NEW LOOK, SAME TEAM
Blog Post
Good Fences: Building Better Boundaries
Kathleen Tsang • Jul 01, 2020
Part 1: Why do we need boundaries?
We had a section of fence blow over this spring. It had been getting wobbly, we kept putting off the repair, and one big storm took it down.
Our neighbour helped us prop up the fence on some boards. We tied the loose lattice-top with rope. But it kept wavering dangerously. The only way to secure the fence was to dig deep holes, install new posts, and rebuild the slats.
Our newly built fence provides privacy and protection. It keeps the babies away from the neighbours’ pond and the dog from wandering over. The fence keeps good things in and harmful things out.
Fences are a good illustration of boundaries in our lives. We need boundaries for privacy, protection, and to keep us safe in other ways. There are many areas of life where boundaries are important—we’ll expand on each of these areas in upcoming blog and video posts:
1) Romantic relationships: We need good boundaries to protect us from toxic or harmful behaviours in relationships. We also need good boundaries such as fidelity, honesty and trust to maintain a strong relationship.
2) Time: Good boundaries help us to establish positives like routines and good sleep hygiene. They help us to say no to time wasters that make us feel defeated.
3) Money: In our financial lives good boundaries might be building a family budget or creating a plan to get out of debt. Having poor boundaries with money can put a lot of stress on our mental health and relationships.
4) Thoughts: Sometimes our brains take us places we don’t want to go. How can we keep out harmful thought patterns? Good boundaries might include using tools like CBT to redirect or re-frame negative thoughts.
5) Substance use: A few drinks on the weekend might be nice to kick back and relax, but are those habits starting to spill into the week? Excessive substance use can affect our physical and mental health, our job performance, our relationships.
6) Other relationships: Your high school buddies who want you to get high, your toxic co-workers, the stepmother who keeps texting criticisms.. There are plenty of relationships in life that require boundaries. Some are more persistent than others. What’s ok in those relationships? What’s not ok?
7) Screen time: The verdict is in, too much screen time is causing a mental health pandemic. Anxiety and depression are on the rise, no thanks to social media and too much mental stimulation. Good boundaries means limiting that screen time and refocusing our brains on real world things.
Boundaries are about setting limits to safeguard what’s good. Having well-built fences in our lives can help us to have more meaningful, healthy lifestyles.
Our fence experience taught us that it’s much more difficult and costly to build the fence properly, but the payoff is long-lasting. Those foundations of good habits, thoughts, principles and routines can help to ‘keep in’ what’s good and ‘keep out’ negative influences.
In our upcoming posts we’ll share some strategies on how to build and repair those boundaries.
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Photo credit: Manja Vitolic on Unsplash
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