Boundaries vs. Borders: FIREWALL YOUR Relationships, Yourself

In relationships, borders are like membranes: they allow in only selective types of communication, they require protocols and rituals, and are policed by cultural and societal mores. Borders are, therefore, interpersonal and dyadic.

Boundaries are individual.

Personal boundaries are rules of conduct, red lines in the sand any infringement and breach of which you deem unacceptable behavior.

You need to set your boundaries clearly, unequivocally, and unambiguously firstly to yourself: how to protect your dignity, privacy, freedom, rights, and priorities.

You then need to communicate your boundaries to your partner replete with a "price list": the costs associated with ignoring or violating them.

Finally, you need to be firm and enforce your boundaries: your credibility depends on a consistent and fair application of these rules of engagement.

The ability to thrive in intimacy is inextricably linked to the capacity to maintain and enforce personal boundaries. In personality disordered patients, both are sorely compromised.

Intimacy, however fleeting and of whatever nature (even merely physical) is a tightrope act.

On the one hand, it involves the disclosure of vulnerabilities and the relaxation of firewalls intended to fend off unwarranted or coerced attention.

On the other hand, real intimacy entails the maintaining of personal autonomy, agency, and self-efficacy. In other words: of separateness.

To attain intimacy, one needs to feel sufficiently secure of one’s core identity, self-worth, self-esteem, internal regulation, and boundaries to invite another person in.

The mentally ill tend to enmesh, engulf, merge, or fuse with others - even as they push them away and flee (approach-avoidance repetition compulsion).

This dysfunctional attachment style is the outcome of twin contradictory anxieties: of abandonment and of engulfment.

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