The Final Four

First, Jerrod and I have traded off being sick for the past month. Sorry we haven't blogged in awhile! The first several laws of boundaries can be found in our past two videos - so go check those out!

What are the Final Four laws of boundaries?

Today, we are wrapping up our May series on boundaries with insights from the book “Boundaries” by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend.So far, we have given a general overview, covered the first 6 of the 10 laws of boundaries and today we are covering the Final Four: The Laws of Proactivity, Envy, Activity and Exposure.

The Law of Proactivity is about moving beyond the hurt, abuse and harmful effects of past relationships and into a defined identity showing “what they love, what they want, what they purpose, and what they stand for.” (pg 98)

Getting to that place takes a whole lot more work than simply flipping a switch and deciding that you are going to start living differently. Before we can live Proactively, we have to own our Reaction. Harmful and abusive actions in a relationship will inevitably produce an equal and opposite reaction in the other person. If you were the victim of these behaviors, you may have bottled that reaction up for a time by explaining away or attempting to justify these harmful behaviors but that pressure can only build up for so long before some reaction comes out. Many times, the best case reaction would be to flee the abusive situation and retreat to a safe place where you can begin to establish healthy boundaries to fence out similar relationships in the future. This is a healthy and necessary stage in the process of rebuilding your life, but sometimes the boundaries we build to keep harmful things out become the same walls that end up caging us in and keeping us from being able to move forward in our lives.

According to the book, “reaction phases are necessary but not sufficient for the establishment of boundaries...Emotionally, the reactive stance brings diminishing returns. You must react to find your own boundaries, but having found them...eventually, you must rejoin the human race you have reacted to, and establish connections as equals...” (pg 97)

There is a level of power reclaimed when a victim is finally able to React, own and express boundaries. Speaking from personal experience as well as countless stories from people I have spoken with over the years, this empowerment can feel so liberating that it is easy to want to stay in this phase. The problem is that when your power solely or primarily comes from identifying as a victim, in order to keep that power you will necessarily always identify as a victim.

The reality is that there are greater and more liberating expressions of power beyond the reactionary power of a victim. In the book, the authors write:

“While reactive victims are primarily known by their ‘against’ stances, proactive people do not demand rights; they live them. Power is not something you demand or deserve; it is something you express. The ultimate expression of power is love; it is the ability not to express power, but to restrain it...Do not try to get to freedom without owning your reactive period and feelings. You do not need to act this out, but you do need to express the feelings. You need to practice and gain assertiveness. You need to get far enough away from abusive people to be able to fence your property against further invasion...But do not stay there. Spiritual Adulthood has higher goals than ‘finding yourself.’ A reactive stage is a stage, not an identity. It is necessary but not sufficient.”

Next up we have the Law of Envy. We’ve all felt the little green monster creep up from time to time and cause us to become jealous of what others have. Envy is always rooted in a sense of lack, whether real or perceived, in comparison to the lives and experiences of those around us. We can’t help but observe and recognize the differences between our lives and those around us. It’s impossible to not notice that another may have more, or better, newer and nicer that ourselves, but envy warps our perception to not only desire what they have but to also project an injustice as to why they have what we don’t.

So, how does envy play into our boundaries. In the book, they detail that “Envy defines ‘good’ as ‘what I do not possess,’ and hates the good that it has.” Like Jerrod said, we have all dealt with envy at different times throughout our lives, but what is it that makes it so dangerous and destructive in our relationships? The book says that envy “guarantees that we will not what we want and keeps us perpetually insatiable and dissatisfied...if we are focusing on what others have or have accomplished, we are neglecting our responsibilities and will ultimately have an empty heart.”

Envy denies personal responsibility for the outcomes of our lives. There are areas that are legitimately out of our control, but there are many things in life that directly come back to the choices we have made. Overcoming envy will require us to take an introspective look at our own choices and to take ownership of their outcomes.

Law number 9 is the law of Activity. Healthy boundaries do not spring up on their own but are established through the direct and assertive actions of the one building them. The opposite of action is passivity. Passivity allows boundaries to be eroded or never built in the first place. Passivity can be the result of fear or laziness, but it will never produce the results that striving and intentionality will have in our lives.

In understanding passivity vs action, the authors write:

“The sad thing is that many people who are passive are not inherently evil or bad people. But evil is an active force, and passivity can become and ally of evil by not pushing against it. Passivity never pays off.”

We each have the responsibility to assertively establish our boundaries and to consistently uphold them throughout our lives. If we are waiting and hoping that others will be able to recognize and maintain our boundaries for us, we will find ourselves in a cycle of hurt and confusion resulting from our lack of action.

The final law of boundaries is the Law of Exposure. This means that our boundaries need to be brought out into the light and seen. It is important for us to remember that healthy boundaries are not only necessary in a loving relationship, but are also an expression of love in our relationships. While we may feel that it is more loving to give in when a family member is pressuring us to give up one of our boundaries, we know that this will only cause hurt, resentment and bitterness down the road. Giving out of obligation may be received as a kindness in the moment but when it is then added to our internal lists of “all the things I’ve done for them” it would have been better to have not given anything.

We all have boundaries, even though we may not have discovered them all just yet. Boundaries are good, healthy and necessary in order for us to be able to love well. We need to have the confidence to clearly assert our boundaries and maintain them under pressure so that our relationships can be healthy as well.

This wraps up our month-long series on boundaries! We hope that it has helped you understand why boundaries are important and give you the confidence to discover and establish healthy boundaries in your relationships. If this series has been helpful for you, please consider subscribing to our YouTube channel and remember that you can find all of our healthy relationship content in one convenient place in the videos tab!

Finally, join us on YouTube or Facebook this Thursday night for our monthly podcast! We’re taking the boundaries conversation even deeper with more insights from the book, personal stories and a lot of fun along the way. We’re going live at 6 central time and we always love to respond to your live feedback, so be sure to set a reminder and join us on Thursday! We’ll see you then!