Unfuck Your Boundaries: Build Better Relationships Through Consent, Communication, and Expressing Your Needs

by Faith G. Harper

Healthy boundaries are as much about social justice as interpersonal effectiveness. If we don’t have boundaries, we are as malleable as play-doh. And if we are malleable, we are controllable.

Boundary violations may not even be overtly awful things that are happening to us. It could be the day to day chipping away at our person-hood with things that are “okay.”

Physical Boundaries: These are the boundaries that deal with the pragmatics of touch (when, where, how, who, etc.)—both of others touching you and you touching others.

Property Boundaries: These are the boundaries that deal with the things we own or lay claim to.

Sexual Boundaries: Sexual boundaries include the physical and emotional aspects of sex. They also cover information about our sexual selves:

Emotional-Relational Boundaries: Emotional-relational boundaries are not just about how we want to feel and how others want to feel. They are even more about demonstrating our respect for our own personhood and the personhood of others.

Intellectual Boundaries: Intellectual boundaries are about our thoughts, beliefs, and ideas and how they are respected. They are also about our access to information, ideas, and opportunities to learn.

Spiritual Boundaries: Spiritual boundaries are about our belief systems, how we practice them, and what we choose to share around these beliefs.

Time Boundaries: These are boundaries regarding one of our most precious resources: the expenditure of our minutes, hours, and days.

Boundaries can be rigid, permeable, or flexible.

Rigid Boundaries are boundaries that nothing gets through, ever, and there is zero space for negotiation. Some boundaries should be rigid AF.

Examples of Internal Boundary Violations • Asking personal questions outside of the depth of the relationship

Neuroethics refers to the overlap between social norms, philosophy, anthropology, and empirical brain science.

Fight is beat their ass before your ass gets beat. • Flight is get the fuck up out of here this isn’t safe. • Freeze is if you play possum and don’t respond at all maybe all this will go away.