How Does My Fear Of Rejection Affect My Ability To Set Boundaries?
With boundaries it’s a multifaceted idea. It’s not just the boundary itself, its the voicing the boundary, and upholding it too. Boundaries also has this interesting duality of it being for you, but usually involving other people too. The boundary itself is for you and your safety, and the other half of the boundary concept involves telling people and taking action if it’s not met.
The last half is the part of boundaries that has kept me from implementing them in the first place. My fear of rejection, of not having somebody care about something I have to say, of being told my need is stupid, or of it being ignored completely has kept me from having the ability to set boundaries.
This is difficult to admit, and it sounds silly. But I think the key here is doing things out of fear vs doing it out of love for yourself. When I do things out of fear, it’s frightening, I feel hesitant, I wonder why I’m even doing it in the first place. Because that is what fear does, it is there to scare you, keep you small, and keep you questioning.
Doing things out of love, however, is much different. Doing things out of love for yourself is compassionate, it’s exciting, it can still be hard, but at the root of it you know the why. The why here is to protect yourself, to make yourself feel more comfortable, and to use your self trust to believe that what you need is valuable and true.
The why behind any action will lead the emotion that comes with it. My why for setting boundaries for so long has been fear, and that is why I have a real issue with setting and keeping them. I really struggle to do this for myself.
I have never considered attaching my why of being loving and helping myself to setting boundaries. I believe my biggest fear of all of this, is rooted in the idea that I have rejected myself so much in putting my ideas down, not believing in myself, or thinking my needs were ridiculous that I naturally believe other people will reject my needs too.
I reject myself, so why wouldn’t others? And realizing that now makes this whole idea make sense. But because it makes sense, doesn’t mean I don’t want to do something different. When I reject my own self it hurts, it cuts my thought process short, and I don’t see a point in thinking or doing because I shut my own self down.
My boundaries start with me, and in order for anyone around me to uphold them I first have to make boundaries with my own self. I have needs for my own mind to treat me kindly, I have boundaries for my own mind to believe in what I need, and I have boundaries that I will not put myself down.
If something around you isn’t working, we have to take a look at foundations first and with my boundaries I realized the foundation was simply not working. I couldn’t do anything externally for myself, if my internal world wasn’t making sense first.
I came to this whole realization just in writing this, so I’m excited to practice replacing fear with love in my decisions for myself. I don’t expect perfection, but my well being and safety is important to me and I am really looking forward to seeing what I do with this new information to create a good world inside myself and outside.
