Guilt, boundaries, and me
How I’m staying with it all.
Some boundaries I’m setting lately and how I’m dealing with the guilt
Happy Sunday, Soothers. If you’re like me, a thoughtful, empathetic, perfectionist and people-pleasing do-gooder tryna live her life out in the world, you have probably struggled to set boundaries. Setting boundaries has been a huge challenge for me throughout my life, mostly driven by feelings of guilt and fear for not helping a person as much as I could (which then led my brain to think, “You’re a bad person!” and then to an identity crisis of not being “a good person” and total terror around that… btw, I’ve found it valuable to try to work towards being a person who is true to herself, rather than a “good person.”)
But something’s shifting for me lately. I don’t know if it’s the YEARS AND YEARS of therapy and self-development work finally compounding, the “villain era” memes going around that make me laugh, the fact that I am in my 40s and finally feeling good and solid about this or what, but I am finally getting… I won’t say GOOD, at setting boundaries, but guess what? I AM SETTING BOUNDARIES! And it feels great.
Here’s the thing: I didn’t realize I was bad at setting boundaries for a long time. Because boundaries are murky concept and hard to define, I didn’t even really…
