Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life

by Henry Cloud

She saw it in the lack of respect in his eyes when she tried to tell him about her need for more support from him. She felt it in his increasingly insistent demands for her to do things his way.

It all pointed to one conclusion: the marriage was no longer a team, if it ever had been one. It was a parent-child relationship, with Sherrie on the wrong end.

The inconsistency over the years..

Coming around to his viewpoint (but not really), quietly holding her tongue, or even apologizing for being “hard to live with” all helped.

You should never have to be scared to speak your truth.

Somehow they needed to rekindle the flames of their first love.

core problem: Sherrie suffers from severe difficulties in taking ownership of her life.

It takes wisdom to know what we should be doing and what we shouldn’t. We can’t do everything.

Sherrie has great difficulty in knowing what things are her responsibility and what aren’t.

Any confusion of responsibility and ownership in our lives is a problem of boundaries.

many clinical psychological symptoms, such as depression, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, addictions, impulsive disorders, guilt problems, shame issues, panic disorders, and marital and relational struggles, find their roots in conflicts with boundaries.

Well then.

burden and load give us insight into the meaning of these texts. The Greek word for burden means “excess burdens,” or burdens that are so heavy that they weigh us down. These burdens are like boulders. They can crush us. We shouldn’t be expected to carry a boulder by ourselves!

boundaries help us keep the good in and the bad out.

Boundaries are anything that helps to differentiate you from someone else, or shows where you begin and end.

Victims of physical and sexual abuse often have a poor sense of boundaries.

Boundaries start at the skin

The most basic boundary-setting word is no. It lets others know that you exist apart from them and that you are in control of you.

you cannot say no to this external or internal pressure, you have lost control of your property and are not enjoying the fruit of “self-control.”

“I don’t like it when you yell at me!” gives people a clear message about how you conduct relationships and lets them know the “rules” of your yard.

Many people live scattered and tumultuous lives trying to live outside of their own boundaries, not accepting and expressing the truth of who they are. Honesty about who you are gives you the biblical value of integrity, or oneness.

physically removing yourself from a situation will help maintain boundaries.

Emotional distance is a temporary boundary to give your heart the space it needs to be safe;

To continue to open yourself up emotionally to an abusive or addicted person without seeing true change is foolish. Forgive, but guard your heart until you see sustained change.

Forgive but guard yur heart / Emotional Boundary.

Fear of being alone keeps many in hurtful patterns for years. They are afraid that if they set boundaries, they will not have any love in their lives.

Our point for now is that boundaries are not built in a vacuum; creating boundaries always involves a support network.

your feelings are your responsibility and you must own them and see them as your problem so you can begin to find an answer to whatever issue they are pointing to.

Feelings boundarys

Attitudes have to do with your orientation toward something, the stance you take toward others, God, life, work, and relationships. Beliefs are anything that you accept as true.

We need to own our attitudes and convictions because they fall within our property line. We are the ones who feel their effect, and the only ones who can change them.

People with boundary problems usually have distorted attitudes about responsibility. They feel that to hold people responsible for their feelings, choices, and behaviors is mean.

My issue

Parenting with love and limits, with warmth and consequences, produces confident children who have a sense of control over their lives.

Think for a moment of how often we use the phrases “I had to” or “She (he) made me” when explaining why we did or did not do something.

We need to realize that we are in control of our choices, no matter how we feel. Doing so keeps us from making choices to give “reluctantly or under compulsion,”

Making decisions based on others’ approval or on guilt breeds resentment, a product of our sinful nature. We have been so trained by others on what we “should” do that we think we are being loving when we do things out of compulsion.

Choices

Setting boundaries inevitably involves taking responsibility for your choices. You are the one who makes them. You are the one who must live with their consequences. And you are the one who may be keeping yourself from making the choices you could be happy with.

Choices

when we confess that we have a heart that values things that will not satisfy, we can receive help from God and his people to “create a new heart” within us.

What we can do is set limits on our own exposure to people who are behaving poorly; we can’t change them or make them behave right.

We need self-control without repression.

We need to seperate ourselves from people that are self destructive/act in destructive ways. This does not make us un loving

We need to be able to say no to ourselves. This includes both our destructive desires and some good ones that are not wise to pursue at a given time. Internal structure is a very important component of boundaries and identity, as well as ownership, responsibility, and self-control.

Not confronting our fear denies the grace of God and insults both his giving of the gift and his grace to sustain us as we are learning.

1. We must own our own thoughts.

2. We must grow in knowledge and expand our minds.

3. We must clarify distorted thinking.

We rarely see people as they really are; our perceptions are distorted by past relationships and our own preconceptions of who we think they are, even the people we know best.

Facts

make sure that we are communicating our thoughts to others.

many sex addicts are looking for sexual experiences, but what they really desire is love and affection.

Many people have difficulty giving and receiving love because of hurt and fear. Having closed their heart to others, they feel empty and meaningless.

Both love concealed and love rejected can kill us.

They have a lot of love around them but do not realize that their loneliness is a result of their own lack of responsiveness.

we need to claim our hearts as our property and work on our weaknesses in that area. It will open up life to us.

boundary problems take some very recognizable shapes.

people who don’t respect others’ limits also have boundary problems.

boundary conflicts are by no means limited to those who “can’t say no.”

When parents teach children that setting boundaries or saying no is bad, they are teaching them that others can do with them as they wish.