Many a self-help manual suggest that setting boundaries to protect oneself against people deemed “unhealthy” presences in our lives is a positive, healthy step towards creating a positive, healthier you. Sometimes, the suggestion is accompanied by advice such as ensuring you're vibrating at the right frequency to attract only the people you want to your life. Or, you’re told to stand up for what you believe in by addressing it with those closest to you, and ensuring that they know what you will or will not tolerate from them. This may alienate people, however; it may be wiser to earn their respect by setting an example for them to follow by your acceptance of them, and why they're in your life, rather than dictate to them the terms by which they’re allowed to be in it, or not.
Setting boundaries does nothing to address the issues a person has with their beliefs about themselves, which is the basis for finding ourselves faced with challenging people to begin with. It has the opposite effect of keeping a person’s personal issues from being addressed at all. Why would a person ever worry about the behaviour of others unless they were worried about their own?
This is the crux of the matter. There is no need to set boundaries to protect ourselves from the actions or influence of people we find “unhealthy” or otherwise challenging. Setting boundaries does not keep anything or anyone out of our lives; it only keeps us hiding from seeing the truth about ourselves.
No matter the depth of our self-awareness, our higher selves present us with challenges throughout our lives in order for us to learn and grow. When we don’t rise to meet those challenges, we continue to get them until we do. The messages behind them can get more intense the more we ignore them, and sometimes result in serious repercussions to our well-being. This is not because our higher selves want to harm us; it’s because we're hiding from ourselves, and creating unconscious (and sometimes conscious) guilt as a result of our refusal to change our beliefs. Guilt is the most pernicious, pervasive emotion we can harbour, and when we do we can manifest all kinds of punishment on ourselves, as well as on others.
The irony of setting boundaries in our interactions with others is that we’re really setting boundaries against our own growth when we do it. Whatever it is were supposed to learn from a particular person that we find challenging to deal with will simply surface in another person at another place and time until we have received whatever message we’re trying to tell ourselves. Setting boundaries with the goal of preserving our truths in fact limits us from seeing them in the first place.
It’s inevitable that we’ll meet people who challenge us to examine our beliefs about ourselves, and give us an opportunity to grow. The people we find the most challenging to accept are the ones we learn the most about ourselves from; they’re mirrors reflecting some aspect of our beliefs that needs addressing. After all, we cannot set boundaries against everyone, and expect to win wisdom or greater self-awareness by closing ourselves off from the world behind walls of fear. We needn’t worry about attracting people into our lives who don't serve our growth if we’re doing what is needed to preserve the path of it ourselves. The opposite is true; the more we examine and alter our beliefs to reflect our inner truths, the more we’ll attract people into our lives who also reflect those truths.
If we learn from our encounters with people who challenge us, we'll eventually find those challenges disappear of their own accord, because we have moved beyond needing them, and will no longer attract whatever it is they were meant to teach us. It’s that simple. As we grow in acceptance of who we are and the truths we represent, we no longer need fear anyone. Setting boundaries is a mark of living in fear, not courageously protecting the truth. The truth needs no protection; it needs only acceptance in order to see the light of day.
Challenges come from our inner selves; they have nothing to do with anyone else. We create them for ourselves, and rather than shut them out behind boundaries of insecurity, we should embrace and learn from them, so we need not experience the same challenges over and over again. This is the path we need to take to change our beliefs to reflect our truths, and to find greater peace in our lives. Face the fears you have about yourself, and your need to hide from yourself will fade away.
