Do you have good boundaries …or are you a cold fish?
When our littlest Carvalho was a wee baby, we had a doula help us with her for a few months.
That also involved dealing with our ‘spirited’ twin boys when they were home from school.
This was all explained to said doula when she started helping us.
However, the death knell for our relationship with her sounded when she announced one day that she “wasn’t a nanny” and therefore helping with the twins was “beyond her job description”.
Some might say she had good boundaries.
For my part, I felt that the strictness of her interpretation of her remit jarred with the realities of a caring role.
On a similar theme, when training a bunch of family lawyers a few months ago, one of them announced that they thought they had “rubbish boundaries”.
Why? Because they cared too much about their clients and struggled to put the phone down when they seemed in a vulnerable state.
I speak a lot in my training sessions about the dangers of becoming too much of a ‘rescuer’ with clients.
BUT… I do think that boundaries have to be a more malleable concept for those of us practising these more personal areas… such as family and private client law.
And also when it comes to personal matters. For example when someone is looking after your kids or an elderly/ill parent.
For me, humanity comes first.
Boundaries next.
I’m not saying we should always be sacrificing ourselves.
But in those difficult moments when we are needed by our clients, if we respond to that as a human being with feelings, that doesn’t mean we have sh*t boundaries.
It comes into my work as a therapist now. Recently, our annual price increases came into effect.
But if a client is in a particularly delicate situation…or they say to me they’re struggling and can’t manage an increase…I’m not going to respond by saying “THIS IS MY BOUNDARY. RESPECT IT “.
Sometimes there’s a delicate balancing act to perform – considering their needs and my own.
But rigidity is rarely the best approach when dealing with humans and feelings.
I see a lot of advice on social media these days on how to assert your boundaries. But it all seems a bit, well… strict.
And I fear that the manner in which it is approached may rub people up the wrong way.
When I got sober 18 years ago, I went from being Little Miss No Boundaries to Little Miss Strict Boundaries pretty quickly. And I took the opportunity to tell people about them at every turn.
What I realise now is that I was approaching it in the wrong way. There wasn’t much nuance or flexibility in my approach. Just a clunkiness which was at odds with the grey areas of human interaction.
So, a plea from me to consider the energy you bring to these conversations. And try to put yourself in the other person’s shoes.
How do you deal with boundaries?
PS And continuing with the fish 🐠 theme, here ⬇️ is our boys’ newest squishmallow ‘sushi’…