Inside yourself you have a simple compass that has just two directions on it— "OK for me" and "not OK for me" This is your inner voice and you need to consult it in order to set your boundaries.
Babies are in touch with their inner compass
When you were a baby you knew when things were OK for you and when they were you smiled and gurgled and connected with your primary caregivers. You also knew when things weren't OK for you and when they weren't you screamed to let your caregiver know that things weren't OK. At that stage your carer would investigate to see how they could restore you back to a state of being OK again. Until the next time, your temperature, the state of your nappy, your hunger or your sense of safety crossed the threshold from OK to not OK. Knowing when that threshold is being crossed is about having a boundary. As a baby, screaming is about communicating that boundary to others.
Other people appreciate knowing where our boundaries are
So you had clear boundaries as a baby and you didn't hesitate to communicate them to everyone around you. In fact your carers appreciated your clarity in doing so, as long as they were able to give you what you needed. They often got a lot of satisfaction from doing this - from protecting you from things that weren't OK and giving you what was OK.
I appreciate it when other people can tell me what is OK and not OK for them and don’t just leave it to me to guess. For example, if I am going out to eat with someone and I want to go to a fish restaurant I would so much prefer to know ahead of time that they are allergic to fish.
Sadly, our ability to let people know what is OK for us is often compromised by the time we grow up.
As we get older we start to look outside ourselves to find out what is OK and not OK
As you got older you may have learned not to trust your inner certainty about what was OK or not OK but to put this aside to please other people and fit in with what was OK for them rather than yourself. You learned to have your attention outside yourself rather than inwards to work out what was OK to do, to say, to ask for and what was OK to offer to other people.
If you didn't like eating vegetables, or you liked running on the pavement, or you enjoyed painting on the walls you learned that it mattered more to know what other people thought about these things. People still enjoyed giving you what you felt was OK but only if it matched with their ideas of what was healthy, safe or otherwise good for you...and for them.
You also learned that it wasn't always a good idea to let other people know what was OK or not OK for you. Maybe you really didn't like your birthday gift from your aunt and learned that you had to pretend to like it and thank her profusely. Maybe it really wasn't OK for you to spend time with those children next door but your parents needed you to spend time with them.
It doesn’t serve us well to lose contact with what is OK to us
Over and over again we learned, as children to override our own preferences, likes and needs for the sake of other people. This is a big part of living alongside other people, which is important for all of us but doesn't serve us well if we lose contact with what matters to us.
So by the time we become adults our inner compass of OK and not OK is consulted less and less. Other people and societal rules tell us what to do with our time, what our values should be and what we want from life. We lose our confidence in even knowing what is OK for us and we often don't know how to communicate this to others or whether it's actually all right to do so.
We discount our inner voices, override our inner voices and eventually we lose contact with our inner voices. Instead of consulting that inner compass we try to make ourselves OK by putting all our energy into making other people OK, by numbing the feelings of distress with substances or mindless activities, by trying harder and harder to 'succeed' or make money. We put ourselves under huge stresses because we mistakenly believe that there is no other option but to carry on. Even if we are aware of an inner voice that is saying "This isn't OK for me." we tell ourselves that we can't do anything about it. But maybe we can.
Sometimes it takes a very significant event to wake us up.
I woke up to the need for boundaries when I lost my son but it wasn't instantaneous. My waking up has taken many years but the clear catalyst was that terrible night when I was told he had taken his own life.
I was in a relationship that wasn't OK for me. I was in a job that wasn't OK for me. I was in a financial situation that wasn't OK for me. I drank more wine than was right for me. I smoked and that wasn't right for me. I spent time with some people who weren't right for me doing things that weren't OK for me. I could go on. Whilst I had been just about managing all these aspects of my life up to that point I now had profound grief and deep trauma to manage too and I couldn't manage all of those things at once. I knew that if I was to learn how to live with this profound loss that I needed to relearn to consult my inner compass.
I worked hard to tune back into my inner compass
So slowly, inexorably, over the years I changed a lot of things. I learned how to tune into my inner compass of OK/not OK and I developed the ability to listen to the 'Yes' and 'No' from inside myself. I don't always succeed in doing this and I always know when I have crossed my own boundaries, perhaps by agreeing to something that goes against my values or compromises my energy levels. I end up feeling overwhelmed and distressed.
Other people haven't always appreciated what I do or don't do, what is right for me and what isn’t, especially when they were used to something different and whilst I have compassion for how they feel I can't allow that to change my direction. For me, being aware of my "OK for me" versus "Not OK for me." inner compass and voice, or, in other words, having boundaries and allowing them to inform what I do is a radical practice of self-care.