Apr 02 2008
Healthy Boundaries: Do You Know What Your Default Stance is?
While teaching a recent class, a student pulled me aside, clearly feeling anxious as she told me, “I can’t stay in this class!”
When I asked her what was going on, she said that when other people in the class started processing their feelings, she felt overwhelmed. She’d recently taken the Healing From the Core: Grounding and Healthy Boundaries course, so I knew she had the basic skills to deal with what was going on. For some reason, she just wasn’t using them. I was curious about why.
As we talked a bit more I discovered that unless she was actually thinking about them, her boundaries were virtually non-existent. Her default stance in life was to be helpful to those around her by being a human vacuum cleaner for any uncomfortable feelings anyone was having in her vicinity.
She was a woman who was carrying a lot. At home she’d figured out how to manage her boundaries one person at a time. But on a bad day in her practice, if too many clients expressed emotions, she’d get wiped out.
Now she found herself in this class with multiple people learning to deal with emotions in a healthier way. But her default stance left her overwhelmed. No matter what new skills she learned or books she read, as long as her default stance underneath those skills and knowledge was to automatically take on and carry the woes of those around her, she was headed for burn out.
Please understand, I’m assigning no blame here. The brain works in amazing ways. If we had to consciously think about everything we do, we’d be paralyzed. So certain actions happen on autopilot.
In her case, as for so many of us, her default stance had originated long ago in a dysfunctional family situation that was out of control. Being a sensitive, empathic child, she soaked up the pain to keep the peace, and she did that until it was so much a part of her psyche, she didn’t even think about it anymore. She was no longer conscious of it at all.
Like the default font that automatically shows up when you open a word document on your computer whether you like it or not, a default stance shows up when you are living on autopilot. It’s what you do before you even think about it – your knee-jerk response.
To change your default stance, you need to bring it into your conscious awareness, make a new choice, and take a healthier action until the habit, the default stance, has been extinguished.
So my anxious student began by using her skills of grounding and filling to steady her system. Her anxiety subsided. She stayed conscious of her default stance so she could choose healthier boundaries. Again and again, throughout the next three days of the course, she reclaimed her power to choose how her boundaries were operating.
I reminded her as the class went on that she was only responsible for her own process. She gave herself permission to stay inside her navigational system (her body) and deal with her own emotions, leaving everyone else to process their own stuff. She had to remind herself repeatedly not to vacuum up the emotions in the room.
Now the skills she’d learned in the Healing From the Core: Grounding and Healthy Boundaries course began to kick in and work for her. She had to give it a lot of conscious attention, but she was happy with the results.
Her situation isn’t unusual in the healthcare field. She just did it to a higher degree than I normally see. The truth is, we all operate from default stances in many areas of our lives. But understanding your default stance is particularly important to your ability to be an excellent therapist.
Do you know what your default stance is? Find out by answering the questions below. Look to your recent actions. Don’t judge yourself, just notice. Many automatic responses are fine. It just helps to be conscious of them so you can choose something different if you need to for your health and well-being.
What is your automatic response to someone in need?
1. Do you start to extend yourself before you even think about it?
2. Do you feel like you don’t have a choice in extending yourself? In other words, do you feel like it’s your “job” to extend yourself?
3.Do you wall off in some way? For instance, do you put white light around yourself or put up an energetic shield?
4.Do you psychically recoil or run? Maybe you physically stay in the room and look like you’re present while you’re actually a long distance away.
5.Do you become a human vacuum cleaner, sucking up all the pain in the room? You’d know this because you’d feel the pain of the person in need in a visceral, unpleasant way. You may not even be able to let go of the pain without great effort.
6.Do you have some other creative way of separating yourself energetically from this person in need?
Once you answer these boundary questions, assess your default stance in this crucial area. You may want to reread my previous blog called “Helping Out in Heathrow Airport.” It shows you how I’ve learned to check in with myself before consciously choosing to extend a helping hand. This has been a learning process for me as well. It’s a complex issue, but well worth the time and attention.
This could be the beginning of a new day for you. You don’t have to continue to operate from an automatic reflex that drains you. Take the time to make the changes you need. If you’d like help, consult the Healing From the Core audio series for the skills to begin making this change. Then attend a Healing From the Core: Grounding and Healthy Boundaries course. I have also just completed a book with CD (that’s why you haven’t heard from me in almost 2 months!) that is all about having a healthy presence with others – how to have healthy boundaries. So stay tuned in future blogs for how to order it.
By practicing the techniques you’ll learn here you can change your life, your energy level – and your access to more joy!
This is a very worthy topic for body workers, probably for
anyone, because our energy is effected dramatically by our
response to other’s pain. I have chosen to cross-train in the
mental therapy field, specifically Psychomotor work, developed by Georgia Rigg. It is a beautiful blend of talking, role playing and body/energy work aimed at healing the traumas of past experiences. I highly recommend it to anyone dealing with one’s own or other’s spoken or unspoken trauma. While my clients may come in for treatment of a particular area of the body, often they quickly reveal a traumatic cause for their pain. While I can treat their physical symptoms I find it very helpful to use what I’ve learned from Psychomotor workshops to protect myself from falling into the abyss of their feelings.
This IS a worthy subject, I agree. So many people in ‘helping’ careers do not know how to shield themselves when a client or patient breaks down. I think it’s an important borders skill, important enough to teach in massage school.
I learned many years ago to psychologically “detach”, to take a mental step back and not get involved in someone else’s emotional pain. I also shield myself with white light before EVERY client and that helps me too.
We need to ‘be there’ for those people. We can’t help at all if we’re struggling with their pain in our bodies. That helps no one.
I think it’s an important enough skill to say that you’ll never be an effective healer if you don’t master it.
Suzanne, I have just found your blog site, and am thrilled to re-connect. Over the past 6 months, I have gravitated back toward the bodywork/energy work field after 6 years away. Your April blog rings true to me in many ways. I have years of skill and practice in centering, grounding, and consciously deciding how much resource I have to give. Even with all of this “knowledge”, I had a melt down last week because I had over-extended myself for the sake of 4 distinct volunteer activities. I had forgotten my skills, and I was left feeling depleted, in pain, and over-emotional. Thank you for the reminder queries, which will help me re-calibrate again.
On another note, I have been included in a very exciting venture called “The Women’s Sojourn”. The workshops are facilitated by Nancy Reller and Meredith Hunter, and might be a complement to the work you are doing in the Washington D.C. area. Please check out the website and blog site if you are interested in referring. http://www.thewomenssojourn.com, and http://www.thewomenssojourn.com/blog. Have a great day. Thank you again for all you do.
I read two great books about boundaries by an author named Anne Katherine. The first was called Boundaries: Where You End and I Begin. The second was called Where to Draw the Line: How to Set Healthy Boundaries Every Day. I attended the Muscular Therapy Institute (founded by Ben Benjamin, columnist, Ben’s Corner) and the core of the curriculum was ethics. Every Saturday for three hours for two years straight, we attended a class called Skills and Dynamics of Therapeutic Relationships. One of the most important texts assigned was a book by Robert Bolton called People Skills: How to Assert Yourself, Listen to Others, and Resolve Conflicts. As key as that text was, in terms of boundary issues, specifically, I learned a ton from the Anne Katherine books, and I found them at a new age bookstore, of all places. Just wanted to share that with you.
This has been a very interesting string of events. While searching for something else, I stumbled upon this article. We are provided with what we need when we need it, however, this should have come to me many many years ago. My own Dr. commented that when I pick up on someone else’s pain and make it my own, that it’s pretty stupid. I assure you, I don’t WANT to carry anyone else’s pain as I have far too much of my own, yet it happens day in and day out. I have been doing massage for 37 years and never learned these techniques that others talk about; grounding and centering. We never knew of such things back then. When I feel that I AM grounded and centered it makes no difference, I still pick up others pain and trauma. I never really considered all of this a boundary issue, it was just what happens. I will certainly look into the books recommended and also the class posted. Perhaps someday I will practice from a place of health and not feel as though I have to carry the weight of the world. Thank you for this wonderful article and the responses to it, but also for the sensitivity in knowing what the issue was. At first, I thought this article was being written about me!
Hi Suzanne,
Your blog brought some thoughts about how years ago a person could walk into a room and I could tell you pretty much what they were feeling. I could read the vibrations that they were emitting. I couldn’t tell you exactly what they were feeling, but at times I could see things that related to them. Then a very close friend told me that I should get some help because I was being “codependent”. I agree that at that time I didn’t know what I felt because I put my mind and sensing into what others felt. Not necessarily taking on their stuff, but I spent hours with friends helping them with their stuff, when I wanted someone to help me with mine and see my needs like I saw theirs.
After therapy and dealing with “codependency” I have found that I have shut off a lot of my sensors, even after making a safe healing place and being grounded and secure in my grounding. Even with doing all that you and other classes have taught me and knowing what I was capable of, I really have to make a major effort to feel and see what my client is feeling and aware of their needs during their session.
I have to say that this situation has been becoming more clear in the past few months and then your blog helped me put it a little bit more clear. I have always felt that in Cranio and SER I really knew what was needed and going on, but now I look back and question myself. I really haven’t told anyone this because this reality is unnerving to me. I know that I haven’t faked all of the intuitions, because I know in doing LomiLomi, I have to use intuition, but people have so many of the same problems that it isn’t hard to fake it. (Wow, I can’t believe I just said that. Being an instructor of LomiLomi, I’m suppose to not fake things, right?)
In answer to your questions, I don’t have to check in with myself because I keep closed and only extend when I feel prompted to. I wish I could say that about doing my client sessions.
I’m excited about your book. You have been working so hard on it. I can’t wait to order one.
Take Care,
Catch ya in the continuum,
Marilyn