Why Exercising Boundaries Feel "Wrong" When You're Healing

EPISODE 113 | WHY EXERCISING BOUNDARIES FEEL "WRONG" WHEN YOU'RE HEALING

Trauma, or the dysfunction that we have experienced growing up, it affects our whole stance, our whole stance towards God, towards faith, towards relationship, because it has already been formed. When we're very young, that's kind of like the baseline that has already been formed.

[00:00:19] INTRODUCTION
Welcome to Becoming Me, your podcast companion and coach in your journey to a more integrated and authentic self. I am your host, Ann Yeong, and I'm here to help you grow in self-discovery and wholeness. If you long to live a more authentic and integrated life and would like to hear honest insights about the rewards and challenges of this journey, then take a deep breath, relax, and listen on to Becoming Me. 

[00:00:36] Hello, hello. Good morning from where I am in Singapore. If there's anyone who It's happening to catch this Live and it's a different time zone for you, good evening. Okay, so, in today's Live, I want to talk about three reasons why trying to exercise boundaries can feel wrong. Okay, why exercising boundaries can feel so wrong. 

[00:01:03] Okay, so, before I proceed, I just want to be very specific about the context in which I'm speaking from because I think context is always so, so important. Okay, so the context in which I'm going to be talking about why boundaries feel so wrong comes from the perspective, my perspective, and my experience.

[00:01:24] Okay, that has these few points. So, if you relate with these points, this Live could be for you. This sharing could be for you. Okay, one, you want to be authentically loving. What I mean by that is, you know, we don't want us just to appear loving. We don't want just to be seen as loving, but we have this desire to really be authentically loving.

[00:01:48] So, it's not like I'm doing something that appears loving, but inside me, I'm resentful, I'm upset, I feel coerced - that's not authentic, right? So, one, there's a desire to be loving, but authentically loving, so that we're not just performing out of duty, obligation, but freely loving. Two, is we share this desire to follow Christ.

[00:02:13] Okay, so, a lot of resources that explain about boundaries and all that are really helpful, but it's not very often you'll find resources that talk about that in the context of someone who also desires to be a disciple of Christ, right? Someone who longs to follow Christ. That adds a layer of, I guess, not necessarily complexity, but certainly something else.

[00:02:35] Another dimension that can make it complex, as I will talk about more later why. For so many of us wanting to be a follower of Christ can add complexity to learning to exercise healthy boundaries. Okay, so, the desire to follow Christ. By that I mean our relationship with God. So, not just Christ, but really the Trinity, Trinitarian God, is the most important relationship in our life. Or at the very least, we really desire for it to be the most important relationship in our life.

[00:03:07] Okay, so, this is different from just having religion as an identity. Because it is absolutely possible to be Christian or to be Catholic without this desire for the relationship with God, our relationship with God, to be the most important relationship in our life. So, this point is important. I'm speaking from the context of someone who really longs to draw closer to Christ, to know Him better, to be able to love Him more, and to follow Him, right to do what He desires us to do from a loving place, but also from a free place, okay. Hence the authentic in the first point.

[00:03:43] So, we wish to love Him with all our mind, our heart, our soul, our whole beings. And we want to be able to love our neighbour as ourself. We wish to be able to love others in the way that He has loved us. But at the same time, we are also aware we can't.

[00:04:02] So, as I mentioned to the third point, is that this sharing is specifically also from the context of someone who is already on the interior healing journey. Now, not everyone who has point one and two wanting to authentically loving and wanting to follow Christ is necessarily already on the healing journey.

[00:04:23] So, what does it mean to already be on the interior healing journey? It means we've tried, okay, we've tried really hard and failed many times. We still desire but we become very aware that there are real limitations within us and in our prayer relationship with Christ, with God. He has illumined for us that there are areas in our own being, in our own lives, that need healing before we can be more whole, in order to live the life that He created us to live, which includes being able to love others in the way that He has loved us.

[00:05:02] We can't do this from a fragmented place, from a very insecure and anxious place. And for many of us, even those of us who really desire to follow Christ very much, even for those of us who really would yearn to be authentically loving, we are still very fragmented and insecure.

[00:05:18] And that's why we find we struggle to do so. We struggle to do what we wish to be able to do. So, those of us who are already begun, has already begun, have already begun this interior healing journey, maybe you've already done some, for example, inner child healing. You may be familiar or have started doing some parts work like internal family systems work.

[00:05:42] You picked up a bit of this language beyond just the language of faith and spiritual healing. You are aware that in your humanity, in your human capacity, in your emotional capacity, that you also need healing and you've begun doing so.

[00:05:59] Okay, so, for many of us who are also already on this healing journey, we've become aware that we are, in the lingo of the day, we are survivors of complex trauma. Okay, what that means is we have become aware that in our in our growing up years, in the relationships that we've had, we may not have or we have not received the kind of attunement, the kind of emotional attunement that we needed to develop healthily.

[00:06:31] And we have come to recognize that our stumbles and falls, the many things that we often bring into spiritual direction or confession, or maybe even therapy and counselling. We become aware that these are, in a sense, the fruit of our wounds, right? Okay, so that's really a level of awareness that like I said is required or that some of us, those of us who have already begun on a journey have, that many people around us do not share, right. Those of us who are already at this level of awareness of the third point here, that we are on the interior healing journey, often feel very alone because most of the people around us do not have that awareness, right?

[00:07:19] And then fourth, the context in which I'm speaking is that we live within a dysfunctional family system or a dysfunctional community system. They're kind of related, okay. So, basically, it's like a dysfunctional system, but the first most immediate one is always our family and is usually our family of origin.

[00:07:43] Okay, and if we have already grown up and let's say, some of us are married and we have families of our own, we may find that we bring those dysfunctional patterns into our new family. And we bring the dysfunctional patterns that we know into our faith communities, other kinds of systems, in that sense, that we belong to.

[00:08:03] And it's like the ocean, you know? If we're the fish, it's like this is the ocean that we swim in, okay? And if this, the systems that we're familiar with, have dysfunction and at the same time are very explicitly religious - so, by that I mean, you know, being Christian or being Catholic is a big part of the identity - there's a lot of God talk.

[00:08:26] There's a lot of talk about heaven and hell and church and so, religion is a very big part of our experience and at the same time, we are aware that this system we're in - can be the family that we're in - is dysfunctional.

[00:08:39] THE STRUGGLE OF EXERCISING BOUNDARIES 
Okay, so, within this context, it's a very specific kind of context, but I know many, many of us share these contexts. 

[00:08:46] Why is it that trying to exercise boundaries that we are learning is important to function healthily, to love more authentically? Why does it feel so wrong? 

[00:08:57] Okay, so, I'm just going to briefly share the first point before I do the sharing. So, the first reason that I'm sharing today, okay, there are definitely more than three reasons.

[00:09:09] I'm just sharing three reasons today. The first reason why boundaries are so hard is because we don't know what normal, healthy relationship dynamics is. We don't know what normal is.

[00:09:27] Okay, and what does this mean? Dysfunctional, because we are in a dysfunctional kind of like family system growing up.

[00:09:36] That's all we've ever known for many of us, for many of us. It's only when we're much older, maybe when we happen to share our lived experience or some aspects of what happens in our family or in the community that we, you know, that we're in with someone else that we trust and their reaction may be of horror or of amazement, like, oh my gosh, it's like, that's not okay, or like, really, like, your family does that, right?

[00:10:05] Actually, to be very honest, when I was growing up, when I sometimes got that experience from others, that didn't even trigger any warning bell for me because I just thought, yeah, you know, they don't get it because that's not your family, right? I still thought that this is what it means. And this happens to be just my family, the way my family is.

[00:10:25] I was never aware that the level of enmeshment, level of enabling, of a very subtle kind of emotional manipulation and control or spiritual manipulation and control, that those were not okay, that those were signs of dysfunction in a family. I knew we had problems. I mean, there were some problems that were very glaring, but actually I...

[00:10:52] It's like I only noticed one or two problems because part of being a part of a dysfunctional family is usually there's a villain, there's a problem person. There's like a black sheep, right? So, it's like we know there's a problem or we know there are problems, but we focus all those problems on that one problematic individual in the family.

[00:11:12] And that's the case in whether it's our immediate family or sometimes the extended family, like the larger family, you know? We kind of like scapegoat someone. It's like all the issues is just on that one person. And I was blind to many of the other problematic relationships within the dynamics I was in because I could only see the problem, you know, in that one person.

[00:11:36] And that was shaped largely by another member of the family that was very influential over me. Right, so, that was the norm for me and if we zoom up, zoom up a little and we're talking about, you know, religious kind of context and we look at not just our own families, but let's say our communities or our church families, think of how often also, it's like we can acknowledge that there are problems, but the problems are all dash, dash, dash, you know? Like, pick your issue of the day that we think, or that church thinks is the most sinful or the most problematic.

[00:12:14] And it's like all the problems are just centred on those, that group, or that issue. And we collectively remain blind to all the other levels of dysfunction that is actually present in the family, right. So, this is kind of true both in terms of our immediate family as well as in our larger community or church families.

[00:12:36] THE IMPACT OF DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY SYSTEMS
So, why is it that I say we don't know what normal is? We learn very early on to fulfil certain roles. That's one of the traits of dysfunctional systems. They're not stable, right? So, every system longs or needs to have stability. It tends towards stability. So, if there are no healthy relationship within the system, even in unhealthy ways, we're going to find some way to try and be stable.

[00:13:03] So, in a dysfunctional family, for example, that usually means different family members taking up specific roles, which become very rigid. Okay, by rigid means once you take up that role, the system or the family does not like you to change that role because everyone playing exactly that role they're supposed to play. It gives the family or the system some sense of stability.

[00:13:28] So, for example, my role included being the golden child. Right, the achiever, the golden child, the one that the family could be proud of. I was a good girl, both in church as well as in school. I was a youth leader, student leader, given a lot of opportunities to compete, to perform.

[00:13:48] I did well academically. I was considerably, comparatively well formed in my faith compared to my peers. I took on that role. So, it's not even just that. The system or the family I was happy, that I fulfilled this role. It became my identity, right? That golden child, but I was also the rescuer.

[00:14:11] Okay, I was the rescuer because part of the way my family valued and my, I guess, even my school or my culture, values the golden child, especially in a woman, in a girl, is, you know, service, support, care, caretaking, right? That meant that I was often the rescuer to come and fill in the gaps when other people didn't play the role that they were supposed to play.

[00:14:38] And there was pain and there was suffering. Someone was suffering because other people, let's say, did not live up to their responsibility. I took it upon myself to fill that gap. It became part of my identity that I needed to. I was personally responsible to meet every need that I recognized, especially when there was emotional suffering.

[00:15:01] It goes so far, for me, that I get entangled and enmeshed even in my own emotional responses with the person or persons who are suffering. So, for me, if they're suffering and other people are not doing what they should be doing, I should step in and I should make up for that lack. Growing up, no one ever taught me that that was potentially unhealthy, that that was not required of me.

[00:15:34] Because in a sense, it was required of me. It felt like in the system that I was in, that that was required of me. People were happy with me when I did that. When I didn't do that, I felt disappointment from others and then I was disappointed in myself, right?

[00:15:49] So, my identity became the rescuer, the golden child who is also the rescuer, the one who would fix things, okay? Especially in terms of relationships, the one who is supposed to do peacekeeping whenever there's conflict, to try and let the different parties hear each other. It never worked because back then, I never realized that part of a dysfunctional system, dysfunctional family, is that no one is able to actually see the other person for who he or she is.

[00:16:23] That's part of the dysfunction, right? It's part of the trauma. We all in a system, in a dysfunctional system, people are seen through the roles. They play through what they can bring. To bring some sense of stability or system stability or safety to the system. Okay, so, none of us can actually see one another just as human beings; individual, unique, imperfect, different, with different needs, with real needs. 

[00:16:51] There is no space for people to be different from who they have to be because the system wants them or needs them to be that role to play that role. All right, so, given that that's the nature of a dysfunctional system and we don't know what normal is, this is what we grew up as normal: always fulfilling the role that we know we're supposed to play.

[00:17:15] Okay, like so, I keep speaking for myself. There are many different roles. So, depending on what kind of role you play it, the experience could be a little different, but my role as the golden child, who was also the rescuer you know? If I were to exercise boundaries, which required me to think of my own needs and my own limitations, and maybe to decide this time, I'm not going to be the one to step in and fill the gap. 

[00:17:40] I felt, I would feel a great deal of shame because that's not what has made me feel affirmed for. I've been, feel affirmed for, I've always felt more affirmed by others when I do fill the gap, when I step into the gap, right. When I fulfil the needs, when I rescue.

[00:18:01] When I began to recognize that I was a human being and not just a role that actually, in all my years of being the golden child and being the rescuer, I didn't know who I was. 

[00:18:16] When I decided I needed to take a step back and discover who I was, there was a lot of pushback. There was a lot of pushback from the family system. Because the family system felt threatened by, you know, this individual who is now trying to find out and discover who she is, almost like independent and apart from being a member of the family who plays this specific role, right?

[00:18:43] So, when we exercise boundaries, when we try to individuate, when we try to differentiate ourselves from our family, which is actually what God desires for us, because He created us not just for roles, He created us to be His beloved, right? And each of us is unique. We need to know who we are through attuning to ourselves, to experience, through experiencing God attuning to us. 

[00:19:09] None of that happens in a dysfunctional kind of system. There's no attunement usually, or very warped and distorted attunement, right? So, because we don't know what normal is, when we try to exercise that boundary, it feels really wrong. It feels morally wrong. Let me put it across that way. And I think others, maybe who do not have this kind of experience growing up, may not understand why it is that it's so hard. 

[00:19:37] Because it feels wrong. It makes us feel guilty. It makes us feel shame for being selfish. It makes us feel like we're not a good family member. And speaking for myself, from my culture, family is really, really important, right? I mean the family unit, or the group and the community, it's like, it's survival, it almost feels like it's more important than the happiness of the individual, right? 

[00:20:03] Which is another issue that I struggle with in terms of differentiating and individuating and believing that God also wants my happiness as an individual, that He did not create me just to serve the community or just to serve the family, right? Because that's not, that's actually not true about human anthropology, Christian anthropology, even. 

[00:20:25] Each of us has amazing dignity and beauty and preciousness and none of us is meant to be just a means to another end. No matter how good, we are all meant to be loved as human beings in and of ourselves, right? That actually is what the faith teaches, but it feels so wrong when we try to embody it for ourselves because it doesn't feel normal. It doesn't feel normal. 

[00:20:51] Okay, so, that's the first reason I wanted to talk about why boundaries can feel so wrong, right? 

[00:20:56] THE ROLE OF FAITH IN SETTING BOUNDARIES
The second reason because we're talking about a context in which religion is a big part of the system that we're in, right, a family or we're very active in our church community, for example.

[00:21:08] But especially if the family that we grew up in that is dysfunctional is also at the same time religious, our faith has been distorted by our experience of dysfunction and by complex trauma. Okay, so, that's another reason why boundaries can feel so wrong because our faith itself or our image of God has been distorted. 

[00:21:32] And we don't know that it has been distorted because we don't know what normal is, right? Can you begin to see how, in a sense, things are stacked up against our journey towards wholeness and authenticity? You know, a big part of the interior journey is just learning to recognize what's in the way. 

[00:21:49] What's holding us back from being able to become more free, more whole, more loving in order to be loving in a more free way. Right, so, our faith has been distorted by our experience of dysfunction or trauma. So, this means, think about it, our understanding, our interpretation of what God wants, even of what the church teaches, of scripture, of faith, of who God is, all of the above, all these things, they have been distorted because the lens through which we come to know all of this is the relationships that we grew up with. 

[00:22:35] So one, perhaps, easier example would be I, of the Trinity; the three persons in the Holy Trinity. I never felt close to God the Father. All my years growing up, it was like, I know He's there and He's Jesus's father. 

[00:22:54] And therefore He's very important because He's God. He's the one who creates in my mind. It was like, you know, He's the one who creates and He's Jesus's father, but it's almost like, let's stay at a respectable, different distance from each other. He felt forbidding. He felt distant. He felt, honestly, a little too busy that I didn't want to bother Him. 

[00:23:20] I didn't want to disturb Him because you know that that was kind of relationship that I had with my father, right? It was a very typical, I think, Asian father daughter experience. And I never experienced what it was like to be like the doted daughter of a father.

[00:23:43] I think my father just never knew how to express his love. And, you know, I've also since learned that there are other things at play. I think that he probably wasn't very attuned even to his own emotions. So, he wasn't able to attune to me as a father when I was a young daughter. I tamped down the natural need, I think, of a little girl who longed to be delighted in by her father. 

[00:24:15] And I extended that to God the father too. You know, I mean, if you're not going to get it, if you tried when you were little and you got hurt by it, you're not going to try very much more, right? You learn to find another way in which you try and get daddy's, you know, my father's affections or pride. That included doing well in school, right? Bringing honour to the family, for example. 

[00:24:42] And so, that was how I subconsciously, I never realized, but that's how I kind of subconsciously related to God the Father too. I better not shame Him. I better not let Him down. You know, I want Him to be proud of me. I want Him to be proud of having me as a child, as a daughter. 

[00:25:04] Now, that's really, really not the kind of relationship that we can have with God the Father. But I never knew that until my relationship with God the Father began healing. And that started more than 10 years ago. And it's in such a different place now. I never felt that I could call God the Father, Abba, my Father too. 

[00:25:26] He was always just Jesus' Father. And as much as I knew about church teaching, and how through baptism, He's our Father too. Well, that's all I knew about relationship with the father - is distant, and don't disturb Him, and I want Him to be proud of me. Right, so, that's an example of how my faith had been distorted by the dysfunction and the trauma that I experienced in my life, in my own family of origin. 

[00:25:54] Right, so, trauma, or the dysfunction that we have experienced growing up, it affects our whole stance, our whole stance towards God, towards faith, towards relationship, because it has already been formed. When we're very young, that's kind of like the baseline that has already been formed. We have a sense of how to relate to each other. 

[00:26:15] We have a sense of how we are meant to connect with one another and so, when we try to draw closer to God or we try to exercise our faith, we don't question these fundamental things. We don't question the foundation on which we learn to relate to one another. So, if the foundation is distorted, the foundation is dysfunctional, we build our faith on that distorted dysfunctional foundation. 

[00:26:45] Right, so, just think about, think about anyone. I mean, I think all of us would know someone who is very religious, who may be able to quote scripture you know, talk about prayer, talk about God, talk about church teaching, even. But in their presence, we feel anything but safe. We may even recognize that they use their knowledge of their faith or their religiosity to try and get other people to do what they want. 

[00:27:16] And you get this sense sometimes that if you don't do according to what they believe is right, you are going against God's will. Let me repeat that. Okay, sometimes in the presence of people who are very religious, and who are able to, let's say, quote scripture, church teachings, and all that kind of thing, or talk a lot about God and the saints, and devotions, or scripture, again. 

[00:27:40] When they subtly, or not so subtly - some people are subtle, some people not so subtle - try and use that to get us to do something in a way that the belief is right, we may feel that if we don't follow what they want, we are actually going against God Himself, that we are actually going against God's will, right? 

[00:28:00] Sometimes, it can even be explicit. Like in my experience, I have it explicitly said to me often this is not what God wants. What you're doing is problematic because this is not what God wants. This is not what the church teaches. And they speak very definitively. And even though I may know as much or even more than them about what the church teaches, because I've studied some of these things on my own, I've explored - it still feels like there's a sense of a power over me because this is someone that is an authority over me in my life, right? 

[00:28:38] And so, that's another reason where if we don't do what this somebody else wants in our life, there's somebody who has in some sense authority over us in our life. We fear. We can't help feeling and fearing that we're going against God. Okay, so, there's a saying or writing, I think, by maxim, by Thomas Aquinas, Saint Thomas Aquinas, that's often quoted, and it's - and he says, or he writes this: that whatever is received, whatever is received into something, right, is received according to the condition or the mode of the receiver. 

[00:29:14] "Again, whatever is received into something is received in the mode or the condition of the receiver". Okay, so, it's the same thing from the same source. God, who is all good, right, who is all loving. The way we can receive His love, can only be received, we can only receive His love in the mode or condition of the receiver - which is us. 

[00:29:41] So, when there has been distortion, when there's dysfunction, when there has been trauma, it's almost like the mechanism that God has given us to relate to Him and to relate to one another, to love one another, has been broken. If it hasn't been healed, we can't even really receive God's love the way that He is giving it to us. 

[00:30:03] Right, and so, because of this distortion, if a lot of us, we are many of us, if we are already fearful and insecure in our attachment styles, because if we come from dysfunctional systems, we usually have insecure attachment styles, right? Then whatever we hear, whatever we learn, even the way we pray, is tainted, distorted by our anxiety, our fear.

[00:30:31] Just think of it. We, our nervous systems, are often in fight, flight freeze, right? Or we may be fawning. That's another response. When we feel unsafe, trying to please and appease, right? If our nervous system is not safe, it's not in that state where it can actually really be present, we are not present.

[00:30:53] Can you imagine that? Being not present when we are praying. Many of us actually, are not often really present when we pray. We pray from our anxieties, don't we? A lot of times we pray from our fears. A lot of times we pray out of obligation. We could be at mass out of obligation and completely be somewhere else.

[00:31:15] We are not present. And actually, we're not even present to ourselves. If we're not present to ourselves, we're not present to God who is present to us. We can't actually be present to anyone else. We are not able to love. And yet, because of our upbringing and the distortion of what we imagine our faith is meant to be, we think that's what God wants, that he just wants us there in body or doing these things because they are right, even if we are not present.

[00:31:49] As we begin to heal, as we begin to get to know God, we realize that's not what He wants. We realize that actually He wants us. He really is interested in a relationship with us, not just what we can offer or do for Him, not just for what, you know, not for what we can act or perform. And that He is absolutely okay with us being where we are.

[00:32:14] Right, and boundaries - I may not have, I've shared this before in the previous podcast, I think, but at some point in my journey with God, I said no to Him for the first time. I said, no, like I felt like I was discerning something and I felt like maybe God is asking me to do this. And I, for the first time, I said, I don't want to do it. No. 

[00:32:38] And there was a little bit of anxiety, kind of like vocalizing it, actually saying it, communicating it to God, right? No, I don't want to. Now, I have actually already been going through quite a lot of healing, and especially inner child healing, and growing in security with God. 

[00:32:53] For me to even be at that point where I could say no. But what really took me by surprise and swept me away was the experience of delight from God that my no gave Him joy. Why? What I felt in my prayer was that He was saying to me, "Ann, I am so happy that finally you're able to just tell me what's in your heart". 

[00:33:19] You know? In the first place that you realize what's in your heart. And two, for you to feel safe enough with me, for you to trust me enough to just tell me no. Because that's what I felt God was saying, "I've always known you don't want to do this. I already knew, even if you never told that to me, I already knew you didn't want to, that you're unwilling. 

[00:33:39] But it pleases me so much that our relationship has grown to the point where you can just share with me what's in your heart". I was blown away because my upbringing, in my upbringing, you never say no to God. Just think about it, right? What is praised? Saying yes to God, the fiat. And of course, ultimately, that's still what we want to work towards, to be able to let our life be one big yes to God.

[00:34:04] But, but, and that's a huge but. That yes is meant to come freely. It has to come, or it's meant to come authentically. From love, right? We want to say yes to God because we love Him, not because that's the answer we feel like we have to give, not because we're afraid that He'll be upset with us if we say no, not because you know, that's what appears right and so that I won't be judged or criticized by others.

[00:34:35] I don't know about you, but for me, and especially as a complex trauma survivor, so much of my sense of safety came from not being criticised, not being judged by others as lacking, not being judged by God as lacking, that I never had the interior freedom to even feel I had a choice. So, I never even dared to articulate a no.

[00:35:00] I mean, there were times before when I said I'm not ready to answer this question. I wanted to be able to say yes, but I can't. But there's always been a lot of shame, you know, in acknowledging that, that I've let God down because I can't say yes to Him. But this time, this time, this turning point, when I said no, I actually said it from a place of much greater security.

[00:35:24] I knew, in a sense, that my relationship with Him was not threatened by my inability to say yes. It was just the truth. And the truth sets us free. And my experience really truly was; it doesn't matter whether I can say yes or no in this moment. It's the relationship that matters ultimately. It is the relationship and not what I can do or what I can't do.

[00:35:51] Because ultimately, it is also the relationship, through that relationship that I'll be given the grace to be able to make my life one big yes to God. But that comes in steps. That comes slowly. Slowly in progression, right. So, I realized that learning to practice boundaries. So, in that case, even with God, you know He delights in it.

[00:36:17] Like, because He wants me to have a deep sense of self. So that I know what I say yes to. And so, my yes means something. It comes from a place of freedom. And even if my yes is imperfect, it's okay because it is authentic, right? Rather than in the past, I was always trying to appear more perfect.

[00:36:44] I was very conscious of what I thought He wanted or what others would think of as the holier response. I was not present to myself. I was not free. So, there was no spiritual fruit, even if I appeared like I was a good disciple of Christ. So, a big part of this integration journey is about becoming more real, more integrated, more whole, right, more authentic.

[00:37:14] So, that was the second reason why boundaries can feel so wrong because when our image of God is distorted, when our whole experience of faith is distorted, exercising boundaries can make us feel, or the system that is dysfunctional can make us feel like we are displeasing God. That we are letting God, or letting the church down, or letting the family down. 

[00:37:39] And then there's this religious overtone. It's no longer, it's not just moral, it's also religious. It's very powerful. When we grew up in this kind of a system, this is very difficult to break through. Alright, so, we come to the third point - it's related - how can we break through and learn to exercise boundaries? 

[00:38:00] THE JOURNEY TOWARDS SECURE ATTACHMENT WITH GOD
Why is it that it's so hard to exercise boundaries? It's because we're still developing a more secure attachment with God. Okay, so, my most recent post before this Live was a shared collaborated post with Brya, Brya Hanan. And it was about nine signs that may indicate that you have an insecure attachment with God.

[00:38:22] Now many, many of us have insecure attachments with God without even recognizing it, without even realizing it, right? So, part of the process of integrating and healing is developing a more secure relationship with God so that we have that freedom to choose love, not out of a place of anxiety or fear, but because we are free.

[00:38:42] Love is free. God loves us freely, and He desires for us to be able to return that love freely. Not out of fear, not out of obligation, not out of anxiety. But that requires, that requires a more secure relationship with God. The more secure we become in our relationship with God, the more room we will feel we have to heal, the more room we have to manoeuvre and experiment and try without fear of repercussions.

[00:39:16] MY PERSONAL JOURNEY TOWARDS SECURE ATTACHMENT
So, one thing that and was another milestone for me in my journey towards integration and secure attachment with God. I've always, always been very vigilant, hyper vigilant. It's part of, I guess, being a survivor of complex trauma as well. Hyper vigilant as to whether or not I'm doing things right. Okay, I was very scared, always very scared I would make a mistake.

[00:39:40] I was actually very cheeky and mischievous when I was a little girl, but when I was 12 years old, I got chosen to be in a leadership position in school, and then that continued in secondary school, in my teens. And it became a big part of my identity. Okay, I am the responsible one.

[00:39:56] I'm the prefect, the head prefect. I cannot do anything wrong. I should not do anything wrong. Okay, it reinforced my golden child identity, which was already in me, within my family, right? And there is this subtle anxiety that I will make a false step beyond which there's no coming back.

[00:40:19] THE FEAR AND ANXIETY OF MAKING MISTAKES
Now, on hindsight, during my healing, I do know that when I was a very, very little girl, okay, like, younger than five years old. One of the repeated stories I was told, and this comes from my Chinese heritage, from, you know, the philosophy and maybe the cultural context that I come in. There's actually this saying in Chinese, "一失足成千古恨", it's "Yī shīzú chéng qiāngǔ hèn" - literally it translates to one slip of the foot, like you slip and fall, right? One slip of the foot can result in a thousand, I think the literal translation would be like a thousand bones, but it's kind of like a, you know, like a thousand years of regret. 

[00:41:00] So, one slip of the foot can result in a thousand years of regret, right? I'm sure this saying, this idiom has its wisdom, basically, you know, the importance of living an upright life.

[00:41:13] You never know, sometimes you, you know, maybe you commit a crime or something. That was often the context in which I was, shared this saying. You don't do anything that's illegal or, you know, morally wrong because you're going to regret it for the rest of your life. So, subtly, there was always this fear in me.

[00:41:28] What if I make a mistake from which I cannot come back, right? So, as a Catholic, part of that is orthodoxy. I was so scared that I would do something or read something or practice something that was somehow less than absolutely orthodox or correct. It's like, I'm afraid that then I would be led astray without me knowing and I'll be lost.

[00:41:54] I'm sure you're familiar with that. That in fact, there's often a narrative out there that that could happen, right? But as I developed my relationship with God, I realized how much fear was in me, that often even that which I felt He was inviting me to do, I don't dare to do because I'm like, no, what if, what if that's a trick or what if I try it and then I was misled.

[00:42:21] Just think for a moment what that says about my image of God, that He would deceive me, right? That He could potentially lead me astray. Now, this is still already in the context where I have regular spiritual direction. You know, because that was also another thing. I was blessed to have that mirror, to have someone accompany me.

[00:42:46] So, that was one of my ways of kind of trying to ensure that I wouldn't do anything wrong. Now, spiritual direction is meant for much more than that. But a big part of my motivation was exactly because I was, I needed that security that somebody else would catch me if I do something wrong. Okay, and I didn't want to do something wrong. At a certain point in my relationship with God, this is an image that I had, the father is always with me and I want to play.

[00:43:17] EMBRACING FREEDOM AND TRUST IN GOD
It's so tiring having to try to ensure through my own very limited perspective and limited human insight as to what is okay and what is not okay.

[00:43:27] It's like almost everything I do, I want to make sure that it's okay. I'm not doing something that's not okay. I realized that, you know, Abba is next to me. I'm with Him and I'm like, you’re watching me. I'm going to, I'm going to run now, and I'm going to play, I'm going to explore this world that you gave me, that you created, right, and you put me in, and you've blessed me with, and I'm going to run, and I'm not going to keep worrying about tripping and falling, because You're here. And if I ever wander where I should not go, that it would be of danger to me, you will catch me, and You know I don't want to get lost, You know.

[00:44:04] I was telling God, right, you know how much I want to be with You and You will catch me. I didn't have the language of attachment at that time when this happened in my relationship with God. Much later on, I realized that this is an indication of a secure attachment, right? There is so much confidence in this relationship, in this love that God has for me, in His goodness, that I know it would not be in God's nature for me to be lost just because I wasn't hypervigilant every moment of every day, making sure that I didn't do anything wrong.

[00:44:43] And that changed the game for me so much. Because I realized it's okay if I fall. It's okay if I make mistakes. It's part of learning. It's part of growing up. It's part of rediscovering the world that God has put me in.

[00:44:57] Part of rediscovering who I am. But that has repercussions, right?

[00:45:02] THE IMPACT OF SECURE ATTACHMENT ON OUR IDENTITY
Because as I became more free, my identity became more rooted in God's love for me and less in the scripts and the narratives that has been dictated for me. Which meant that sometimes the actions that I wanted to take in freedom that actually I thought was more loving, more authentically loving from my perspective, they were seen, or they can be seen, as less than good, okay. Like not that holy, not that responsible, or this is not a good enough Catholic, not a Catholic enough thing to do, or not a virtuous enough thing to do, this is not what an ideal Christian wife or Christian daughter, you know, should do.

[00:45:46] So, all those scripts that still has a hold on me, I will not lie and say that they do not have a hold on me anymore. They still have a hold on me, but they have lost the potency that they once had. Because in the past, the moment I felt that what I'm doing is not what a good Catholic would do or not what a good Catholic wife or daughter or a good daughter would do, it would shatter me.

[00:46:10] Honestly, it did because I had no identity. I had no solid sense of who I was apart from who others think or what these external scripts tell me is good. Even if I am good, it doesn't tell me who I am, but that's all I had, right? I needed to play the role the systems that I belong to needed or dictated me to play.

[00:46:37] HOW TO EXERCISE BOUNDARIES
Right, so, now, I mean, I'm learning when you exercise boundaries, there are repercussions. People will be upset. People will be disappointed. But more importantly, I think I have to be okay with, in a sense, being less than the ideal person that I always thought I should be, or that I was capable, I should be capable of being.

[00:46:58] OVERCOMING FEAR AND EMBRACING GOD'S LOVE
A lot of the time, the hurdle that is the hardest for us to cross is not even what other people think but how we see ourselves. What we don't realize is how we see ourselves, it's also often a trauma response. We need to see ourselves, let's say, as holy or perfect, even though we know we're not. We need to strive towards that because that's the only way we feel we can be safe.

[00:47:24] Right, so, when we fall, sometimes, even if we go for a confession, for example, we can't really forgive ourselves. We still hold it against ourselves. And so, we are not able to experience the healing, love, and forgiveness, and mercy of God, who loves us really, really, really, in spite of anything we can do or fail to do.

[00:47:48] We are so far from our intellectual understanding that God's love is, you know, as high as the heavens are above the earth, right? As the psalmist says, and that's how much God loves us. We can say that, we can sing that, we can pray that, but our lived experience of it isn't that at all. It's almost like we need to be constantly vigilant to make sure we don't lose God's love.

[00:48:15] Right, and so, for those of us who are still struggling to have a more secure attachment with God, practicing boundaries can also be really hard because we are afraid that exercising boundaries with others, right, or with Him, will displease God. So, the more secure we grow, in our relationship - I love that comment.

[00:48:36] Yes! Yeah, yeah! So, the more we more secure we grow in our relationship with God, the more able we will be to exercise boundaries without fear of that repercussion. Or even if we still have the instinctive fear, there is a more secure base that holds us, that we know in our bodies we are still loved. And we can try and it's okay even if it ends up that we regret this like we may decide later on that I wish I'd done something else.

[00:49:07] I that maybe I had not been so hard on my, on this boundary. It's okay even if that's what happens later. It's part of life.

[00:49:15] Yeah, okay, so, Erica's saying, " what you've shared resounds so deeply, slowly trying to have this more secure attachment with God. I'm wondering how you move past the fear that there isn't enough time here on earth".

[00:49:32] Well, that's a really good question. How do you move past the fear that there isn't time here, enough time here on earth? You mean, you mean that there's no, that there's no time, that isn't enough time for us to develop the secure attachment with God? 

[00:49:47] Okay, I'm assuming that's what you meant, right? Okay, so, here's where the contemplative, the contemplative dimension comes, okay? Yeah, you say that it feels like you have a time limit grow that secure relationship with God. I will say that I think that itself is, I will say that that itself is probably a result of complex trauma, the sense of I don't have enough, the sense of this fear of scarcity, right?

[00:50:11] That there's not enough love from God or there's not enough time on earth for me to develop this secure attachment. So, here's the thing, I said that the contemplative dimension of our faith tells us eternity is not a measure of time, right? We live in chronological time, but in eternity, as the mystic Julian of Norwich would say, all is well, everything in all manner of things is well. In eternity, actually, God has already accomplished, Christ has already accomplished everything that is necessary for us to come to Him.

[00:50:51] It's mystery between, you know, like this whole thing is mystery as to our part, our active part in living this out, our living out our redemption, living our salvation. But you know, what we can know or what we can participate in is probably just a little sliver of the entirety of what's going on. And that's why I think much more important is that, that is to, to surrender.

[00:51:23] Or to offer, you know, really to offer into God's hands what we cannot see. And I know that's a struggle for those of us who do not have that secure attachment. But even in our inability to. Just because we can't do it, doesn't mean that God isn't doing it for us. Yeah, so, it may feel like for us that it's not happening fast enough from our perspective.

[00:51:43] It feels like we're not doing enough. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it's not being done. Okay, that's what I'm trying to say. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's not being done. So, that's the part, as people of faith. I guess, we're called to walk in the dark sometimes, right?

[00:52:01] To walk in darkness because we cannot - we just cannot see. You know, there's an old post that I did on IG, I think just three points. I said over and over again, I have this experience. One, I do not know what I'm doing. Two, God knows what He's doing. And three, I have no idea what God is doing. Right? But there, there is comfort in knowing that we don't know what God is doing.

[00:52:26] So, I hope that has helped. I hope that has helped in - that today's sharing of the perspective of why boundaries may feel so, so difficult for us to exercise. For those of us who've, you know, who come from this specific context of desiring authenticity, discipleship, but also being survivors of complex trauma coming from dysfunctional systems.

[00:52:52] So, if there are any responses from today's sharing, please feel free to just send me a DM. If you can't, if you don't have any right now, send me a message and I'll be happy to respond to your question in another Live or, you know, some other way on IG, okay? All right, thank you for joining, those of you who are here Live. And I hope that those of you are watching this on replay. Enjoy it too. Bye, until the next Live. Take care.

[00:53:25] CONCLUSION
Thank you for listening to Becoming Me. The most important thing about making this journey is to keep taking steps in the right direction. No matter how small those steps might be, no matter where you might be in your life right now, it is always possible to begin. The world would be a poorer place without you becoming more fully alive.

If you like what you hear on this podcast, would like to receive a monthly written reflection from me as well as be updated on my latest content and offers, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter Begin Again. You can find the link to do that in the show notes. Until the next episode, happy becoming!