Minaa B. answers your pressing questions about setting and managing boundaries.
You sent Minaa your most pressing questions, and in this episode she provides her insight and advice.
The following Q+A has been edited for clarity and conciseness.
Minaa B. / Verywell
One parents openly disliked me, while the other was physically abusive and also love bombed.
After therapy and failed attempts to set boundaries, I cut off the openly abusive parent.
I don’t know where to start.
Discussions about boundaries become defensive and triggering and direct communication is the same.
How can I protect my own sanity when my boundaries are not respected or understood?
And how can I protect my child from this torment while still maintaining a relationship with their grandparent?
Sometimes we don’t intend to hurt people.
How they choose to respond will be telling.
If they choose to continue in their behavior, that is problematic.
When it comes to protecting your own sanity, sometimeserecting boundarieslooks like understanding the consequence in place?
What does it look like for you to protect your peace?
When you are engaging with this parent, what does it look like to say, ‘You know what?
And here you are doing it again.’
So maybe you could’t hang out all the time.
This is what makes me feel unsafe about you interacting with my child.
This is what makes me comfortable when it comes to you interacting with my child.'
It’s also natural for you to want your child to have a close relationship with their grandparent.
Consider what boundaries you gotta set for yourself as well as for your child moving forward.
Asexuality is a sexual orientation characterized by a lack of sexual attraction or infrequent experience of sexual attraction.
It just means that they have a low interest or alack of sexual desire.
When it comes to approaching this topic in any relationship,communicationis extremely important.
Letting them know, ‘Hey, these are my preferences around sex.
This is how my libido works.
It’s really important to communicate and have honest conversations around what you feel comfortable doing.
I think it’s also important to have conversations around what non-sexual intimacy looks like in a relationship.
But intimacy can mean many things.
It could look like holding hands with someone.
I encourage you to visualize what intimacy looks like for you even outside of sex.
Now, here’s something else that I think is really important to discuss.
And it’s about having open and honest communication about the goals of the relationship.
Are you seeking to be togetherlong-term?
Or is this just a fling?
Although that is a reallyhard conversationto have, exploring it helps you discern how to move forward.
Your partner might say, ‘You know what?
We do have different sexual desires, but I’m still interested in working with you.
Again, remember that communication is extremely important for the longevity of a relationship.
But when we’re talking about intimacy, remember that intimacy doesn’t always mean sex or intercourse.
How can I deal with these feelings in a healthy way?
When we’re in relationships with people who are abusive, we might find ourselves feeling a variety ofemotions.
And that is because in these relationships, no one person is all good or all bad.
Did I make the right choice?
Did I do the right thing?
Could I have given this person another chance?
What I want to encourage you to think about is why you let this person go.
Deciding to gono contactis a big deal.
You realized ‘If I stay, my mental health will continue to suffer.’
But also, sit with the grief and loss that comes with letting someone go.
A healthy way todeal with our emotionsis to first acknowledge that our emotions exist.
But our emotions are not meant to tell us what to do.
Too often, people engage in a cognitive distortion called ‘emotional reasoning.’
So we say, ‘If I feel afraid, I must not do this thing.
If I feel sad, that must mean something bad is happening to me.
If I feel guilty, I must have done something bad.’
And so I want you to reflect around the feelings that you have.
Maybe you’re free to engage injournaling, including another form called audio journaling.
This is helpful because when we talk out loud, we can hear the discrepancies in our thinking.
Co-regulation is also a very important practice that we can engage in.
We might need them for advice.
We might need them just to be a listening ear or provide us with emotional support.
That is what co-regulation means.
Using someone else’s nervous system to calm our nervous system down.
Always be committed to your why, and remember that missing someone is not a reason toreconnect with someone.
This hurts because it feels like she doesn’t care about how her actions affect me as a friend.
To protect myself, I have decided to distance myself from her because I was growing to resent her.
just provide advice on how to stop feeling guilty about giving her space.
It’s a sad and unfair situation.
There are certain things we don’t like.
And it is up to us to uphold our boundaries.
According to what you’re saying, this is a friend who is consistently late.
It sounds like this person cannot meet your needs.
And so, the best choice here is to discern where you gotta erect boundaries.
Can you go on a hangout with this person knowing that they might be three to four hours late?
You ask how to stop feeling guiltyguilt means you feel you did something bad.
So I want you to reframe how you’re thinking about this situation.
Is it actually bad for you to want to be in relationship with someone who shows up on time?
To give you an answer, no!
Some of us are conditioned to believe that if we say no, we are bad people.
We’ve been told that we have to self-sacrifice and put people’s needs before our own.
Can you continue to maintain a relationship with someone like this?
And can you continue to plan gatherings and get-togethers with someone who does not care about your time?
You have choice in this situation as well.
You have the power to discern what you are willing to tolerate.
I am giving my friend space so that I can uphold my boundary.
I am giving my friend space because my needs matter too.
