Are you continuing to struggle with setting boundaries? Since setting boundaries is an essential skill in recovering from an affair, struggling in this area slows down your recovery.
Some of you set boundaries with little to no effort, while others find it a gut-wrenching task. In overcoming the struggle you look in a variety of places.
Some of the suggestions are helpful, others just pile on more guilt. My focus today is on those of you who are such people-pleasers that setting boundaries is an exercise in futility. You long to please everyone and go out of your way to make sure no one is upset. It’s a habit you learn from childhood and it takes work to break free.
You want the boundaries set, you know what boundaries are needed, but setting them terrifies you. You live in fear about what your spouse’s reaction to the boundaries you set will be.
Although your attention is on them and their reaction, you know it’s really about your own fears surrounding ‘what if’ they reject you at some level. Your own needs and fears interfere with your ability to set the needed boundaries.
When you reach this point, the root issue goes back to your source of self-worth. When you’ve grown up looking to others for approval to feel valued, setting boundaries is a struggle against your nature.
In such cases, the problem lies within your fear of rejection. Until that’s overcome, setting boundaries requires herculean effort.
Once you overcome your fear of rejection, setting boundaries is no longer a big deal. Self-worth no longer comes from someone else’s approval. Setting boundaries happens as naturally as breathing because you have confidence in yourself and your own worth.
The key is to focus on your own needs and feelings above those of anyone else, including your spouse. Your goal is to take care of yourself first and it’s not a selfish act.
The impact of all those years of being programmed that you need their approval in order to feel good about yourself doesn’t change quickly. You see the need for change, but find yourself stuck and unable to do what you know is needed.
Although the struggle is happening now, the origins of it happened years ago. Although you can’t change what happened to you, you can change how you deal with them. You can change how you view them.
In the video on Overcoming Affair Trauma, I share ways of moving past earlier traumas in your life. Those traumas helped shape you and where you go to feel valued. Obtaining healing in those areas gives you the ability for letting go of hypothetical fears and the paralysis that comes with them.
Instead of staying stuck, take steps that free you from the mental burdens and fears that keep you frozen. Click and download the video today. In it you’ll find techniques and helps for putting those traumas and their scars behind you.
Keeping it Real,
Jeff
