Personal Boundaries: How to Express Them?

Hello, I’m returning to an old topic — boundaries. This time it’s a simple, short translation with my own reflection on the topic :)

Sometimes, when we start talking about our boundaries — about what is important to us, where we need space, where we feel uncomfortable — it can seem as if we are pushing others away. As if we are saying: “Stay away from me,” “I don’t want to be close to you,” “You are not important to me.”
But that is not true.
In reality, personal boundaries are not about distance. On the contrary, they are about the desire to be closer. To be near, but honestly. Without tension. Without inner falseness. Without the feeling that you constantly have to betray yourself in order to be accepted.
When I speak about my boundaries, I am not saying: “Go away.”
I am saying: “Please stay. This is how I will truly feel comfortable with you.”
This is an invitation into more honest, more caring relationships. Where you can be yourself. Where you don’t have to guess, stay silent, or endure. Where both what matters to me and what matters to you are important.
And it can be difficult to admit to yourself and to others that I cannot do everything, that I need time for myself, that there are things that hurt. Difficult because inside there may be fear: “What if I say this and you leave?”
That is why we sometimes stay silent. We pretend everything is fine. We tolerate. We agree. We adapt.
But in the long run this game leads not to intimacy, but to exhaustion. We burn out from our own “convenience.” From always doing things “the way it should be,” but rarely the way we actually want.
And here it is important to remind ourselves: boundaries are not a wall. They are a door. I am simply asking you to knock.
I am not shutting myself off from you. I am inviting you to stay — but the real you, the conscious you, next to the real me.
Because, truthfully, real intimacy does not begin when everything is “smooth” and “comfortable,” but when you can honestly say: “This is how it works with me, and this is what hurts,” and be heard.
Personal boundaries are not about loneliness and distance. They are about the possibility of being together without losing yourself.
​
Vsevolod Tereshchenko
Translated by: Laurynas Sadzevičius

​And from myself I would add this: it is even more important to learn how to express our boundaries politely and in an acceptable way.
Because many people, even after learning to state their boundaries, still carry a strong fear of being “punished” for it. So we wait for a long time. We accumulate resentment inside. We stay silent, adapt, tolerate.
And then, when we finally express the boundary, it can come out explosively.
In other words — there is no need to accumulate so much. We can say it right away. :)
And yes, healthy people should not “punish” you for your boundaries. They may disagree. They may step back. They may show that something doesn’t work for them.
And sometimes that stepping back can even be useful — it allows us to see that perhaps we still don’t quite know how to express a boundary without all the accumulated old hurts inside it.
Because when we store up pain for a long time, in the end we betray not only ourselves, but also the other person. And most of all — the connection itself.
Yep… the healing process is not one of the most pleasant ones. 😅
But is staying with the same old toxic habits any more pleasant?
Probably not. 😁

- Speak life to the deadest, darkest night. -