When Boundaries Are Unhealthy
Returning to the Safe Forest
Awhile back, I made a post in which I used the metaphor of a Safe Forest (or Well-Tended Garden) to describe a healthy inner life. I want to return to the Safe Forest to talk a little more about boundaries.
I believe having clearly communicated, healthy boundaries can be a sign of self-respect. Additionally, I believe establishing and maintaining healthy boundaries can ensureare mutually respectful, caring, and appropriate.
Without contradicting any of that, however, please notice that boundaries are only required when a person cannot be trusted to safely accompany you as a sensitive, respectful warden of your inner life.
When a person has reasonably demonstrated a commitment to being a sensitive, respectful warden of your inner life, and you still confine them to rigidly enforced boundaries, you are treating them the same way you would treat someone who is a threat to you.
Doing this is a sign that you have lost the ability to distinguish between friends and foes. Your judgment is impaired, because you see an ally as an enemy. This is paranoia.
Abusing Boundaries and Using “Boundaries” to Abuse Others
Often, when a person becomes so paranoid that they cannot recognize as an ally someone who loves them and is committed to being an emotionally safe protector of their inner life, they push away those they perceive as a threat. They rigidly enforce boundaries with respect to such people, and prevent their relationship with them from naturally developing or evolving.
Such behavior is an abuse of boundaries — a form of self-harm, self-abuse, and suffering — because it results in unwarranted alienation, or enhanced isolation, of the paranoid person. They retreat further into the source of their problems — themselves.
Rigidly enforcing boundaries with respect to people who are committed to being emotionally safe protectors of one’s inner life is emotionally abusive to such people, too, because doing so invalidates their healthy, sincere expressions of love, care, and concern for the paranoid individual.
Moreover, when “boundaries” become an excuse for stonewalling, they have an even more abusive character.
“Boundaries” and Stonewalling
Often, when a person is overwhelmed by their emotions, they suppress them. One consequence of emotional suppression can be the use of stonewalling as a coping mechanism for avoiding unwanted emotions.
When called out for stonewalling, a person who wants to defend this emotionally abusive behavior may respond that they’re maintaining their “boundaries.” Under such circumstances, these claims are disingenuous, but may be the result of self-deception as much as any unwillingness to be entirely forthright with others.
“When a person defers too easily to stonewalling as a coping mechanism, it amounts to denying emotions the gentle space they deserve. They just need to be felt. Suppressed feelings tend to behave like vampires — unless one can confront the beast and drive a stake through its heart, it is likely to rise again, usually more intense than before. The link between depression, physical illness, and emotional dysregulation is a solid one.” (https://cutt.ly/BRo55PK)
There is, however, a more insidious reason for which a person will use “boundaries” as an excuse or rationalization in defense of stonewalling.
[Passive-]Aggressive Manipulation “is the most toxic motive behind stonewalling in relationships. In its more innocent form, it is an avoidance technique implemented in order not to deal with problems or situations, but the aggressive stonewaller favors her … preferences in the relationship and uses stonewalling behavior to have his or her way. These traits, in themselves, are detrimental, selfish, and immature — not good for relating. This type of stonewalling is often abusive, or borders on such.
If a spouse persists with stonewalling, despite all the efforts of their partner to draw him or her out, it could be that the stonewaller has something to hide. It could be as nefarious as an extra-marital affair or a crime, or it could be the loss of a job or a failure to manage an addiction to food, video games, nicotine, etc. The withdrawal from the relationship may indicate anything from shame to wanting to end the relationship. There are many possibilities for why a partner may stonewall and what their motives are.
In extreme cases, the reason behind manipulating others in this manner may be a disorder such as borderline personality disorder, narcissism, or sociopathy. Other factors suggest manipulative stonewalling, such as when a person denies, despite evidence to the contrary, that their stonewalling is:
• Abusive;
• Belittling to others;
• Invalidating of others’ observations and feelings; and
• Rationalizing abuse.
Relationships are a two-way street. If one person persistently withdraws from the relationship, it cannot survive.” Id.
Paranoia Is a Problem
Check out this article:
Paranoid Thoughts Taking Up Your Day? How To Stop Paranoia And Anxiety (https://cutt.ly/JRpqfl5)
Being unable to distinguish between allies and enemies (i.e. paranoia) is a huge problem. Overcoming such a serious psychological condition is not done without great effort. Remember, one’s paranoia may be acute — focused on a single person — not just general (broadly directed at most people or everyone).
Beating paranoia requires the afflicted person to subordinate their emotions to their reason. Think about the protagonist in the film A Beautiful Mind, who overcame paranoid schizophrenia by employing logical, rational rules and deductions to determine which experiences he had that were real and which were delusions / hallucinations. A paranoid person needs to take a similar approach.
First, however, one must recognize and admit they are being paranoid, which is almost impossible without help. This is why, when one claims they need to rigidly enforce boundaries against people who genuinely appear to love, support, and care deeply for them, the support of other friends and family, should not consist of simply affirming whatever the “boundaries-“enforcer thinks, believes, says, and does.
Rather, their friends and family should encourage them to consider giving the person against whom boundaries are being enforced a fair hearing, and, in good faith, creating opportunities for them to demonstrate their goodwill and loving intentions. If nothing else, friends and family ought to make a decent effort to remain neutral and refer the “boundaries-“enforcer to their therapist for advice or affirmation.
To simply affirm a (potentially) paranoid person’s thoughts, beliefs, words, and actions may have destructive unintended consequences for the person enforcing their “boundaries,” as well as the person against whom they are enforced.
Walking with One Another
Sojourning with another in their Safe Forest is one of life’s greatest joys — an experience of intimacy resulting from curiosity, wonder, love, respect, and trust.
Walking with one another in this way is difficult for humans, because, while we are intensely social creatures, we are often conditioned, if not hard-wired, to be hyper-vigilant against external threats. This makes extended periods of emotional intimacy extremely challenging.
Some research shows that for every negative interaction with another person, we need five positive interactions to balance out the negative one, restoring a neutral opinion of the person with whom we interacted. Under certain conditions, this negative to positive interaction ratio could be as high as 10:1. This makes make-up sex for couples’ relationships an essential element of their relationship’s survival. (See Kahneman, Daniel. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.)
Boundaries truly can be a healthy, beneficial, and even necessary part of a person’s healthy inner life, their Safe Forest. In addition to establishing and maintaining them, however, we ought to acknowledge a few other obligations we each have in walking with others through our Safe Forest.
First, we need to do everything we can to promote positive, enjoyable interactions.
Second, we should quickly and effectively repair (and allow to be repaired) damage to our relationships whenever it occurs.
Finally, we should avoid paranoia, and make every effort to be quick to recognize and correct it — especially when someone has broken our trust, and seeks to repair it.
Even a damaged forest can recover. It will take time, but we can cultivate emotional growth that is not only resilient but regenerative. We just have to have the will to commit, and then do the necessary work.
Those intimate moments with the people we love most are always worth the effort.
© 2021 Noel Bagwell. All Right Reserved.
