The issue with boundaries: Part I of many

Boundaries are fucking difficult.

They are, there’s no way to sugarcoat it. Especially if you grew up a chronic people pleaser, like me.

To this day, I derive a major part of my self-confidence from other people’s opinions of me. Or what I perceive as their opinion, anyway. It’s what I’m working on most in therapy.

And not being able to set healthy boundaries comes right with that package. It’s simply a survival strategy, because if you don’t have boundaries, you are free to do whatever is necessary to make people like you. Even if that hurt you in the process.

An incident today, however, showed me that I’m finally making a bit of progress in that area.

It seems to strangely easy, but when I was asked whether I wanted to join someone on a trip tomorrow, I just said no. I said no because I didn’t want to. Even though I knew the person really wanted me to tag along. But she asked, and I said no.

And it was fine.

This is all for today, something small, but a victory nonetheless.

Peace out,
Emilia