How to Set a Relationship Boundary After Childhood Abuse

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By FaithAllen
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When you have no relationship boundaries in your life, you continue to feel like the helpless child who had no voice.

People who were abused as children were taught that they had no relationship boundaries. They had no say over what their abusers did to their bodies or souls. As adults, survivors of childhood abuse often have trouble setting a relationship boundary. When you have no relationship boundaries in your life, you continue to feel like the helpless child who had no voice. Learning how to set a relationship boundary will help you to feel safe, which is an important part of healing from childhood abuse. Here is how you can set boundaries in your life.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

Strong desire to heal
Patience
Courage

Step 1

Recognize how frequently you allow other people to control your life. If you have not set relationship boundaries in your life, then you likely spend a lot of time doing things that you do not want to do. You also likely invest a lot of mental energy into unhealthy relationships.
Step 2

Decide that you are ready to take control of your own life. Until you decide to take the reins of your life, you will be unsuccessful in enforcing the relationship boundaries you set.
Step 3

Choose which relationships you want in your life. You do not have to invest in any relationship that you do not want. You are in charge of who is in your life and who is not.
Step 4

Set the terms for each relationship. Ask yourself how much time and energy you are willing to invest in each relationship, and then draw your line in the sand.
Step 5

Enforce the boundaries you set. If somebody tries to cross a boundary, say, "No!" and walk away.

Tips & Warnings

Each time you fail to enforce a relationship boundary, you are choosing to harm yourself rather than tell a disrespectful person, "No!"
You do not have to keep anyone in your life that you do not want. This includes family members.
If you are not ready to cut a person out of your life, try defining tighter boundaries, such as only communicating through email.
Let go of the guilt. Disrespectful people use your guilt to control you. Setting relationship boundaries is healthy, and enforcing them is your right as a human being.
Finding a qualified therapist with experience in counseling people with your abuse history is an important part of healing from childhood abuse. Your therapist can provide you with more tools to help you set and enforce relationship boundaries.

Comments

trudster said

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on 4/4/2009 Discovering that you have buried childhood events so deep that you didn't think I needed to fix them was a problem. Now accepting that these wrongs did occur along with trying to understand what boundaries are is confusing and foreign.

trudster said

Flag This Comment

on 4/4/2009 Discovering that you have buried childhood events so deep that you didn't need to fix them was a problem. Now accepting these wrongs did occurr along with trying to understand what boundaries are is confusing and foreign.