Therapy grounded in real inner work and genuine human connection.
I was having a conversation at the gym this morning with my running coach about how there has been a change in the last decade related to what people are looking for when they come to therapy. Of course, people contact us when they are …
Boundaries are one of the most important ways you care for your relationships and for yourself. It’s a way of being honest about what works for you and what doesn’t. This has nothing to do with being selfish. When you are not clear with others …
Whether we are consciously aware of it or not, there are currents of thought that run through our collective society.
They can be embedded posts you see on social media, come out of the mouths of your friends or family or through storylines on shows you watch.
They can lay dormant until there is a reason for them to be called forward, but they sit there in the back of our minds. Maybe even silently pulling on us.
Some of these things can be positive influences, like the ones I want to talk about today.
The good: Helping others and being generous is good, right? Of course it is. But, too much good is exactly that: too much.
Consider this: Are you the person who gives so much to the point that is negatively impacting you? It can look like giving the kind of support or the amount of support you are not able to give (for whatever reason), which leads to resentment.
Resentment poisons relationships.
Or, it can look like over focusing on others such that you are disconnected from your own needs or feelings. Eventually that will catch up with you.
The good: Blaming others is disempowering. So, taking responsibility can help you step into an empowered position.
Consider this: Any chance that one of the ways you to control things is by being overly accountable? This kind of controlling is SO undercover. If you are responsible for everything, then you have the control to fix it, right?
Being responsible for what IS in your domain is a good thing, but being responsible for what is in the domain of others results in enabling behaviors, being in uneven relationships and, ultimately, a massive sense of frustration because it doesn’t work in the long run to be responsible for everything.
The good: Yes, being a productive member of society and doing your part is fantastic.
Consider this: Hello overachieving and burn out. Yup. Not all resting, doing enjoyable things, watching tv or not doing something every second is the result of laziness. Resting is vital to daily life.
Sleeping in and of itself is not for lazy people, is it? It is a basic need. It’s just a question of balance. Sleep or rest or just “not work” the amount that is right for your body, stress levels, health status.
The good: Having a vision and a place you are headed with any area of your life is excellent. Creating some structure through planning might be great for your specific temperament and personality.
Consider this: This can be a recipe for getting stuck in your head. A potential disconnection from what you really want or need. What you need and want has the potential to change. And there needs to be a connection to those changes and a response to them. That might mean letting go of a goal or plan. And that’s OK.
Ultimately…
Just as it relates to the currents of thought outlined here, where do you land?
Do you tend to find yourself over helping, being overly responsible, over working or overly rigid with your plans?
It could be a good time to take a look at how these currents of thought may have crept in and might not actually be true (or good!) for you.
Everybody loves to share their thoughts on what and how you are doing. How are you supposed to filter through all that feedback? There are two ends of the spectrum here. There is the end of the spectrum where you trust what other people say …
You might be finding yourself in relationship dynamics where you are being too accountable. If you are not sure what this means, take a moment and go back to the last post about this here. I’m going to be honest with you: making a shift …
The concept of being responsible for your actions is a positive and empowering message communicated by good parents, respectable organizations, teachers, mental health professionals, leaders with integrity and many others. And it should be.
It is an important skill: to know how to be accountable. Knowing how to be aware, acknowledge and clean up when we have done wrong is a vital skill in having healthy relationships and being an upstanding member of society.
On the flip side, taking too much responsibility is often not discussed. Too much of a good thing is still too much.
You may have had volatile relationships in your history where confrontation or any expression of anger was just not okay.
So you did it by trying to take responsibility.
So, this only feels natural.
Being accountable for things going wrong all the time might feel like you are damaged goods.
No one can do that. You and I both know that intellectually. However, you may, on a deeper level, wish for that control because it would just be easier.
I know that seems counter intuitive. But, being responsible for something that is not within your locus of control ties your hands. If it is not within your locus of control, there is little you can do to effect change, leaving you feeling like a failure.
They also feel like they are in an impossible situation that is never improving. They just might not know that it is not improving because the part that needs attention resides with them.
If you continue being responsible for what is theirs, you are foreclosing on their chance to move through similar roadblocks in other areas of their life where you are not there to take responsibility.
That means you and everyone else around this person will have to continue to deal with crappy interactions. Be a blessing in this person’s life by holding them accountable. You never know… if the person you are allowing to carry their weight rises to the occasion, it could inspire others close to them or allow for a ripple effect of positive shifts.
All human beings will kindly accept the invitation of being free from blame or responsibility when they are in an interaction with someone who is willing to take the blame.
The person allowing you to be responsible for what is going wrong is not a jerk. They are only responding the way a normal human being would.
You want to make sure you are accountable enough, that you are gracious with others in their shortcomings AND you want to make sure you are allowing everyone to pull their weight. To give yourself and them the opportunity to operate at the highest potential.
Take some time to consider whether you might be taking on too much responsibility in your relationships.
And, stay tuned or subscribe so you don’t miss the next post on HOW to implement this insight in your most important relationships.
Anger and guilt are similar in the sense that they experientially disclose true boundaries and values. Not just our intellectual constructs of them. That’s the beauty of emotions, they bypass what we “think” or “expect”. To be fair, that can also be the challenge of them. They can …
The human emotional system is built as a messaging system. Each emotion has a general message it wants to convey. Once that message is delivered, the emotion or the wave of that emotion can subside. Sometimes it takes a little time for the emotion to …
In the personal growth world, there is a lot of talk about boundaries.
First of all, what are they?
They are the rules between people about how they interact with one another. They can be set overtly. Or they are just silent agreements that occur as your relationship develops.
Through your feelings and actions.
For example, if you get mad at your partner for not doing the dishes, you are setting the boundary that it is not OK with you that they are not doing their fair share. However, consider that some ways of setting boundaries are more effective than others.
If you are truly not OK with your partner not doing their dishes, let them know in a clear way with your words and actions. If you don’t like it, but it is not a big enough deal to commit to some discomfort to change this dynamic, work on accepting the situation. When you are clear you want to change, you could say something like: “hey, I don’t like it when there are always dishes in the sink, can we figure out a way to solve this?” Then actually brainstorm and figure out a plan. Then test it out, update the agreement if you need to.
Of course, you might have to take things further and designate plates that only you use if your partner wants to test out how serious you are and leave the dishes for a week. You will have to figure out what works best in your home. But commit to there being a solution.
If you just huff and puff while you are washing the dishes, then make an underhanded comment about how doing the dishes “isn’t that hard”, that isn’t really effective. You are pretty much signing up for more of the same because your boundary setting strategy is not direct or clear. You are throwing out a “cooked spaghetti” boundary: super flimsy. And you are adding an insult in there. People don’t take kindly to that. They get offended.
For example, you want your teenager to get up for school on his own. He resists this, so you keep waking him up because you are worried he won’t make it to school. Then there is fight every morning about it. You are trying to hold a boundary by getting mad at him.
If you let him be late for school, there will be natural consequences at school. If you feel concerned, talk to the front office and ask about the consequences if there are multiple tardies. Is it detention? Report card is impacted?
If you feel like there won’t be enough of a consequence there, let him know that he needs to bring a print out of tardies to you each Saturday morning. However many tardies will equal dollars he owes you or number of chores he has to do before spending time on video games or screens. If you choose to have him pay you, that money can be saved up and give it to him later as a spending money for college or security deposit for his first apartment, but don’t tell him that. Let him be upset about it. He will be. But instead of you getting upset, let his actions result in a direct consequence.
Get committed and follow through on making sure your plan happens. The clear boundary holding is up to you, not him, since you are the one that wants to change things. Obviously, every home and school environment are different, these are just illustrations.
That interferes with the power of the boundary. The message is then lost.
Everyone encounters seemingly impossible situations. These are situations where it really feels like you are powerless. Your hands are tied. Like, no matter what you do, it’s not going to turn out how you want it. Usually those situations carry emotional intensity. And, let’s be …