Healthy Personal Boundaries in communicating. June 6 2018.

How to create Healthy Personal Boundaries in communicating. People SKOWL.  We Secret Keep, Omit, Withhold and Lie to different degrees in different situations. It’s a common denominator and part of personal boundaries. It’s done with the intention of keeping people safe. How do you create healthy boundaries to maintain healthy safe relationships? 

Today I’m going to talk about using healthy omitting, withholding and secret keeping.

By developing healthy personal boundaries, you put yourself in a position to have peace of mind in your relationships. All of them.

Are your boundaries healthy? Take at look at your relationships. The ones that are dysfunctional are that way partly because boundaries are muddled.

Creating different boundaries for the different groups of people in your life is important to your mental health and is actually natural for people.

I haven’t met a person who doesn’t SKOWL at points in their lives.

Because of our unique Human Interaction Processes, HIP’s, we all accept different types of scowling as okay in different circumstances.  We do it to protect ourselves and others from negative feelings and justify it that way. I think it’s healthy to avoid triggering negative emotions in myself and others most of the time.

There are times when facing negative emotions in a relationship is necessary to moving on and getting long lasting peace of mind. There are times when we trigger negative emotion because we want change.

When negative emotions are present, it’s necessary to deal with them and move forward in a relationship most of the time. When negative emotions arise, dealing with them directly is best for success.  That’s where conflict communications skills become critical. Learn them and use them for your own peace of mind and to create a path to keep moving forward in life in a positive state.

Today we’re talking about avoiding triggering negative emotions. Communicating in a way to prevent negative situations is a good idea. Prevention of negative energy is smart and helps with living in peace of mind and less stress.  

What would it be like if you had more peace of mind?    

I use omitting and withholding often in creating my boundaries with different groups of people. I have a lot of diversity in my life so honoring boundaries using omitting, withholding and some secret keeping are crucial to my peace of mind and to maintaining healthy relationship with a large and diverse network.

The topics I love to talk about are communications, business, religion, politics, family, nature, cooking, and gardening. I like games, sports and many different types of recreation.

My upbringing was catholic. Family and extended family was made important. Gatherings were fun and often. Alcohol and drug use common and accepted by most.

I have groups of friends where alcohol and drug use is uncommon and rare. I omit doing it with those people. I do however share my truths if I’m asked, most of the time. Mostly I avoid the topic and the topic doesn’t come up. When it does I usually keep the discussion short and move on to another topic. 

I will say that I use very moderately and my kids have not seen me drunk more than once. They are both over 30. 

My wife now, who I met on a blind date set up by my first wife after we were divorced, was brought up as a Muslim and she’s has never had a drink. When we are with Muslim people, I omit and withhold a little and  we talk about different things than we do with my family, for example. Omitting keeps things peaceful. 

I have many different groups of friends and colleagues. Some I talk about politics with, others I talk about religion and spirituality with.  FYI, in my religion and spirituality conversations I focus on common denominators. It keeps the conversation on common ground. There are many common denominators in the major religions, so it’s actually quite easy. When the conversation gets sensitive, I might omit some of my thoughts. I might move the conversation in a different direction.  I'll Stay aware of the energy in the conversation, omit and withhold to keep the peace. Healthy boundaries keep things peaceful.  

There are people in my life I talk about business with. Some I talk about recreation with. With some people I’m intimate in my conversations and others I’m not. Healthy boundaries keeps the peace and my peace of mind is worth it. Is yours? 

Choosing to talk about different things with different people is boundary setting. It’s very important to peace of mind.  It’s omitting and sometimes it’s secret keeping and it’s okay.

Another type of omitting and boundary setting I use is avoiding negative talk about other people. When negative conversations about other people come up, I listen first, and then I omit my negative opinions often and mostly change the conversation by pointing out positive things about the person. Or I attempt to take the person talking negative to a place of understanding and acceptance of the negative behavior they are talking about. Promoting understanding and empathy in another person is a type of boundary I use. When I hear negative talk, I set a boundary to stop it and move the conversation to positive thinking and feeling. 

I joke about how people have 100 different personalities that we move into depending on who we are with. We are different people when we are with young kids than when we are with adults. We are different people with our business colleagues than we are with our intimate personal friends. We show different parts of ourselves to different people. This is boundary setting. We omit, secret keep or withhold depending on situations and people we are with.

It’s healthy to do it unless we want relationships to go to another level. The more open and direct we are, the deeper and more intellectually and emotionally intimate the relationship can be. The less we bracket and set boundaries, the more intense and intimate the relationship becomes. The more struggle we go thorough with people, and process to common ground, the more close and intimate the relationship becomes. 

Often we don’t want deep relationships with people and that’s okay.

To keep all relationships peaceful and positive do these things: 

1. Talk about different topics and have different boundaries for different people. 

2. Use different omissions, withholds and secrets for different groups. 

3. Prevent negative processes in interactions by focusing on common denominators and positive attributes. 

4. Avoid triggering negative emotions in others by keeping topics light and common. 

5. Avoid Gossip. 

Go out and make it an awesome day. Use your SKOWL with integrity.