion and empathy.
It also discusses the ways I may have disrupted other people’s boundaries in the past, and when to atone for them if it is necessary to. Sometimes it isn’t okay to atone for them, either because it is too far gone or it ends up actually being (or perceived as) just an exercise in making oneself feel better and it will make them feel worse. Regardless, assuming you are not an abusive person and have a lot of additional work to do, this book also helps you fix past boundary errors you have made.
“...we all have so much capacity for healing. And healthy relationships. And we deserve safe passage in society... problems that have existed for generations don’t get fixed with platitudes, they get fixed when we do the difficult work of figuring out what we truly want in life, the kinds of relationships we want and don’t want, and how we best communicate these desires to those around us while holding space for them to communicate their desires to us.”
This was a really great book. A fast read, without any fluff and a lot of concrete suggestions on how to take back your life. It is short, succinct, to the point, and has a voice that is a lot of fun. Definitely worth picking up, as it is clear we all have a lot of work to do in this department.