Category: Boundaries

Family Boundaries: Journal Prompt 11

Triangles A triangle happens when you involve a person outside of the original conflict, seeking an external alliance and attempting to maintain a sense of power. In family dynamics, triangulation can function as a way to relieve anxiety and avoid confrontation, ultimately helping the family maintain status quo. A Triangulation Example: Person A + Person B have a conflict. Person A feels anxious about the conflict and talks to Person C to help manage their anxious feelings and avoid working it out with Person B. Person C becomes a thermostat, enabling avoidance and relieving anxiety. Triangulation is understandable, but it ultimately undercuts what a family hopes for, connection and security. Journal Prompt: I triangulate when...

Power and Control, 5

Gaslighting. In gaslighting, your lived experience is discounted. It's put out on the side street for super clearance. Gaslighting demands that only one perspective counts, and that is the one who is tearing down your perspective. Refresh your screen and remind yourself that you are gifted your own perspective. If someone has the power to demean your reality, they have too much control. Journal Prompt: My perspective feels...

Power and Control, 4

Intimidation. Intimidation gets less airtime than physical violence but carries out a similar function–power and control. Intimidation capitalizes on fear to gain wanted outcomes. Intimidation includes (but not limited to), aggressive language, damaging property, threats of physical violence, hostile physical posturing, and yelling or screaming. Journal Prompt: I have felt intimidated...

Power and Control, 2

Minimize. Healthy relationships happen when both experiences matter, not one more than another, not one less than another, both, with equal shares of mattering. Minimizing, is a communication pattern where someone's experience matters less. Someone's experience is shrink-wrapped. It's made trivial and they themselves feel insignificant. Overtime, minimizing leads to doubt and diluted self-trust. Journal Prompt: I felt that my experience was minimized when...

Power and Control, 1

Fear. Fear opens the door to power and control. If there is panic that something will be lost, security, connection, or belonging, people respond. Journal Prompt: In relationships I fear... For the sake of this series, we will not talk about abuse that has escalated to physical and sexual violence, obvious offenses that need to be taken seriously, here is a resource for more help. In this series rather, we'll process more subtle patterns that can as well be damaging to relationships.

Regret: Journal Prompt 8

Moments. The emotional experience of regret is like a storm. A storm blows through, aggressive, loud, windshield-wiper necessary. But clouds pass, the rain eventually stops, and the threat passes. You can choose to be an observer. Instead of storm chasing, you can accept the emotional experience of regret. You can build your tolerance muscle and wait out the passing of the storm, knowing that the experience of regret is a moment in time–apart of you–but not all of you. Journal Prompt: The emotional experience of regret is like...