When Breaking Generational Cycles, Don’t Forget to Teach Boundaries

The first time I heard the word “boundaries,” I was 19 years old. I was a college student sitting in my counselor’s office after repeated doctor’s visits for various stomach pains turned out to be pure anxiety. I was scared to be there. I didn’t grow up at a time when therapy was normalized, and the stigma felt like something heavy I was carrying. Was I crazy? Or broken?

My therapist assured me that neither was true. I wasn’t crazy, and I wasn’t broken. I was human, and I’d learned to cope with life’s stressors in ways that had become maladaptive for my life. If I wanted to be a healthier human being with healthier relationships, I would need to learn a new way of being. To do that, I would need to develop boundaries.

She gave me a reading list, and I, ever a voracious reader, started to tackle it. One of the first books I read was Dr. Henry Cloud’s famous book on Boundaries. It’s still a prominent one recommended by therapists today. It’s one I’ve personally recommended more times than I can count.

“Boundaries define us. They define what is me and what is not me. A boundary shows me where i end and someone else begins, leading me to a sense of ownership. Knowing what I am to own and take responsibility for gives me freedom.” ~Dr. Henry Cloud

Growing up, my family had both rigid and loose boundaries. On the rigid end of the spectrum, there were inflexible values, an unwillingness to consider others’ perspectives, and a frequency in saying no (often without any justification). On the opposite end, there were areas of enmeshment where there were no boundaries at all. I didn’t learn healthy boundaries growing up, and I know my parents didn’t either. Therapy provided an opportunity to learn a new way of existing.

I’m a mother now, raising a tween and a teenager. I consider myself a cycle breaker. I don’t spank my kids, and I don’t force religion down their throats. I have a different way of parenting, and I know that likely means I’ll make different mistakes. I’m under no illusions that I’m not making any.

Boundaries for Cycle Breakers

Part of parenting differently means taking advantage of the opportunities I’ve had that my parents didn’t. I was able to get professional help from a therapist. I can use the skills and techniques learned in that process to help my children learn and develop healthier coping skills than I had. I started with boundaries.

The first boundary I taught them was around the physical body. Consent was something I wanted them to understand clearly, but I knew that just talking about it wasn’t enough. I had to model it, too. I didn’t tickle or hug them if they said no. I taught them that they had a right to bodily autonomy, and “no means no” for everyone, not just strangers. I didn’t make them hug relatives. I taught them they had a right to privacy, particularly as they’ve matured. Healthy boundaries are open discussions in my household.

I’m also helping my children learn healthy communication and accountability. People can’t know our boundaries if we never tell them. We don’t expect people to be mind readers here. We express ourselves clearly, and we take responsibility for our own actions. That’s what I’m trying to teach them, at any rate. I help them connect the dots between the ways they communicate with others and the results of those communications.

My children have a barrier around this that I didn’t have. Both are on the autism spectrum, and they have different abilities to see and understand social cues and dynamics. They can find it challenging to interpret some of the more subtle styles of communication, and that is often complicated by the fact that not all children are being raised with healthy boundaries or effective communication. Boundaries are a practice, and I’m trying to make the space in my home for my children to practice them regularly.

Dirty Dancing: An Unusual Lesson in Boundaries

I often think about the line in Dirty Dancing where Johnny tells Baby, “This is my dance space. This is your dance space.” He was trying to teach her the boundaries of their dancing positions, but the line also resonates for interpersonal boundaries. There should be a clear distinction between ourselves and others. Without it, we’re often unable to know ourselves and advocate for our wants and needs.

What also struck me about this line is that it doesn’t rely on moviegoers to intuit the boundaries between the dancers. They are clearly stated. It’s not ambiguous. This idea of personal space probably isn’t novel to people who grew up in relatively healthy homes, but for the rest of us, understanding that we’re entitled to space, bodily autonomy, and the freedom to make our own decisions about our lives does indeed feel revolutionary.

When we start learning about boundaries, we have to figure out where that distinction lies between ourselves and other people. We’re the ones who have to draw the lines, but once we do, we’re also tasked to communicate them. We can’t expect people to magically know what we’re thinking. We have to tell them where the boundaries are, and then we have to enforce those boundaries.

To people who’ve never dealt with a healthy boundary, the enforcement can feel like an ultimatum. But it’s not. When we draw lines around what behavior we’ll accept, we’re telling people that there are limits to what we’ll tolerate in our lives. For instance, a family member being disrespectful during a holiday could result in other members choosing to leave. This isn’t an ultimatum. It’s a consequence of refusing to honor other people’s boundaries. It’s cause-and-effect, and unhealthy people will see this as an attack when it’s simply a stated limit.

I learned in therapy that I don’t have to sit and stew in family conflicts. I’m an adult. I can leave if I’m not being treated respectfully. I can end a conversation if my stated boundaries for what I’m willing to discuss continue to be overstepped. I get to decide what to allow in my life.

When Loose Boundaries Create Misdirected Anger

I used to get angry at other people for not respecting my boundaries, but sometimes, I simply hadn’t communicated my boundaries, and yet expected other people to intuit them. Or else I’d communicated my boundaries but then failed to enforce them.

In both cases, I wasn’t the victim. Getting mad at other people was a lot easier than being accountable for my too-loose boundaries. It was certainly easier than having to put better, healthier boundaries into practice. If other people were the problem, I didn’t have to do anything at all.

Loose boundaries can create misdirected anger. In reality, we’re disappointed with ourselves for failing to enforce the boundaries we know are healthy for us. The frustration we’re feeling has everything to do with our insufficient boundaries and the havoc they create. We can blame other people, but the truth is that other people aren’t thinking about us all the time. We can’t expect them to guess our needs when we’re unwilling to speak up about them.

I had to stop getting angry at my family for not understanding healthy boundaries. Just as I’d grown up without them, so had my parents. They didn’t know. In fact, I eventually loaned Dr. Cloud’s book on the subject to my mother so she could understand why my behavior within the family dynamic had changed so drastically. I was separating myself from the family unit, but I was doing it because we needed healthier boundaries to have healthier relationships. It wasn’t a punishment; it was self-protection and self-care.

Boundaries: What We Do, Not What We Say

I still struggle with healthy boundaries. I found this particularly challenging at work when dealing with leaders who could not understand that it’s vastly inappropriate to text about work issues all day and all night, long after standard business hours. Setting a boundary made me look like the problem, even though it was obvious that the true problem was in a leadership with loose boundaries. Because of the power differential, I struggled to enforce healthy boundaries.

Even in my personal life, it’s not my first instinct to lead with healthy boundaries. I was a people-pleaser for a long time. That’s my first instinct. But I know better now, and I try to let that first instinct pass so I can put into practice the better lessons learned.

Children don’t just listen to what we say and then do that. In fact, it feels like they rarely listen. They can hear a package of cookies opened despite their noise-canceling headphones, but they can’t seem to hear a request for a chore to be completed. Such is parenting life. But children often learn well from what we do, not what we say.

If we talk a lot about healthy boundaries but never actually demonstrate them, our children will model what we’re doing, not what we say we should do. That’s the way of life. They don’t care if we give a lecture series on being kind if we’re unkind to people in real life; they’ll do as we do, not as we say. It’s a good reminder for parents that we need to live in alignment with our values because words alone are not teaching our kids right from wrong. They’re watching and learning.

There was an incident at a family event where I walked out with my children. It was a terrible experience for me, and my children didn’t understand what was happening. When my boundaries were disrespected and the event began to take a toxic turn, I got us out of there and was able to discuss with my children the need for respectful relationships in our lives. If someone is being disrespectful, we get to say no and leave. We don’t have to put ourselves through that just because we’re blood relations. They got to see a boundary put into action. I was disappointed and frustrated, but I knew that I was modeling the correct behavior.

When I was younger, I would burn bridges without looking back. I didn’t think there was another way. These days, I don’t do that so often. Just as in the example of the family event gone wrong, I’ve learned to calmly enforce the boundary and leave it at that. I don’t have a screaming match and then leave. I simply leave the room. I draw my lines and hold them. I expect my relationships to be respectful, and if they aren’t, I’m not sticking around to endure abuse.

It’s made my life peaceful. I’m not operating out of anger or holding a boundary as a way to punish others. This is a way of taking care of myself and of my family. It’s also a way of upholding some basic standards in my relationships. Mutual respect, affection, and kindness are not too much to ask. They aren’t the gold standard of relationships; they should, instead, be the baseline.

Boundaries are Self-Loving (and Kind to Others, Too)

I started my journey to learning better boundaries as an act of self-love and self-preservation, but over time, I learned that boundaries are kind to others, too. No one’s highest self screams abuse at others. No one’s best self hits below the belt. When we enforce a boundary and remove ourselves from toxic situations, we’re also preventing the other person from continuing a behavior they may feel shame or regret for later. It’s a kindness to create boundaries for any relationship in our lives — both to ourselves and to other people.

When I teach boundaries to my kids, I make sure they understand that this isn’t about controlling other people’s behavior. It’s about being accountable to ourselves. We also have to respect other people’s boundaries, which can be just as difficult to practice. Good boundaries make for good relationships. They both preserve and protect ourselves and our relationships from harm.

I noticed something interesting early on in my boundaries journey: My boundaries had a ripple effect. In my family, fights were vicious. Make no mistake: I could hold my own. I was in the thick of it. But when I went to therapy, I learned that I was responsible for my own actions. I was responsible for how I behaved, even in situations that were otherwise out of my control. I didn’t have to engage. I didn’t have to fight. I could do something extraordinary: I could lead the charge for change.

At first, my family thought I was cold and unfeeling. It must have seemed that way. Instead, I was calm, rational, and unrattled by their behavior. I was holding a boundary, and I was not engaging in the old behaviors that contributed to the toxic atmosphere in my household.

At first, my disengagement caused things to escalate. It got worse, long before it got better. But it did get better. I had ushered in a new standard. It didn’t change the overall dynamic in their individual relationships, but it did change theirs with me. There was a ripple effect that became noticeable when I stopped participating in the chaos and started practicing more effective communication and conflict resolution.

I know that I can not change other people. But I can change myself. I can choose to live in alignment with my values. I can break cycles handed down over and over, the worn-out trauma of previous generations. I can teach my children what I didn’t know and wish I had. I can help them develop stronger coping and communication skills. I can help them learn better boundaries.

I can empower them to live healthy lives with healthy relationships, and I know that it starts with me. Not in my words alone. I have to live the lessons I want them to learn. I have to be brave enough to do the hard thing that says, This cycle ends with me.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.