Setting your boundary

These first steps will help you evaluate deeper as you think about setting your boundaries.

1. Identify the situation and its importance. 

First, identify the situation in which you’re struggling and needing to evaluate the boundary you’re setting. Is it with friends or family? Is work becoming the biggest priority and you don’t want that? Has your time, money, or energy become stressed too far? Wherever you’re finding stress, anxiety, exhaustion, or overwhelm in your life, that’s a great place to evaluate a personal boundary. Then, describe why it’s important for you to create or alter your boundary with this situation. Think about why creating or altering this boundary is an important step and needed change for you. 

2. Invite God into your boundaries setting process.

As a Christian, God is an important part of your life. Inviting God into this process of boundary setting can help you see the situation and boundary setting process through a different lens. Inviting God may look like spending time in prayer, reading the Bible to learn what Scripture has to say about your situation or remind you of your values, spending time in silence and solitude to hear from God, spending time in worship, fasting, or participating in other spiritual disciplines. You can use this time to seek God for wisdom, courage, grace, and truth. 

3. Search for deeper roots.

As you begin to consider your current boundary, search deeper for reasons why the boundary is set or why you want to change it. Consider how you might be led by fear, shame, anger, guilt, or hurt. Think about how you want this situation to honor God and your values and any role of sin or suffering within your life. Reflect upon whether your current circumstance is driven from habit or what you’ve been told. Whatever may be the roots, delving deeper into our actions can be helpful to have further understanding of why we do what we do. If you struggle with identifying these deeper roots, you might consider discussing with a trusted individual or counselor.

Sticking To Your Boundaries

These latter steps will help you stick to your boundaries. 

4. Communicating my boundaries. 

Take time now to determine how you will communicate this boundary with others. When you set a plan to communicate this boundary, you will be more likely to stick with it. Do you need to send a text? Is a phone call or in person conversation needed? Can it be communicated formally or informally? Perhaps, you practice saying the boundary a few times in the mirror to convey your boundary confidently and with more ease. If it’s a boundary for yourself only, you might need to brainstorm how you’ll remind yourself. Do you need a reminder on your phone or a post-it note somewhere you’ll see frequently like a mirror? Make sure you find something that will help you remember the importance of this boundary.

5. Seek accountability. 

When you’re working on something new, accountability can be an effective way to ensure you follow through. Ask yourself: who can hold me accountable? Find a trusted friend, family member, church member, pastor, or colleague and talk to that individual about your plan. You might ask that individual to check in on you and how you’re doing with maintaining that boundary.

6. Re-evaluate.

Set a time and day to go back and re-evaluate your boundary. Is this boundary working for you? If so, great! Congratulate yourself in some way. It’s no small feat to maintain your boundary. If it’s not working, how might you alter it? Was the boundary practical? Do you need to take a smaller step before getting where you need to be?

Next steps

Often, there are further reasons why maintaining boundaries are difficult. Past or present experiences can make it difficult to do on your own and could require further mental health expertise. If you need additional support with your boundaries or mental health, it may be time to enlist help by searching for a “Christian counselor near me”. Sojourner Counseling has licensed therapists who are ready to help you in 2024 with the changes you want to make. Schedule online today to make an appointment online or in person in Raleigh, NC!

If you’re not ready for counseling, these Christian books on boundaries may be an ideal next step:

Boundaries Updated and Expanded Edition: When to Say Yes, How to Say No To Take Control of Your Life by Drs. Henry Cloud and John Townsend. They also have related books on boundaries with kids, with teens, in marriage, and in dating.

Boundaries for Your Soul: How to Turn Your Overwhelming Thoughts and Feelings into Your Greatest Allies by Dr. Alison Cook and Kimberly Miller, LMFTGood Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are by Lysa TerKeurst

The post New Year, New Boundaries: 6 Steps to Set and Stick to Your Boundaries in 2024 first appeared on Sojourner Counseling.

The post New Year, New Boundaries: 6 Steps to Set and Stick to Your Boundaries in 2024 appeared first on Sojourner Counseling.

It’s okay to have boundaries

Boundaries are good and healthy. This statement might be obvious to some. To others, it may not be. Women often feel like they have to be everything to everyone: most reliable friend, best daughter, mom who holds everything together, hardest worker, loyal daughter. Fill in the blank with whatever role you can imagine. But the thing is, there’s no way to be the best at everything and hold it all together. Whatever real or imagined expectations you or others have set are making things just too tough because you were just not meant to function this way. Some of this may come from your own high expectations. You may not have grown up seeing healthy boundaries modeled. When you tried to establish a boundary, you were met with anger or guilt from friends or family or a boss. Or maybe you might believe that setting boundaries is selfish and sinful when the Bible tells us to love others. However, starting now, we must consider and remember that God has given us boundaries in Scripture for our good and has created us as creatures who can’t go and go like the Energizer Bunny. 

Let’s consider a definition of boundaries. Cambridge Dictionary provides two helpful definitions: 1. a real or imagined line that marks the edge or limit of something and 2. the limit of what someone considers to be acceptable behavior. In both these definitions, limitations are what make boundaries. We all have limitations, and when we recognize our limitations, we can create healthy, God-honoring boundaries and function as God designed us. In his book, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, John Mark Comer states, “What if these limitations aren’t something to fight but to gratefully accept as a signpost to God’s call on our souls?…They are where we find God’s will for our lives.” 

When we consider our boundaries to help us better steward ourselves and resources, we can better love and serve God in the way He intended. If you’re looking for a place to start, prayer is a great place to begin by asking God to explore your boundaries.

Say goodbye unhealthy patterns in relationships

People are designed for community and connection. The pandemic and social distancing showed people how crucial social connection with others is. However, you must be mindful of the boundaries you have in relationships. Although there are many struggles women have in relationships, fear and inadequacy can often drive behavioral patterns in relationships with others. Fear of others can lead to compromising values or saying yes because you’re afraid of how the other person may respond. Inadequacy can drive women to comparison of others’ lives, leading to feelings of jealousy or discontentment. It can even lead to putting down others to make you feel better about yourself. 

In a healthy relationship, you’re able to love God, love ourselves and love others in a way that aligns with God’s design for you. In a healthy relationship, you’re able to say no without fear of the other person becoming angry or feeling guilty afterwards. Additionally, when your boundaries are respected in relationships, the other person doesn’t guilt or shame you or ignore your boundaries. 

If you find yourself in unhealthy patterns, it’s time for a change. You can begin to implement healthy boundaries in your relationships today. If you’re noticing patterns of unhealthy boundaries, it might be a good time to begin working with a professional counselor to help you identify the deeper roots of these patterns and begin to work on changing them. You can say hello to healthy boundaries in relationships this year!

*Please note: If you are or suspect you are in an abusive relationship, seek help immediately.*

Check your social media boundaries

Social media keeps you connected to old classmates, family, friends, and that neighbor you once lived next to in third grade. The same platforms that can gift you convenient connections can plague you with easy comparison. Have you ever noticed that people rarely post sad pictures of themselves or confess to the realities of all the hardships in life? That’s purposeful. The constant use of social media without awareness of its impact on your mental, emotional and spiritual health can be negatively impactful. In fact, studies have shown that increased social media use has been linked with increased rates of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and feelings of inadequacy. 

Does this mean you should cut social media use completely? That’s for you to decide. Here are a few questions you might use to gauge your current use and whether to increase, maintain, decrease or cut use all together.

• How many minutes or hours do I spend on social media platforms each day?
• How do I feel after being on it for a period of time? Happy, joyful, anxious, irritated, angry, sad? 
• Does social media bring you closer to God?
• Is it helpful with keeping up with friends, family, classmates, co-workers, neighbors, etc that I actually want to maintain a connection?

Whatever you decide to do, consider committing today to be more prayerful and aware of your social media use. 

This new year provides an opportunity to reflect on what boundaries you want to set for yourself. Whether it’s starting with accepting boundaries as healthy, looking at patterns in relationships or monitoring your social media use, starting somewhere with evaluating your boundaries is essential. If you’re struggling with boundaries and looking to explore these deeper, meeting with a Christian counselor can help you identify your personal boundaries and help you build healthier boundaries that align with your faith. Schedule an appointment with Sojourner Counseling today!

The post Boundaries for Christian Women in 2024: New Year, New Boundaries first appeared on Sojourner Counseling.

The post Boundaries for Christian Women in 2024: New Year, New Boundaries appeared first on Sojourner Counseling.

Set a Vision for Your Family

Have you ever gone to the grocery store without a grocery list? You might have had a mental list in your mind of what you needed but then walked out the store with several other items you hadn’t planned to purchase. If you do it once or twice, it might be okay. But if you do it frequently, it might cause other issues, such as going over the grocery budget or not having a place to store the extra food items in the fridge or pantry.  

Like going to the grocery store without a list, if you don’t know what’s most important to your family, you can get swept up by many opportunities that pop up as the year progresses. Opportunities with your child’s schooling, work responsibilities, extracurricular activities, ministry, friends and family commitments…you name it! All of these might be good things but saying yes to everything might lead to a packed schedule leading you to feel burned out and overwhelmed as a parent juggling all the opportunities. 

Prayerfully, you can start today by asking God to show you the vision He has for your family this year and what opportunities and responsibilities fall into that vision. If you have a vision, then that vision can help steer to what your family commits. When the questions come from your children about why you’re prioritizing some opportunities over another (AKA saying no), you come back to that vision and remind them of the vision God has provided for your family! 

Commit to Consistency in Your Boundaries for Parenting

Let’s be honest…consistency is hard. It means staying the course. It means keeping up with something even when you don’t want to or are too tired. Consistency and predictability as a parent are crucial to helping your children thrive. Consistency demonstrates to your children that it increases trust and reliability. For children, consistency also produces an increased sense of security and order. All of these factors are shown to be important as children develop and build a healthy attachment. 

One area where consistency can be particularly hard is in the area of discipline. When adults respond inconsistently to children’s misbehavior, it can often create confusion for the children. Children may have difficulty understanding what response or consequence they may receive from a parent, which can produce anxiety. 

Using a schedule each day, having a consistent set bedtime and wake time, establishing family times or traditions, and preparing age-appropriate rewards and consequences can all be a part of building a consistency within your family this year. As you model this consistency to your children this new year, it sets a positive example and strengthens the healthy consistent boundaries you want to set as a parent.

Use Calm, Clear and Direct Communication in Boundaries for Parenting

Imagine working a job where your boss tells you what you’re expected to do sometimes. Now, imagine that same boss gets upset with you for doing something that wasn’t communicated to you but was expected. You’d probably feel confused as an employee. Often, children voice this same dynamic with parents. They realize their parents are upset but are confused about the response to something that wasn’t clearly communicated. 

Let’s look at a couple of examples here:

For young children, for example, asking a question as a direction is interpreted as a choice. “Do you want to put your shoes on?” is interpreted as a literal question. By asking a question, instead of giving a direction, a child interprets it as a question about whether the child does or doesn’t want to do something. A parent might be confused about why the child has not put on shoes if the child doesn’t do it after being asked the question. 

A teen may interpret a slightly raised voice or agitated tone from a parent as yelling. A parent may expect a teen to be respectful in communicating with a parent and might feel disrespected when the teen uses the same response back to the parent. 

By using calm, clear, and direct communication with your children, these communication misunderstandings can begin to decrease. As a parent, you have the most important role in modeling and teaching boundaries in communication to your children. 

Each new day and new year has the potential to start fresh as a parent. If you’ve messed up (this makes you normal because who hasn’t?!), it’s not too late to implement one, two or all of these tips for setting boundaries as a parent. Just be sure to give yourself some grace as you think about implementing these boundaries.

If you’re looking for more support in boundary setting with your children, connect with our office today. We’d love to provide support to you and your family as you work to build healthy boundaries this new year.

Stay tuned for our next blog about setting boundaries as a Christian woman in 2024!

The post Boundaries for Parenting in 2024: New Year, New Boundaries first appeared on Sojourner Counseling.

The post Boundaries for Parenting in 2024: New Year, New Boundaries appeared first on Sojourner Counseling.