May 15th 2019

May 15th 2019

Boundaries and Feelings.

In addressing loneliness and feeling alone, I have been writing about how lack of boundaries or impaired boundaries may be contributing to your feelings of being alone. When we don’t have good boundaries, it impairs our ability to have good relationships.

Many people are often asking how to do I do boundaries? How do I create them?  Well, that’s a big topic, especially if you are new to boundaries. I’ll address all of that.

But before we can do boundaries, which are about our own behavior and how we want to feel and be treated and enforce our value system, we need to be aware of our feelings. Feelings are wonderful ways to tell us how we are being treated. If our our boundaries are being respected, we feel good, connected, respected and happy. Or our feelings tell us we our boundaries are being pushed or broken. If boundaries are being pressed or broken, we feel guilty, bad, confused, conflicted and probably even angry or resentful.

So how connected to your feelings are you? Do you feel that you are good at recognizing and processing your feelings?

Processing your feelings are not asking WHY you are feeling something, but rather being able to do healthy questioning, such as “What am I feeling? Where is this feeling coming from? What is this feeling about? What is this feeling trying to tell me?”

Many times, people confuse feelings with a thought.

Feelings are:

Happy, joyous, content, blissful, content

Angry, Furious, raging, annoyed, irritated

Sad, depressed, hopeless, lost, confused, anxious, lonely

Fearful, scared, terrified, shocked, stunned, overwhelmed

The above are just a few examples of feelings. A thought is a statement:

I am lonely. (This is a thought; the feeling is lonely)

I didn’t get my way. (This is a thought, the feeling might be frustrated, angry, or annoyed)

I couldn’t believe she said that too me! (this is a statement, the feeling is shocked, outraged, hurt)

I am worthless (this is a thought or statement, the feeling might be sad, hopeless, worthless)

So, learning to be able to identify and accurately label your feelings is so important in mental health and doing your boundaries. Then once you have identified either the thought or the feeling, next it is to see what it is telling you. If it is in relationship to your boundaries, you’ll need to decide how you want to deal with it.

So, for this period, think about how good you are at recognizing and accurately labeling your feelings. Are you good at see what they tell you? Remember, feelings are not facts, but rather information about you, your needs or how you are being treated. So, it’s important to learn how to work with them, especially if you want to do healthy boundaries

 

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