Defining personal boundaries

In defining personal boundaries, it is important to distinguish two characteristics:
a) “Workability” (resilience).
b) Liveability (plasticity, adaptability).

A “working” boundary means that I am able to act in defense of my “no”: leave, interrupt, finish, turn around, stop, if it so happens that my verbal “no”, a warning was not enough. Here, too, the ability to honor agreements and act within certain (by myself for myself first) boundaries.

A “living” boundary means that the boundary is always connected to a need, and if the need changes, I am able to move the boundary ecologically. Otherwise it is not a “boundary,” but a rigid atavism, a neurosis, a jerk, or a symptom of OCD.

For example, I stopped by for dinner strictly before 7 p.m., but something went wrong and I decided to sit out until 9 p.m. How do I know if it’s my boundary just not working, or if it’s alive and adaptive?

Recognize your need according to the following principle: if it suddenly turned out that you have so good, relaxed, and soap and chips, and at home cleaning and preparing for work, and therefore (out of avoidance) I will stay late — then we are talking about a not working boundary, because from two options I simply choose the one that involves less effort. The need to be with you specifically I don’t have, I just want life to be easier.

If it turns out that, even though I have something to do at home, but with you we suddenly have the deepest conversation, we plan vacations, we share creative plans and inspire each other, and I have long needed just such communication — then to stay with you means a “living” border. And if I were to leave, to interrupt myself in a living filling process, it would mean “rule for rule’s sake, when the border has no meaning except ritualism.

To skew in one direction or the other refers us to the radicals of “countervictimism-dependency,” or “schizoid-borderline”.

But the main point remains unchanged: the very ability to yell, scream and swear in situations where something is not going my way or I don’t like it has nothing to do with healthy personal boundaries, but is firmly linked to infantile character.