I’ve found that many trauma survivors feel like they have to either choose between embracing their sensitive, feminine self and sacrifice boundaries, or have an armor of protection and lose their gentleness. It’s possible to discover both (and to find a balance that feels intuitive – instead of forced). I invite you to join me as we explore how you can work with your softness while also setting boundaries that keep your inner peace.
Leaning into your true self is how you’ll uncover your natural limits and set healthy boundaries
It’s common to face frustration when discovering boundaries during trauma healing because, if we feel disconnected from our bodies, how do we know when we’ve reached our limits? This can lead to creating boundaries around what we think should be a boundary, become aggressive, or find ourselves not voicing them at all. This can come with a lot of internal friction, because we may be unsure if the boundary we’re setting is from our true self, or what we think we should do.
Setting boundaries without feeling aggressive or controlling
The first step is to understanding our body and nervous systems is to recognize when we’ve stepped outside our window of tolerance.
When we’re in our window of tolerance, we make rational decisions, move within our natural state, and even feel calm, at peace, and can become creative in this space.
We know we’ve stepped outside our window when we feel flighty (needing to do everything at once, cleaning the whole house, being productive to feel like we have worth) or entering our fight state (feeling irritable, short-tempered, and often feeling guilty after interactions when we were in this state.)
We also might enter a functional freeze state, which is when we feel completely overwhelmed by our tasks that we feel frozen, unable to start anything, and feeling lazy but also anxious. I invite you to learn more about functional freeze in this blog post to explore yoga guidance for easing out of this state.
When we enter any of these dysregulated states, our bodies are signaling to us that something is off. Our bodies are asking for a change in our environments. We might face annoyance with ourselves with how little we can tolerate sometimes, especially as sensitives who feel everything on a much deeper level, but this level of intuition is actually an amazing gift.
Related Post: Why Having A Sensitive Soul Is A Gift While Healing Sexual Trauma
Recognizing when we’re dysregulated is how we know we’ve reached our limit. This could mean that we can’t hold space for others right now, or we need to take a moment for grounding, or spend the rest of our evening making time for self care.
Setting boundaries can be difficult, but when we look at it from a different angle, it can be much easier to work with. I like to look at it as: I can’t be present for myself anymore, so I definitely can’t be present for others.
We don’t have to be there for others all the time, especially when our own bodies are signaling for rest. It doesn’t support regulation to add more work, sacrifice our wellbeing and mental health for relationships, or push ourselves harder when our nervous system is asking for less. I understand that this isn’t always possible, given life and work demands, but we can start small, work with our schedules, and give ourselves grace.
I like to look at boundaries as the same as limits. Once we’ve reached our limit, we can honor this instead of judging ourselves or pushing through. We can tune in and ask what our bodies need. Sometimes it’s a quiet feeling of irritability. Or a louder voice that says “this is too much, we’ve reached our limit.”
Working with your sensitive, feminine nature for setting boundaries
As naturally more empathetic, nurturing souls, we can use this knowledge about ourselves to work with our boundaries. We don’t need to become overly aggressive, but to turn our nurturing nature to ourselves and acknowledge: it’s time for rest, I can’t take on any more.
We also don’t need to apologize for our boundaries. It’d be like if we apologized for being full during a meal. We just reached our limit of fullness. Our bodies have had enough for now.
This is much different from messages we may have received around setting boundaries as being something we need to proclaim and demand. We can still be firm in our boundaries but out of our feminine love for ourselves, not out of a need to power over or feel in tight, rigid control. It also lets us put more of our guard down, because we’re not in a constant state of being ready to assert boundaries at any moment. We can take a moment, see if our environment or situation is supportive of our bodies and minds, and go from there. This makes it a much more intuitive and gentle experience instead of a defensive one.
We need to give ourselves time to discover our boundaries and limits
I understand how easy it is to explain setting boundaries compared to actually doing this type of work. If we don’t know how we feel, how do we know if we reached our limits? This comes with trial and error, and is a truth about healing. We don’t have to have all the answers. We also don’t have to always get it right. It’s just about trying something, seeing if we notice a change in our bodies, and taking what we’ve learned with us.
We might be overly aggressive, or feel we weren’t clear enough, but it’s a step in the right direction because we’re placing this work in our field of awareness. We can also set boundaries before we become overwhelmed, leading to responding rather than reacting.
An example of this is that I was in public one weekend, and realized I felt totally calm and indifferent in a crowded space. Normally, this would immediately frustrate me. But for this day, I noticed I was actually fine. Later in the day, though, I could feel that I was reaching a limit. My breathing was choppier, I was getting snippy, and I wanted to rush into a store, grab what we needed, and get out. I realized I was in fight or flight. I did what I could, given the grounding strategies I know, but then came to the realization that I had met my limit for the day. I needed more than a few grounding tools, but to be back in my element and to explore more focused techniques.
The interesting change that happens when we honor our limits
The more we honor our limits and explore strategies to bring ourselves back into our window of tolerance, the more we can actually tolerate. Our window of tolerance isn’t something that remains the same – it can expand or shrink based on our experiences. And it’s actually healthy to reach our limits, because then we can notice – like how I did – that I was comfortable in public for longer than I usually am.
Our bodies are designed to handle stresses every day. I like to think of handling stress like a tree – if a tree grows inside with no wind or adverse conditions, it can fall over because it never grew strong roots. A tree that grows outside with stronger winds can actually grow much taller because it extends its roots to handle more stress. We have to have some stress in our lives to handle more stressful situations (not meaning trauma, but daily stressors like work, family, and life) without becoming overwhelmed.
Trauma can cause overload, leading to being much more stressed, more of the time. It’s supportive to meet ourselves where we are, exploring our new limits, and through time, we can return to our baseline.
Honoring our boundaries and limits is how we can support our nervous systems and also become more experienced in setting boundaries, leading to them being easier to set overtime.
Overview
We don’t need to hide our sensitive, feminine selves while we set boundaries. Instead, we can use this knowledge to gain deeper understanding of ourselves and that recognizing boundaries just means our capacity. We can no longer be there for others or take on any more tasks until we gently ground and return to our tolerance level, which can only happen when we are gentle and nurturing to ourselves.
To summarize, here are five ways to set boundaries through a sensitive, feminine lens.
- Tune into your nervous system
- Explore boundaries as honoring your limits
- Be nurturing and kind to yourself
- We can set boundaries before we reach a point of overwhelm
- Boundaries can be gentle and firm
Over time, we can withstand more stressors to increase our window of tolerance without overwhelming ourselves. This is how we can handle more stress over time without forcing boundaries that don’t feel in tune with our natural selves. When we set boundaries that are focused around honoring our bodies (instead of trying to control a situation or person), we allow the opportunity for boundaries to feel more natural and we become more confident and genuine when voicing them.
Soothing your nervous system
I invite you to explore gentle, trauma-informed yoga classes to soften and ease your nervous system in my free, private library. These classes honor common sexual trauma symptoms and can be accessed through any device. I welcome you to join me inside!
