Compassionate Boundaries

On retreat with Wholehearted last weekend, we explored the two sides of self-compassion: tender and fierce. Tender to meet our vulnerable experiences with soothing energy, and fierce to take action to meet our own needs.

Many of us find tender compassion to be a lot easier to access than the fierce. One expression of fierce compassion is setting a boundary – knowing, voicing, and meeting our own needs. I know from my own experience, and from my coaching work, how many women struggle to maintain boundaries in the face of someone else wanting something different from them.

If maintaining our boundaries means disappointing or frustrating someone else, it can be really tempting to abandon ship. I get it. When our identity is built on being caring and giving, this can be really challenging. But it has a very real cost to our wellbeing and our relationships. One telltale sign that this dynamic may be at play, is if you are feeling resentment, which often has the flavour of, “I’ve abandoned myself for you.”

Our fierce compassion session at Wholehearted explored some of this, and the conversations continued over dinner. And the question came up: “How do children learn boundaries?”

It was a profound question to ask, and provoked deep ripples.

I have had the privilege of witnessing the origin of boundaries in action hundreds of times as a midwife. For an infant at birth, there is no boundary between herself and her mother. From the infant’s perspective, there is only one organism of mother-baby.

In utero, the baby’s nervous system, nutrition, hygiene, thermoregulation, are all provided by the mother. At birth, the baby loses its blood connection to the mother through the placenta, and therefore also its source of continuous food and oxygenation.

• The baby must breathe on its own – taking a breath is our first act of self-care.

• The baby needs its mother (or another caregiver) to feed it – responding to its inner hunger signals, signalling hunger, and receiving care through food is the baby’s first experience of communicating a need and having it met or not met.

• The baby is dependent on her people to keep her warm and protected.

Our very survival is determined by the strength of our acceptance and belonging. Our infant-parent relationships are uniquely:

• Dependent

• Survival-critical

• Asymmetrical (our caregivers are profoundly powerful and we are profoundly vulnerable)

What we need from our caregivers changes as we grow

This totally dependent, asymmetrical relationship is temporary. The toddler starts to learn “no” as an expression of the experience of herself as separate from the mother and caregivers. The constant “no” is an experimentation with boundaries. Where do I end and you begin? What do I have power over? What are the consequences if I frustrate your expectations?

Conflict in parent child relationships is not only normal, it is developmentally vital. As children grow and their capabilities grow, the boundaries are in constant flux. This is really confusing for parents and requires a constant re-evaluation and new discernment about what is appropriate and best. If you have parented a teenager you’ve witnessed how the desire to do it MY WAY develops with (or maybe even before …) growing capability and self-responsibility.

The experience of being able to frustrate each other, getting out of balance, and then repairing and coming back together is how we learn deep trust in self and others.

Is the myth of the ideal mother getting in the way?

Growing up, we learned about boundaries in relationships through our families and through our culture. How much separateness is safe. Whether “no” is survivable. Whether a relationship can hold conflict, or whether disagreement means the end of belonging. Whether needing something is an imposition. How much of ourselves we are supposed to sacrifice to make a loved one feel comfortable.

And over the top of it, as girls and women, we were absorbing something else: a constant messaging from the world about what a good and caring woman looks like. That the ideal mother is self-sacrificing, magically meets needs before they are even expressed, and is never frustrated or angry. And by extension, that a good woman — mother or not — is endlessly available, attuned, and uncomplaining. (And if you’re in a “caring” profession, you get yet another layer of this expectation added on …).

The idealised picture was formed from the perspective of the baby - who can’t know yet that her mother is an actual real whole human with her own needs and wants - and reinforced by society.

Whether or not you are recognised to be mothering, most likely you are contending with an internal version of what a “good caring woman” looks like. Most of the women who raised us were measuring themselves against it too — usually with little support, and usually in silence.

The yearning that doesn’t go away

As adult women, many of us are in a double bind. Not only are we trying to live up to the image of the caring motherwoman, but we may also be holding our own longing for the idealised mother — the one who meets all our needs before we name them, who never frustrates us, in whose presence we don’t have to be separate.

The yearning is the residue of having once been an organism of mother-baby, with no boundary at all. We have all been there. Some part of us remembers merging as the condition of total safety, and goes on wanting it.

And if you grew up in a house where you didn’t feel safe, or where it didn’t feel okay to be fully yourself, this is especially tender territory.

For many of us, the autonomy and self-responsibility of adulthood can feel like loss rather than growth. And it is why so many of us go looking, in adulthood, for relationships where the boundary dissolves again.

A developmental transition

So what’s the way forward? Tender compassion tells us to acknowledge our experience first, with warmth and caring. Without judgment.

Fierce compassion tells us that we can take action to align ourselves with our chosen values and aspirations for ourselves. We can explore what beliefs are enabling, and which are holding us back. And we can learn to develop boundaries that reinforce our full autonomy, enable relationships based on mutual respect, and set us up for being able to truly receive.

We take responsibility for knowing, and meeting our own needs. But take note: this doesn’t mean not asking for anything, or that we don’t get to receive. But it does mean that if there is a gap between what we need, and what is available, that we accept responsibility for changing that picture.

We allow others to take responsibility for meeting their own needs. For many of us, this is really hard. It means we become willing to frustrate or disappoint others’ expectations. It means tolerating the discomfort of watching someone struggle with something we could have done for them. It means allowing others to make their own choices.

The reorientation

Maybe becoming fully adult means a reorientation in what we are yearning for.

From yearning to merge — to be met, completely, without having to ask — toward yearning for autonomy. Toward wanting to be a self, in relationship with other selves, each of us responsible for our own needs and able to be frustrated by one another without it ending anything.

The yearning to merge may not disappear. But it can stop being the thing we organise our relationships around.

Developing the boundaries of full adulthood is fierce compassion in action.

To dive into some self-compassion micro practices, check out the little video I made here.