The Courage for Boundaries

Where does the courage for boundaries come from? It’s necessary to love ourselves in order to have courage to risk disappointing others.

When we have a self-compassion practice, even when things feel terrible, even when we feel shame, we gain courage. Then the courage grows by itself. We become fearless.

This courage comes slowly, not all at once. When we see that we are able to hang in there with ourselves, continue our self-care regardless, our self-compassion, our radical self-love—that is when the courage grows.

We've been taught to fear our bad feelings, by the self-esteem culture all around us. A culture that values self-esteem but does not teach self-compassion.

Self-esteem is conditional. As opposed to Self-compassion which teaches us to love ourselves unconditionally.

When self-esteem is held in the highest regard, we are required to feel positive about ourselves at all costs.

Self-esteem becomes self-criticism when we aren't measuring up to our self-imposed harsh standards. The inner critic emerges when the standards we set aren't met.

Disappointing ourselves is the worst of all. We fear ourselves, that is where courage is the hardest.

When we experience rejection or anger in an effort to set boundaries with others, then we add our self-criticism to the original bad feeling. Nothing is so scary than losing our own self-regard.

Our self-criticism is what truly stops us in our tracks—our fear of ourselves, of our own self-judgment.

But with self-compassion, we love ourselves unconditionally.

When we love ourselves regardless, unconditionally, we dare to risk rejection of others. We have the willingness to set the boundaries Brene Brown is suggesting.