How would you describe your boundaries with people? Have you ever considered what your personal boundaries look like? Boundaries play a big role in our ability to make lasting changes and find peace in our relationships with both people and food. Let’s face it these two relationships are intertwined. The interactions that you have with other people will either support you in reaching your goals or they will hinder your progress. The same person can actually help and hinder you with your goals throughout the course of the day.
Unfortunately, we can’t control other people but we do have control over our own interactions and relationships. One of the best ways to regain a sense of control is by spending time focusing on your boundaries. Boundaries are limits that we choose to identify reasonable, safe and permissible ways for other people to behave towards us. In addition to those limits, our boundaries dictate how we will react when people do not behave towards us in acceptable ways.
To make things more complex, we can have different boundaries with different people. For example, at home you may be known as a strong, confident and assertive individual but at work, you may feel overpowered or unimportant. Take a moment to consider why this might be the case. The likely answer is that you have taught the people at work a different set of boundaries then the people at home.
With Emotional Eating, we struggle with boundaries. When we are too flexible with our boundaries, we can feel overwhelmed or taken advantage of and when we are too tight, we may miss out on fun and spontaneous moments for fear of breaking the rules. Peace with food comes when we find a balance in our boundaries and our relationships with people and food.
If you are ready to find consistency in your boundaries and stop feeling out of control in your relationships with people and food, we can explore safe ways for you to set healthy boundaries across all of your relationships and most importantly, with yourself.
Margie