The #1 Boundary Lesson That Can Help Prevent Avoidable Heartbreak

The First Of Many Boundary Lessons From Lissa Rankin's The Boundaries Handbook

*The following is an excerpt from my unpublished book The Boundaries Handbook, which I’m releasing exclusively to my paid subscribers. To the 100 of you who have paid to subscribe since I started this less than a month ago, THANK YOU!!! After 14 years of writing almost every day without ever being paid for that effort, I can’t tell you how it warms my heart and heals some part around worthiness and value every time I get an email letting me know one of you values my writing enough to pay to read exclusive content. Today’s excerpt is about the first boundary lesson my therapist taught me, which I fought her on with tons of resistance, and which ultimately saved me.

The tragedy of relational trauma presents itself as a fragmenting of the wholeness of the soul. It unravels us more deeply than mere betrayal and cuts into us as a primal wound, one that leaves us feeling far less than the wholeness that is our natural state, our birthright. To dare to move beyond this kind of wound, to reach out to another who has been hurt in this way and say, “Come, sit, stay for a while, let us rest here together” requires profound courage and knee-trembling risk.

The absence of trustworthy companionship, the feeling that one is existentially alone, the chronic unmet longing to be seen, heard, understood, validated, and most of all, loved and accepted for all of who we are, lies at the broken heart of all trauma. To offer up even a moment of unconditional positive regard, to see and mirror back someone in their beautiful wholeness, to hold someone’s vulnerability safe, to remind someone that they are not and never have been broken, to show our respect for someone else’s autonomy by allowing them to have their sovereignty not only respected, but appreciated, to withhold judgment and offer up admiration for the ways they have managed to survive in a world that has not always been kind, to love unconditionally instead of conditionally transacting, to refuse to make our care conditional on our agenda while also making it clear what’s okay and not okay in the field between two individuals, to learn also to do this for ourselves- this lies at the core of all healing.

To become a sanctuary of refuge for another fellow journeyer, to allow ourselves to receive that same solace in the arms of another, to build a container of trust and safety, to allow all that enters that field to become available for transformation without requiring it to be so, to dare to open our hearts without collapsing our right to have wants, needs, fears, and boundaries that keep us separate but still in the field of love, this is the promise of healthy, bilateral relational boundaries that open the door to the intimacy we all crave without erecting walls or engaging in “power over” or “power under” dynamics that foreclose intimacy.

We reify “openness,” especially in spiritual circles. We are encouraged to open up, to be vulnerable, to spill our guts and bare our souls, to divulge our secrets, to unguard our hearts. Yet not all who wish us to be open wish us well, and without kind, firm, clear boundaries to protect ourselves and other people, unbridled openness can be masochistic. We may splay ourselves open, but at what cost?

Stanford chaplain and physician Bruce Feldstein, MD warns that the soul can become sore when we experience too much heartbreak, especially spiritual heartbreak. This “soul soreness” that can result from boundary wounding needs the kind of medicine no drug can provide. Only safe, well boundaried intimate relationships- with ourselves and all our parts inside, with other safe enough people, and with whatever we might call The Great Mystery out there- can nurture and heal this kind of soul soreness. In order to heal those deep soul wounds, we must have firm, clear, reciprocal, fair boundaries that help us mend ourselves and each other.

When I began treating my own boundary wounding in 2017, my very wonderful therapist explained very simply that boundaries are about the ethics of caring, a way to keep myself and others safe so that intimacy can thrive and love and respect can flourish. She described boundaries as a practice of setting limits that protect a person from becoming a victim of harmful behaviors and also to contain oneself so as not to victimize others or behave in ways that cause harm to other boundary wounded people. 

My therapist started treating my boundary wounding right away, trying to stitch together gaping holes in my wounded boundaries like a surgeon slapping emergency sutures everywhere, trying to stop the bleeding until the source of hemorrhage could be identified and repaired more delicately. I could see very quickly how my mother had harmed me with her boundary injuries, and with crushing self-awareness and a mountain of regret, I could see how I had inherited the legacy of those wounds and inadvertently harmed others the same way she had hurt me. I felt desperately motivated, if only for my daughter, to make sure I got it right now that I was learning there was another way to be in relationship.

So I asked my therapist for the rule book on the ethics of caring. Could she write it down, so I could study it, memorize the rules, get a gold star, and avoid making any errors ever again? I’m a good student! I felt motivated to pull an all-nighter if I had to in order to memorize and practice the rules.

She kept telling me, "It doesn’t work like that, Lissa. You can’t just get an A in healthy boundaries overnight when the reason you’re confused in the first place is because of trauma. We have to heal what confused you, and that will take time. But be patient. We will begin your recovery now, but this will mostly likely take years." She informed me we would start with a series of practical lessons. Dear readers, let me share the first one with you now.