Setting Boundaries and Standing Up for Yourself as an Act of Self-Love
By: June Westerfield
Tags: Self-awareness, Self Improvement, Self, Self Love, Body Positive

Setting Boundaries and Standing Up for Yourself as an Act of Self-Love June Westerfield Follow Dec 19 · 6 min read

How I’m Learning to Stop Being a People Pleaser

Image by drromie from Pixabay

I consider myself to be a fairly tough chick. This hasn’t always been the case. Growing up with a strong-willed and often emotionally, verbally, and physically abusive mother, I felt weak and useless most of the time. Growing up in a family of other strong-willed people just exacerbated that feeling. Although I had the same loud voice and physical presence (we are not a small bunch), I never felt like I had the same inner fire.

And perhaps I didn’t. I was in survival mode most of the time, I think. Because any act of standing up for myself risked both physical and emotional pain. Most importantly, it risked the removal of love. You see, in my house, though it was never said out-loud, my mother’s love (for me) was conditional. It was based on compliance. If I did what she wanted and was useful. When I was caring for my sister, keeping the house cleaned, laundry done, and food cooked. I was worthy of love when I did exactly what my mother wanted when, or before she wanted it, when I was exactly perfect, I was loved. Since my mother was struggling with bi-polar disorder and who-knows-what other forms of mental illness which she refused to acknowledge much less treat, there was never ever a day in which I could do everything to please her. I walked on a world of eggshells.

For my entire life I generally felt weaker and “less” than just about everyone else in the world. Then I I married a man who was just as mercurial as my mother, yet more dangerous. Three years in, I found strength to leave. And eventually, from the power of a good friend and a lot of therapy I realized I had survived an emotionally abusive marriage. But even after that, I was still doing everything I could to be loved my mother.

Then I met a man who loved me absolutely unconditionally. Someone stood up for me when no one else ever had, even when he couldn’t stand up for himself. My hero. He gave me the strength to learn to stand up to my mother, even when the consequences were dire (like, homeless kind of dire).

I married that man who is the most loving man in the world who also happens to be disabled with depression and anxiety. I quickly learned to stand up and fight and advocate for his medical needs. Since marrying him and finding new strength in myself through his constant and unconditional love and support, I’ve started using my writing skills and my voice to amplify that of other women and to advocate for feminism and self-love and respect.

I feel strong and powerful. Mostly. Sometimes. Always, in the defense of others.

Yet, there is still that weak, eager to please, part of me that always wants to make those I love happy even when it means feeling bad myself. There is still that little part of me that fears the retraction of love. So sometimes, when others do things that make me unhappy, I don’t say anything. I just let it go on. Because I know they don’t mean to hurt me and they probably don’t mean to hurt me. So it’s no big deal.

Until it is a big deal and I’ve had enough and my emotions erupt and spew out all of my frustration on the person. The usual response is not “I’m sorry, I’ll stop doing what is upsetting you”. It’s usually “Well, if you don’t like it, and you’re not going to do ‘xyz’ for me, then fine.” And I don’t see or hear from that person again, until they really want or need something from me. You see, despite all my new-found strength, I still surround myself with people who love conditionally. I still attract people to whom I am the greatest person on earth as long as I’m useful to them, but the moment I stop doing for them they disappear.

So, you can see why, if I really love the person, I tend to keep my mouth shut. Until I can’t anymore.

Then one day, I spewed on the best friend I’ve ever had in my life. At that point she’d been a constant in my life for more than seven years. She was the only person I’d ever trusted as much as my husband. But I was feeling taken advantage of and I one day it just all bubbled out and I spewed.

I cried while I screamed at her over the phone about how she took me for granted. I told her I was always there for her, that I did for her and I gave and gave, and she took and took, but did little to give back. I let loose every frustration I had, some of which probably wasn’t even her fault, but I’d had enough of everyone and she caught it all.

I’ve never been good at making friends, and even worse at keeping them, mostly because I attracted the kind of “friend” that didn’t stick around. I just knew I had lost the best friend I’d ever had. I sat there, trembling, waiting for her to yell back at me then hang up, ending our friendship forever.

But she didn’t hang up. She said, “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

I was floored. No one had ever said that to me before. Any time I had ever stood up for myself in that way I had been made the bad guy or had been accused of over-reacting. But not this time. She agreed. She apologized, and then we talked for a very long time about how we had both contributed to the situation.

That conversation happened in July of 2018. I know that because I wrote the first half of this post back then, but I was too self-conscious to post it. But two and a half years later, I felt it was finally time to tell the story of my first fight with my best friend.

And it was the first. We have now had a few more along the way. Minor spats, mostly. All born of not communicating (usually on my part) when we aren’t felt heard. Usually, it’s because of my inability to set boundaries for myself. We’ve both had work to do. She has helped me learn to set and enforce boundaries, with her and with others.

I’m still a people-pleaser. It’s an instinct that is so ingrained in me, that I have to consciously fight it. I’ve learned to recognize when I’m doing something for someone because I want them to like me versus doing it because I like them. I’m also learning to speak up for myself before things get so built up that I erupt like deranged volcano.

A decade ago, I discovered unconditional love is real when I married my husband. But my bestie has helped me realize that unconditional love in friendship is also possible. That it is possible to be liked and loved for who you are and not just what you can do for others. But more importantly she has helped me learn that standing up for myself, in the face of losing a friend, is an act of love to myself.

In my efforts to advocate for body love and respect for women, I talk a lot about respecting our bodies as the home for our soul and loving them as they are because of that. Yet, the very act of believing I deserve respect, much less unconditional love, from others is an act of pure defiance against everything I was taught growing up.

I am not saying that you must love and respect yourself and your body to be able to expect love and respect from others, or vice versa. I do not think the two are interdependent. It can be possible to have one without the other. But I do think that expecting others to treat you with common respect, setting boundaries, and speaking up when those boundaries are crossed is an act of unconditional self-love. And I think we all deserve that.