The ‘B’ word
The b word - yes Boundaries. Stumbling block for so many of us on the narp journey. Just the mention of them used to make me shudder. Laying boundaries, stating boundaries, it used to make me feel totally inadequate because I was too afraid to do it.
When I opened up to friends, and even counsellors about how hurt I was feeling at the actions of others towards me, they would ask the dreaded question….
‘Have you spoken to them about it?’
This innocent question used to make me feel so alone - of course I hadn’t spoken up - because it would be a complete disaster - didn’t they understand that? And in reality, why would my friends understand? It makes no sense - you should be able to talk to the people in your life, right? So this question cut deep,because in my heart I felt I was being the deceitful one, keeping my dissatisfaction hidden, not being truthful with the other person. I felt called to account, blamed for not being open, not speaking up.
In short I felt ashamed.
And if you feel like that, I want to reassure you right now, it's not your fault, and you can fix this.
What if you were actually trained to put up and shut up?
They say that if you boil a frog slowly he doesn’t notice the water getting hot. Poor frog. Similarly you can be dissuaded from speaking up. Slowly, over time, with patience and leverage, you can be trained into silence.
Maybe when you speak up a frosty silence engulfs the room, the person you speak to looks distraught or angry, clenched jaw, reddened face, glaring, goes silent, and then points out you do the exact same thing you are accusing them of all the time but they never complain.
What a slick triple whammy, you have been guilted for hurting them, (what a heartless person), then, rejected and abandoned in their silent treatment, and smeared as an intolerant person.
And when this and variations of it happen every time you try to speak up no matter how gently, you learn as an absolute fact that speaking up will only make things much worse.
So you go quiet, plaster on a smile, and get on with presenting yourself as someone who has life sorted.
Your guilty secret is that you can’t do that simple thing that others breeze through. You stop sharing your struggles because it hurts too much to be seen as ‘too weak to speak up’. Your fragile self-esteem can not take even one more blow.
And eventually you manage to bury it deep, so deep you think it has gone, that you are naturally an easy going, tolerant person.You numb out any feelings of discontent, in truth you numb out everything. And in every situation, you are the one whose boundaries are disregarded. You are seen as a doormat, and that hurts so bad, but you can’t see the way out, because you’ve ‘forgotten’ now.
Narp to the rescue
When shame has taken you as its prisoner it can feel impossible to escape. But these dreadful feelings can be taken to a NARP module, any one of them will do. Start with module 1 if you don't know where to go, and if you can't name the feelings, it doesn't matter, so long as you can feel them. And yes we can feel them, we feel them constantly, dragging on us like a weight on our heart, sometimes it is all that we can feel.
As some of the pain releases and you relax enough to be able to let inspirations rise into your consciousness, you may realise you are carrying beliefs that do not serve you. I don't call them false beliefs, because my ego kicks against them. 'False beliefs?' it rages, 'Oh right so all this suffering I've endured when I've spoken up - that's all false is it?'. But the beliefs you are carrying right now, that are reflecting back to you - they are not making a happy life for you, they are unhelpful to you, and with NARP we can work to let them go. They are real beliefs, as real as the video player you threw away years ago when you no longer needed it. So we can let these old beliefs go.
Working our way through NARP we come head to head with a belief ‘ It's dangerous to speak up’, and we clear the trauma holding this in place. There is often a lot of shifting to do to get to the clear-headed space where we are no longer scared totally witless about speaking up, where we can imagine the scenario where we speak up with the person, they punish and reject us (again), and we can accept it without disintegrating.
There are likely a lot of abandonment wounds that are playing into this, causing us to feel super-hurt when we are punished and abandoned. All of this has to be cleared so that we can begin from a calm fearless center. And then we have to go out into the world and walk our talk.And I think reframing could help here.
What if we drop the ‘B’ word altogether?
Just drop that label. Instead these statements about what we will and won’t accept are invitations. We are offering something sweet and lovely - an opportunity to be in a beautiful relationship with us.
This simple reframe makes life easier, first we can think - is this person important enough for me to want to extend an invitation to? If not, no effort is required, we can simply disengage. But if this person is significant to us, rather than being the law enforcer policing infringements, we are …generously offering an invitation…
For example - to my SO. Here is my invitation - "I’m sad you forgot my birthday, please can we celebrate it then I will be happy."
Now they get to decide if they will accept your invitation to make you happy.
This is what a’ No, I reject your invitation’ might look like.
‘You never reminded me about your birthday, if you had, you would have had a much better day, and if you did remind me, I didn’t hear you, because you speak too quietly, and anyway you never even told me how old you are this year and I didn’t make a big fuss about that did I?’
This is an example of what a yes I accept your invitation looks like
"Oh no - I am so sorry, how could I have forgotten? Let's go out right now and celebrate your birthday, I know it's midnight, but the petrol station will be open, I’ll buy you some flowers for a start."
Your part is super simple then.You are not required to cajole, persuade, explain, judge or influence their behaviour in any way. You are not required to make them understand how you feel about their refusal. If your invitation is rejected you withdraw from the situation. You make a note to yourself that the person rejected your invitation, and you decide what that means for your relationship.
That's it.
You offered an invitation as a sovereign adult, and as a sovereign adult they chose their response. You did not cause them to give that response because of the way you worded your request. You did not cause their response because you chose the wrong moment. You did not cause their response because your request was unreasonable. They chose their response.
Imagine if you’d sent a party invitation to a dear friend and they declined it, not with a graceful apology for being double-booked, no, they tell you in irritated tones that ‘it was unintelligible, you didn’t write out the invitation clearly enough, and even though your writing was messy they didn’t make a deal about it did they?’ How crazy would that be? How confused and disappointed would you be? You were open and honest and offered an invitation to them, they declined it - that's going to hurt, even more so if they declined it disgracefully as in the above example.
You are allowed to feel hurt, angry, upset, disappointed.
It can also help to reflect on how you would have behaved in the same situation. If a friend came to you with such an invitation, how would you have responded? I know you would have responded kindly, gently and thoughtfully. And it wouldn’t be difficult for you to respond that way. And you would have responded that way even if you were hungry or tired, or they had phrased it clumsily. And you would have recognised it took courage for them to voice their request, and you’d be grateful that they value and trust you enough to be able to offer you that invitation. Why would you expect anything less from the person you just made your invitation to?
The get out of jail free cards we deal for them…
Why is it ‘OK’, ‘understandable’, ‘just they way they are’, ‘a bit defensive’, ‘so hurt that they see it as a criticism’, ‘had a difficult childhood’, ‘passionate, and get angry’, ‘love me so much they can’t bear to think they hurt me’ (so they hurt me again), or any of the other myriad get out of jail free cards we deal for them. Why do we let it be OK? Because we have something to lose, and we don’t want to lose it. The soul-mate, the happy family, the financial security. The best friend, whatever it is, we make that more important than our own heart, our own soul. We sacrifice our own happiness because we are so afraid of what our life will be like if we lose that thing.
So you made your invitation and it got refused. Your only job now is to pull away, take care of you. You don’t have to make any big decisions if you don’t want to. You can definitely congratulate yourself for getting some more intel on this person - now you know how they react to a reasonable request.You can shift on the hurt, fear and everything else that comes up with the SHR or module 1 of Narp.
You don’t have to shame yourself for feeling sad. You can take this time when you have withdrawn to do extra nice things for yourself. Take yourself out for a coffee to a lovely place. Go for a walk in nature. Do some yoga or drawing. Whatever is going to feel good, even a beautiful drive out in the car and a stop to watch the sunset. Remind yourself that you did something good today. You offered an invitation to someone to participate in a healthy relationship with you - and they declined. You know what your choices are now - you may choose to give them a second, third or fourth invitation - the choice is yours. There is no push or hurry. Just take good care of yourself, and remember, they chose their response. They are a grown-up. You communicated your preferences, and they have communicated theirs. That is the truth, and the truth will set you free.
