Work & Self Boundary Problems

Goal

To become equipped to address boundary problems in the workplace and within the self.

Workplace Boundary Problems (Cloud & Townsend, pp. 194-205)

A lack of boundaries creates problems in the workplace, such as the following:

• Getting saddled with a co-worker’s responsibilities
  If you are being saddled with another person’s responsibilities and feel resentful, take responsibility for your feelings and realize that your unhappiness isn’t anyone’s fault except your own. Then, go to your co-worker and explain your situation. When they ask you to do something that is not your responsibility, say no and refuse to do whatever it is that the person is wanting you to do. If your co-worker gets angry at you for saying no, be firm about your boundaries and empathize with the person’s anger. Don’t get angry back. To fight anger with anger is to get hooked into your co-worker’s game. Keep your emotional distance and say, “I am sorry if this upsets you, but that job is not my responsibility. I hope you get it worked out.”
• Working too much overtime
  If you are in a situation in which you’re doing lots of extra work because you “need the job” and because you are afraid of being let go, you have a problem and would benefit from setting boundaries on your work, reviewing your job description, making a list of the tasks you need to complete in the next month, and making an appointment to see your boss to discuss your job overload.
• Having misplaced priorities
  The secret to prioritizing effectively is to realize how much time and energy you have and to manage your work accordingly. Know what you can do and when you can do it, and say no to everything else. Effective workers strive to do excellent work, and they spend their time on the most important things. Say no to the unimportant, and say no to the inclination to do less than your best. If you are doing your best work on the most important things, you will reach your goals. You also need to make a plan to accomplish the important things, and erect some fences around your tasks. Realize your limits, and make sure you do not allow work to control your life. Having limits will force you to prioritize.
• Experiencing conflict with co-workers and/or authority
  In instances of conflict in the workplace, you must see yourself as the problem, not the other person. To see another person as the problem to be fixed is to give that person power over you and your well-being. Because you cannot change another person, you are out of control. The real problem lies in how you are relating to the problem person. You are the one in pain, and only you have the power to fix it.
• Working for someone with a critical attitude
  Stress is often caused by working with or for someone who is overly critical. People will get hooked into either trying to win over the critical person, which can almost never be done, or by allowing the person to provoke them to anger. Some people internalize the criticism and get down on themselves. All of these reactions indicate an inability to stand apart from the critical person and keep one’s boundaries. Allow these critical people to be who they are, but keep yourself separate from them and do not internalize their opinion of you. Make sure you have a more accurate appraisal of yourself, and then disagree internally.
• Expecting too much of work
  People increasingly come to the workplace wanting the company to be a “family.” The workplace ideally should be supportive, safe, and nurturing. This atmosphere should primarily support the employee in work-related ways, however, to help them learn, improve, and get a job done. The problem arises when someone wants the job to provide what that person’s parents did not provide for them: nurturing, relationship, self-esteem, and approval. The job expects adult functioning, and the person wants childhood needs met. These differing expectations will inevitably collide. You need to make sure you are meeting your needs for support and emotional repair outside of work.
• Taking work-related stress home
  Conflicts at work need to be dealt with and worked through so they do not begin to affect your personal life. Make sure you understand work issues and face them directly so that work does not emotionally control your life. Find out why a certain co-worker is able to get to you, or why your boss is able to control the rest of your life. Find out why your successes or failures on the job are able to bring you up or down. These important character issues need to be worked through. Otherwise, the job will own you.
• Disliking your job
  Many people are unable to ever find a true work identity. They stumble from job to job, never really finding anything that is “them.” More often than not, this is a boundary problem. They have not been able to own their gifts, talents, wants, desires, and dreams because they are unable to set boundaries on others’ definitions and expectations of them. You must make sure that your boundaries are strong enough that you do not let others define you.

Self-Boundaries (Cloud & Townsend, pp. 208-214)

In addition to being responsible for having boundaries in our relationships with others, we also are responsible for having boundaries with ourselves. A majority of internal boundary conflicts revolve around eating, money, time, task completion, language, and alcohol and substance abuse. Both chronic and bingeing overeaters suffer from an internal self-boundary problem. For overeaters, food serves as a false boundary. Food may be used to avoid intimacy by gaining weight and become less attractive. Or they might binge as a way to get false closeness. For bingers, the “comfort” from food is less scary than the prospect of real relationships, where boundaries would be necessary.

People have tremendous problems in many different areas dealing with money, including impulse spending, living beyond one’s means, credit problems, chronically borrowing from friends, careless budgeting, ineffectual savings plans, working more to pay all the bills, and enabling others. The problem of our financial outgo exceeding our input is a self-boundary issue. When we have difficulty saying no to spending more than we should, we run the risk of being at someone else’s mercy. In addition to feeling as though finances are out of control, many people feel as though their time is out of control-feeling as though there aren’t enough hours to accomplish their tasks. People whose time is out of control inconvenience others whether they mean to or not. The problem often stems from one of the following:

• Omnipotence-having unrealistic expectations of what can be accomplished in a given amount of time
• Over responsibility for the feelings of others
• Lack of realistic anxiety-living so much in the present that planning ahead is neglected
• Rationalization-minimizing the distress and inconvenience that others must put up with because of lateness

Task completion deals with “finishing well.” Resistance to structure, fear of success, lack of follow-through, distractibility, inability to delay gratification, and inability to say no to other pressures can all contribute to being a poor finisher.

How we use language can deeply affect the quality of our relationships. Language can be beneficial when we use it to empathize, identify, encourage, confront, and exhort others. It can hinder us when we use it to talk nonstop in order to hide from intimacy, dominate conversations to control others, gossip, make sarcastic remarks (expressing indirect hostility), threaten someone (expressing direct hostility), flatter instead of authentically praise, and seduce. We have the power to set boundaries on what comes out of our mouths.

Alcohol and substance dependencies represent one of the clearest examples of internal boundary problems as they create devastation in the lives of addicts. Divorce, job loss, financial havoc, medical problems, and death can result from the inability to set limits in this area.

Self-Imposed Obstacles (Cloud & Townsend, pp. 214-218)

There are several reasons why our “no” doesn’t work on ourselves:

1. We are our own worst enemies. An external problem is easier to deal with than an internal one. When we switch our focus from setting limits with other people to setting limits on ourselves, we make a major shift in responsibility.
2. We withdraw from relationship when we need it most. The more we isolate ourselves, the harder our struggle becomes.
3. We try to use willpower to solve our boundary problems. The willpower approach is simple. Whatever the problem behavior is, just stop doing it. You may tell yourself “just say no,” “I will never ________________,” or “I will always _______________.” This doesn’t work, however, to stop out-of-control behavior since it causes resentment, which leads to rebellion.

Self-Boundaries Exercise

Instructions: Reflect on the self-boundary domains that are problematic for you by completing the following table and answering the questions:

• What has contributed to your importance and confidence ratings? For example, if you rated improving boundary setting associated with time as being a 9 in importance and a 5 in confidence, what helps the level of importance to be a 9 rather than an 8 and level of confidence to be a 5 rather than a 4?
• What would it take to move your ratings up by one? For example, moving your importance rating from a 9 to a 10 and your confidence rating from a 5 to a 6?
• What barriers exist in being able to have higher ratings?
• Which area would it be most beneficial to start addressing today? What small steps could you take toward having stronger boundaries in that area?

Next Step

Enhance your resolve to begin setting boundaries by watching the following video: