For much of my life, I protected myself from others, and from the world, with boundaries made out of anger, fear, insecurity and frustration. I imagine many of you reading this might be able to relate in your own way.
Early on it seemed that the most efficient way for me to feel safe in this wild world was to get hard and to build a wall, so to speak. I learned to isolate myself, to cut people out of my heart, sometimes including those very close to me, as a way of feeling safe. I developed an edge - a harsh, incisive part of myself that can hurt others and keep them at a distance. I built armour and weaponry to protect myself - closing down my heart in exchange for safety.. And again, as many of you reading might be able relate to, it was a pretty clumsy way of being. Once you put the armour on, it’s rarely easy to take off. Often we forget it’s even there in the first place, and live as though we are at war, or ready to defend, even in the most welcoming and peaceful moments.
If you’ve read any other posts here you know I’ve been dismantling this armour for many years now, and today I want to share a recent experience that crystallizes another way of having safety - a more mature, elegant and intelligent form of boundaries - in a really fun way.
My understanding is that when I have collapsed my sense of self, when I’m interacting with another person and reflexively shut down my own sense autonomy or shrink before them, there’s a frustration and agitation that automatically follows. I feel an agitation and angst because I’ve allowed another person’s reality to collapse mine. Then the old weaponry is liable to come out - the protective edge - because, although the person I’m interacting with has done nothing wrong at all, my habit of collapsing (not having a firm, autonomous sense of self) has triggered an emergency defence (toxic boundaries).
This is a really common dynamic, and often goes unnoticed and unquestioned, but there’s such a brilliant opportunity in it that to leave it untouched would be a huge loss.
The broken link that sets off the whole cascade of events, triggering the toxic, overprotective, unintelligent boundary, is a weak sense of self, a poor sense of autonomy, a collapsed, rather than expanded, being. If we can be anchored in who we truly are, in an expanded sense of our self, suddenly that feeling of being walked all over and needing to fight back resolves.
In case this sounds too philosophical so far, I have some personal, tangible examples to give this some more shape:
I will give two examples, and the second one is better so stick around for it.
First, lately I’ve been using a mental image to anchor myself to my fully expanded, authentic self during interactions (sometimes including those with myself). The image is of me sitting on a gorgeous balcony during a sunset, and welcoming the person I’m talking to in that setting. The balcony is my space, my energy. I’m a strong person there, I have a beautiful reality I inhabit - it is strongly optimistic, loving, deep, respectful, far-seeing, sacred and honest. On this balcony, I am welcoming a guest exactly as they are, totally comfortable being separate from them, grounded in my own unique reality and truth.
During conversations I’ve been using this reference point as an anchor - something to hold onto and orient myself around, rather than habitually collapsing and shrinking. During a conversation when I’m doing this, I’ll pause frequently, refocusing on that comfortable, confident sense of autonomy. It doesn’t feel like a cerebral practice, as I’m actually feeling if my energy and emotions are open and connected to that sense of comfortable expansion or not, grounding to it repeatedly.
And believe it or not, it works for me! I’m able to be way more authentic, gracious, and share more uncomfortable truths, but in a way that is not defensive or tinged with harshness. There’s no war to fight, no heads to smash in, because I haven’t collapsed - I feel a sense of autonomy that keeps me centred, and able to show up more naturally.
The second example is more unique: A while ago I’d had a couple of very long and intense conversations throughout the day (using the aforementioned anchoring technique), and although they had gone well, I was feeling pretty socially worn down by the evening. There was a group chat I was supposed to participate in, and I knew it would take quite a bit of effort to maintain an expanded sense of self throughout it.
For the first part of the call, I was okay. I tried to be as present and aware of what was going on within and around me as I could, but slowly my resolve faded.
As often happens when I’m feeling overwhelmed by other people’s energy, I started to get a headache, so I impulsively grabbed my acoustic guitar. Playing the guitar and singing seem to soothe my nervous system and calm things right down.
I wanted to stay present, but I knew I needed to do something to take care of myself and feel fully connected to my energy - not numb and collapsed. So I put my phone, which was on speaker mode, on mute, and began playing my guitar while listening to everyone speaking. As usual, my nervous system started to calm down, but in addition to that, suddenly everyone’s speaking - some of which was giving voice to a lot of confusion and disillusionment - suddenly became a gorgeous work of art. They were sharing this profound, spoken word poetry backed by my (admittedly amateur) strumming and picking.
I was almost crying it was so beautiful - suddenly my consciousness was hugely expanded, I could see the struggle and conflict within each individual in its larger context - this exquisite journey of growth across lifetimes.
I was still very present, and would occasionally stop playing, unmute my phone and contribute when I felt moved to - then return to what I’d been doing.
At the end of the call, I confessed to everyone what I’d been doing, and thankfully they thought it was great. To me it felt like a somewhat comical extension of the practice I was doing in my conversations earlier - by keeping my song, my sense of self, the rhythm that is my truth, at the heart of my awareness, I could show up to the complexity of life rooted in something solid and beautiful. That sense of autonomy, of separation, actually strengthened my connection to others.
I believe this is what healthy boundaries are made of - they come from inside, from a strong, sacred sense of one’s self, they are built from love (not insecurity), and they give one a sense of separation that actually enables the heart to open more, not less, to others. It feels very important, then, that we all connect to our song, to the wonderful feeling of being fully naturally who we are when expanded, and hold that in our interactions, anchoring ourselves to it intentionally. When we can do that, the armour seems to fall away - those old walls aren’t needed anymore, because we’ve expanded beyond them in a way that is much more intelligent and graceful.
That’s it for today - if this post stirred anything in you, leave a comment below or send me a message, I always love to hear!
Photo by Christopher Rusev