I just spent the weekend visiting my teenage daughter at college. She is really thriving with one small exception. As a pleaser and a “good girl”, she is struggling to set boundaries with some of her friends, teammates and classmates.
As you may know, boundaries help us differentiate what issues and concerns are our responsibility and what belongs to other people. My daughter fears that the act of setting and enforcing healthy boundaries may be perceived as being selfish.
I see it differently. I think healthy and clear boundaries allow everyone to step into personal responsibility which I see as critical for healthy relationships and for health.
Topically applied essential oils may help you establish and fortify mental, physical and emotional boundaries.
What are Boundaries?
Healthy boundaries are the limits you establish around yourself to protect your time, emotions, body, and mental health from the unhealthy, draining, or manipulative or damaging behavior of others.
Boundaries are the invisible lines and gates you have up to inform people what you are willing to do and not willing to do. These boundaries help define what you are willing to say “yes” to and what you decide to say “no” to. They give you a sense of agency and sovereignty over your decisions.
Boundaries also convey to people how they are allowed to treat you. Clarity about your values and needs can help you create clear boundaries. The clearer you are about your identity and your needs, the easier it is to honor your own needs. Boundaries may include:
- Physical Boundaries: Pertaining to physical space and touch (when, where, how, who).
- Property Boundaries: Pertaining to our possessions. You may not like it when others touch or borrow your things without your consent.
- Emotional-Relational Boundaries: pertaining to how you treat others and how you allow others to treat you and value your emotions, without requiring you to take responsibility for other people’s emotions.
- Intellectual Boundaries: pertaining to your thoughts, intellectual beliefs, opinions, ideas and how they are respected.
- Time Boundaries: pertaining to how you spend your time and ensuring that you have time for self-care.
When you do not speak up for yourself nor demonstrate to others that you have boundaries, you are conveying to the universe that you do not value yourself.
If you lack boundaries, you may easily be persuaded into things you don’t want to do because you may be acting out of guilt or obligation rather than self-love.
How Poor Boundaries Can Impact Your Health
Setting boundaries is a form of self-care. Boundaries allow you to feel safe and respected, allowing you to clearly stating what is acceptable and unacceptable treatment, recognize what you need and ask for it, which supports your mental health and overall well-being.
Healthy boundaries help you manage stress, take care of your physical well-being, and create healthy relationships. For example, when you say “no” to working late because you’re overtired, you’re prioritizing your need for rest. Or if you turn down an invitation to something because you’re already overbooked, you are prioritizing yourself and your physical and mental health.
Boundaries may help teach you how to say no, allowing you to focus on your needs and things that matter to you.
Poor boundaries can contribute to negative emotions, leaving you feeling overwhelmed, resentful, angry, emotionally drained, resentful and exhausted. Without clear boundaries, you may absorb other people’s feelings and take responsibility for their problems, or overwork, allow others to take advantage of your kindness, and eventually this will negatively impact your physical and mental health.
How to Support Healthy Boundaries with Essential Oils
Essential oils, like Small Intestine Support™, can help you identify and support healthy mental, physical and emotional boundaries for yourself and others.
On the physical level, the small intestine plays a critical role in the digestion process, absorbing and assimilating key nutrients while preventing harmful pathogens and toxins from entering the body.
On an emotional level, the small intestine plays a similarly discerning role with emotions, helping to understand experiences and determine healthy and appropriate relationships and boundaries.
It is also an area where we can hold deep childhood scars of rejection, abandonment or abuse; negative thoughts fueled by feelings of lack of self-worth, low self‐esteem, loneliness, neglect and anxieties about survival and success with can interfere with our ability to identify and support healthy boundaries.
Vibrant Blue Oils Emotion Balance Small Intestine Support™ blend supports the healthy functioning of the small intestine as it sorts and transforms food, feelings and ideas into useful ingredients for the body/mind. It also helps correct imbalances where you are overly in tune with other’s criticism, feelings or opinions at the expense of your own.
Small Intestine Support™ can be smelled or applied around the ears. You can start on the bottom of the ear at the earlobes and gentle massage upward along the exterior of the ear, hitting many of the major reflexology points. This article and chart show specific points on the ears for specific issues.
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