Setting and maintaining boundaries reduces anxiety

[sparky]

Just a simple thing I should have learned many years ago, but am happy to at least be learning now.

Like many Mormons I never learned the concept of boundaries and choosing for yourself when it came to the church. So if I got "invited" to meet with a leader, my anxiety shot through the roof. What if I was extended a calling I didn't want? What if I was asked to give a talk on something I didn't care about or I found problematic?

But as I've gotten clear with myself and started practicing saying no and setting boundaries, an amazing thing has happened. Get a talk invite? I have a ready response. Can the EQP meet with me? Sure, I like getting to know people, but if it's just to extend a calling, then I'll be kind and save both our afternoons by being straightforward that I'm not taking callings ATM (or, you know, ever again). Can I help with this community service project? Well, let me check my schedule, but sure, that sounds nice. No anxiety, because I already know I won't agree to something I'm not okay with.

I know this is something most people here are familiar with, but it's so liberating to experience. And I have a lot of your comments to thank for getting me here. So thanks, NOMs!

[Red Ryder]

This reminds me of a time a few years Go sitting in sacrament meeting. The bishop got up to fill in the last 10-15 minutes of sacrament meeting left from the second speaker. He talked about his fond experience meeting with all the members and getting to know them. I sat there thinking, what is he referring to? I’ve never sat down with him to get to know him? Then suddenly it dawns on me that he is referring to temple recommend interviews.

At that point I could only smile knowing that I had given up temple recommend interviews and had such a peaceful experience knowing that I controlled my own destiny at church. I could turn down callings. Eat on fast Sunday’s. Skip Saturday night shake conference sessions. Watch Monday night football. Choose 1 year of food storage over 2. Read my own manuals and lessons that interest me. Forgive and not judge people. Orange Jello over green. Blue shirt over white. You get the idea.

I realized I had FREE AGENCY!!

For some people they learn that at an early age. For others it takes a lifetime.

Finding your inner peace starts with finding voice and choosing your boundaries. Great post Sparky!

[stealthbishop]

Excellent Sparky! Really happy to hear it. I can confirm from my own experience, and so many others, that if you were raised LDS you probably have very little if any experience with boundary work because we are told that it is God and the church and our leaders that set the boundaries in our lives. It can take years for us to even get clarity on what we are not okay with and then it take a very long time to get practiced in setting and enforcing our boundaries. This is such important work for all or most of us.

[Linked]

That's great your boundaries are up and helping Sparky!

Mormonism can't coexist with healthy boundaries, no matter what my sister in law says. It relies too much on invading individual boundaries and declaring their boundaries as the only true boundaries. It demands that any church activity be given priority, and any moral decision/thought/reckoning be run by church doctrine first.

I'm a bit disturbed that I don't have intuitive disgust against bishop's asking about the sexuality of young teenagers because I was raised without that boundary. The church sets all boundaries.

[sparky]

It demands that any church activity be given priority, and any moral decision/thought/reckoning be run by church doctrine first.

Reminds me of the time I overheard my mother and one of my sisters talking about kombucha (or maybe kifer?) and how they were interested in it, but they'd looked all over the church's website and couldn't find anything about it so they didn't know if it was against the Word of Wisdom. All I could do was shake my head.

[glass shelf]

Mormonism can't coexist with healthy boundaries

This is 100% true in my experience. I had done a lot of personal work on starting to set and make boundaries before I left Mormonism. It's hard when you are basically taught to be a doormat and manipulated from birth. Parl of my eventual shelf break was this terrible video which made me realize how terribly Mormonism really treats women and that it trains them to have no boundaries. I credit the prior work I had done on boundaries with helping me to recognize it. Shortly after this video, I ran across the essays, and I was done.

I hated BYU and knew LDS culture was a poor fit for me. I only wish I'd deconstructed it all at that point instead of waiting 20 years. I sometimes wonder if I would have left a lot sooner if I lived in UT and was surrounded by it all of the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3n-DOKBffuU

[alas]

Mormonism can't coexist with healthy boundaries

This is 100% true in my experience. I had done a lot of personal work on starting to set and make boundaries before I left Mormonism. It's hard when you are basically taught to be a doormat and manipulated from birth. Parl of my eventual shelf break was this terrible video which made me realize how terribly Mormonism really treats women and that it trains them to have no boundaries. I credit the prior work I had done on boundaries with helping me to recognize it. Shortly after this video, I ran across the essays, and I was done.

I hated BYU and knew LDS culture was a poor fit for me. I only wish I'd deconstructed it all at that point instead of waiting 20 years. I sometimes wonder if I would have left a lot sooner if I lived in UT and was surrounded by it all of the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3n-DOKBffuU

This inability to maintain proper boundaries, especially for women, all ties into why I couldn’t even stay active for my TBM husband. Child sexual abuse is about the worst boundary violation there is, so my therapist always had me look at my boundaries. And at church, if I was assertive about my boundaries, instead of just passive aggressive about boundary issues, I quickly found myself labeled as some kind of heretic. In Mormonism it is much more acceptable to say you will do something and then just don’t, than it is to just say, no, I can’t do that at this time. So, I would progress in therapy, and flunk church.

Boundary violations that are repeated over and over are a form of abuse, and good Mormons have no boundaries between them and church.to be in the church you have to be willing to live with a certain amount of abuse. All abuse is a violation of the person’s boundaries. Whether it is the enmeshment that the church insists on, or telling you your experience is false. The church engages in gas lighting, which is a boundary violation because it discounts your reality and invades your sanity. It engages in emotional abuse by constantly blaming you, when in reality it is the problem. Oh, prayer wasn’t answered, well it is your fault for not praying with enough faith. So, as I stopped accepting abuse from the church, I was just kind of treated like I didn’t exist. And if I started trying to be accepted, I got the normal abuse. And I have a low emotional tolerance for abuse. It throws me back into childhood helplessness.

[glass shelf]

In Mormonism it is much more acceptable to say you will do something and then just don’t, than it is to just say, no, I can’t do that at this time.

I remember when I fully realized this as an active Mormon. I would get so much pressure when I would say that I couldn't/wouldn't do something vs all the people who left me with extra work by just not doing it. Looking back, that's one of many cultural red flags. Any organization in which it is better to be passive aggressive like that instead of just clearly establishing and keeping commitments is problematic for sure.

[Hagoth]

If you believe that God has given some guy down the street some invisible magical power to boss you around you should expect a life of relentless anxiety. Realizing that there's no such thing as religious authority, and that you have authority over your own life really makes it much easier to set those boundaries.