How To Create Healthy Boundaries

Going home for the holidays can be a joyous time of sharing with friends and family. But it can also trigger old, unhealed wounds and rubber band you back to a former version of yourself that you’ve worked so hard to evolve.

While this provides an incredible opportunity for deeper healing, you may not have the time or space to work with it during this busy season. Whether that’s the case, or you’ve been stepped on one too many times or are running yourself ragged because you can’t seem to say no, building strong, healthy boundaries will help.

Here are some tips to help you build up that permeable bubble:

Stay Open

Pain causes you to contract and to attempt to repel whatever you feel inflicted the wound. Contracting on top of the pain causes suffering, or dukha.

Instead, create spaciousness, or akasha, and the willingness to be open, like the sky, to whatever you feel. This will keep you from reacting with excess anger and will allow things to roll off your back more easily.

 

Exist in Love

Inside yourself, connect to the highest frequency possible. Find love and compassion for yourself as you are experiencing whatever challenge requires you build a better boundary.

The vibration of unconditional love is strong enough to protect you; as soon as you drop into fear or anger you become vulnerable. Practice this in your meditation, while driving your car or standing in line at the grocery store.

Put Up a Permeable Boundary

Imagine yourself inside a giant bubble. You can chrome it out, so people around you can see their reflections. You can make it bright yellow to create a feeling of cheer and lightness. You can make it a double bubble if you need extra strength.

Whatever the appearance, though, make sure your bubble is permeable —you aren’t trying to become a hermit and disengage from the world, you just want a little protection as you move through it.

Look for Wholeness

As you look out form within your bubble-boundary, make an effort to see the similarity and connectivity between yourself and others. Go deeper than the surface and remember that everyone wants to be loved and respected, everyone wants to feel valued and appreciated. In this way we are all one.

When someone (or you!) acts out of alignment with this, it’s because they (or you) have forgotten their connection to wholeness. It means they (or you) have contracted and feel their need to be loved and valued is under threat. Your unconditional love and acknowledgement isn’t intended to fix them or bring them back from their reactivity, but is a way for you to not take their behavior personally.