- Tiny Buddha

March 1, 2019 at 6:19 pm #282465

Participant

Dear Dahn,

Your parents never taught you the concept of boundaries.

Many Asian culture is entrenched in the concept of ‘image is everything’; that to be a seen as a good person, a person should be humble, polite and kind to others. And that’s a good thing, but it tend to go beyond that in that you are taught to sacrifice your needs and desires in favor of the other person. That’s bad. That teaches children to ignore their personal boundaries when you really should be exerting it. Because when you show people that they have the choice in whether they can accommodate or ignore your boundaries, they will act in a way that benefits them first and foremost, without regards to your well being. So they will have no qualm using you. They have no qualm hurting you, or even understanding that they have hurt you, because you’ve acceded to their demands before so they would have no thought of you declining anytime in the future. You gave them the impression that it was okay to take from you since you never tried to stop them.

Now, it’s not a bad thing to want to be kind to others, but it should never be at the expense of yourself. And when you give all of yourself to others all the time, you’ll eventually grow to resent people for demanding so much of you. Or you’ll feel ‘scared’, which is your intuition sending you warning signals that you are uncomfortable. But since you were never taught boundaries, you don’t understand why you feel ‘fear’ so you tend to ignore it because you feel that it’s irrational. But it’s not, it’s just that you’re not used to listening to your guts when it believes that you should be saying no to someone’s demand. So start with building your boundaries.

Here’s some links to start: