When healing, you learn the difference between being treated poorly and being treated well.

This is useful in the implementation of healthy self-care.

When you share these new standards with others they will be met with approval and excitement. Those around you will find it flattering and freeing when you point out how they are being mistreated and how they may be mistreating themselves. It is easy, when the finger is pointed at someone or something else.

Explaining boundaries and protective measures is usually met with sighs of understanding and can empower others to take similar actions. It is good to share your new understanding with friends and family.

Keeping boundaries and being consistant with protective measures is entirely different. People can become dismissive of your “smaller” changes for instance, I do not watch scary movies because life is scary enough; this is not recieved with a lot of understanding most times because it’s seen as, “just a movie”. To me, even the books I read can make a difference between evading a dissociative episode and not.

“Larger” boundaries like removing people from your life because they do not treat you well and refuse to change (follow healthy, Biblical, steps before cutting someone out entirely), can be met with the fiercest opposition because it may make others uncomfortable, make them feel like they have to choose, and ultimately question your new sensitivity and whether you are not just being “too harsh”.

Interpersonal boundaries are the most difficult to put in place, but they can be the most crucial.

I have experienced this in many ways since beginning my healing. Most dramatically is my lack of contact with my nuclear family. But the most seemingly innocuous incident, even, has led to my removing a friend from my circle of trust.

I was talking to another friend about a project when this friend mentioned someone we had worked with before, with whom I considered myself friends, when out of his mouth came words that pierced a darkness I didn’t even know was present in my heart, a belief I had never expressed because it was socially inconvenient to hold true,

     “You know how it seems like [such-and-such] doesn’t care?”

There they were. Words I held in my heart that I never said out loud for the shunning that could come with them. It was as though he had said them for me, flooding the feeling to the surface that I couldn’t un-feel.

It was true. I did feel as if that person didn’t care. As if ours was a friendship born and maintained by convenience;  in that the friendship was at his or her convenience. My help was enlisted by convenience, my opinions considered and asked-for by convenience, I was an easily accessible commodity rather than friend.

It was then I silently broke that bond. I have no place in my heart for those who choose to use my time and talents to their own ends instead of loving me the way so many others do; when it is INCONVENIENT and uncomfortable.

You will be questioned, ridiculed, and sometimes, shunned for keeping to the boundaries that your healing requires.

Don’t let go.

Hold fast to the truth of the worth of your healing, of the worth of worshipping GOD by doing the hard things,  of your worth to Christ and how He longs to see you brilliantly reflecting His work in your life through your healing.

If you need encouragment, save this and read it over and over.

You can do this. Not because you are able but because it is necessary.
It is necessary because GOD commands it.
GOD commands it because He loves you and WILL help you.

YOU CAN DO THIS.

Boundaries, Christianity, Faith, family, friends, God, healing, Jesus, Trauma