Trust and Boundaries

Today I am thinking about trust and boundaries. Specifically, self-trust and healthy personal boundaries. I was told by someone once a long time ago that I do not have healthy boundaries and, in many instances, have no boundaries. I believed them. This was partially true at the time, but I realize it became a story that I continually tell myself that is not actually true anymore. When it was true, it was a result of my early life experience and I have spent the majority of my adult life acutely aware of the deficit and working on improving the situation…but didn’t update the story I tell myself. I have realized a few things about healthy boundaries today…I do have some, they do change over time – as I change over time – and that is most likely appropriate.

Self-trust is actually a vibration… and I believe it actually goes hand in hand with self confidence and integrity. I learned to rely on myself – I am capable of survival in challenging and threatening situations. I have also learned to rely on myself in other, more subtle, ways. The more authentic I am in the world (I believe I have evolved into a person who is extremely authentic), the more self-trust I have. Sometimes I lack self-trust for a minute – this happens when I abandon myself by running away from negative emotions. It usually doesn’t last long…I have to remind myself who I am…authentically…and that who I am is okay…always – regardless of what someone else thinks. If emotions are the navigation system of life, it is super important to listen to them – understand them – and deal with them appropriately and move forward. I can trust myself to make boundaries that are in alignment with who I am at my core and that do not go against my personal integrity.

Boundaries are guidelines of rules of conduct with how we interact with the world or how we allow it to interact with us. Mostly we violate our own boundaries…either doing it ourselves or by allowing someone else to. Boundaries are defined by feelings, and they are your own personal truth. Each individual is responsible for defining their feelings and speaking their personal truth. When I had poor or non-existent boundaries, I was not aware of my own feelings about anything at all…I felt a lot of shame and tried to mold myself to what other people wanted… and gave too much of myself in order to feel “useful”. So much so that I actually at one point in my life, did not know what I wanted to eat. Crazy as it sounds, I spent 3 hours once in a QFC in the middle of the night trying to decide what food I might want and trying to remember what foods I liked – that was a state of extreme disconnect and lostness.

I do now acknowledge how I truly feel, acknowledge what I do and do not want, know what is acceptable to me and what is not. I am no longer ashamed of who I am. I do have boundaries. I don’t fear people thinking negatively about me. I don’t fit myself into someone else’s “box” of who I am supposed to be… I honor and admit to who I truly am. I speak up. If I don’t want to do something or go somewhere, I say so and honor my choice – rather than just doing it to be nice. I am able to define and communicate emotional needs in relationship… and I reassess as needed, as well as honoring other people’s needs. I know how to protect myself energetically and how to differentiate between my energetic “stuff” and other people’s “stuff”. I have actually come a long way and failed to give myself credit.

This – just like housework or yard work – is an on-going thing though. You don’t just create boundaries and say “Okay…done – that is checked off the list”, it is a continually changing defining, refining, evolving process. Boundaries don’t have to be in resistance to anything…especially if we are all connected – but have to be in conscious alignment with our feelings (a “feeling” is a sensation based perceptional experience of an emotion) and honor our authentic selves and what is “true” or “right” for us. I also think you/me/we need to trust ourselves to allow things to unfold the way they are supposed to. We are all works in progress.

As an empath, things get extra complicated for me. It’s easy for me not to honor my own feelings – so I have to be extra aware. I refuse to be victimized by my empathic make-up… I have to empower my own vibration or energy to such a magnitude that it dilutes the feeling of other people’s energy that I can feel…to a point it does not change mine. I can approach the situation completely open, and I can see it, feel it, understand it but I don’t have to be a match to it, or take it as my own. This is how I can have the ability to help and heal places and sometimes people to some degree.

More and more I am developing and keeping a healthy loving energy to wrap myself in to feel safe in all situations…even if there are “feelings” that may be scary (even my own – LOL)– rather than suppress them. I’m working on being an “empowered empath” 😉

I had an interesting and very vivid dream early this morning…not quite ready to sort that out just yet. Maybe later… it actually had a lot of meaning for me…I’m just not sure how to put it in to the right words.