Personal boundaries, are important because they set guidelines on how you should be treated by the people around you. Setting these boundaries does not necessarily mean you don’t want anything to do with them. It just means that you want your own space.
These boundaries consist of physical, mental and emotional boundaries. Physical to mean personal space, mental to mean thoughts and opinions while emotional boundaries deals with feelings.
A lot of people do not have the guts to say no whenever there’s a situation that requires a yes or no kind of response. Case and point being, saying no has been proved to be so hard especially when the person you want to say no to is your friend or someone close to you, say your relative.
We often want to feel like we don’t want to disappoint the people we care about by not accepting to do favors for them, forgetting that while doing that we are oppressing ourselves and we do not have the courage to speak up.
A simple yes can help you carry someone else’s burdens as a way of neglecting your own. This happens more so when you are suffering from mental health issues. You tend to ignore your own problems assuming they will go away miraculously. But do they really go away that easily? Or maybe they are just piling up.
Let’s take an instance where your friend borrows you some cash because he needs to pay rent and is short. Because you have been friends for too long, there’s no way you can say no. I mean it’s rent we are talking about here and if he does not pay, the house gets locked up.
You decide to send him the cash immediately and you get the ‘thank you, you are the best’ kind of response. You expect that he is going to refund the cash as soon as he gets it, so you decide not to pressure him.
A few weeks down the line, you don’t get a response about him planning to pay you back even if it is in bits. In fact, to make matters worse, he goes off on you and gets a new number.
All this can lead to one getting anxiety disorder which is a mental health disorder characterized by feelings of worry, anxiety or fear that are strong enough to interfere with one’s daily activities.
So when are you supposed to set personal boundaries? Whenever you feel like you are not comfortable with the favor because it might affect you in some way or it might inconvenience you.
It is Okay to say no when your mental health is put at risk. It is okay to say no whenever the yes will make you sacrifice a lot of things that are important.Boundaries are about speaking up for what you need and taking care of yourself when those needs aren’t met. The hard truth is: you don’t always get what you want but putting it out there gives you a fighting chance.
SIMPLY JOJO 