9 Signs of Poor Boundaries | MedCircle x Dr Ramani

[Music] hi everyone it's dr romini and today i'm going to walk through nine signs of poor boundaries that you need to know don't forget to subscribe below and hit that bell so you always know when we post more videos like this one boundaries affect every way we go through life and it's often something we were never taught to set right in fact in many ways a lot of how we raise children in our world goes against setting boundaries we tell kids that you have to go hug someone where you would may not be consensual or the child doesn't want to hug that person or you have to follow rules that don't necessarily make sense for all kids so it's all we actually kind of teach children to kind of squelch that sense of boundaries we're also never taught how to set them many people when they set boundaries they feel guilty like oh if i set this boundary this person's going to feel bad and then i feel bad i'm setting the boundary so we don't even feel like we have the right to and even if we can get past the idea that we do have the right to set boundaries we'll often feel bad if we set them but poor boundaries can really impact our lives in many ways it can put us at risk for entering into toxic relationships it can put people at risk for dangerous situations it can it can also result in people sort of taking on more than they need to taking on more caregiving responsibilities more work responsibilities in a way that can really take a toll on both their physical and their mental health and there was also psychological fallout from poor boundaries when a person has poor boundaries they will often blame themselves even for a very negative or even a problematic or traumatic interaction saying well it's my fault i had poor boundaries which can not only result in self-blame and shame but a whole cascade of negative emotions associated with that so let's talk about some signs let's talk about the nine signs of poor boundaries because i think if people have a sense of i don't even know what poor boundaries look like we might be able to help people sort of navigate these waters number one is that a person finds that they can't make a decision and the reason they can't make a decision is often because they feel torn they feel torn between sort of overextending themselves or doing what other people want and what they really want to do and so i guess the fantasy in that case is really that maybe someone else is going to step in and make this decision but when you can't make a decision it's also much more difficult to set that line in the sand and say actually i can't come to the movies tonight i have a deadline or i won't be able to stay for dessert because da da or i won't be able to take on that extra piece of writing because i have to get the other report done first so that's a decision but if a person thinks i don't know what's going to happen if i make this decision or something it's kind of bad is going to happen a person then may hold back on making decisions and then may repetitively have this issue around decision making the second sort of sign of poor boundaries is somebody who is a people pleaser now people pleasing is a massive risk for all kinds of poor boundaries and it's how a lot of people paint themselves into a corner people-pleasing is exactly what it sounds like it's giving in against what a person actually wants and doing what other people want it's denying one's own self-interest it's denying one's own wants desires you name it so when a person is people pleasing they're literally just catering to what other people want when i've worked clinically with people pleasers one thing that i have really sort of focused on is that be aware of the dynamic but also there's sometimes some secondary gain from being a people pleaser right because when you're a people pleaser you're the nice person and you get to maintain that identity of oh that person's cool they're so nice they they just go along and and it's sort of like this weird kind of strangely manipulative dance you people please the people who are being pleased are saying isn't aren't they great aren't they wonderful so they're reinforcing something that's actually harming the people pleaser and the people pleasers buy in the people pleaser persons buy in is that they get to walk through the world as the nice accommodating person so some of the work in therapy goes a lot deeper it's saying why is it so important for you to be viewed as this person who always goes along who always makes people's lives easier and it's about sort of breaking down some of those those schemas the identity around that understanding the history around that because when we people please we set terrible boundaries we will stay out later than we want we will do more than we want we'll take on all kinds of additional roles and responsibilities that can really put us in a sort of an uncomfortable again potentially toxic situation because we just keep trying to please that other person i think that when a person is a people pleaser and they found an audience of people who are willing to suck up all their people pleasing that also gets to be again sort of a toxic dance that the people who are being pleased are saying well this is great i don't have to question it you know word to everyone out there who is being people pleased you're on the receiving end of it it's not our job to hold other people's boundaries but it is part of our role as human beings to be empathic and have compassion so if we do sense that someone is really overextending themselves in our service to really say okay you need to please step back you've been doing so much it can be a very reciprocal and supportive dance that way but ultimately it is on all of us to know that if we are people pleasers that really is going to negatively affect and erode boundaries another sort of an extension sort of a third sign that people are have poor boundaries it's sort of an extension of the people-pleasing stuff but it's people who become so overly focused on other people that they actually become exhausted and fatigued in their own life so basically they're taking care of everybody else's stuff needs schedules whatever and they themselves are not taking care of themselves they're sort of completely depleting themselves now this gets tricky in terms of a boundary issue because we have to look at even things like for example caregiving burdens and especially when people have young children it's hard to set a boundary and sort of roll up to your kid and say well i'm setting a boundary darling and i'm not going to change your diaper like it doesn't work that way and so it is the but what it does mean is that that person who has the responsibility of very young children may need to set those boundaries those caregiving boundaries in other areas for example they don't need to feel the need to put a five-course dinner on the table or they don't need to do sort of extra things for other family members who could be doing them themselves or even in the workplace before i move on to number four i want to let you know i have a full med circle series on many mental health conditions that may lead to poor boundaries in relationships these include hours of videos in which i explain the causes and the risks of these mental health conditions the signs the symptoms how to get the right diagnosis and treatment and much much more please check it out at watch.medcircle.com or in the links below this video people who have poor boundaries often do exhaust themselves because they're doing doing doing for so many other people and once we even pop it out of the caregiving realm just to sort of normalize an experience that many people have is that sense of a person thinking well i have to do because i'm climbing up the ladder i'm trying to win someone over i'm trying to um you know win this boss over get this opportunity i want to show hustle and then that person in their hustle may be doing and doing and doing and doing and the boss or the colleague whoever might be taking and taking and taking and the boundaries are getting worse and worse mostly because a person thinks it's a means to an end but then ends up getting really exhausted really depleted and it can really really take a toll on their lives so it's just about being aware of somebody sort of completely exhausting themselves while they're doing everything in the service of others that's another big sign of poor boundaries another sign that somebody has poor boundaries is that they have sort of lost their sense of self when a person has poor boundaries they often sort of really start not only absorbing roles in other people's lives but almost sort of start absorbing other people's lives like you are other people's bad days become your bad days other people's losses become your losses and a person will say i don't even know who i am again i feel like i exist only for my children or i exist only for my partner or he only exists for this job and they've lost them who are you what do you stand for people with poor boundaries tend to lose that sense of self because as their boundaries get encroached upon they really are so living their lives not only in the service of others but almost again absorbing their identities so that their own identity kind of gets lost in the shuffle this is a really sort of a dangerous precedent and you'll see this again where i've often seen this repeated is in in parents where they'll say i became so about my kids and everything my kids schedules my kids needs my kids meals my kids rooms my kids this my kids that well just in case none of you knew this these kids actually do grow up and if you do it right they grow up and they make their own lives and at that point many people will say i don't even know who i am anymore so there's a risk in that and that may not even happen in child rearing though i think it happens in a very sort of intense way there could happen in a relationship where a person is all about i'm going to be for them i'm going to support their career i'm going to take care of them that a person turns around one day and says well i certainly got them to where they needed to but who am i can happen in a job as well having that losing one sense of self in a job because the job becomes so all absorbing that a person doesn't maintain their social connections their hobbies their interests they become the job and subsequently lose their sense of self so it's a real sign that a person may not have very good boundaries because they've literally lost their sense of self to not being able to maintain these boundaries more carefully uh sixth sort of sentence another sixth sense and a sixth indicator another way we know that people may have poor boundaries is over sharing now this is such a tough one because i'm sure a lot of you are thinking dr romney how much sharing is over sharing sharing is it's it's not about it's not an either or sharing is almost like a process that is that should be done over time and is predicated on trust so when a person over shares they may for example share information with somebody where they have not sufficiently established trust and potentially shared something that they should not be sharing it could be inappropriate to share because it could it could be uh it could be sharing the confidences or secrets of another person that could make themselves vulnerable that they could be sharing information that could put them in a really disadvantageous place in terms of a job situation one of the reasons that has been suggested that people over share is that they may feel sort of overwhelmed or dominated in a situation and to them the over share might be a way to sort of establish an attachment need or a connection with the other person and that idea of if i if i give give give give and we'll also see this as a pattern in people actually who have histories of trauma and we know that boundaries are an issue for people with histories of trauma is to go in there and lay out too much too quickly i am the first one out there who is a big fan of emotional vulnerability and sharing but the thing i'm a bigger fan of is being discerning and making sure we're good gatekeepers for ourselves if a relationship is trusting and it's evolving over time and getting better as time goes on we might feel that oh i'm trusting this person more i might be able to share this next thing with them heck even in therapy i don't expect people to come in on day one and boom drop the cargo hold in the room i'm fine with it if it happens it is therapy there's confidentiality and protections in that space but i also very much appreciate it if people say i need to learn you i need to get to know you a little bit and that's fine too but when it comes to our social relationships or other workplace relationships or relationships that don't have those sorts of those protections of of sort of built-in boundaries through things like confidentiality and all of that over-sharing is often a a sign of poor boundaries because you're going in there so quickly not only can it potentially make another person uncomfortable but it also could be putting over sharer in a position of tremendous vulnerability and might make it harder for them to stay safe in a given relationship situation and what we do know about people who over share and then that over sharing comes back to bite them they tend to blame themselves for another person's misuse of the information at the end of the day if somebody harms you with the information you overshared that responsibility is on the person who harmed you but many many people will find themselves blaming themselves and that oversharing is also a real sign of poor boundaries another sign of poor boundaries may be that a person is getting resentful and annoyed that they're overextending themselves but the other people aren't and that may very well be because those other people have either a they may have better boundaries but b they may also be sort of advantaging the fact that another person doesn't have good boundaries and they're they're benefiting from that but it can again when a person has poor boundaries it can really sort of pump up a sense of resentment a sense of frustration and instead of stepping back and saying you know i really have i i'm not maintaining my boundaries and so yes of course i feel taken advantage of that you could connect those two and that should be sort of a call to arms to really start setting those boundaries but a person who feels that you know i keep getting sucked into things i'm really frustrated why am i the only one who's sort of having to do everything and that relates to another sign of poor boundaries i'm going to talk about that that can really leave a person wondering like uh this feels very unfair but if you are feeling that in your relationships that you sort of feel really annoyed and you're not able to identify it but you do feel sort of a sense of resentment and frustration that could be a sign of poor boundaries and especially when that's not being reciprocated and it often isn't like i said for those two reasons i gave either other people do have better boundaries or they're benefiting so much from your lack of boundaries that they're thinking why should i stick my neck out and all this relates to another sign of poor boundaries which is passive aggressiveness it relates to that sense of resentment passive aggressive people do not communicate directly about needs wants disappointments and frustrations so they may sort of do things like common passive aggressive technique would be to stonewall and not communicate a person doing that might actually say i'm setting a boundary i'm not responding to them but that's not going to be appropriate if something's already underway people are already in the process of making arrangements or it's a workplace situation and then a person who has not had good boundaries gets frustrated and then the passive aggressive play at that point might be i'm not i'm not talking about something i'm not doing this but that's not going to work if you've already agreed to do something other sorts of passive aggressive kinds of plays might be barbs that are sort of like well it must be easy to live your life since you have you know since you don't have any responsibilities kind of thing and that another person say well i do have responsibilities i'm doing them and it's not on me that you're taking on so many more that that it doesn't come out as a person in a healthy way saying this is hard for me because i'm carrying a lot more of this load can we figure out a way to divide these tasks in a more equitable way and make it very direct the passive part of passive aggressive is that a person is not dealing with a problem that's on the table is not communicating about it directly and that makes sense because people with poor boundaries communicating directly is is a struggle for them asking for what they need or want or what or setting a line where they say i can't do more of this that is direct it's not passive the other person on the other side of the passive aggressive communication feels almost sort of ganged up on they they'll think why is this person coming at me and as though that the person who said who didn't set the boundaries is frustrated and may even be frustrated at themselves so the passive aggressive peace almost feels like a projection to the other person too so if you find yourself behaving in a passive aggressive manner it may very well be that you haven't set good boundaries and what's interesting is that may not even be that you're that you're not setting good boundaries with the person in front of you it could be for example a person who's over extending themselves at work through poor boundaries is then passive aggressive for example with family members or friends because they're so frustrated about what's happening there they'll say like oh my gosh well thanks for starting drinks without me passive aggressive and they may go on to say i i'm am i the only one here who's working no you're not your friends have jobs too but when it's those kinds of communications that person's frustrated about work where they're not setting boundaries and then they're coming and lashing out or sort of lashing passively at the people in their social purview because maybe they don't even feel like they can safely communicate about that in that other situation another sign of poor boundaries is a person doing things and not setting boundaries because they're afraid of being rejected and they're afraid of abandonment this is a very very common pattern in people who have poor boundaries they think if i don't do this then then these people aren't going to show up anymore then this person is going to leave my life and it's it's a very destabilizing fear because what happens is the person will have poor boundaries but in a way those poor boundaries give them a sense of control right they can keep overextending themselves and potentially getting ahead of or avoiding this sort of fear even if it's a unlikely fear of being rejected or of being abandoned and so they won't have good boundaries and they'll keep doing what is asked of them to avoid that now this can play out in lots of ways it can play out sexually a person sort of giving in to sexual behaviors practices and asks that they don't feel comfortable with really isn't consensual but they they they do it because they're afraid of being abandoned by a partner or a person agreeing to do unpleasant tasks in a social situation in a workplace so they won't be rejected we've seen that in styles that for example have been labeled dependent personality styles i'm not a fan of the term but it's the sense of a person who feels that i won't be able to function in the world alone if people leave me so i'm going to agree to whatever they're asking me to do or do things that i don't want to do or eat foods i don't want to eat or go places i don't want to go because i don't want to be left and then have to take care of myself which i don't feel like i can do the fear of rejection and the fear of abandonment are profound fears and people really are will mobilize themselves in many ways to avoid it but having poor boundaries can be part of that so if a person has those fears i really struggle with being afraid of being rejected i really struggle with a fear of abandonment that becomes a wake-up call to say and is this manifesting and is this playing out in how i set boundaries now when we think about mental health and mental illness poor boundaries play a role in a lot of presentations in mental health we definitely see poor boundaries and a lot of for example personality disorders which is a core interest of mine that i share on med circle all the time we see it pretty much across the board in every form of personality disorder not even just the antagonistic high conflict ones but all of them and some of it really reflects sort of the the difficulties with intimacy and empathy that cut across all personality disorders either a person has absolutely extreme boundaries or they have sort of intrusively strange boundaries like we see makes for example in a schizotypal personality where a person will come up to someone and do or say strange things to them we definitely see struggles with boundaries and poor boundaries in personality issues like borderline personality which tracks because there's a tremendous fear of abandonment the entitlement we see in a narcissistic personality could definitely be associated with poor boundaries we see it in psychopathy or anti-social personality where a person might have poor boundaries to the degree that they engage in boundary violations for themselves or others to get what they need we see it across more of the sort of anxious personality disorders of people with avoidant personalities often really have poor boundaries because they don't feel socially skilled and often feel that they have to give in to what other people want we see it what used to be called dependent personality it's again on the fence if they're going to keep it people feel like they have to give in and do things they don't want to so they won't be rejected we also need to remember that that poor boundaries cut across other mental health issues too sometimes it's a it's a result of for example in a substance use disorder we might see it as a function of sort of intoxication or impairment or to be able to get drugs or alcohol in an anxiety disorder especially social anxiety there may be poor boundaries because a person isn't even clear how to set them because they're so afraid of how they're going to get scrutinized in a person with a mood disorder there may be some poor boundaries around because of the apathy because of sort of feeling like well why is anyone going to want to spend time with me and there are sort of behavioral theories of depression where the belief is that a lot of why a person is depressed is that they're not getting enough behavioral reinforcement from the environment and may not know how to do that but i think we need to keep in mind one thing with poor boundaries we often think of poor boundaries as the person having poor boundaries for themselves agreeing to do too much never saying no but poor boundaries can manifest in another way and that's a person violating other people's boundaries and that's where we see for example in the high conflict personality styles narcissism and anti-social personality being great examples of a person sort of reaching in to where they shouldn't calling people at all hours expecting things from people that are not realistic interrupting their lives asking them to do more and more and more asking them inappropriate questions that is a poor boundary where one person is violating another person's boundary and i think that's an important part of the boundary conversation thanks for watching don't forget to check out my full series at watch watch.medcircle.com [Music]

Channel: MedCircle

Views: 1,105,512

Keywords: boundaries, signs you have poor boundaries, poor boundaries in relationships, how to set boundaries, signs of poor boundaries, boundaries in relationships, setting boundaries, setting boundaries in relationships, emotional boundaries, psychology, relationships, relationship boundaries, mental health, narcissist, toxic relationships, how to say no, medcircle, dr ramani, signs, video, youtube, fear, abandonment, rejection, borderline personality disorder, anxiety, depression, narcissism

Id: B7-TtxJwbPk

Length: 23min 44sec (1424 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 31 2022