Boundaries: Why it’s so hard to heal
I teach a trauma informed yoga class one night a week. One designation of this class as trauma informed is I’m responsible for creating and holding space that invites the students to feel as safe as possible to explore and move . One way I cultivate that is by starting class on time and sealing that space off by locking the front door. It’s at this time I start to invite my students to bring their awareness to their environment, breath and senses.
Last week when 5:30pm came around I stood up and locked the door to begin our arrival into the class. I spent about 2 minutes sharing the theme for class and I invited the students to start creating orientation to their surroundings by acknowledging physical sensations, sight, smells, feelings and movement of breath. I always like to start class off like this because It supports setting the boundary of the space for each student and the space.
As we transitioned out of our arrival practice and into our first pose I heard some people at the front door. They tried to pull on the handle and of course the door was locked. The inner conflict in me was big, do I interrupt class and break the safety of the container or uphold my boundary. Pause, breathe, stay present is what I told myself.
Then the doorbell rang, it was then I had a sure feeling of holding and protecting the space. I turned toward the door and gently waved at them and mouthed out the words, sorry not right now. I could feel this confidently come from the parts of me that have been doing the work to allow my opinions and needs to be valid and to have boundaries. It felt good to know my intention and focus, to uphold my needs to be able to sustain the trauma informed container.
The next morning I awoke to a message from my boss asking if the review she just received was from someone who tried to attend my class. As I read the review I could sense that the reviewer was feeling rejected, shame and anger by my interaction with them. My heart sank and of course it was never my intent to have anyone feel that way.
Managing a room of yoga students and trying to preserve the space while acknowledging the stressful time the person on the outside of the room was having was a nervous system overload. If I was going to maintain my mind-body connection, my presence, my role as the teacher and of course my needs, the fact was I was going to have to fail somewhere.
Failure! This word use to be my poison. Failure meant someone was mad at me, I messed up and was vulnerable to be seen as imperfect but most importantly I let someone down and the result of my action/inaction inflicted pain onto them. As a kid I valued the avoidance of failure. As long as I could gain the acknowledgement, praise, and recognition of others I could minimize the looks on my parents face and hearing the words “i’m disappointed in you”. I came to the conclusion somehow that to be truly valued I had to be perfect, achieve and no one could ever be mad at me. The more work I did and the more people liked me meant I was good enough (relational trauma).
Like most of us, I reached a point where I was stressed and exhausted by trying to meet the achieve/be perfect parts demands. I have worked on listening to this part and while it hasen’t gone away I’m able to work with it enough to allow me room to set boundaries. I can tell because I no longer react to others disappointments with obligatory apologies so they will feel better and I no longer want to do things to please others at my expense. So this naturally means I have gotten more comfortable with failing.
Setting boundaries, a lot of times, is not about making sure others don’t cross the line but it’s more about being ok with failing them when you have to remind them not to do it. Some will understand and have access to be compassionate with you (keep those people close) but more often than not you are going to encounter soneone’s wounds and just like any unattended wound it will hurt when it get’s touched. They will be mad, hurt and upset and that is ok.
In an odd way they have an opportunity to be reminded of their would and they have a choice to attend to it or not. What makes it hard to heal is that the parts of you that need to achieve/be perfect can’t take on the responsibility to care for others without letting yourself down in the process.
What I do know is the more you get to listen to yourself, your feelings, your internal stories you will get to know what’s conflicting and how to help yourself. What you need most is you. So, in other words sometimes failing others is the nicest thing you could do for you.
