How a Lack of Boundaries Contributes to Anxiety - Video Transcript

Hey guys, I'm Kristen the anxiety therapist and today I'm going to be talking about how to set healthy boundaries, this is something that so many people struggle with and it comes up so frequently in my therapy sessions with clients, most of whom tend to have high functioning anxiety, be people pleasers kind of have this fear of disappointing others and therefore they tend to put other people's needs above their own and don't set boundaries with others. And what happens when we don't set healthy boundaries with others is that it actually leads to more anxiety.

Um it can also lead to low self esteem to sort of needing approval, fear of rejection, um and anger and resentment, but it's sort of unfair anger and resentment because we feel resentful towards other people for not respecting our boundaries, yet we're not communicating those boundaries to others, so they're not necessarily at fault right there, just operating in life how they operate and it's up to us to establish boundaries.

And so what are healthy boundaries, basically their rules for how others learn to treat you and um what you will accept from other people. And um this can I feel a little bit intimidating, especially for people who tend to be conflict avoidant or think that anytime they are expressing a boundary that it's going to be off putting or come off as aggressive, but there's really a way to assert your boundaries in a very respectful way and and it actually leads to a sense of trust and safety and respect within relationships.

Now if you already have an established relationship and there are poor boundaries there and maybe they're they've been, you know, long standing for several years. A lot of times. It will get worse before it gets better because you're sort of changing the way that you're relating to someone.

So if you start setting these boundaries with someone, they're like, wait a second, you know, this is not how our relationship is, what, what's going on here. So there's, there's bound to be some pushback, but ultimately, um you just need to become more self aware about what your priorities are, what your needs are, um kind of what you value and and use that as a way to um sort of embrace the uneasiness or the discomfort that's going to come from setting those boundaries with other people in your life.

Um, so just something to be aware of and really reflect on for yourself. You can often identify where your boundaries are if feelings of anxiety or anger or frustration come up, right? Usually that means that someone has sort of crossed our boundary and um that's a place to really kind of dive deep within yourself and become more introspective about why that feels uncomfortable for you or what it is that about that that relationship or that dynamic that feels like they have sort of crossed crossed that line for you.

So, um feel free to message me or comment with any questions or if something I talked about really resonated with you and stay tuned for more videos every Friday have a great weekend.