It's tempting, when the need arises to stand up for oneself, to shrink. Not because that is what we want to do, not even because it will make things at all better, but for no other reason than to make the sinking feeling in our guts disappear, or our heart stop racing, or to alleviate the sweaty palms and anxiety that come along with it.
In my Skool community today, there was a story. A woman who, for the last 40-plus years, has felt like a trained poodle to her family. Jumping to the rescue, jumping to their every need, making herself scarcely visible but ultimately the emotional, and many times physical, rescuer of everyone she loves.
Then one day she just stopped catering.
She stayed perfectly pleasant. She simply quit jumping. When a family member picked a fight over something they were sure she'd said, she didn't argue it into the ground. She calmly showed them what had actually been said, and when the apology never came (it never does), she let it go. When someone made her rearrange her whole day, twice, then left her hanging, she stopped rearranging. When she was asked to give up a day she'd already set aside as sacred, she said no. No fight. No apology tour. Just no.
Her biggest surprise, she told the room: "my heart rate settled quicker than expected and nobody died! I’m fine, they’re fine, nobody died, all is fine." (She made me laugh with this one btw)
Had she shrunk, had she let them overrun her life that day, she knew the resentment would build. That the pain of the moment would become a dull ache like from a broken toe that never quite set right. This is what boundaries are for. Too often we want people to respect them, or to honor them. But the real test happens in you first. Can you hold the line when the feelings come? When you do, you may be surprised at how fast the bad passes.
Where do you shrink when you know you shouldn't? And what do you really think would happen if you stopped?
Nothing changes if nothing changes.
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