Boundaries are where you end and another person begins. Basically, if you held a hula hoop around your waist, you’d only be responsible for what’s in the hula hoop — everything else is other people’s stuff. Not everyone is good at following this, though, and perhaps you’re one of them. Here are 10 signs you don’t have healthy boundaries.
- You overshare. You share way more of a story than what’s appropriate or necessary. Often, you share intimate details that someone really didn’t need to know. For example, on a date, you might start talking about the details of your relationships with former partners. This is just over the top — people don’t want to hear about that. Oversharing is like a blinking light showing people you have crappy boundaries.
- There tends to be drama in your relationships. Your relationships take off like a rocket ship then burst into flames. You tend to fall head over heels quickly. You become obsessed with the other person and you both get to know each other almost immediately. Inevitably, this blows up in your face more often than not. You end up having a dramatic ending to the relationship and you’re left wondering what the heck happened.
- You don’t know how to say “no.” You have a lot of fear around upsetting other people or having them think poorly of you and as a result, you have difficulty saying “no.” You overbook yourself and you end up resentful at the other person even though you’re the one that said “yes.” Having poor boundaries means not being able to tell someone what you really feel and need.
- You easily let people talk you out of/into things. You may have an idea in your mind of what you want to do, but you easily let someone persuade you to do otherwise. For example, you know you don’t want to go up to someone’s apartment after the first date. You’re set on this, but then when you’re dropping them off, they nudge you a bit and you fall for it. You go against what you wanted because you let them talk you into what they want.
- You want to save people. You look at potential partners and you gravitate towards those who you feel need saving. They have something really wrong with them like being emotionally unavailable or being hurt from a recent past relationship. You should really run the other direction you actually run towards these people but you want to be the one to save them (newsflash: you can’t).
- You want to be saved. You have a lot of scars from past relationships, some very recent. You want another person to pick up the pieces for you and put you back together. In other words, you want to be saved by your knight in shining armor. You think that another person can help fix the damage that you really need to deal with on your own.
- You’re not sure who you are. You’re like a chameleon, always changing to blend in with those around you. This may mean that a lot of people like you but you lose your sense of self in the process. You aren’t really sure what you truly like and don’t like. The sign of poor boundaries is liking something just because someone else does when you really might not actually like it at all.
- You feel responsible when someone else gets upset. When someone gets mad or sad you always feel like it was your fault. Even when you didn’t do anything, you feel as though you did something wrong and need to fix it. On the other hand, when you did do something, you still don’t understand that other people’s feelings are their own to deal with. Boundaries mean you know what’s yours and in this case, you don’t.
- You feel like you owe someone something. Whether it’s a parent, partner, or spiritual advisor, you feel a sense of obligation towards them. You feel as if you owe them something so you act in accordance with what you think they’d want from you. In this way, you’re not listening to your own expectations of yourself. Instead, you’re blatantly going against what you want sometimes.
- You feel like no one listens to you. Probably because you say “yes” so much, people just assume you’re going to do what they want you to do. As a result of this, no one listens to you in those rare moments when you do try to speak up for yourself.
