Inflexible Boundaries

Personal boundaries can become rigid and unyielding – like “walls” between you and others. If you have inflexible boundaries, you may:

• Fear being hurt, vulnerable, or taken advantage of.
• Have difficulty identifying your wants, needs and feelings.
• Say no if requests involve close interaction with others.
• Avoid intimacy by staying freakishly busy, picking fights, or avoiding people (fear of intimacy).
• Refuse to share personal information.
• Fear abandonment or suffocation, and avoid close relationships.
• Struggle with loneliness, low self-esteem, distrust, anger, and control.

Collapsed Boundaries

Personal boundaries can become weak or even nonexistent. The proverbial “doormat” has collapsed boundaries. If you have collapsed boundaries, you may:

• Say yes to all requests because you fear rejection and abandonment.
• Tolerate abuse or disrespectful treatment.
• Feel you deserve to be treated poorly.
• Avoid conflict.
• Have no sense of who you are or what you feel, need, want and think.
• Not see flaws or weaknesses in others.
• Focus on pleasing those around you.
• Take on the feelings of others.

Healthy Boundaries

Personal boundaries are evident and effective when you know who you are, and treat yourself and others with respect. If you have healthy boundaries, you may:

• Feel free to say yes or no without guilt, anger or fear.
• Refuse to tolerate abuse or disrespect.
• Know when a problem is yours or another person’s – and refuse to take on others’ problems.
• Have a strong sense of identity.
• Respect yourself.
• Share responsibility with others, and expect reciprocity in relationships.
• Feel freedom, security, peace, joy and confidence.

How do you set healthy boundaries? Setting healthy boundaries involves taking care of yourself and knowing what you like, need, want, and don’t want. The best time to set personal boundaries is before they’re being encroached upon.

_________

i think i really really like this website...

hahha..

7 signs of addictive relationships

1. Dishonesty. Neither Sam nor Debbie talks about who they are or what's really bothering them. They lie about what they want. This turns communication into an addictive relationship.
2. Unrealistic expectations. Both Sam and Debbie think the other will solve their self-esteem, body image, family, and existential problems. They believe the "right relationship" will make everything better. Yet, they're in a disastrous addictive relationship.
3. Instant gratification. Sam expects Debbie to be there for him whenever he needs her; he needs her to make him happy immediately. He's using her to make him feel good, and isn't relating to her as a partner or even a human being. She's a like drug. An addictive relationship drug.
4. Compulsive control. Debbie has to act a certain way, or Sam will threaten to leave her. Both feel pressure to stay in this addictive relationship; neither feel like they're together voluntarily.
5. Lack of trust. Neither partner trusts the other to be there when the chips are down. They don't believe the other really loves them, and they don't believe genuine caring or liking exists. At some level they know they're not in a healthy but rather in an addictive relationship.
6. Social isolation. Nobody else is invited into their relationship – not friends, family, or work acquaintances. People in addictive relationships want to be left alone.
7. Cycle of pain. Sam and Debbie are trapped in a cycle of pleasure, pain, disillusionment, blaming, and reconnection. The cycle repeats itself until one partner breaks free of the addictive relationship.

Addictive relationships can change, if both partners are self-aware and willing to do what it takes. In some cases an objective viewpoint (such as counseling) helps; other times, self-control and mutual accountability are all that's needed to turn the addictive relationship around.

-----

-psychology.suite101.com-

interesting browsing site..

ping pong session..

it's been a long time..

missed it..

-Equity Theory-
focuses upon a person’s perceptions of fairness with respect to a relationship. During a social exchange, an individual assesses the ratio of what is output from the relationship to what is input in the relationship, and also the ratio of what the other person in the relationship outputs from the relationship to what is input into the relationship.

it posits that if the person perceives that there is inequality, where either their output/input ratio is less than or greater than what they perceive as the output/input ratio of the other person in the relationship, then the person is likely to be distressed.

____

body..

i am distressed.. haha.. how? give incentive? ahahaha...

today's not my day..

sigh..

the busier i get.. the more i blog..

weird..