Developing Self-Respect — Part 1 of 2

Hello and welcome back to Second Chance to Live my friend. I am happy to see that you decided to stop by to visit with me. You are always welcome around my table. Today I want to speak to a topic that has been essential to me in my recovery process. The topic involves where I end and where other people begin and vice a versa. Through facing and addressing the matter I learned to be responsible to, but not for other people and their choices.

The topic has to do with knowing, setting and accepting boundaries.

For many years of my life, my concept of boundaries was limited to what separated one State here in the United States from another. When it came to having, respecting or even understanding how boundaries factored into relationships, I was clue-less. The notion of my needing to set or maintain boundaries seemed ludicrous. Because I did not respect my own need to have boundaries, I did not know how to respect other people boundaries. Consequently, I developed a series of limiting behaviors.

These behaviors reinforced my distorted perceptions and led me to believe that boundaries were merely obstacles to be overcome.
These limiting behaviors led me to believe that control and manipulation preceded any need to have or respect anyone’s boundaries. My distorted perceptions also kept me guessing at what was normal. Consequently, for much of my life, I felt like a blind man, who kept bumping into different walls. As a result, any adjustment came with emotional, mental and spirtual pain. Over time, I came to realize what I was doing to myself. Pain has a way of doing that for me.

When I am sick and tired, of being sick and tired about being sick and tired, then I become willing to look for solutions.

Doing the same thing over and over again while getting the same results motivated me to seek a different way of living. Through my growing awareness I discovered why I needed to set, maintain and respect boundaries — my boundaries and other peoples. My awareness revealed that boundaries, when not respected give way to a host of other limiting behaviors. Such behaviors undermine the individual’s ability to develop self-respect.

These limiting behaviors manifest when personal responsibility is discarded as trivial while seeking to hold other people accountable for choice, happiness and discontentment.

Please read Part 2 Thank you.

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