Personal Boundaries

Maintenance Required

Part 3: Social Pressure and Competing Values

Photo by **Khwanchai Phanthong** from **Pexels**

When it comes to maintaining boundaries, stresses derived from the opposition are to be expected, even welcome. How else can you appropriately test the strength of your values? In this post, we’ll review how it is we set boundaries, discuss maintenance via stress and competition (value-testing) and peek ahead to defining and managing consequences for when boundaries have been trespassed (Part 4).

How We Set Boundaries

In the previous post (Part 2), “I See Values, You See Limits,” boundaries were defined as a measure of self-esteem. Therefore, the process of setting boundaries is the natural result of your self-esteem. This is good news! Why? Because it means boundary setting doesn’t require extra work. Simply look within and see what matters to you, and then decide how much it matters. If it really matters, you’ll have set a boundary by default.

But, as we know, setting boundaries isn’t enough. We need to maintain them, or as I sometimes think of it patrol them.

The very measurement of my self-esteem appears to you, when tested, as a limit. We are each looking at the same act (values esteemed), but we see it from two different points of view. Therefore, when I take my values seriously and uphold them, you will see limits to my tolerance of behavior that does not fall in line with my value system.— “I See Values, You See Limits”

How We Maintain Boundaries

STRESS TEST: Encountering Others

People with different values will bump up against ours, repeatedly. When this happens, we encounter each other’s boundaries and experience the awkward moment or social pressure. The unaddressed awkward moment leaves boundaries temporarily intact but the stress unresolved. (It would require later reflection in order for the boundary to be shifted, which would in turn either resolve the stress or create additional stress.) Social pressure attempts to trespass the boundary by compelling you to redefine your value system. The stress from social pressure can be either resolved or create new stress. Social pressure can take different forms, among them the question, the suggestion, the cold shoulder, the insult, and the physical attack. If the social pressure works, you will sufficiently tolerate behavior or concepts outside your value system.

Social pressure, in and of itself, is not necessarily negative — much of our learning takes place when we re-evaluate our cherished beliefs; nevertheless, social pressure in the form of insults and physical attacks is harmful both to ourselves and, ultimately, to the one perpetrating the insult or attack. When we examine the consequences of trespasses in a subsequent article, handling this type of pressure will be addressed.

One example of positive boundary-busting can be seen in entertainment, where we actually pay people to cross the line. Humor, for instance, has its basis in turning norms upside-down, including expectations of behavioral norms. However, if you feel under threat as a result of someone’s comment or action and they excuse their behavior “as a joke,” you can be assured that was no joke — no humor was intended.

This brings up the issue of response. How do we respond to boundary-crossing? Don’t be tempted to jump straight to the response. In most situations, you will have time to consider the most appropriate one. For now, we are focusing on maintenance. When we maintain our personal boundaries, we are upholding our value system; we are not yet employing the use of consequences. We are observing and recognizing the opposition. Like reading the instructions before taking a test, we learn as much about the test as possible before engaging with it, because this will boost our chances of success. We want to pass the test!

Maintenance allows us to remain mentally engaged, less emotionally reactive; one of the benefits is that we will be less likely to over-react (i.e., expose our emotional vulnerability), which rarely works in our favor.

STRESS TEST: Encountering Ourselves

A boundary alarm goes off, and yet you hesitate. Why? You harbor two competing values, each requiring a different response. It’s okay. It’s normal. It’s often healthy. Adding to our value system by way of experience, reason or revelation will cause unexpected, even uncomfortable, shifts. I will use a personal example that, while politically loaded and therefore unpopular, perfectly illustrates how two values can lead to this kind of paralysis.

Growing up in blue-state California, receiving a higher education, and being a woman, it felt completely natural for me to align myself as pro-choice. Having control over my body made complete sense and I resented having to explain myself — would I bother justifying my right to breathe? I wouldn’t.

And then, while taking my physiology courses for massage therapy certification, our wildly liberal instructor announced that he had some data to share that would likely make us feel uncomfortable: a fetus’ nervous system is “online” at six weeks. Meaning? The fetus can feel. (I will allow you to draw your own conclusions as to the import of that statement.)

I was left with two competing values: the right to autonomy with regard to my reproduction and my instinct to protect those who cannot protect themselves. I will not pretend that twenty years later, I have an answer. I still struggle to balance these values against each other. Of course, when these values are considered in isolation, there’s no problem.

I feel it is within my right to use prophylactic birth control (right to autonomy), and separately
I feel obligated to notify Child Protective Services when I suspect child abuse (the instinct to protect).

When these values are in isolation, no competition exists. Tension arises only when the values are pitted by circumstance against one another. When this happens, we are forced to dive deeper, learn a greater lesson, and be patient with ourselves. (By extension, we can offer that patience to others as they struggle with their own competing values.) Only you can determine the outcome, which value will outweigh another, and under which circumstances.

LESSON FROM THE POOL HALL

This same physiology instructor explained, in an entirely different lecture, how in nature — when opposing forces meet — one doesn’t obliterate the other. Instead, they interact in such a way as to produce or reveal a third, entirely different force/thing/event. He likened it to pool balls rolling on a table: on courses to intersect, once they hit each other, each will veer off onto an entirely different trajectory from its original one. In social parlance, this new trajectory is termed a compromise.

VALUE-BOUNDARY SHIFT

Often, the rigidity of our values flexes after we have encountered stress, either external (oppositional force) or internal (competing value). Consequently, our boundaries will appear equally malleable until we come to a decision, regarding our feelings. Maintenance is hard, continual work! We often neglect it because we are so busy questioning, learning, and growing. Some new, rascally truth is always sending us back to square one, the eternal do-over. But don’t let that scare you; don’t give up. Keep those boundary-building muscles toned. There is a great need of people who are both resolved and resilient.

What’s Next?

In Part 4, we will finally look at consequences, what to do when others trespass our personal boundaries. Defining consequences requires specificity. So let’s take out our worksheet on setting boundaries.

In Part 2, you had been asked to identify five values, appropriate tests of those values and limits of tolerance to them. Now take a look at what values may be competing. This becomes important when setting limits and, later, defining consequences. Why? Because these competing values will co-mingle to produce that third “trajectory,” the compromise. The compromise allows you to continue moving forward, honing in on exactly what aspect of your values means the most to you. Below, I will show you how I strike a compromise between two competing values when setting my limit of tolerance.

Having struck the compromise, feel free to add a consequence. Keep in mind that this process is fluid, highly dependent on circumstance. For example, if an adult were to be in the processing of harming a child in my presence, I would likely either step in myself (again, circumstance depending) or call the police. There are a number of other imaginable consequences, all dependent on circumstance. So, if you feel overwhelmed by this process, keep it specific and don’t worry about differing circumstances. The question you are addressing here…what would you do in this circumstance given your value(s) and the limit you set?

This is practice. Develop those muscles! Maintaining your boundaries is like physical exercise: you do it because it keeps you healthy.

Since hard work deserves its reward, it’s time to celebrate! Let’s dance.