Boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud & Dr. John Townsend

Copyright © 1992, 2017 by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend

Are you in control of your life?

People often focus so much on being loving and giving that they forget their own limits. Have you ever found yourself wondering: Can I say no and still be a loving person? How do I answer someone who wants my time, love, energy, or money? How do I stand up to hurtful behavior or abuse? Why do I feel guilty when I consider setting boundaries?

In this award-winning New York Times bestselling book, Drs. Henry Cloud and John Townsend give you biblically based answers to these and other tough questions. They show you how to set healthy boundaries with your parents, spouse, children, friends, coworkers, social media, and even with yourself. This updated and expanded edition specifically shows how to set boundaries in our increasingly digital world.

Unpacking the ten laws of boundaries, Drs. Cloud and Townsend show you how to bring new happiness and health to your relationships. You’ll discover firsthand how sound boundaries give you the freedom to walk as the loving, giving, fulfilled individual God created you to be.

Dr. Henry Cloud is an acclaimed leadership expert, psychologist, and New York Times best-selling author. In his leadership consulting practice, Dr. Cloud works with Fortune 500 companies and smaller private businesses alike. He has an extensive executive coaching background and experience as a leadership consultant. Dr. Cloud lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Tori, and their two daughters.

Dr. John Townsend is a respected leadership consultant, psychologist, and New York Times bestselling author. Dr. Townsend is the founder of the Townsend Institute for Leadership and Counseling and conducts for the Townsend Leadership program. He travels extensively for corporate consulting speaking, and helping develop leaders and their teams. He and his wife have two sons and live in Newport Beach, California.

Comments extracted from the book, they could be right or wrong, you decide for yourself:

• Part of taking responsibility, or ownership, is knowing what is our job, and what isn’t.
• Any confusion of responsibility and ownership in our lives is a problem of boundaries.
• Many clinical psychological symptoms, such as depression, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, addictions, impulsive disorders, guilt problems, shame issues, panic disorders, and marital and relational struggles, find their roots in conflicts with boundaries.
• This book presents a biblical view of boundaries: what they are, what they protect, how they are developed, how they are injured, how to repair them, and how to use them.
• Physical boundaries mark a visible property line that someone holds the deed to. In the spiritual world, boundaries are just as real, but often harder to see.
• Knowing what I am to own and take responsibility for gives me freedom. If I know where my yard beings and ends, I am free to do with it what I like. Taking responsibility for my life opens up many different options. However, if I do not «own» my life, my choices and options become very limited.
• Boundaries help us to define what it is not our property and what we are not responsible for.
• We are not responsible for other people.
• We are responsible to others and for ourselves.
• Everyone has responsibilities that only he or she can carry. No one can do certain things for us. We have to take ownership of certain aspects of life that are our own «load».
• We are expected to deal with our own feelings, attitudes, and behaviors.
• Boundaries are not walls. We are to be in community with them. But in every community, all members have their own space and property. The important thing is that property lines be permeable enough to allow passing and strong enough to keep out danger.
• Examples of boundaries: skin, words, truth, physical space, time, emotional distance, other people and consequences.
• Boundaries are anything that helps to differentiate you from someone else, or shows where you being and end.
• The most basic boundary that defines you is your physical skin.
• Victims of physical and sexual abuse often have a poor sense of boundaries. Early in life they were taught that their property did not really begin at their skin. Others could invade their property and do whatever they wanted. As a result, they have difficulty establishing boundaries later in life.
• You can create good protective fences with your words. The most basic boundary-setting word is no. It lets others know that you exist apart from them and that you are in control of you.
• If you cannot say no to this external or internal pressure, you have lost control of your property and are not enjoying the fruit of «self-control».
• It is difficult for people to know where you stand when you do not use words to define your property.
• Sometimes physically removing yourself from a situation will help maintain boundaries. You can do this to replenish yourself physically, emotionally, and spiritually after you have given to your limit.
• When a relationship is abusive, many times the only way to finally show the other person that your boundaries are real is to create space until they are ready to deal with the problem.
• Taking time off from a person or a project can be a way of regaining ownership over some out-of-control aspect of your life where boundaries need to be set.
• Emotional distance is a temporary boundary to give your heart the space it needs to be safe; it is never a permanent way of living. People who have been in abusive relationships need to find a safe place to being to «thaw out» emotionally.
• Forgive, but guard your heart until you see sustained change.
• Boundaries are not built in a vacuum; creating boundaries always involves a support network.
• Trespassing on other people’s property carries consequences. «No trespassing» signs usually carry a threat of prosecution if someone steps over the boundaries. We need to back up our boundaries with consequences.
• Feelings come from your heart and can tell you the state of your relationships. They can tell you if things are going well of if there is a problem. If you feel close and loving, things are probably going well. If you feel angry, you have a problem that needs to be addressed. Your feelings are your responsibility and you must own them and see them as your problem so you can begin to find an answer to whatever issue they are pointing to.
• We need to own our attitudes and convictions because they fall within our property line. We are the ones who feel their effect, and the only ones who can change them.
• People with boundary problems usually have distorted attitudes about responsibility. They feel that to hold people responsible for their feelings, choices, and behaviors is mean.
• To rescue people from the natural consequences of their behavior is to render them powerless.
• A common boundary problem is disowning our choices and trying to lay the responsibility for them on someone else. Think for a moment of how often we use the phrases «I had to» or «She (he) made me» when explaining why we did or did not do something. These phrases betray our basic illusion that we are not active agents in many of our dealings.
• We need to realize that we are in control of our choices, no matter how we feel.
• We have been so trained by others on what we «should» do that we think we are being loving when we do things out of compulsion.
• Setting boundaries inevitably involves taking responsibility for your choices. You are the one who makes them. You are the one who must live with their consequences. And you are the one who may be keeping yourself from making the choices you could be happy with.
• In reality, setting limits on others is a misnomer. We can’t do that. What we can do is set limits on our own exposure to people who are behaving poorly: we can’t change them or make them behave right.
• The other aspect of limits that is helpful when taking about boundaries is setting our own internal limits. We need to have spaces inside ourselves where we can have a feeling, an impulse, or a desire without acting it out. We need self-control without repression.
• We must own our own thoughts. Many people are mechanically thinking the thoughts of others without ever examining them. They swallow others’ opinions and reasonings, never questioning and «thinking about their thinking». Certainly we should listen to the thoughts of others and weigh them, but we should never «give our minds» over to anyone.
• We rarely see people as they really are; our perceptions are distorted by past relationships and our own preconceptions of who we think they are, even the people we know best.
• We need to make sure that we are communicating our thoughts to others. Many people think that others should be able to read their minds and know what they want. This leads to frustration.
• Taking care of what lies within our boundaries isn’t easy; neither is allowing other people to take care of what lies within their boundaries. Setting boundaries and maintaining them is hard work.
• People who don’t respect others’ limits also have boundary problems.
• When parents teach children that setting boundaries or saying no is bad, they are teaching them that others can do with them as they wish.
• Children need to have the power to say things like these: «No», «I disagree», «I will not», «I choose not to», «Stop that», «It hurts», «It’s wrong», «That’s bad», «I don’t like it when you touch me there».
• The inability to say no to the bad is pervasive. Not only does it keep us from refusing evil in our lives, it often keeps us from recognizing evil. Many compliant people realize too late that they’re in a dangerous or abusive relationship.
• Whenever they need to protect themselves by saying no, the word catches in their throats. This happens for a number of different reasons:
  • Fear of hurting the other person’s feelings.
  • Fear of abandonment and separateness.
  • A wish to be totally dependent on another.
  • Fear of someone else’s anger.
  • Fear of punishment.
  • Fear of being shamed.
  • Fear of being seen as bad or selfish.
  • Fear of being unspiritual.
  • Fear of one’s overstrict, critical conscience.
• Avoidance: saying no to the good. It’s the inability to ask for help, to recognize one’s own needs, to let others in. Avoidants withdraw when they are in need; they do not ask for the support of others.
• Individuals with walls for boundaries can let in neither bad nor good. No one touches them.
• Controllers can’t respect others’ limits. They resist taking responsibility for their own lives, so they need to control others.
• Boundary development is an ongoing process, yet its most crucial stages are in our very early years, when our character is formed.
• None of us enjoys being told no. It’s difficult to accept another person’s refusal to give support, to be intimate, or to forgive. Yet good relationships are built on the freedom to refuse and confront.
• We always reap what we sow. And the later in life it is, the sadder a picture it is, for the stakes are higher.
• Withdrawal, hostility, and setting inappropriate limits are ways parents act toward their children. Over time these become ingrained in the soul of the child.
• Confronting an irresponsible person is not painful to him; only consequences are.
• We are to love one another, not be one another. I can’t feel your feelings for you. I can’t think for you. I can’t behave for you. I can’t grow for you; only you can. Likewise, you can’t grow for me.
• You cannot change others. More people suffer from trying to change others than from any other sickness. And it is impossible. What you can do is influence others. But there is a trick. Since you cannot get them to change, you must change yourself so that their destructive patterns no longer work on you. Change your way of dealing with them; they may be motivated to change if their old ways no longer work.
• Sometimes the problem is that we judge others’ boundaries.
• When we accept others’ freedom, we don’t get angry, feel guilty, or withdraw our love when they set boundaries with us. When we accept others’ freedom, we feel better about our own.
• Things can hurt and not harm us. In fact, they can even be good for us. And things that feel good can be very harmful to us.
• If we do not share our anger with another, bitterness and hatred can set in. We need to be honest with one another about how we are hurt.
• As iron sharpens iron, we need confrontation and truth from others to grow. No one likes to hear negative things about him or herself. But in the long run, it may be good for us.
• It is crucial for victims of abuse to feel the rage and hatred of being powerless, but to be screaming «victims’ rights» for the rest of their lives is being stuck in a «victim mentality».
• Your envy should always be a sign to you that you are lacking something.
• Passivity never pays off.
• Trying, failing, and trying again is called learning. Failing to try will have no good results; evil will triumph.
• I have been said that when a baby bird is ready to hatch, if you break the egg for the bird, it will die. The bird must peck its own way our of the egg into the world. This aggressive «workout» strengthens the bird, allowing it to function in the outside world. Robbed of this responsibility, it will die.
• Boundaries are really about relationship, and finally about love.
• We have many boundary problems because of relational fears. We are beset by fears of guilt, not being liked, loss of love, loss of connection, loss of approval, receiving anger, being known, and so on. These are all failures in love.
• If our boundaries are not communicated and exposed directly, they will be communicated indirectly or through manipulation.
• Appropriate boundaries actually increase our ability to care about others. People with highly developed limits are the most caring people on earth.
• It is crucial to understand that meeting our own needs is basically our job. We can’t wait passively for others to take care of us.
• We are to develop our lives, abilities, feelings, thoughts, and behaviors.
• Meeting our own needs is basically our job. We can’t wait passively for others to take care of us.
• We are to develop our lives, abilities, feelings, thoughts, and behaviors.
• A lack of boundaries is often a sign of disobedience. People who have shaky limits are often compliant on the outside but rebellious and resentful on the inside. They would like to be able to say no but are afraid.
• When we are afraid to say no, our yes is compromised.
• We can’t manipulate people into swallowing our boundaries by sugarcoating them. Boundaries are a «litmus test» for the quality of our relationships. Those people in our lives who can respect our boundaries will love our wills, our opinions, our separateness. Those who can’t respect our boundaries are telling us that they don’t love our no. They only love our yes, our compliance.
• Appropriate boundaries don’t control, attack, or hurt anyone. They simply prevent your treasures from being taken at the wrong time.
• Saying no to adults, who are responsible for getting their own needs met, may cause some discomfort. They may have to look elsewhere. But it doesn’t cause injury.
• We all need more than God and a best friend. We need a group of supportive relationships. Having more than one person in our lives allows our friends to be human. To be busy. To be unavailable at times. To hurt and have problems of their own. To have time alone.
• When we’ve taken the responsibility to develop several supportive relationships, we can take a no from someone. Why? Because we have somewhere else to go.
• It’s no secret that quite often, when people begin telling the truth, setting limits, and taking responsibility, an «angry cloud» follows them around for a while.
• Emotions, or feelings, have a function. They tell us something. They are a signal.
• Fear tells us to move away from danger, to be careful.
• Sadness tell us that we’ve lost something.
• Anger is also a signal. Anger is a sign that we need to move forward to confront the threat. Anger tells us that our boundaries have been violated. Anger also provides us with a sense of power to solve a problem. It energizes us to protect ourselves, those we love, and our principles.
• Individuals with injured boundaries often are shocked by the rage they feel inside when they begin setting limits. This is generally not «new anger», it’s «old anger». It’s often years of nos that were never voiced, never respected, and never listened to. The protest against all the evil and violations of our souls sit inside us, waiting to tell their truths.
• Years of constant boundary violations generate great anger.
• As you develop better boundaries, you have less need for anger. This is because in many cases anger was the only boundary you had. Once you have your no intact, you no longer need the «rage signal». You can see evil coming your way and prevent it from harming you by your boundaries.
• An inability to receive someone’s boundary may mean there is an overdependent relationship.
• Though we certainly need each other, no one is totally indispensable. When a conflict with one significant person can bring us to despair, it is possible that we are too focused and dependent on that person to meet our needs. Such dependency is appropriate for children, but they are to grow out of this in adulthood and move into having several healthy and supportive relationships. It tends to slow down our personal and spiritual development.
• An inability to accept others’ boundaries can indicate a problem in taking responsibility.
• One of the major obstacles to setting boundaries with others in our lives is our feelings of obligation. What do we owe not only our parents but anyone who has been loving toward us? What’s appropriate, and what isn’t?
• If the giver is hurt or angered by a sincere thanks, the gift was probably a loan. If the gratitude is enough, you probably received a legitimate gift with no feelings of guilt attached.
• It’s important to understand that your no is always subject to you. You own your boundaries. They don’t own you. If you set limits with someone, and she responds maturely and lovingly, you can renegotiate the boundary. In addition, you can change the boundary if you are in a safer place.
• People who own their lives do not feel guilty when they make choices about where they are going. They take other people into consideration, but when they make choices for the wishes of others, they are choosing out of love, not guilt; to advance a good, not to avoid being bad.
• One sure sign of boundary problems is when your relationship with one person has the power to affect your relationships with others. You are giving one person way too much power in your life.
• Many marriages fail because one partner fails to set clear boundaries with the family of origin, and the spouse and children get leftovers.
• Adults who do not stand on their own financially are still children. To be an adult, you must live within your means and pay for your own failures.
• Good boundaries prevent resentment.
• Giving is good. Make sure, however, that it is the proper amount for your situation and resources.
• The patterns you learn at home growing up are continued into adulthood with the same players: lack of consequences for irresponsible behavior, lack of confrontation, lack of limits, taking responsibility for others instead of yourself, giving out of compulsion and resentment, envy, passivity, and secrecy. These patterns run deep. Your family members are the ones you learned to organize your life around, so they are able to send you back to old patterns by their very presence. You being to act automatically out of memory instead of growth.
• The first step in establishing boundaries is becoming aware of old family patterns that you are still continuing in the present.
• When you refuse to forgive someone, you still want something from that person, and even if it is revenge that you want, it keeps you tied to that person forever.
• The difference between responding and reacting is choice. When you are reacting, they are in control. When you respond, you are.
• Doing good for someone, when you freely choose to do it, is boundary enhancing. Codependents are not doing good; they are allowing evil because they are afraid.
• The saddest people on earth are those who end their days with no relationships in which they are truly known and truly loved.
• It’s scary to realize that the only thing holding our friends to us isn’t our performance or our lovability, or their guilt or their obligation. The only thing that will keep them calling, spending time with us, and putting up with us is love. And that’s the one thing we can’t control.
• Ignorance of one another’s boundaries is one of the most blatant red flags of the poor health of a dating relationship.
• If you have never questioned, set boundaries, or experienced conflict with your family members, you may not have an adult-to-adult connection with your family.
• We need to be comforted before we can comfort. That may mean setting boundaries on our ministries so that we can be nurtured by our friends. We must distinguish between the two.
• More marriages fail because of poor boundaries than for any other reason.
• The problem arises when one trespasses on the other’s personhood, when one crosses a line and tries to control the feelings, attitudes, behaviors, choices, and values of the other. These things only each individual can control.
• We do not communicate our feelings by saying, «I feel that you …». We communicate our feelings by saying, «I feel sad, or hurt, or lonely, or scared, or …». Such vulnerability is the beginning of intimacy and caring.
• If you are angry, even if someone else has sinned against you, it is your responsibility to do something about it.
• Not dealing with hurt or anger can kill a relationship.
• That is a rule of life. We do not get everything we want, and we all must grieve over our disappointments instead of punish others for them.
• Problems arise when we blame someone else for our own lack of limits.
• The most responsible behavior possible is usually the most difficult.
• Accepting someone as she is, respecting her choices to be that way, and then giving her appropriate consequences is the better path.
• Remember that a boundary always deals with yourself, not the other person.
• Boundaries need to be communicated first verbally and then with actions. They need to be clear and unapologetic.
• Developing boundaries in young children is that proverbial ounce of prevention. If we teach responsibility, limit setting, and delay of gratification early on, the smoother our children’s later years of life will be. The later we start, the harder we and they have to work.
• Children need to have a sense of control and choice in their lives. They need to see themselves not as the dependent, helpless pawns of parents but as choosing, willing, initiative-taking agents of their own lives.
• Learning how to delay gratification helps children have a goal orientation. They learn to save time and money for things that are important to them, and they value what they have chosen to buy.
• You have the delicate task of helping your child see that she is not the center of the universe. There are limits in life. There are consequences. Yet you need to do this without quenching the sense of excitement and interest in the world that she has been developing.
• If you are being saddled with another person’s responsibilities and feel resentful, you need to take responsibility for your feelings and realize that your happiness is not your coworker’s fault, but your own. In this as in any other boundary conflict, you first must take responsibility for yourself.
• Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.
• Whatever you do, remember that your job overload is your responsibility and your problem. If your job is driving you crazy, you need to do something about it. Own the problem. Stop being a victim of an abusive situation and start setting some limits.
• You also need to set limits on yourself. You need to realize how much time and energy you have and manage your work accordingly. Know what you can do and when you can do it, and say no to everything else. Learn to now your limits and enforce them.
• Effective workers do two things: they strive to do excellent work, and they spend their time on the most important things.
• Limits on good things keep them good.
• The Law of Power: you only have the power to change yourself. You can’t change another person. You must see yourself, not the other person, as the problem. To see another person as the problem to be fixed is to give that person power over you and your well-being. Because you cannot change another person, you are out of control. The real problem lies in how you are relating to the problem person. You are the one in pain, and only you have the power to fix it.
• Transference is when you experience feelings in the present that really belong to some unfinished business in the past.
• Make sure you understand work issues and face them directly so that work does not emotionally control your life. Find out why a certain coworker is able to get to you, or why your boss is able to control the rest of your life.
• Whatever the context, boundaries are about freedom, self-control, responsibility, and love.
• Adhering to structures, boundaries, or rules can be very beneficial. But rules in and of themselves should not be your master, robbing you of the freedom to do good for others or yourself.
• If there is an area of life in which you are suffering, make a personal rule to keep it from hurting you.
• The principle is this: when in doubt, default to face-to-face or some form of synchronous contact.
• Pgo Possum: «We have met the enemy, and he is us».
• Welcome consequences as your teacher.
• It’s far better to be empathic but at the same time refuse to be a safety net: «I’m sorry you lost another job this year, but I won’t lend you any more money until you’ve piad back the other loan. However, I’m available to talk to for support». This approach will show people how serious you are about developing self-boundaries.
• Some results of victimization are these: depression, compulsive disorders, impulsive disorders, isolation, inability to trust others, inability to form close attachments, inability to set limits, poor judgment in relationships, furthers exploitation in relationships, deep sense of pervasive badness, shame, guilt, chaotic lifestyle, sense of meaninglessness and purposelessness, unexplainable terror and panic attacks, phobias, rage attacks, suicidal feelings and thoughts.
• Another injury due to victimization is a deep, pervasive sense of being «all-bad», wrong, dirty, or shameful. No matter how affirming others are of their lovableness and their attributes, victims are convinced that underneath it all, they have no good inside themselves.
• We need to see that what is right is also good for us. And we usually only see these good reasons when we’re in pain. Our pain motivates us to act.
• The first thing you need to learn is that the person who is angry at you for setting boundaries is the one with the problem. If you do not realize this, you may think you have a problem.
• Maintaining your boundaries is good for other people; it will help them learn what their families of origin did not teach them: to respect other people.
• Do not let anger be a cue for you to do something.
• Do not let an out-of-control person be the cue for you to change your course. Just allow him to be angry, and decide for yourself what you need to do.
• Do not allow the angry person to get you angry.
• When they no longer have control over you, they will find a different way to relate. But as long as they can control you with their anger, they will not change.
• Realize that the hard part is just beginning. Setting the limit is not the end of the battle. It is the beginning. Keep working the program that got you ready to set your boundaries.
• Unmet developmental needs are responsible for much of our resistance to setting boundaries.
• You will be amazed by how much can change in your life when you finally begin to let go of what you can never have. Letting go is the way to serenity. Grief is the path.
• If angry people can make you lose your boundaries, you probably have an angry person in your head that you still fear. You will need to work through some of the hurt you experienced in that angry past.
• Setting boundaries and being more independent is scary because it is a step into the unknown. Change is frightening. It may comfort you to know that if you are afraid, you are possibly on the right road, the road to change and growth.
• Not to forgive is the most self-destructing thing we can do.
• The wrong can never be undone. But it can be forgiven and thereby rendered powerless.
• If I am not forgiving them, I am still in a destructive relationship with them.
• People tend to look outside of themselves for the problem. This external perspective keeps you a victim. It says that you can never be okay until someone else changes. This is the essence of powerless blame.
• Responsibility beings with an internal focus of confession and repentance. You must look at yourself and face the internal resistance of wanting the problem to be on the outside of you.
• One of the first signs that you’re beginning to develop boundaries is a sense of resentment, frustration, or anger at the subtle and not-so-subtle violations in your life.
• People who can’t get angry when they are being violated, manipulated, or controlled have a genuine handicap. No «warning light» alerts them to boundary problems. An inability to get angry is generally a sign that we are afraid of the separateness that comes with telling the truth. We fear that saying the truth about our unhappiness with someone will damage the relationship. But when we acknowledge that truth is always our friend, we often give ourselves permission to be angry.

Related books:

• Cuando digo no, me siento culpable de Manuel J. Smith.
• La asertividad para gente extraordinaria de Eva Bach y Anna Forés.
• La asertividad de Olga Castanyer.

raul