Do you have a pattern of saying yes to others, but then feeling resentful later on? Do you believe that you must come to the aid of others and often give to get?
You are not alone.
Many of us have developed a belief that we must be nice, pleasing, or helpful to the exclusion of our own feelings and needs in order to be worthy of love or appreciation. This belief is, of course, not true and furthermore an impossible goal to meet. When we give to get, we can often end up feeling angry and as a result we don’t create healthy boundaries or compassionate boundaries at home and work.
A few years ago, I was presenting to a group of 100 employees on the topic of increasing resilience to stress. During the seminar, I asked employees what was causing stress in their lives. One of the employees, named Cheryl, said, “ My boss stresses me out.” When I inquired further, she told the group that a few times a day, her boss would text her a note with an alarming tone in the order of “Get in my office now!” Cheryl said that when she received these texts, she would immediately freeze up and wouldn’t know what to do or say for several minutes. She didn’t feel safe to address her boss in his time of fury and wanted to avoid conflict, so she did nothing.
This became a habitual pattern between the two of them: After each text, Cheryl would automatically shut down and wait until she felt ready to respond. This only added to more aggressive outbursts on her boss’s end and it became a vicious cycle of her shutting down, him blowing up, and more importantly Cheryl not setting compassionate and healthy boundaries at work—a pattern that she also re-created when conflict arose at home.
What is a Compassionate Boundary?
A “compassionate boundary” is a term that I have been using for the last several years with my students and clients. I define a compassionate boundary as the act of turning toward whatever difficulty I am feeling with compassion and listening to the underlying need that I want to request that is both compassionate to myself and the other person involved. When a boundary is crossed, the first emotion we often feel is anger. Anger is here to protect us from harm and informs us that we need to re-assert our boundary to come back into harmony. The practice of cultivating compassionate boundaries has been tremendously beneficial in my personal and professional life. I hope it serves you well, too.
How can we tell when we aren’t holding compassionate boundaries?
- We say yes, when we really want to say no.
- Other people’s problems become our priorities.
- We neglect important concerns related to home or work.
- We suffer physically because there is so much outward focus that we aren’t listening within to our self-care needs, like sleep, meditation, exercise, taking breaks, etc.
- We accept abuse in our relationships.
- We are overly apologetic and don’t speak what we are truly feeling and needing.
Workplace anger is often triggered within social situations, for example, when an assistant doesn’t carry his load on a project, the boss doesn’t acknowledge your efforts, or like in the example above, a boss feels a lot of stress and overwhelm. In Cheryl’s case, the boss’s stress turns into overt anger toward his employee.
Anger and setting boundaries are clearly connected. Anger is one of the emotions we feel when we experience a perceived threat. When threatened, we release the hormone epinephrine, followed by norepinephrine (noradrenaline), prepping the body to react by increasing our heart rate and blood pressure and narrowing our focus to fight, flight, or freeze.
Holding Compassionate Boundaries
Many of us have developed very habitual reactions to difficult situations. Over time, the more consistently one responds in a certain way, the stronger the underlying neural pathways become, and thus the more difficult it is to alter our initial response when we perceive something as threatening. However, a regular meditation practice can support us to pause before reacting and investigate all of our feelings and needs.
Anger is a feeling I had not given enough space for in my life. Fear and I were good friends, sadness too, but expressing anger got me in trouble as a teenager and even sometimes as an adult, so I learned to stuff it. However, it ended up leaking out in ways that were hurtful to myself and others because I wasn’t allowing my anger to be here, when it justifiably showed up. If we don’t allow ourselves to feel our anger with kindness and acceptance, we can’t create healthy boundaries and this can cause great damage to oneself and others through our words and actions.
If we don’t allow ourselves to feel our anger with kindness and acceptance, we can’t create healthy boundaries and this can cause great damage to oneself and others through our words and actions.
Now that I am older and wiser, I am more welcoming and responsive with anger.
The two questions that I ask anger when I notice it is present are:
What needs to be protected?
What needs to be restored?
These questions are helpful because they allow me to explore and restore my boundaries with compassion for myself and others. I have recognized that anger is a gift and here to protect me from harm. Anger can be a powerful ally that transforms from reactivity into a courageous heart.