As hard as I find it to write posts like this, it feels much harder not to. I’ve learned a lot in my journey away from abuse – about myself, about others, about the way our world works. It would be a disservice not to share out of residual self-consciousness and doubt. There are plenty of people going through exactly what I’ve worked to escape and undo; I’d like to guide them, somehow. I’m not trying to throw a pity party here.
But in true Chironic fashion, this healer’s got a wound, too – and part of working on it is to help others with their own.
Now that I’ve outed myself as a narcissistic-abuse survivor, I’d like to make a post about one of the most insidious symptoms of having been raised in a virtual cult: lack of boundaries.
You’ve probably heard about boundaries. I’ve had therapists, friends, lovers, even complete strangers tell me over the years that I needed to “develop some boundaries” and “not let people walk all over” me. But when you’re steeped in narcissistic toxicity and you’ve never known any different, these suggestions are meaningless. Telling someone like that to “just say no” and “articulate your needs” is tantamount to telling someone to “just” defy gravity. No problem, man. It’s easy.
Saying “no” to narcissistic parents often goes a bit like this:
Parents: “Water the plants when we’re away, will you?”
Me: “I can’t. I’m not available then.”
Parents: “You will water the plants.”
Me: “But I have other plans.”
Parents: “Oh, stop being so selfish and ungrateful and help us when we need you!”
Me: “No.”
Parents: “We’re glad you’re finally saying ‘yes.’ We knew you would.”
Me: “But I said–”
Parents: “Your sister would’ve agreed without so much drama, of course. . . .”
You might note that there is nothing overtly abusive in this conversation; this makes it all the more difficult to identify for what it is. But a lifetime of this can destroy self-trust, drain life of meaning, sabotage goals and relationships, and generally wreak havoc on a person’s ability to self-actualize.
What’s more – in many narcissistic families, this qualifies as a positive conversation. It doesn’t end in blows, name-calling, projections or blame.
So if this is the best one has been raised to expect – if this is the epitome of love (narcissistic families are famous for having virtual mantras declaring the supremacy of their family values), how can one trust that their “boundaries” will be respected by anyone? And in families where even basic, fundamental boundary setting (e.g. wanting privacy to change clothes) can be met with violence, how can someone state their needs and wishes in the world at large without being thrown into fight or flight mode? Many coming from these backgrounds fearfully hide their needs until they explode, further sabotaging their chances of having a healthy experience. They simply don’t know they can set boundaries without conflict.
Hell, given those circumstances, how can one even know what boundaries are?
Toni Morrison famously said, “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” Well, the same goes for blog posts. In all my efforts to heal myself before and after going no-contact with my family of origin, I came across countless references to “boundaries,” but next to nothing on exactly what they are, and how to actually set them. So I’ve decided to fill the gap:
Setting Boundaries: A How-To Guide for the Baffled
To borrow from Wikipedia, personal boundaries are “guidelines, rules or limits that a person creates to identify reasonable, safe and permissible ways for other people to behave towards them, and how they will respond when someone passes those limits.” In order to effectively define what this means for you, I suggest the following:
Step 1: Cut Ties
If someone doesn’t respect boundaries in general – if they won’t take ‘no’ for an answer routinely, as a habitual way of interacting with you and others – STAY AWAY FROM THEM. This is true whether their toxicity is publicly displayed or only evident in private. Private violations keep you trapped as the sole witness, greasing the slide down to madness. Boundaries don’t work with all people. So get out. Full stop.
Step 2: Identify Out-of-the-Ordinary Beliefs
Perhaps you’ve learned that successes will be met with dismissal or negativity. Perhaps you’ve learned your pain will be met with anger. When you are raised with such reactions, it’s difficult to pin them down as dysfunctional. You integrate these values and simply agree that you are undeserving of support, celebration, and compassion.
Narcissistic recovery is a long road, one dotted with slow realizations, clarifying memories, and sudden epiphanies. Chances are, if you have “no boundaries,” there are un-examined abuses you’ve been ignorantly tolerating. These become much easier to spot if you follow through with step one. Once you’ve gotten pathologically disrespectful voices out of your life, it’s much easier to get them out of you head. Your intuition will work great when it’s not constantly under fire with messages intended to make you question reality. If you’ve been told to believe things you know are wrong, then you know the discordant melody of cognitive dissonance. This happens constantly with gaslighting. The worldview of an abuser simply does not “map” well with that of the collective.
One small example:
In one of my last encounters with my sister, she told me that “no one expects mothers to love their children,” that I was “selfish for wanting such affection,” and selfish for giving so much time to my own kids when she needed me. I agreed that mothers don’t always love their children, but this is not the norm, and went on to bring up common terms like “maternal instincts” and “a mother’s love.” This only put all of reality under her knife: “You’re making things up,” she insisted. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never heard those terms. They don’t exist.” As a mother, a long-time childcare provider, and a virtual scholar of child development, I was thrown so off by this that I spent hours sobbing in my car (always fun). Had I never met this woman, I might’ve laughed in her face – but I was raised to put my sister’s (and everyone else’s) perceptions above my own. Being indoctrinated through threats and insults, my own views – no matter how reasoned, researched or experienced – had a built-in collapse mechanism designed to protect me from attack. In this case, like so many others, I turned my truth against myself, beating myself up for being “wrong all this time,” while struggling with the mammoth anxiety born from such high levels of cognitive dissonance.
That’s what can happen when you’re forced to adopt beliefs that just don’t fit.
There are plenty of resources to help correctly “map” reality. When in doubt, get a second opinion from a trusted friend. Don’t feel you can trust anyone? Self-help books have been a boon to me. They haven’t necessarily done what they intended – given how many I’ve read, you’d think I’d be a wealthy, enlightened, charismatic saint with magical powers, perfect health, and a bevy of nonprofits. But these books have helped in a different way: they generally draw from the collective norms and values of our culture – indeed, the very premise of each is usually built on at least one. These books aim to make you more compassionate, creative, confident, outgoing, spiritual, analytical, or intelligent. They show you how to be a better listener, a better communicator, a leader. They teach you about emotional maturity and physical integrity. They tell you what the human species, by and large, actually values.
Self-help books (as well as film, fiction, and biographies, to an extent) rely on near-universal assumptions about the human condition: that everyone wants love and acceptance, that we’re wired for connection, that it’s perfectly normal to go after what you want. That feeling good is good. If your upbringing led you to question these things, you will go through life with an inner-dissonance and cultural-disconnect that can manifest as jadedness, illness, mysterious physical pain, and a whole slew of mental health disorders – to say nothing of it’s implications for your social and professional life.
Identifying what is generally considered acceptable anchors your sanity and helps guide your perceptions of what reasonable boundaries are. It’s a key step in the process, and one that’s often overlooked by people who were lucky enough to be raised with, ya know, common sense.
Step 3: Tend the Garden of Your Mind
Possibly the slowest scar to heal, for me, has been the ability to trust my own thoughts. When the values of others trump (for lack of a better word) your own, you feel you have no right to your own inner world. Learned self-loathing can complicate matters all the more, isolating you and making it difficult to compare, contrast, and develop a healthy sense of where you fall on the spectrum of belief.
End result: your brain has holes. You leak out. Others leak in. There are no intellectual boundaries.
Once you’ve gained a modicum of social clarity through steps one and two, you can begin to identify what your personal preferences are. If you need, start by studying those of others. Read books, write lists, journal, make a vision board – do whatever helps you pinpoint and better understand exactly what you want out of life, how you want to be perceived, and what sort of interactions you desire.
You’re likely to run up against some inner-demons at this point: familiar words rolling around your head saying, “Stop being so selfish. Stop thinking about yourself. You don’t deserve all these things.” Well, hear me out: Developing clear desires, goals, and boundaries is NOT SELFISH.
Without working toward self-discovery, self-respect and self-actualization, no one will know how to be around you. The rules of discourse will not be clear, you might seem woefully hard to please, and your needs could make themselves known in dysfunctional ways, such as manipulation, self-pity, or temper tantrums. Unconscious self-sabotage leads to dependency, and resentment and jealousy could color your reactions to those who genuinely self-express. You might rely on others to validate your every thought and action, exhaust those closest to you, and limit your ability to help others. So, in no small way, thinking about your wants and needs, dreaming big (so big, you can’t be moved), and solidifying your values is actually a service to others.
The more you hone in on how you wish to live, the more it will show in your day-to-day life. By tending your dreams, you will naturally learn to avoid those who would sabotage them. Voices of dissent lose their power when your hopes and values are louder than them. Your ideals will serve as a guiding light and a moral compass, and allowing yourself to move toward them will show others that you respect yourself – and demonstrating self-respect is a boundary in and of itself.
While escaping abuse inevitably involves a prolonged period of aloneness – an exodus from slavery followed by an underworld journey in which you face countless ghosts and demons – you do rise again. And when you do, you find that the rewards for your bravery are great. You are infinitely more capable, compassionate, positive, healthy and outgoing than you ever imagined possible. This, in turn, attracts new people into your life – ones who, like you, are far too inspired and engaged with life to want to abuse anyone.
But with that in mind:
Step 4: Let Others Dislike You
The backbone of this whole body of issues is a discomfort with being disliked. Being rejected is a primal fear we all carry, but when you have a history of abuse, being even mildly disliked feels like a direct threat. How is that disdain going to manifest in my life? In physical brutality? A psychic attack? Slander? The stakes can seem incredibly high.
But after taking the time (and it does take time) to move through the previous steps, being disliked shouldn’t feel so terrifying. You should have a solid grasp of what you have, what you are capable of, and what resources are available to you should you need them – an understanding you likely lacked at the beginning of the process. Having ground beneath your feet – knowing what is real, how the world works, and where you stand within it – can provide a tremendous sense of strength that enables you to weather disagreements, stand up for your beliefs, and withstand rejection with grace.
What I’ve learned (and am still working to integrate) is that each one of us is our primary source of truth. Spiritual leaders, scientists, politicians, academics, and even our friends can provide a wealth of information to peruse, but it’s ultimately up to us as individuals to decide what we accept and use to build our worldviews. If you want strong boundaries in life, you need to know this, deeply, and live in accordance with it.
And this means some people won’t like you.
As far as this blog goes, I’ve come to lean on – albeit shakily – the philosophy that if it’s true to me, I’m allowed to share it. To be honest, I’m insecure the whole time I write these entries. I panic after hitting “publish.” I’m far from the end of my own healing journey (if there is an end), but I’m also quite far from the beginning. My core belief is increasingly strong: we were born to be who we are. If we weren’t meant to be our most authentic selves, we simply wouldn’t have that impulse at all.
Each of us is born with a set of strengths and weaknesses. We can build or tweak or amend them, but the fact of the matter remains that we’re all made a little differently. This is why the differentiation of step three is so crucial: after effectively learning the proper norms of society, you must sort out which ones genuinely serve you. When I try to align myself with the common western belief that ghosts and spirits are imaginary, I lose my effing mind. Not only does this discredit very real experiences of mine – thus being its own kind of gaslighting – it goes against the circuitry of my mind. There’s nothing I can do about it. I’ve tried to not believe in reincarnation, a higher power, multiple dimensions, fairies, aliens, starseeds, Atlantis, even freaking mermaids – I just can’t. I have an instinct for belief. My years-long crush, Regina Spektor, nailed it when she figured some people are just naturally spiritual, and others not. When I try to quell this nature to appease hard-line materialists, I sew nothing but mental chaos and despair for myself – and I’m the one I have to live with every day.
So there are people who aren’t going to like me. A lot of them. Most people will think I’m too woo-woo. Some will think I’m too queer, others not queer enough. Too political and too nuanced in equal measure. I might be unattractive, unrealistic, morbid, weird. Plenty of folks don’t read much, yet here I am writing. There will always be people who don’t like me. But that’s OK, as long as I know, trust, and like myself – I’m not for those people, and those people aren’t for me.
I mean, my family of origin never liked me much, and they sure as hell don’t like me more now that I’ve cut them out of my life. And that’s 2000% fine.
The more you censor yourself to please others, the less alive you are. When you hide yourself, you withhold your gifts from those who may desperately need them – just to avoid offending those who don’t want them. It’s a symbolic suicide that far too easily leads to desires for the real thing.
So just let people dislike you. To quote the the Internet’s version of John Lennon: “Being honest may not get you a lot of friends, but it’ll always get you the right ones.” I kinda doubt he actually said that, but them’s wise words nonetheless.
You are here for a reason.
F the haters.
Good luck, comrade.