Monday Mind Talks: 4 Ways to practice setting love boundaries in your life

Understanding how to set personal boundaries is key to developing and sustaining good relationships. It is a crucial aspect of mental health and well-being. Boundaries can be physical or emotional, and they can be loose or rigid, with healthy boundaries usually falling somewhere in the between. Healthy boundaries can help to define one's identity. Healthy boundaries, in particular, can help people establish their identity and indicate what they will and will not hold themselves accountable for.

Here we suggest you 4 ways to practice setting love boundaries in your life.

1. Consider your emotional state

Tuning into your emotional state, as well as how specific people and situations affect how you feel about yourself, can provide signs as to whether it's time to set a boundary. Recognize when you're running on fumes and when you might need to take a break to refuel. This may be not returning phone calls or text messages right soon, or it may imply scheduling some downtime to recover.

2. Be consistent

Allowing boundaries to slip can lead to confusion and the development of new expectations and demands from those around you. Attempt to keep things consistent and steady. This helps to reinforce your original thresholds and values while also ensuring that those lines remain well defined. 

3. Turn towards your feelings with kindness

When you become aware of the emotion you are experiencing, pay attention to where it is located in your body. The trick here is to not push away the emotion. Keeping it bottled up inside will just cause it to boil up and explode later, resulting in more painful emotions or even a complete emotional shutdown. Practicing a loving-kindness meditation, especially on days when you feel more sensitive, can be a terrific approach to building sentiments of love. 

4. Be your biggest cheerleader

You must offer yourself some love in order for your boundaries to be firm. If you have a narrative in your head that says you're worthless and undeserving, it will be tough to set limits that protect you. A lot of it boils down to self-esteem and self-worth. The more you engage in activities that produce feel-good hormones, such as singing, running, or whatever you choose to do — things that feed your own heart — the more your internal dialogue will alter and you'll feel more deserved.

If you have difficulty setting boundaries, mental health counselling may be an option. A good counsellor can assist you in practising assertiveness, identifying and establishing healthy boundaries, and working on incorrect ideas to replace them with more constructive ones.

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