Limits and Boundaries

I have been thinking a lot about limits and boundaries recently.  All the times we don’t listen to our body and push on through.  Knowing what a Yes, No and Maybe feels like in our body.  In truth I feel like speaking about this now because I see it as an issue in almost everyone I work with and recently I have had a lot on my plate and my body has told me it has hit a limit and I had to listen to it.  If you read my blog regularly you might have noticed I haven't written in almost a month.  My body said no to writing.

I let my creative juices boil and brew in my time off until they could no longer be contained.  So here we are.

Many of us have been taught to ignore the feelings and sensations inside.  We override to keep on going. Some of us have been taught to do this in our families or in the cultures we grew up in, the cultures we work in.  We often value people who persist and grind.

Modern society treats boundaries as an inconvenience and limits as a weakness to overcome.  We glorify the grind of the worker who pulled an ‘all-nighter’, or the caregiver who selflessly gives until their last drop of energy.  The athlete who plays through an injury.  But both biologically and emotionally our body is constantly signalling to us where our limits lie.  Learning to notice those sensation based cues can be one of the most empowering things we can do for ourselves.

So how do we know what a limit feels like?  Well our body has a surveillance and alarm system in our autonomic nervous system.  Before we consciously know that a boundary has been crossed in our thinking brain, our body already knows.  It picks it up first.  It shows up as a tight jaw, shallow breathing, a heavy chest or that feeling we all know in the pit of our stomach.  There is an experience of friction when we override these cues and it can look like, pushing through physical exhaustion, swallowing resentment that gives us a tight jaw or sore throat, or maybe you have experienced freezing up when you want to say no.

The water doesn’t need a wall to know where it meets the land. The edge is constantly moving but it is still an edge. They have permeability, movement and relationship without losing distinction. The boundary is fluid.

We learn to override either in the family or cultural systems.  Workplace cultures are notoriously bad for this - stretch goals anyone?  Popular culture celebrates and hero worships high performers who override their human limits all the time.  We frame exhaustion as dedication and self-abandonment as loyalty.  Our economy and workplaces value what we produce over how we feel, and that conditions us to treat our bodies as machines rather than a living system that has hard thresholds.  On that note, I find in workplaces when I am doing work around systemic change, many people have a mental model of the organisation as being a machine and they struggle to comprehend complex change.  Well maybe if we started treating our bodies as the fluid, dynamic, organic, living systems that they are, the mental model would change?

What is the difference between limits and boundaries?  Well this is how I see it.

A limit is internal, what your bodymind can handle and a boundary is external.  It is our behaviour demonstrating how we protect that limit in our interactions with the world.  To be able to set a boundary you first have to be able to tolerate feeling your own emotions and sensations in your body, including anger, guilt and anxiety.  Because anger tells us when a boundary has been crossed, it is our body saying No.   For many of us when we start to set boundaries we may feel guilt and anxiety, particularly around people who have taken advantage of us pushing ourselves in the past.

When we learn to tune into our emotions and sensations we begin to hear what the Yes, No and Maybe feel like inside of us.  It becomes very clear.  Also I find a maybe is just a No that takes a bit of time to be spoken by our body.  That deep sense of inner knowing that you are developing and refining by doing this work, it knows that a maybe is a no.

Healthy boundaries are never rigid. They are fluid, always in relationship and can always be renegotiated. If they are too rigid we cannot let people in, we say no to opportunities that come our way that might benefit us.

One thing I notice in myself and also with clients, when we start setting boundaries with the people who have been on the receiving end of our over giving and over working they might not like it.  You might lose a few friends in the process but you will gain so much for yourself in the long run.

We gain time for ourselves.  It also often brings with it more energy, more creativity, more time to invest in the relationships that are important to us.   Most importantly, it strengthens our connection with our deep inner knowing so we can become ourselves.

 Boundaries aren’t just about saying no, they are about becoming more available to an authentic yes.  Boundaries are not a luxury, they are an essential ingredient for a healthy bodymind and happy life.

Why the feminine is the change maker - part 2

Last week I started this conversation about why the feminine energy in our culture tends to be the instigator of change. I know this is not always true but I do find that many women whether by choice or force of life events, tend to explore themselves deeply and the fact that we have this deep inner knowing which I talked about in last week’s blog which means we tend to read the ‘tea leaves’ and know when it’s time for change.

Anecdotally, when I think about all the training and professional development I have done over the years, there has always been a much higher percentage of female participants than male participants and so we notice this and we talk about it. You could complain about it and say men don’t do the hard work, but I don’t think this is entirely true because I have lots of male clients and friends who have committed to exploring themselves, but to be honest it is usually after something going really wrong in their lives. Maybe it is that it is women who are the instigators of change in relationships, in families, in cultures. Many studies of couples on relationships and marriages consistently show that around 70% of divorces are instigated by women.

There are many ways we can explore why this happens and I always love taking a Jungian lens on what is actually happening because it always explores the shadow side of everything which I find super interesting. If we look through a Jungian lens, It is always the masculine within the feminine that changes first. In Jungian parlance, the animus (the inner masculine in a woman) seeks direction, clarity, and forward motion. When a woman begins her transformation (say, through grief, menopause, creativity, or awakening), it’s often her inner masculine that reorients first, perhaps by finding new values, boundaries, or purpose. Once that internal alignment shifts, her outer relationships must also adjust. How I notice this in clients is they cannot pretend to be anything other than their authentic selves anymore and this often causes friction in different relationships in their lives as this authentic self in them is emerging. Things can be a bit wobbly for a while as she finds comfort with meeting these new parts of self.

And yes, often this catalyses change in the masculine partner or in the wider system. But not always right away. Sometimes the feminine awakens and moves first, and the masculine (whether internal or external) resists or lags—until it feels safe or necessary to catch up. That friction can either break the container or refine it.

Digital image - Womb in the Sky, Kellie Stirling

Why does the feminine change first?

In the simplest form, we are the ones who can create life and give birth to that. Even beyond biological birth, the feminine is the archetypal womb—the container that holds, gestates, dissolves, and re-emerges. This role isn’t limited to women, but in most systems, it is the feminine energy that initiates the deep work: the descent, the death, the regeneration. Women, especially at midlife, often step into this initiatory role on behalf of their families, partnerships, and communities.

It’s like we become the crucible in which the old dies and the new is born. Let’s look at it from a few different perspectives:

• Biologically: Our hormonal cycles force us into regular encounters with change. Life transitions like menstruation, pregnancy, birth, perimenopause, and menopause demand transformation. For example, every month when we have menstrual cycles, we are moving through a cycle of change, a cycle of birth, death, rebirth metaphorically speaking that is experienced in an embodied way with our menstrual cycles.

• Emotionally: The feminine is finely attuned to relational field dynamics because we have lots of estrogen which helps creates oxytocin. Our nervous system is regulated by oxytocin which acts as a neuro-modulator. Neuro-modulators fine tune and shape how our nervous system reacts to stimuli over time. So we become more relationally attuned and attuned to social safety. We feel what’s missing, what’s breaking down, or what wants to emerge sooner. So oxytocin plays an enormous role in regulating arousal, stress responses and healing.

• Spiritual/Archetypal: The feminine holds the wisdom of the underworld. We know how to descend and return with insight. That’s where true alchemy happens.

So when it comes to relationships, often, when a woman begins to change, it upsets the systemic homeostasis of the relationship. If she holds the relational field (as is often the case), any shift she makes is deeply felt by the other. This can either provoke resistance or invite the partner to evolve too. Sometimes both. In this sense, women often become the alchemical fire that either transforms or reveals what’s no longer sustainable.