Where to Draw the Line Quotes

“The longer we stay in a violating situation, the more traumatized we become. If we don't act on our own behalf, we will lose spirit, resourcefulness, energy, health, perspective, and resilience. We must take ourselves out of violating situations for the sake of our own wholeness.”
― Anne Katherine, Where to Draw the Line: How to Set Healthy Boundaries Every Day

“We sometimes feel that if a person tromps over us after we've said no, then we must not have been clear. We can get caught in the trap of explaining again and again, meanwhile letting the other person take advantage of us.”
― Anne Katherine, Where to Draw the Line: How to Set Healthy Boundaries Every Day

“Your time is your life. You are absolutely the final authority on how you will use it.”
― Anne Katherine, Where to Draw the Line: How to Set Healthy Boundaries Every Day

“The growth of intimacy will teach us how to love—both ourselves and the other person. If we will allow ourselves to practice the skills of intimacy, we will learn to love. Boundaries protect love and intimacy. Certain behaviors support the integrity of intimacy. Other behaviors, harm, disrupt, or reverse, intimacy. By using skills that promote intimacy, boundaries are created that protect the relationship.”
― Anne Katherine, Where to Draw the Line: How to Set Healthy Boundaries Every Day

“Your greatest obligation in your use of time is to yourself, so that you are filling the days of your life with the pursuits and activities that reflect your deepest values. Time boundaries protect these pursuits, creating the limits that allow you to interact most fully with what matters to you. When we clutter our lives with imagined obligations, unnecessary activities, and distractions that only kill time, we dilute the power of our lives. You have the ultimate responsibility for the use of your time. At the end of your life, none of the excuses or defenses will matter. What will matter is that you spent your time on the experiences you wanted to have.”
― Anne Katherine, Where to Draw the Line: How to Set Healthy Boundaries Every Day

“In every one of your relationships, you are on a continuum between intimacy and separation. You stand on a slide that tilts you toward either intimacy or separateness. Exactly where you stand at any given moment is the result of your decisions, your feelings, how you handle situations, and the way you and the other person communicate.”
― Anne Katherine, Where to Draw the Line: How to Set Healthy Boundaries Every Day

“Intimacy absolutely requires that each person in a relationship be whole and individual. Codependence is not intimacy. Enmeshment—two people blending in such a way that one or both lose their identity—is not intimacy either.”
― Anne Katherine, Where to Draw the Line: How to Set Healthy Boundaries Every Day

“Good boundaries, created by the use of good intimacy skills, keep a committed or intimate relationship lightly balanced between the needs of the individual and the needs of the relationship.”
― Anne Katherine, Where to Draw the Line: How to Set Healthy Boundaries Every Day

“Intimacy is the challenge of life. As I sail steadfastly into the deepening seas of my fifties and leave a longer wake behind me, I see that nothing is more important than one’s relationship with self and others—not career, not keeping the house perfect, not amassing possessions. Learning to love, to be genuine, and to gracefully allow others entrance into our hearts—these are the profound challenges for which we were born.”
― Anne Katherine, Where to Draw the Line: How to Set Healthy Boundaries Every Day