Setting Boundaries: Respect or Contempt??

Pffft... and Humph...

Setting healthy boundaries for those of us who are empaths can be challenging at first, but keep respecting yourself and others enough to do so.

The chaff falls from the wheat almost immediately, as you see most respect you for it, and then the very few who hold contempt.  By these few, you may be called selfish for setting boundaries.  Don't be angry.  Know where this is coming from and stay the course.

Learning to stop second guessing ourselves is a process - well worth doing.

When we are dealing with loved ones it is especially difficult to see them floundering... not getting better - seeming to remain back as in that abusive childhood - that injured soul, closing everything off whether good or bad.  You want so badly for them to see that they are not the sum total of their behavior - or what the NM has projected onto them.  They are them - who God made perfectly - and they are good.  But you can't force them to trust, to feel for real, or to want to do the work in order to be whole.  :(

We all have to be patient, and not regress - not even for our loved ones.

I was saddened with this situation lately, and my son perked me up with a line from Forest Gump, "Sometimes There Just Aren't Enough Rocks".  So true and so sweet.

Anyway, patience and love seems never ending ... and I guess that's a good thing.  It's life, and in life we learn the most when the waves are the choppiest and the water runs the deepest.  Such opportunities to grow and for relationships to flourish shouldn't be tossed away.

Everything you want is on the other side of fear