Boundaries: Step One: Me, Myself and I

Can you remember an occasion when you criticised someone else (either out loud or to yourself)? Perhaps you moaned about a co-worker for being always tired.

Have you noticed a thought about something – say, a newspaper article – that on reflection owes more to your parents’ ideas than what you know you feel? Something like: ‘Isn’t the Royal Family marvellous?’

Have you enjoyed a spontaneous moment with friends? Did you laugh at a ridiculous situation?

Have you felt frightened but known this to be irrational? For example, if waking up from a nightmare and feeling too scared to sleep again.

Have you sulked or deliberately provoked a fight? Did you take out a bad mood on a partner?

Have you been consciously pleasing to another? You might have offered compliments to cheer someone up.

Looking back at the week – how was your time divided up? Do you spend more hours overall being critical either of yourself or others, or do you spend quite a lot of time caring for yourself or others? How often do you aim to please others, and how frequently do you enjoy moments of spontaneous fun?

Now, think about which of these experiences or feelings correlate most closely to the Parental or Child-like voices at your debating table. Be aware that this is a matter of personal degree.

Remember that no single viewpoint is superior in some way. Simply, you are making observations not judgements to help you analyse your own behaviour, thoughts and feelings. You have taken the first steps into a deepening of the understanding you have of yourself. Use your Learning Journal to make notes.

In the next part of this Step, we are going to introduce you to some key areas where you can begin to introduce new boundaries into your day-to-day life. These will have practical benefits for your relationships, happiness and health, as well as teaching you the basics of boundary-making.

Sleep (#ulink_5f97ef91-6ec9-5e1d-a23d-e782d4c4ddbb)

We’d like you to look at establishing good self-boundaries around sleep first. We start with sleep as these self-boundaries will put you in a much healthier, more relaxed and mentally stronger place to decide what you want for yourself and from others.

When we don’t have enough sleep, the competing voices in our head are louder and harder to analyse; think how difficult it is to make a decision if you are overtired and how easy it is to overreact emotionally to situations you might otherwise shrug off. We’re sure you can think of a problem that seemed to solve itself or diminish after a good night’s sleep.

BRING IN THE BOUNDARIES:

Your Sleep Plan

How well do you sleep? Are you resigned to your sleep pattern or constantly in a state of stress about it? Perhaps you recognise one or more of these sleep issues: the struggle to drop off, intermittent sleeping, waking up tired, waking up too early, wanting to sleep during the day, or needing to catch up at weekends? Whatever the issue, a new sleep self-boundary will be of huge benefit. So, let’s start.

Set your own perfect bedtime. Start by keeping a sleep diary and note each evening when you start to feel properly tired, not just a weary sensation. We mean the type of tiredness that means you will fall asleep quickly. As you set your sleep boundary, this feeling may take a few weeks to become recognisable, and your proper time to fall asleep may be earlier or later than you believed or wanted.

Once you have clocked this ideal go-to-sleep time, work backwards from it to establish a bedtime. How long does it take to lock up, put the cat out and turn the dishwasher on? How long for teeth cleaning, etc.? What’s an ideal reading time if you enjoy a book in bed or want to make time for sex?

So, the night-time ritual might read: 10 p.m. – put the dishwasher on, check the front door; 10.15 p.m. – clean teeth, check on children; 10.30 p.m. – in bed; 11 p.m. – fall asleep.

Note that this doesn’t include time for gadgets in bed – even podcasts or your favourite TV show. Electrical devices need to be banned from the bedroom. Notice your response to this ban; part of you probably doesn’t like this idea. It may be your inner child wanting its toys, but the Adult you knows that toys don’t help you sleep well. You might use TV or late-night music as a form of comfort to help you drop off – even though you often wake later if the programme changes abruptly or switches off. Another little voice in your head may be warning that you will feel worse if you try to stop this habit, as it acknowledges that you have become reliant on audio-visual stimulation. Perhaps this means you don’t ever get through REM sleep – the light dreamlike state – into the deep sleep state where the body starts repairing itself.

So, what can you do at bedtime? The simple answer is sleep, sex and reading – as long as you don’t end up more awake. With reading in mind, any subject matter is fine but it must not be work-related, or disturbing, or depressing. You can use a Kindle-like device if the illumination is adjusted so your retinas are not being exposed to blue – or daylight-type – light, which is known to affect sleep patterns.

It’s ideal to keep the same sleep routine seven days a week, so this means no super-late weekend lie-ins. An exception might be if you may have to get up early for work at a time you know is not ideal for yourself. Allow yourself to sleep later on non-work days, but don’t exceed a normal, healthy eight hours.

Some people experience waking in the night. When this happens, we have little reasoning available to us at that time, which is why we may feel anxious or frightened (like a Child). Or we may become self-critical – going over our day and all the things we got wrong or berating ourselves for what we haven’t done (as a Parent might). In the bright light of day, we know this isn’t helpful but at night we feel marooned in our fear. So, what to do?

Soothing yourself back to sleep

Waking up in the night is especially tough. Here’s how to get back to sleep again – by soothing yourself.

First, take the stress out of trying to get to sleep by realising that simply resting in itself is good. Are there only two hours of sleep before you get up? Reframe that: that’s a whole two hours of rest you will be having.

Second, be kind to yourself. Notice that you are warm, comfortable and can relax and rest. In doing that you may realise that you are too hot/cold. Open a window, have a fresh pillow by your bed that will be cool, or have a blanket by your bed to warm yourself up.

Some are familiar with the practice of giving yourself a hard time emotionally at night: ‘I should have done a better job yesterday; I shouldn’t have snapped at my partner.’ Rather than speaking like a cross Parent to yourself, purposefully move to being nurturing – ‘Come on, now is not the time to be thinking these things.’ And make the tone gentle, as if you were talking to an anxious child: ‘Rest now and tomorrow it can be sorted out.’ This really isn’t the time to be dealing with problems.

You may also feel nervous or scared: ‘What if my partner hates me for what I said earlier? Am I useless at my job? What’s that noise?’ Again, be kind and tell yourself: ‘Come on, it’s OK. I can sort this out tomorrow, now is not the time to be fretting.’

The revolving bedroom door

What if your sleep is affected by others – be they nomadic children, pets on the bed, or a duvet-snatching partner? How can your self-boundaries manage the behaviour of others?

What parent doesn’t know the patter of small sleepy feet when your child is coming in for a midnight cuddle, story, glass of water, or other excuse to see Mummy and Daddy?

Keeping your child out of your bed may be a tough self-boundary as you respond to an almost primeval need to protect the young. But caveman parents didn’t have to set an alarm, get children to school, commute to an office and then spend a day full of reports, meetings and office politics. You don’t have the luxury of time, however, you do have the greater luxury of safety. You don’t need to be on high alert 24/7 to protect your child from hungry bears.