I think that one of the thing that difficult to learn about being a human is how to maintain your own boundaries while still having empathy for those trying to cross them.

We’re all prone to certain behavior patterns. Some of them are ingrained from how we are raised, some we created in order to survive certain circumstances, and some we’ve learned and habitually applied. Another part of the ‘fun’ of adulting is learning to recognize these behaviors, and once you’ve recognized them, decide what you want to do with them. Is this a beneficial behavior that you want to nurture and expand? Is this a behavior that formed out of a circumstance you’re no longer in that no longer serves you? Or is this a behavior that is outright destructive?

Once you’ve got it sorted out, you have to decide what you want to do about it.

Today I’m going to go over some of the behaviors that I have had to consciously nurture that are only recently becoming easier and almost second nature. (We’ll leave all those destructive behaviors for another time. wink wink)

For me, and many empathetic people, setting boundaries can be a challenge. Especially when the person that you need to respect those boundaries is struggling. When I was younger, I didn’t know how to do this. I didn’t understand what was happening. There was a person in my life that I cared about, they needed help, and yet they were using me up. My own needs weren’t being met, and I would begin to resent their presence, even when I felt for their situation. This usually ended in one of two ways:

After being pushed to the brink, I would set up walls instead of boundaries. The person would get upset that they weren’t getting what they needed from me anymore and they would vanish from my life. This often left me hurt and confused, even though I knew on some level that I was better off without them.
After being pushed to the brink, and usually after an unforgivable offense on the part of the other party, I would cut them off. Again, this was often emotionally upsetting for me—and I’m sure for them—and left me feeling like I’d failed both of us.

Both of those circumstances had me cutting off a relationship that I had spent a lot of time and energy nurturing. And sometimes that is necessary. Not every time though.

I think the important thing that I lacked in those situations was understanding of what was happening. You can feel empathy for a situation that a person has put themselves in and also realize that it’s not your responsibility to pull them out. There’s an innate desire to help one another in most of us (especially empaths) due to herd mentality. Women are often more susceptible to this behavior than men because it’s ingrained in us from an early age that we’re to nurture, help, and care for … whoever. If you happen to be an older sibling on top of it, double whammy, you’ve been told to watch out for the others since they were born.

I recently had an opportunity to recognize that I had been hurt by someone I cared about. I had to set a new boundary. And there were some things I was no longer willing to discuss with this person. When we spoke, I could see that they were remorseful, that they were in pain. And I had sympathy and empathy with that. I also was able to remind myself that I was not responsible for making someone else feel better about how they had hurt me.

It went well. The relationship has changed but it has not been destroyed. I feel hope that they will move on and grow and I feel happy that I won’t have to deal with the negative behavior that I was experiencing.

Setting boundaries, giving grace.