Every so often, I have to exert a boundary that makes me feel uncomfortable. I will immediately go into a fear state and either regret putting it up, or how I implemented it. I have now fully realized though, if someone has a problem with my boundaries, it's because they benefited from me not having them, and profited from the losses that I incurred from not using boundaries.
As I grow into a fully healed, wholehearted person, I gain more experiences and confidence that reminds me that I have the right to stand up for myself, to look after myself. People who don't have boundaries can fall into the people-pleasing trap, which I have since learned is the fawning engagement in a trauma response: an attempt to feel safe in a perceptually unsafe space by soothing potential aggressors.
When I first began learning about boundaries and implementing them in 2020, one of my biggest challenges was the idea that I would not be viewed as a sweet or kind person. Today I realize that building my personality around that was truly a maladaptive coping mechanism, which was perpetuated because I had low self-esteem. Though I wasn't fully conscious of it at the time, I didn't believe I was good at anything else, so I wanted to make up for that by being perceptually good.
Now that I can show up into spaces as my own person, with the right to respectfully co-exist with others, regardless of what they think of me, I can still foster that desire to be kind, but I do so more helpfully now, and even more authentically. Now my kindness is rooted in service, and not in what I can secretly get from it. And I don't say that to belittle myself; I sincerely did not feel safe and that is why I was in a fawn state, so what I got was ultimately survival.
That makes me sad to remember myself as someone who felt that unsafe and unloved, but as I work with my boundaries, and do well every time I use them, I learn that I have value. I cherish those who appreciate me, and I give a wide berth to those who trigger my spidey-sense. Today I don't fear what's around the corner. I responsibly go about my day, and I consider how I can be helpful, because I have found that I sincerely enjoy contributing where I can.
Paradoxically my one real fear of using boundaries ended up solidifying what I valued so highly, which is that I am a good person. But today I don't have that desperation that others view me as that. Instead that knowing is between me and God: it's internal, and that has made all the difference.