Tao Te Ching (Introduction)

Respect for Others' Boundaries

Just like buildings and countries have 'boundaries', humans too have boundaries.

We must respect others' boundaries, for a conflict free life.


Personal boundaries are the imaginary lines we draw around ourselves to maintain balance and protect our bodies, minds, emotions, and time from the behavior or demands of others.

They provide the framework to keep us from being used or manipulated by others, and they allow us to confidently express who we are and what we want in life.

FromPsybersquare.com:Boundaries are NOT rejection.
And Barriers

According to the Oxford English Dictionary a boundary is defined as follows:

boundary - A thing which serves to mark the limits of something; the limit itself, a dividing line.

Notice the absence of the word "rejection" in that definition? That's because boundaries -- whether physical, psychological or emotional -- are NOT rejections. Nevertheless, people frequently interpret boundaries as a rejection, or are afraid to set boundaries for themselves for fear that someone else will interpret their boundary as a rejection.

At the crux of the Great Boundary Misunderstanding is the common inclination to interpret a boundary in a black-and-white way, because of the fear of rejection. If Dan*, an adult, lets his parents know that he will visit them twice a month, but no more than that because his work will suffer otherwise, he is setting a boundary. If Dan's mother responds by complaining that they never see him anymore, she is dealing with Dan's boundary in a black-and-white fashion.

Black-and-white thinking means that there is no gray -- no middle ground.

In the case of Dan's mother, there is no "sometimes," there is only always or never. Clearly, since Dan is visiting twice a month, his mother's claim that she never sees him is not true. Dan's mother is simply afraid that Dan's action of putting a limit on the number of his visits is somehow a rejection of her or the family. When Dan says: "I can't visit as much as I used to, because my job is so demanding," his mother hears: "I don't like you anymore and no longer want to spend time with you." Is that, in fact, true? Is Dan rejecting his family? Or does he simply need a little more time and space for himself in order to succeed at work?

We all need a different amount of space at different times in our lives. To clearly define that space for ourselves and the ones we love is a healthy and reasonable thing to do. Dan's boundary is not a rejection. Dan's mother is only reacting in a negative black-and-white fashion, because she's afraid that it is. Better communication on both sides would make Dan more comfortable with the healthy boundary he has set and alleviate his mother's fears of rejection.

The boundary dilemma and the fear of rejection becomes a compounded problem for many people in recovery. Dysfunctional families are often dysfunctional in large part because they DON'T set healthy boundaries. As a result, during their crucial years of development, the children of substance abusing or dysfunctional parents very frequently ARE rejected by their loved ones. Children from dysfunctional families commonly develop a hypersensitivity to rejection as a result.

Furthermore, because the children of alcoholic or dysfunctional parents generally experience NO boundaries or TOTAL barriers growing up, they never learn to recognize what a healthy boundary is. Therefore, as adults, each time a loved one sets a boundary for them, they experience tremendous fear that the boundary is, in fact, a barrier that indicates total rejection.


However difficult it may be for a given individual to deal with boundaries, the fact remains that boundaries are a healthy, normal, and necessary part of life. Boundaries are a way to manage one's life and one's interpersonal relationships -- a way to set limits. The next time you need to set a boundary, or accept a boundary that someone else has set, just remember: a boundary is simply a boundary and not a rejection.

Never Not Here (Guest Post)

By NeverNotHereTV

(23) IN A PRIMARY RELATIONSHIP THERE ARE 3 FUNDAMENTAL IMAGINATIONS.

There is the "I", there is the "YOU", and there is the "WE". There may be some substance in the I and in the YOU, even though we know that they are both built on thoughts and memories. The WE has even less substance, and may be a pure thought form. It is also nourished (or impoverished) by thoughts and memories.

Most of the thoughts building the WE are collective beliefs of how it should be. (If you are raising children, I am not going to address your situation. Please write your own post.)

There are many thoughts around how the WE should be nourished, and I definitely agree that it should be. My focus here is how that nourishment is taking place. Many thoughts of the perfect WE honor self denial. It's that selfless mother that gave her all to the family, with nothing left over to call her own. (That's just her negative self talk isn't it?) We even have the term unconditional love, meaning there is no self in it or no business deal. Is that a high state?

Really, who wants unconditional love? Maybe in church or something? Unconditional love does not react, because it can't go up and down. Isn't that kind of distant? Detached, Cool, Lacking any specialness. Surely I wouldn't like it, would you?

If you are in any way assuming that selfless role in a relationship, I would ask if you are not nourishing bitterness along with your love? If that is your MO you are for sure reacting. You are dramatizing those reactions. You are half believing that the others are there principally to absorb your reactions, (so your "truth" can be heard). And the purpose of all that drama is to manipulate those around you as a secret back seat driver. You are as dishonest as any crook.

Please consider that if you are feeding a WE that is not feeding back your I, then you are creating a mountain of poison that will sooner or later sicken you and destroy your relationship.

In fact, in a healthy, long lasting relationship, the I and the YOU and the WE are in balance with respect to their power. They are equal in how they command a slice of your attention. Each component is growing in caring and love, in social abilities and in personal empowerment that makes a difference.

Some people with an advanced case of inadequacy have given up on their own motive power. They may be seeking a stronger WE to prop themselves up with. It also happens with an advanced belief in scarcity, where one tries to jump several financial or social classes to a new level of WE. You might remember that old old TV show, "How to Marry a Millionaire".

If your relationship lacks this balance, start to watch out now. Don't let any more poison seep in. The moment you discover a refusal to build these three equally, then I say "get out". Entanglement only gets deeper. Even the sex is fake. It is not clean.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Firstly, a wonderful post from Universal Consciousness

Tuesday, April 05, 2005:

"The unexamined life is not worth living." -Socrates (quoted by Plato in Apology)

I think what Socrates is saying here is that on some basic level, to be alive, to be human, is to actively examine life. If you don't think about how you want to live, then you give up those decisions to others. You become like an animal, or even a machine, in that you have no self, no agency acting independently. Socrates sees this sense of an independent, rational self, as essential to our humanity. Another translation of the quote reads, "the unexamined life not being livable for a person." This explicit reference to "a person" is evidence of the distintion being made between humans and animals. In fact, one could even interpret it to mean that it is an impossiblity for a human being to go through life without examining it. On some level, to be alive, at least in the human form, is to be conscious. To be conscious is to examine the world around you. Without examining the world, we would be zombies (in the philosophical sense).

However, I do not completly agree with Socrates. The effect of other's ideas on one's own must be recognized. Nobody is completely independent. Socrates might argue that rationality is innate, and that each person can come to rational conclusions independently, but this does not refute my argument. Taking for granted that rationality is innate, (something that I do not, but will for the sake of argument) there is some creativity involved in rationality which allows one to look down the right logical path.

The rules math, for example, are set, but many problems remain unsolved because no one has had the insight to chose the right path to find their solutions. It is this creativity which is susceptible to outside pressure (if not outside determination). One wonders whether there is any substantial ego at all, since science can find no point in the brain at which decisions are made, that is, there is no physical manifestation of a single-point ego (and the ego does seem to be a single point). I'm a materialist, and I think dualism is absurd, and so I seriously question the whole concept of a "Self." So is there really any examiner to do the examining? Socrates believed there to be one essentially a priori, as I alluded to earlier, but perhaps this is an incorrect assumption. If it is, then the quote is largely meaningless.