We’ve talked before about being a people-pleaser, and how knowing you’re a moving toward can help you break the people-pleasing habit by turning the spinner to yourself. Of course, you need skills in order to turn the spinner to yourself, and one of those skills is self-esteem. After all, when you love yourself, you’ll be far more comfortable when someone else doesn’t.
One necessary part of healthy self-esteem that’s particularly challenging for moving toward people is managing boundaries. When people think of boundaries, they usually think of setting (and hopefully, enforcing) boundaries. That’s fair, because setting and enforcing boundaries is a necessary part of self-care. But before you can effectively set and enforce your boundaries, you need to be good at other kinds of boundaries – specifically, giving and receiving boundaries.
What are giving boundaries? Giving boundaries tell you what information to share with others, and what information to withhold. Children are born without giving or receiving boundaries. Interestingly, our culture has a lot to say about children and giving boundaries. Maybe you’ve seen the internet saying “Three things always tell the truth: drunk people, children, and yoga pants.” Your parents probably taught you to “think before you speak” or “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” (I have issues with that last one, but we’ll discuss that another time!)
In contrast, receiving boundaries tell you what information to take in, and what information to reject. Imagine you’re a castle, with a moat and a drawbridge. The drawbridge represents your receiving boundary. If you’re not good at receiving boundaries, it’s as if you have your drawbridge all the way down most of the time. Anyone can walk across your drawbridge, and enter your castle. Depending on how well-behaved your guests are, they may start climbing the curtains and swinging from the chandeliers! Not only will it be hard to get them out of your castle, but after you do, you’ll have to clean up the mess they left behind.
As mentioned, children are born lacking both giving and receiving boundaries. While giving boundaries also impact self-esteem, I want to focus on receiving boundaries in this post. Our culture has less to say about receiving boundaries. Receiving boundaries tend to affect self-esteem more than giving boundaries. And if your parents didn’t teach you receiving boundaries – or worse, took advantage of your lack of receiving boundaries – chances are good you’re a people-pleaser.
Moving toward people are notoriously bad at receiving boundaries. They want to like other people, and they want other people to like them. Being liked is more important than what they think of themselves, and in order to be liked, they take in whatever they're told. If that sounds familiar, your challenge is to work on keeping your castle drawbridge at a 45-degree angle, rather than having your drawbridge down all the way. (And with some people, you might need your drawbridge completely closed!)
What does that mean? One way to pull up your drawbridge is by really noticing what other people say to you. Then apply the true-helpful rule: Is it true? Is it helpful? If it’s not true and helpful, you don’t need to let it into your castle.
You can also think about what people have said to you in the past, and apply the true-helpful rule. If it’s not true and helpful, let it go, and throw it into your moat! (We’ll talk more about ways to do this in another post.)
If you’re a moving toward, you’ll also have to let go of your unenforceable rules about how the world works. Moving toward people want to believe “If I’m nice to you, you’ll be nice to me in return,” and then are resentful, disappointed, and hurt when other people do what they want, instead of being nice in return.
Believing that others will be nice if you're nice is a lovely idea, but not everyone subscribes to it, and most importantly, you can’t enforce it. Having realistic expectations makes more sense. Realistically, no matter how you behave, some people will be nice, and some people won’t. You’re not responsible for how others behave, and you can’t control it by being nice to them. You can be responsible for how you behave, and learn how to stay separate and be assertive when you don’t like how others treat you.
Pulling up your drawbridge to a 45-degree angle is, of course, just the first step. Once you get good at noticing what others are saying and doing, you’ll need skills to respond assertively. We’ll talk about self-esteem and assertive communication next week. For now, I encourage you to stop automatically taking in what you see and hear. Ask if what you’re seeing and hearing is true, and if it is, is it helpful? If it’s not, keep your drawbridge up, and keep your castle tidy!
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Lovely post as always! ❤️