Boundaries: Say No Without Guilt, Have Better Relationships, Boost Your Self-Esteem, Stop People-Pleasing. Jennie Miller
Talk to your GP about natural ways to support the menopause and discuss whether hormone replacement therapy (HRT) might be right for you or your partner.
Early starts or late nights: shift work can take a toll on many relationships because it does disturb everyone’s sleep. Simple tricks like leaving clothes for the next day in another room and minimising all chances of disruption can help. Sleep masks can be useful too. Conversations and mutual consideration are key.
Draw the Line: self-boundaries don’t just mean being firm with ourselves, but with others. Sometimes the greatest threat to you building a strong set of self-boundaries comes from the person you love most.
You’ll notice how in order to achieve your sleep self-boundary in a situation where you share your bed, your co-sleeper will have to put some boundaries in place too. Whether this means addressing their own health, their attitude to bedtime, or talking about their feelings more, your partner’s self-boundary is linked to yours. Throughout the book, there will be examples of this and sometimes you will find this challenging. Our self-boundaries are crucial to our personal wellbeing but they will have an effect on those closest to us. This is not a reason to give up as the case history on fitness in the next section shows.
EXERCISE: Simple Body Scan(Listen to this exercise here)
Trouble getting to sleep or maybe you suffer from 3 a.m. wakefulness? With time, this will help you to relax and head off to the Land of Nod.
Practice this during the day when you can be on your own and not disturbed. Either lying in your bed or on a sofa, take a few breaths, settle yourself and close your eyes.
Now imagine a light above your body. It can be any colour you find comforting – white, lilac, gold – and it can be warm or cool as suits your surroundings and mood.
Start at your toes and visualise the light moving slowly up to your head and back down again, relaxing each muscle as you go. As it shines on different parts of your body, mentally and physically relax the muscles there.
Allow yourself to sink into the bed and breathe slowly and deeply as you drift into sleep.
Setting your sleep boundaries will start a virtuous circle. Engaging that considered voice – which has listened to all your internal opinions – when considering self-boundaries will help you to rest. Being more rested will allow you to engage that voice again when you need to review another self-boundary. Overall, be kind to yourself and know that rest is good. Take the pressure off.
Now go to your Learning Journal and note the sleep self-boundaries you can start to work on.
In this section, we’ll introduce the self-boundaries you need to implement around exercise.
Ask yourself this: what was your reaction to reading the section sub-heading ‘Fitness’? Did you want to skip this section? Perhaps you thought you didn’t need to read it, or were afraid – not just of what it might say but how it might make you feel?
Write this feeling down. Which inner voice is talking, do you think? Perhaps it is a lofty, ‘I don’t need this,’ which sounds a bit like a Parent talking. Or maybe, ‘This feels exciting; I love running around,’ which is like a Child. An Adult response would be ‘I wonder what I can learn from this,’ however experienced or motivated you already are.
We’re all aware these days of how vital it is to get and maintain fitness. Numerous studies have shown the benefits of regular exercise for cardiovascular and mental health. But, how do you draw the line between managing your body for optimum, age-related health and becoming either too overwhelmed to start or too obsessed to stop? Those who develop a fanatical approach to fitness have self-boundaries which are just as weak as those who do no sport. The healthy position lies between the two and is the one that comes with positive self-boundaries – knowing how much and how often to exercise so that your fitness will improve but not dominate your life and relationships.
First, decide how fit you need to be to care for yourself. We would advise visiting your GP practice before taking up a new exercise regime, especially if you are aged over 50. That may mean blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar level testing. You may consider yourself to be in good shape but don’t take that for granted. Inherited cholesterol issues affect slim people as well as those who are heavier; and doctors have also warned about the development of internal fat around organs, which is believed to be more dangerous for your health than a little extra visible fat on your thighs.
You could use a gym to have an assessment with a personal trainer. You may prefer to use a monitoring wristband – like a Fitbit or Nike+ FuelBand. Or you could check your BMI against NHS guidelines – and at the same time, count your daily steps to see how close they are to the recommended daily 10,000. You could also try timing how long it takes to walk to a set point. These tests and measures will give you a practical idea of how fit you are and what you might want to do, but some people will still find it difficult to build and maintain a self-boundary around fitness.
BRING IN THE BOUNDARIES:
Your Fitness Plan
Whatever your current state – couch potato or marathon runner – here are some ways to improve your self-boundary towards a healthier state of fitness.
Take the Adult position and say, ‘What can I learn that might make a difference to me?’
Note down three things you might like to change. These could be: ‘I just want to get off the sofa’; ‘I don’t want to let fitness run my life’; or ‘I want to get moving for the sake of my aching back or stiff joints’.
Getting your body into a healthy condition can be done in lots of ways. Gyms and running are not for everyone – nor do they have to be. Not all fitness has to be competitive either. If you find sport intimidating for that reason, perhaps you might consider Tai Chi or something in a group, like line dancing. Think of a long-lost passion – such as horse riding – could you do that again? Get out of the mindset that fitness has to look a certain way and/or equal slog.
How much time can you give to fitness weekly? Whatever you choose needs to fit in with the time available, rather than you squeezing a busy schedule tighter – which will give you an excuse to fail.
The same can be true for cost and/or facilities. If you live miles from a town, don’t pressure yourself to join a gym you may find hard to visit. The answer might lie in a pedometer.
Draw the Line: set yourself up for success, not failure. But if you do step backwards, don’t give up hope. The boundary is still in place, it just needs a little more attention.
Buddy systems have their uses, but a self-boundary isn’t one you can share. If your buddy falls by the wayside, it can be difficult not to follow suit. Enjoy company if it helps with your motivation, but don’t let it be your only motivation.
At all times be wary of following in other people’s footsteps, particularly your parents’ or those of other important individuals in your life. If you instinctively don’t want to do a type of exercise, ask yourself why. Did your mum, dad, or sibling do it so well that you feel you can never compete? In which case, understand that you don’t have to do this to participate at their level – you can just be yourself and enjoy it.
Self-boundaries can be challenged by our relationships with our emotional partners; however, they are not the only threats to our self-care. The challenge could equally well come from parents, friends, or children, even if they don’t realise they are affecting our personal decisions.
CASE HISTORY
This example highlights the impact those around us have on our boundaries: Liam and Grace came to Jennie’s practice together with a familiar problem of miscommunication. But as Jennie began to work with them, one issue popped up which turned out to be quite typical of their relationship. They seemed unable to create secure healthy self-boundaries