Boundaries with Love

As highly sensitive people ourselves, we've often grown to survive through the world with our emotions by becoming people pleasers. We have grown adaptive to keeping the peace, especially as empathetic people who are feeling the emotions of everybody around us we are often always sensing and adjusting our energy to make sure that we can keep a smooth energy of peace around us.  

Often that has meant that as children we have learned or adapted to lessen our own needs. Our own desires to be able to accommodate for other people who may be more demanding or for other situations who have felt like they needed our presence to be the healer of the situation, rather than receiving what we really needed ourselves. So hence the birth of the people pleaser within us. I see you. 

Now as we have been birthed into motherhood and we are often raising children who are highly sensitive themselves. We have become aware or awakened that we are here to break those cycles because we have that deep inner knowing, sometimes it is birthed from fear, that our children are going to squash their own personal power, squash their own sense of self, to be able to please other people, and we don't want them to have to do this inner work that we are doing to be able to unleash our children. We don't want them to have to spend all this time and energy working through their shadow selves. 

I mean, we're parents we're going to do something to make it imprint, but we're wanting to lessen that load. We're wanting to do the best job that we can and the more aware and awake we are the to our own selves, our own shadows, the more we are able to not pass on these burdens to our children. 

Something that we are learning as people that are breaking out of the people pleaser energy, we're unleashing ourselves from these ancestral or Akashic ties that keep us playing small feeling like we're not enough lessening our power, not trusting our inner guidance is that we need to be able to hold a boundary. This is something that we need to work quite a lot on. 

Often the times when we talk about boundaries, people think that it's about putting up walls to stop other people from getting in or taking your energy or sapping that energy. But a lot of the time is about standing your ground and holding that energy yourself. 

This is boundaries with love, because we want to hold a hard boundary with an open heart. 

We want to teach our children by modeling this, we want to show them that this is how we interact with people in our world. So that we can still be open and loving and giving without burning out, without over delivering. It's something that I'm personally learning all the time and that's okay to be constantly learning and growing. This is why this is a journey. One of the best things that we need to do to be able to get to this point of knowing how to hold a boundary and what your personal limits actually are, is to know what your values are. Okay, so what is it that you value?

It could just be simply to feel calm and grounded. That's the most that's one of the most common values that I get from mothers that I work with. They just want to be able to hold that energy for their family, a harmonious home, a calm home, the grounded home. The value is calm and grounded. So how do you get to that point, we have needs that need to be met to get to that point. 

One of the biggest things that we need especially as mothers who are highly sensitive, empathetic, constantly nurturing, we often end up over giving or over delivering and then we feel burnt out, we feel touched out. Well I know in my case I do. So what do we need to be able to resist that space and stay in our values, calm and grounded? Often need some space. 

In the home space when you're talking to your child you needto know your values and your needs so you can clearly identify and communicate them to your family. You could utilise the SMART goals concept, around is it specific? Is it measurable? Is it attainable? Is it relevant? Is it timely? 

When we are breaking the cycles and not over giving and not running ourselves off our feet, trying to serve everybody else before we serve ourselves? Let's talk about serving yourself before you can be there to give to others. 

The value is I want to feel calm and grounded whilst playing with my child. What I need to be able to do that is five minutes of alone time first so I can get there. 

So you could communicate to your child... yes, I hear that you want me to come and play that game with you, I would love that, first I need to spend five minutes in my room alone so that I can find my calm and fun for when I come out and play, so you get it started and I'll be there soon! 

So you are keeping it quite specific. It's measurable. It's only five minutes. It's attainable. You're right there in the bedroom. It's relevant to your child - so that you can feel calm and playful. That means that our children can understand why you need that. Is it timely yeah, I'm gonna do it right now. 

We're breaking the cycles and we're changing this family code of honor. You may have never seen your mom take some time out to to meditate. I may be advantaged in that I watched my Mum do this regularly. It may be an odd concept for you and maybe you have all these barriers to doing this. Maybe you feel guilt that you are not serving them before your needs. You're breaking this cycle. 

We remember that when we are holding our boundaries and our personal limits. No is a full sentence. Okay, but when we are working with our kids, our partner and our family who are not used to us having these limits these boundaries, they can have expectations that we're going to keep giving. Whilst in some situations it's perfectly fine to let people down with a hard No. There are some situations like with our kids, where we've got to move into that a bit more softly and this is why we're doing boundaries with love is that we're teaching people how to respect our boundaries just like we're teaching ourselves how to honor our our own boundaries. So whilst no is a full sentence, it does help to make it relevant to your kids to know the reason why you can't just straight away go from work to play. You need to take something for you first. 

I review my rhythm every Sunday where I'll look at our calendar, and I'll think what do we have on this week? Is my energy at a space where I can be there for this or do I need to cut some things back. So for the people outside of my intimate bubble, my kids, my family there's some room for no as a full sentence with that. I can just say no, we're not going to make that this week. And I don't need to give any excuses. When people make up excuses or lie and say that they're sick when they're not, as an intuitive you can feel the difference with the truth. You don't need to make up excuses. I know that you're trying to do that to make the other person feel better. But really, you don't need to. 

There's no justification necessary. Even if you have been so busy and you're run off your feet and you honestly need to take a quiet week. You don't need to explain that unless you feel like you want to, but you don't need to come up with excuses. You don't need to justify it. You don't need to explain anything. You don't need to apologize about this. You don't need to apologize for taking space or saying that you can't make something. 

Review your weekly calendar. Make it a ritual to sit down and look at the events that you have for the week ahead and think is this attainable for the energy that I have? Is it going to meet my values? Is it going to meet my kids values because remember, we are advocating for our kids needs we're protecting their energy as much as our own. All of these changes of rhythm, changes of schedule at the end of the year. So many more events, more lights, more evenings out and different types of food. Sugar. All these different things that influence our energy. We don't have our regular rhythm to anchor our base energy into. It is hard for our sensitive little kids to keep up. 

We are the advocates for our child's needs as well. So while you're looking at that weekly rhythm thinking is this is this going to be okay for my kids? Will they be able to keep up with this as well? You are shifting and adapting your energy in alignment with your values. This is advocating for you and your family to stay in alignment with what's important to you with what's serving you! Rather than squashing down your needs and pushing yourselves past burnout to be able to keep up with everybody else's demands. 

We are now coming at these boundaries from a center of personal power and that is activated by your inner priestess of personal power. I'll introduce you to her in a future podcast, when we activate our priestess of personal power, we feel really centred in our values because this is all about the solar plexus energy. To be able to be sturdy within our solar plexus energy, our center of personal power, we have a solid grounded energy through our root chakra. We have a central energy of purpose activated within our sacral chakra our desires are met, our needs are met. If we feel grounded and safe and stable in what we are doing, then we can feel activated within our personal power to go and stand in our worth with that. We want to come from that place because if we are not grounded, if we are not anchored in what our values are, if we're not anchored in what our needs are and if our desires have been have not been met, then we end up screaming our boundaries... 

"WOULD EVERYONE JUST SHUT UP!!!" 

"I NEED SOME SPACE!!!"

We get to that point when we haven't met our base chakra energy when we haven't met our sacral energy and when we are not coming at this from a space of personal power from ou Solar Plexus energy.

We are holding our own energy, our boundaries are for holding space for ourselves. Often we think that our boundaries areabout other people but they're actually about holding this space for ourselves. 

If other people have become accustomed to your lack of boundaries, your lack of boundaries has been serving them. Maybe your kids have been served by your boundaries because they get everything straight away and you're not taking that space to give yourself your needs. So it can be a bit of an adjustment period. It could even be your partner having an adjustment period. And it could even be your family members, your extended family members, people in your community who have grown accustomed to allowing you to mold yourself to fit around everybody else. It might take them a bit of time to adjust to the fact that you are serving yourself first. You're serving your kids needs first and you're saying no, you're saying I don't have the energy for that, that's not in my schedule this week. I don't have room for that. 

This December is a really busy time of year for extra activities, extra festivities, extra events, family lunches with extended family and as a child you've been conditioned to this code of honor to be able to fit in with your tribe. Now that you have birthed your own children you have been awakened to see that the code of honor is no longer serving your entity. That code of honor is no longer working for what your values are. Sometimes people in that extended family who are still living in alignment with those values are going to feel a bit triggered perhaps and they might take it personally that you are living a different code of honor. You're rewriting your code of honor to suit what your needs are. So how do we confront that? 

Here are some examples of things that you may need to say at family gatherings when your boundaries are being violated… 

“I appreciate your concern but this is my decision.”
“I respect your values and beliefs but I don't share them.”
“This conversation is no longer available.”
“This is not a conversation that I'm willing to have with you.”

Put them in your own words. 

As an unschooling Mom, it could be a question as simple as how’s homeschooling going? That used to be one that would really trigger me - depending on who was asking - because if I wasn't grounded in my values, if I wasn't grounded in my needs and desires, what's important to my purpose, then that question would really throw me into a well of feeling inadequate, like I’m not doing enough or feeling judgment from others over not making the right choices… but when we are grounded and stable in our purpose - value aligned - we can communicate how great our life together really is! 

Any judgment we are met with is shut down with it simply not being anybody else's decision on how to raise our children but ours. And honestly I can’t remember the last time I noticed judgement on my choices. (Maybe it was earlier this year when we got reported… I’ll have to share that story another day!)

The thing to take away is it's not about them. It's about you. We're holding hard boundaries with open hearts. If you see these boundary violations, people that keep pushing people or trying to convince you to change what your value systems are to get back into that old code of honor. This can be really common when we have those family members that are really strict and adhering to their family code. They see you as needing to be retrained as a child still in their community and you're re establishing yourself as your own leader of your family community. 

We observe and communicate what we can see is going on. It could be… 

“I see that you're having some trouble accepting the way that we raise our children/the way that we communicate with our kids.” 

As respectful parents, I see that we get this a lot. It could be viewed to outside people that we let our kids walk all over us because we let them have their own opinions or we could be seen to let our kids get away with everything because we have conversations or talk to them as equals. We are changing old patterns.To people that are adhering to that pattern that can be really threatening to the way that they have always lived their life as well.

“I can see that you are uncomfortable with the way that I'm working with my child; I need you to let me make these choices for the way I am raising my children because our values are aligned differently.”

It's not making it personal. It's not making it about them. It's not putting them down or attacking them over the way that they raised you or the way that they're raising their children or anything like that. It's literally about you and your children. 

Coming back to your own personal boundaries and need for personal space to be able to get to the grounded and calm state, instead of something I go to when I am not anchored…

”YOU’RE driving me crazy, give me space and leave me alone!”

Let's change it to not about them. It's about you. 

“I’m feeling tired and grumpy. I need some alone time so that I can refuel my energy so that I can be really present and have fun when we are playing that game together…”

Then by modeling this you can see your child take this on when they need some space to refuel!

Now consider the family at that extended family lunch… 

“I would really like to enjoy our time together today, I need you to respect my boundaries so that we can create happy memories this day.” 

Why are you there? What's your intention? Are you there to have fun and be joyous, spend time together as a family… What do you need to be able to get there? 

We are better off starting with a tight boundary and then seeing how it serves. You can always loosen your boundaries off later if you feel that you don't need such a strict boundary of what you're setting for other people to adhere to. It's a lot harder for people when you are teaching them your boundaries or sharing your new family code of honour with them. It's a lot easier for you to start with a hard line and soften it over time as you feel comfortable rather than going in loosely and not being clear. So remember what Brene Brown says clear is kind.

What we really need to advocate for our child's needs is calm and grounded energy - holding that space for ourselves. Create a ritual every week. Looking at the calendar each Sunday works for me as I have intentionally made my time really slow. If your weeks accumulate tasks really quickly and your events are coming up faster than that, then it could work for you to create a ritual of every evening to sit down and look at the calendar for your next day. Have a think about if your kids have the energy for this. Do I have the energy for this? We're not pushing either you or your kids outside your energy boundaries without preparing yourself for that. So then you can advocate for your needs, advocate for your child's needs.

How many events do you want to go to in a day, in a week? How much running around or rushing do you want to do because I know that rushing is something that really throws out my energy, and impacts my kids. How much time do you have between events? Do you have downtime in between? As a highly sensitive mumma, with highly sensitive children, we have realised that after an energy expansion time, a breathing in, like an outing, event or catching up with friends we need breathing out time… rest, time to do our own thing in our own corners, our contraction time in our rhythm. It's decompression time. We all need that. 

So holding that boundary for your family and communicating that is really important. What we really need as mothers of our highly sensitive kids, as emotional mothers ourselves who may be feeling like we are disconnected, and feeling that struggle with being able to hold these boundaries, is to unleash ourselves from these old codes that are no longer serving. Whilst we rewrite the new that's based on our values, we need to model this to our children. We need to model how you stand for what actually serves you. In my work I do this with clients where I use tools like bespoke flower essences, and journeys into the Akashic and the ancestral realms to release these energetic imprints. Your child is here to break this cycle and it's triggering you to advocate for them. And when you advocate for them, when you hold these boundaries and stand up for what your family values are, what you're relying upon. You're giving your children the permission to rise into their power to hold their power to trust their power, to live in power. And that is our ultimate role.