Many of us have been living with a baseline amount of emotional distress. We’ve become accustomed to it. Not that it is easy.
Sometimes, this emotional distress is tied to low or no boundaries. Then here come folks like me telling you to set all.the.boundaries. You do it and then experience EVEN MORE emotional distress. What on earth?! You might question if you’re doing it wrong. Or if I’m wrong about boundaries. Or if you’ll ever experience less emotional distress.
The truth is that boundaries and emotional distress will often present in this way: you have that baseline level of distress with no/low boundaries then as you set more boundaries, the emotional distress may actually GO UP. Yes. Really. Why? Because we are not used to setting boundaries. Because the people and systems around us are not used to us setting boundaries. So we and they react accordingly to what is new: with a mix of anger, resentment, fear, shame, and many many other emotions.
Anything new requires energy and discomfort. But the beauty of continuing to set boundaries? Usually, we will see that emotional distress decrease. That was the whole point of doing this, right?!
Now of course this does not mean that once you get past the uptick in distress, you will never again experience that again. Seasons change, contexts change, relationships change, systems change. Thus you might experience this up and down again. But you’ll already have the tools and perspective to cross that bridge when you get to it.
👇:How have you experienced this graph? What helped you get past that upper part of the curve?