Boundaries

Creating boundaries are important when dealing with someone with a mental health issue.  It’s what allows you to be compassionate and supportive without getting hurt yourself.

I was asked about how to create boundaries with someone who has borderline personality disorder.  This individual loves her husband, but, his mental health problems create emotionally destructive challenges for her.

The first thing to do when trying to be supportive but needing to create boundaries is to better understand the condition. Just as knowing my son has loose ligaments in his body helps us adjust his physical activity so he can play without getting hurt, understanding what is happening with a mental health problem helps us create boundaries to protect ourselves so that we CAN be supportive. Knowing what a person can or cannot control in terms of their behavior helps us to step away without anger when they are behaving in a way that hurts us or causes harm so that we can protect ourselves as necessary.

According to psych central: people with borderline personality disorder have abandonment issues, unstable intense relationships where they idealize and then dehumanize their partner. They also tend to have unstable self-image problems (probably related to the abandonment issues) and self damaging impulsivity problems.  See: http://psychcentral.com/lib/characteristics-of-borderline-personality-disorder/ for a fuller description.

What my friend wanted to know was how she can deal with her partner’s clinginess and dangerous impulses. My advice to her was that the clinginess has to be dealt with first as that is the most damaging to the person dealing with someone like this. Being restricted from having friends and a life outside the relationship prevents the caregiver from taking care of themselves. The challenge is to find a way to help the spouse feel secure while also making sure you take care of yourself. Knowing that you being away create anxiety, perhaps she can create a check in schedule with the spouse when she is away. This changes the dynamic from – he is checking up on me and controlling me, to me helping him to feel secure since that is something he struggles with and can’t really control.

The challenge with creating the boundary is where to put it so that hopefully both partners will get their needs met. But the boundary has to be put where the person who needs to create a boundary needs it to be placed. You cannot ever totally satisfy someone who is insecure and anxious and you should not try to. Should you create reasonable accommodations? Yes. Allow them to control you? No.

The point of a boundary is to create space between the person suffering from mental health problems and the person supporting the person with mental health problems. It’s about responsibility. The person suffering from the mental health problems has a responsibility to get help with their mental health issue. They cannot and should not put all the responsibility for coping with their condition on their partners or other people. That’s the boundary.

The other thing I would do with someone with borderline personality disorder is that I would ensure that their dangerous impulse problems do not affect me. I've had several friends with this problem and you just have to say no to doing certain activities with them. I have come to view dangerous impulse problems as a suicidal. They are trying to kill themselves by accident. Recognize it as such and then take appropriate steps to ensure that you don't get killed in their attempts to kill themselves.

Finally, try to make sure they get the professional help they need and they stick to it.  This is not easy to do and there is only so much you can do. The person with the mental health problems has to take responsibility for managing their condition. You can’t force them to get help. All you can do is encourage them to get help. And if they don’t get that help and eventually succeed in harming themselves, that isn’t your fault. You can’t fix them and you aren’t responsible for fixing them.  All you can do is support them and know, sometimes that isn’t enough.

To help with this – I would also seek out mental health care for myself because supporting someone with a mental illness or mental health issue is mentally distressing and exhausting. A professional will help you learn how to create the boundaries for your specific situation. Which is why the advice is – go to get counseling even if your partner does not.  People’s whose job is to professional help people cope with mental health problems will give you way better advice than I can in a blog post. So if you find yourself in a difficult situation like this – get professional help!

Sex Positive Parenting

Sex shaming, vs. healthy relationships.

Lea Grover has a great article on what sex positive parenting is really like. See: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lea-grover/this-is-what-sex-positive-parenting-really-looks-like_b_5516707.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063

My favorite quote from the article is:

“And that's what sex-positive parenting really is. Not telling my kids lies about sex to keep them from behaviors I don't think are healthy. It's telling them the truth, the whole truth, and letting it sink in so they can make their own good choices.”

I agree. I have a son and we took the same approach to his masturbation. That’s something you do for yourself in private.  We have taken the same approach to boundaries. When someone says stop, you stop. It doesn't matter if you were having fun in a tickle fight, or a pillow fight. When the other person says stop. It’s over.

And as for the – you get to decide if something is right for you or not. I know I am doing OK. Because when something happened, involving an older neighborhood boy, my son came to me – to tell me because it upset him. He knew he could talk to me and that I wouldn't freak out. We had never told him that certain things were bad. We only have told him that his private things are for him and he should only share them if he wants to. And, so he had no fear coming to me to tell me that something had happened that he wasn't OK with. 

In our family we don’t shame sex in an effort to keep our son from exploring sex.  What makes sex ethical and OK is if it is consensual. If it is not – that’s what I want to know about. And because that’s where we have placed the emphasis, that’s why my son felt comfortable telling me about something that made him uncomfortable and that he wasn't ready for.

And this is important, because if he had not told me, the rather normal you show me yours, I’ll show you mine game that made him so uncomfortable, could have progressed to something worse had he not asked for help to get it to stop.

Simply put – sex positive parenting helps protect kids from sexual abuse. Kids who are raised with the concept of consent and safety aren't afraid to tell their parents when something happens to them that makes them uncomfortable.

Unlike the other child involved who also was present when this older boy convinced them to show off their privates.  When she was asked, she resisted telling the truth. She was crying and afraid to tell her parent what had happened even though she was aware that her parent already knew it had happened because my son and I had told her what had happened.  This little girl was convinced she was going to be in trouble because an older boy took advantage of younger kid’s naivete.  Why was she so scared? Because her parent and told her that showing her privates to others was wrong and something she shouldn't do. Her fear she was going to get in trouble was so strong that even with her parent telling her that she didn't do anything wrong, that the older boy was to blame, this little girl was still convinced she was bad and was going to get into trouble for having had this happen.

If you want to protect your child from sexual abuse, you need to be careful of the messages you send them. Treating sex as something shameful, to be hidden or not talked about because it is private means that if your child experiences something sexual that made them uncomfortable, they will not talk about it because you have already told them, this isn't something we talk about.

If you want them to feel safe coming to you with things that upset them, you have to make it clear, it’s OK to talk about and discuss sex and that they can come to you to ask questions and get information on how to stay safe when they are confused. Because things are going to happen. And sex, even for adults can be very confusing. Don’t tell your kids to be afraid of sex. Help them understand both the good and scary aspects of it so that they can learn how to maximize the good and avoid causing or experiencing harm.

Healthy Boundaries

What are boundaries and why are they healthy?

What is a boundary? According to this graphic (which I found on Facebook and have NO idea who created it), a boundary is a definite place where your responsibility ends and another person’s begins. Having boundaries stops you from doing things for others that they should be doing for themselves.

As a mom, I feel like I need to be reminded of this rule of boundaries from time to time. Basically, I tend to do things for my son that he is perfectly capable of doing himself. I know I do it. I know I shouldn’t because every time I do, I interfere with his learning to be self-sufficient. But it’s really hard because my impulse as his mom is to help. I just have to remember that sometimes I help, by not helping.

This is especially true when we are dealing with difficult people who are self-destructing. Our compassionate impulse to help has to be tempered by our understanding that sometimes we help most, by not helping. People have to have consequences to learn, otherwise they don’t learn.

The problem, as always, is knowing when to give assistance and when to withhold and where exactly to draw that boundary where your responsibility ends and the other begins. This is especially important when the relationship in question is emotionally draining. When that happens, I have to remind myself that ultimately, I can’t control the actions of other people. I can only control my own. That is where the boundary lies. As soon as I stop trying to get the other person to behave a certain way, my stress levels lesson and I find I can behave better and act in a way that benefits both of us.

How about you? Do you struggle with boundaries? How do you find the courage to draw boundaries with other people?