Boundaries Quotes

“Generally, stress means we aren’t getting enough help. It can be heightened by self-made rules about doing things perfectly and not making any mistakes; by black-and-white thinking; by not accepting help, not getting advice, not trusting; by thinking we have to do everything ourselves; and by other rules we may have made to survive childhood.”
― Anne Katherine, Boundaries Where You End And I Begin: How To Recognize And Set Healthy Boundaries

“Intimacy comes from being known, and being known requires knowing yourself, having a self to know, and having enough of a sense of your own individuality to have something to present to the other.”
― Anne Katherine, Boundaries Where You End And I Begin: How To Recognize And Set Healthy Boundaries

“As much as we want to improve our relationships with our fathers or mothers, if your father, for example, hasn’t changed, he’ll probably hurt you again. His response is saying that he can’t handle more intimacy with you. Repeated efforts on your part won’t change this. No matter how much we love someone, they have the choice of holding to their limits. I have a certain relative I love very much. I’ve poured my heart out telling of my wish that we might be closer. I’ve been hurt a hundred times. So I finally got it. No matter how much I want to be closer to my relative, I can’t make him take his barrier away. He has a right to keep it. But I can protect myself from being hurt again. I can stop banging my head on his barrier.”
― Anne Katherine, Boundaries Where You End And I Begin: How To Recognize And Set Healthy Boundaries

“But both physical and emotional boundary development are harmed by distance violations, not just intrusion violations.”
― Anne Katherine, Boundaries Where You End And I Begin: How To Recognize And Set Healthy Boundaries

“We can be assisted but not forced. Our spiritual development comes from our inner selves.”
― Anne Katherine, Boundaries Where You End And I Begin: How To Recognize And Set Healthy Boundaries

“When a person neither knows his feelings nor has healthy ways to handle them, he is vulnerable to whatever will keep his feelings contained—alcohol or other drugs, food, excessive work, stress, compulsive acquiring, compulsive hobbying.”
― Anne Katherine, Boundaries Where You End And I Begin: How To Recognize And Set Healthy Boundaries

“But if the other person is simply incapable of acting in a healthy way because of an addiction or personality disorder, we must protect ourselves. Sometimes we need to leave a job to find a healthier work environment. A company or agency that doesn’t clean up its act always loses the good people. When the employees get healthy, they leave.”
― Anne Katherine, Boundaries Where You End And I Begin: How To Recognize And Set Healthy Boundaries

“In these examples, triangulation becomes a defense. Triangulation becomes a way to offset the abuse of power and to get clarity about the wrongs committed. This kind of triangulation occurs in families where one member is abusing his or her power. Like a poor boss, an abusive parent who is deaf to protest gives the children no choice but to talk about that parent. When a parent refuses to hear the issues of adult children, the children turn either to each other or to outsiders, but both sides lose. The parent loses an opportunity for greater closeness with the child and the adult child must grieve the loss of the sought-for resolution that cannot come about.”
― Anne Katherine, Boundaries Where You End And I Begin: How To Recognize And Set Healthy Boundaries

“Thousands of people grow up in this condition—walking shells whose inner self has been squashed or destroyed—shells filled with some other person’s dreams or values, or filled with hate and anger, or filled with drugs or a drive to gather lots of things—anything to not feel so empty.”
― Anne Katherine, Boundaries Where You End And I Begin: How To Recognize And Set Healthy Boundaries

“who aren’t related by blood.”
― Anne Katherine, Boundaries Where You End And I Begin: How To Recognize And Set Healthy Boundaries

“you long to have with them, it will take time to get through this loss. It’s a death really—the death of your hope for family. Sometimes we have to find family among those”
― Anne Katherine, Boundaries Where You End And I Begin: How To Recognize And Set Healthy Boundaries

“If your parents can’t take the steps toward the relationship”
― Anne Katherine, Boundaries Where You End And I Begin: How To Recognize And Set Healthy Boundaries

“When anger is being diverted from some other person or issue, it scalds. It creates new problems in the relationship that would not have to be there if the true feelings and problems had been communicated. Such a mess can make us feel involved, but this involvement is not intimacy.”
― Anne Katherine, Boundaries Where You End And I Begin: How To Recognize And Set Healthy Boundaries

“but a partner who refuses to enable unhealthy behavior—and fighting about a bogus issue is unhealthy because solving it doesn’t solve the main problem—is a partner who participates in restoring clarity to the relationship.”
― Anne Katherine, Boundaries Where You End And I Begin: How To Recognize And Set Healthy Boundaries

“Dealing with real issues saves lots of time. Also, wasting time on distractions keeps confusion in the relationship and increases the possibility that partners will hurt each other out of escalating anger and frustration.”
― Anne Katherine, Boundaries Where You End And I Begin: How To Recognize And Set Healthy Boundaries

“A parent who is too flexible deprives children of the sense of security that comes from having a specific schedule, clear limits, and definite standards. Such a parent isn’t able to protect her own needs and may raise selfish children who never learn to respect the needs of another.”
― Anne Katherine, Boundaries Where You End And I Begin: How To Recognize And Set Healthy Boundaries

“Parents are likely to parent as they were parented unless they’ve learned a different way and had their own needs met.”
― Anne Katherine, Boundaries Where You End And I Begin: How To Recognize And Set Healthy Boundaries

“Children need a lot from their parents beyond food, clothing, shelter, safety, and security. They need parental interest, guidance, affection, concern, and safe physical contact.”
― Anne Katherine, Boundaries Where You End And I Begin: How To Recognize And Set Healthy Boundaries

“A wife is not the best person to teach her husband how to feel.”
― Anne Katherine, Boundaries Where You End And I Begin: How To Recognize And Set Healthy Boundaries

“child can have plenty of food, warm clothes, and a clean home yet be utterly emotionally abandoned. Without parental warmth and attention, emotional development withers.”
― Anne Katherine, Boundaries Where You End And I Begin: How To Recognize And Set Healthy Boundaries

“Setting emotional boundaries includes deciding what relationships I’ll foster and continue and which people I’ll back away from because I can’t trust them.”
― Anne Katherine, Boundaries Where You End And I Begin: How To Recognize And Set Healthy Boundaries

“We learn about our boundaries by the way we are treated as children. Then we teach others where our boundaries are by the way we let them treat us. Most people will respect our boundaries if we indicate where they are. With”
― Anne Katherine, Boundaries Where You End And I Begin: How To Recognize And Set Healthy Boundaries

“that comes from knowing we can and will protect ourselves from the ignorance, meanness, or thoughtlessness of others.”
― Anne Katherine, Boundaries Where You End And I Begin: How To Recognize And Set Healthy Boundaries

“With good boundaries, we can have the wonderful assurance”
― Anne Katherine, Boundaries Where You End And I Begin: How To Recognize And Set Healthy Boundaries

“Boundaries bring order to our lives. As we learn to strengthen our boundaries, we gain a clearer sense of ourselves and our relationship to others. Boundaries empower us to determine how we’ll be treated by others.”
― Anne Katherine, Boundaries Where You End And I Begin: How To Recognize And Set Healthy Boundaries

“We have spiritual boundaries. You are the only one who knows the right spiritual path for yourself. If someone tries to tell you he knows the only way you can believe, he’s out of line.”
― Anne Katherine, Boundaries Where You End And I Begin: How To Recognize And Set Healthy Boundaries

“When a person neither knows his feelings nor has healthy ways to handle them, he is vulnerable to whatever will keep his feelings contained—alcohol, drugs, food, excessive work, stress, compulsive acquiring, compulsive hobbying.”
― Anne Katherine, Boundaries Where You End And I Begin: How To Recognize And Set Healthy Boundaries

“Best of luck building good boundaries. This process requires continued attention and maintenance. Someday, perhaps, most of us will understand boundaries and be sensitive to interactions that cross boundaries. But until that happy time, even well-meaning people will continue to intrude on personal territory. Good boundaries enable us to define ourselves. They enhance our physical and emotional health and promote recovery. Good boundaries yield healthy relationships. True intimacy is possible only between two whole, distinct people who both have good boundaries. Enmeshment feels like intimacy but it’s not. How can you be intimate with someone who blends into you? Intimacy grows as you become known by the other and as you know the other. If the other person’s individuality shifts and fades, how can you know this person? If your sense of yourself is wobbly, how can you be known?”
― Anne Katherine, Boundaries Where You End And I Begin: How To Recognize And Set Healthy Boundaries

“Diets are a waste of time, sabotage is certain, if you need extra weight for safety or if food is the way you comfort yourself. Instead of setting yourself up for another failure, give yourself the opportunity to learn to meet your needs and protect yourself. Weight, of course, is a complicated problem. Many people hope that when they do learn to protect themselves, the weight will melt automatically. But for most of us, other things need to be attended to. In any case, boundary formation is essential to recovering from bingeing. Attending to your insides is an important part of changing the outside.”
― Anne Katherine, Boundaries Where You End And I Begin: How To Recognize And Set Healthy Boundaries

“Perhaps you eat more when you feel threatened. Perhaps you eat when you know someone is going to try to take more from you than you want to give. Perhaps you eat when you’re with a person who assaults your boundaries.”
― Anne Katherine, Boundaries Where You End And I Begin: How To Recognize And Set Healthy Boundaries