Boundaries

Many years ago I had to set some boundaries for myself to protect my emotions.  It was one of the hardest things I had to do because those boundaries severely limited contact with my dad.  This week I received word that he has passed away and immediately the guilt of protecting myself reared its ugly head. I had to remind myself that self-care does not mean selfishness. 

As far back as I can remember, every wish I made was either for a puppy (which is a story for another post) or for my dad to stop drinking. Given the fact that I didn’t have control over either one, I had to learn to cope with having neither. In keeping true to the intention of this blog, I am not going to go down the woe is me road for having grown up with an alcoholic father, but instead focus on sharing my journey in dealing with it.

It just so happened that unlike many other’s who are dependent on alcohol but can still keep their lives together, my dad was non-functioning. He was in and out of my life sporadically while bouncing around the country and due to several circumstances found his way back to Windsor, Ontario where he was born.  Although my dad was a good person with a heart of gold, he never found peace with himself which affected his potential for relationships with others. I can’t speak for how he felt but it was obvious that he struggled with who he was and never learned to accept himself. This struggle with thinking you are not enough as you are yet can’t be more like someone you think you should be quite often leads to the need to escape. What we don’t realize is that we are meant to be unique and our problems are common but a lot of people flip those believing we that we are meant to be common and our problems are unique causing a feeling of isolation believing that no one would understand what we are going through. When in actuality people in an addicts life will do just about anything to get them to stop and quite often take on the responsibility of their choices themselves.

However, letting go of the need and desire to try to change and therefore control someone else and instead put our energy into taking control of our own life is one of the best gifts we can give to others. It is not our place to make decisions for or try to live someone else’s life by placing expectations on them and when we do, we just set everyone up for disappointment. We also have no place determining how another should live and when we try to fix things for others we are ultimately just disempowering them because their life is not our to lead and may cause feelings of inadequacy.

Unfortunately, setting limits for and focusing on ourselves is something we are not typically taught to do, but it is imperative to our mental and emotional health.  If this is a struggle for you, like it is for most of us, please reach out and I would be happy to share with you the tools I use to help me feel empowered everyday by not only setting but honoring necessary boundaries.