Human beings are not omnipotent
creatures, and children are definitely not invulnerable. When
properly honored and taught to the child, appropriate vulnerability
teaches and prepares the child to be appropriately intimate in
relationships in their adult life. To achieve emotional intimacy in
a healthy way, a person must be emotionally honest with their close
friends and in love relationships through limited vulnerability which
allows them to connect to others.
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The Extremes Created by a Poor Sense
of Vulnerability
As we will note in all of the
characteristics of children that parents must honor, in dysfunctional
homes, children tend to develop the same kinds of boundaries both
modeled and taught directly to children by parents. Problems tend to
develop when children fall to one extreme reaction or the other, or
an ineffective mix between the two, wherein the child learns only
partially effective boundaries. As one only protects what is
worthwhile protecting, boundaries can be closely tied to self-worth.
The child who learns ineffective
boundaries becomes too vulnerable because the parent fails to teach
the child self protection. The parent may overprotect this child,
objectifying them by viewing them as incapable of any discernment of
their own, or they just fail to protect them altogether. The child
never learns where they begin and end, and they walk into dangerous
situations with no awareness of the threat of harm. Some children
are taught to place implicit trust in any adult and authority
figures, and in religious groups that follow patriarchy, girls are
taught to obey all men without qualification. Likewise, some
Christian groups teach that adults and children alike have no
personal rights, viewing any suffering that comes because of lack of
boundaries to be an opportunity to develop character through
disappointment. These children learn passivity, or they follow
passivity to avoid punishment by the parent who will tolerate no
assertiveness.
The exaggerated alternative results in
a child who does not set boundaries but establishes walls and thus
avoids vulnerability by feigning invulnerability. They're too
fearful to be vulnerable, and the cost of their safety comes at the
forfeiting of emotional intimacy. They may start to develop
friendships but will retreat in withdrawal.
Internal Versus External Boundaries
- An internal boundary involves behavior
and thought originating with the self, that which refers to what that person does. Of people who have poor internal boundaries and set no limits on their own behavior, it may be said of them that such a person "knows no bounds." The primary problem originates with them as a lack of their own internal boundaries.
A child with a collapsed sense of self may have been conditioned to set
very narrow limits on their own behavior in a way that is inappropriate,
allowing others too far in to their inner world, if they have any
internal boundaries at all. When any child has not been
trained to respect others or basic rules of appropriate social behavior, they may violate the
boundaries of others without realizing it, merely out of ignorance. Their self-centered perspective may be the only indicator of appropriate behavior because they have not been taught to anticipate or be sensitive to the needs of others.
In the child who demonstrates too much invulnerability, they will
either withdrawal from interaction all together (their created internal boundary) through
antisocial personality traits, or they may exaggerate their behavior,
willfully ignoring the boundaries of others by in order to feel powerful. They claim everything (including other people) as within their own boundaries by setting no boundaries on their own behavior.
- An external boundary is a barrier that a person creates around themselves to limit outside forces. An external boundary involves what the a allows into their world and involves saying “No.” (LINK HERE to another Boundaries video about what the Bible says about saying "No.")
In the collapsed response, the child
lets anyone and everyone take advantage of them. In the
invulnerable, the child does not allow anyone to get close enough to
take advantage of them, and they may be well-known for always saying
“No.” Another way an external boundary can be violated presents
when adults do not permit the child to own their own perceptions and
experiences. If a parent does not like a particular emotion, they
may punish a child for it, teaching the child that they cannot know
themselves or their experience. The child is required to allow that
parent in through their external boundary, exchanging their reality
for that of the parent.
Vunerability Issues in Adults
In a healthy adult relationships,
boundaries establish what we will and will not tolerate. For adults
who grew up in very dysfunctional homes and didn't learn appropriate
boundaries, this dynamic element of hard work within a relationship
fails.
Those who are too vulnerable fail to
establish any kind of boundary, and they let anyone have access to
any area of their lives. Or they may have a difficult time
establishing boundaries through assertive expression of their wants
and needs, the type of person who struggles with saying “No.”
Sometimes, these individuals can declare boundaries to others, but
cannot motivate themselves to defend their established new
boundaries. These are not boundaries at all but are merely “nice
ideas” when they are not defended.
The person with very weak or
non-existent boundaries may also seek to have levels of intimacy that
are too close for the nature of the relationship, and this may create
behavioral problems and may violate appropriate social rules. It
also sets the adult up for disappointment through unmet expectations
and confusion.
Some individuals may also have only
partially ineffective boundaries, and in one area of life, they may
be able to clearly establish what they will and will not tolerate in
a relationship. But when dealing with a certain situation or a
particular type of person (such as a woman raised in an extremely
patriarchal system of gender hierarchy, she may find herself
completely unable to establish a boundary or may have been taught
that a woman must submit to the demands of men.
Authority
figures also pose great difficulty for the person who tends
toward collapsed responses because it is human nature to tend to
comply with authority.
As noted earlier, the invulnerable type
of person tends to withdrawal from social interaction and may cope
through an anti-social personalty. They may have erratic
relationships, vacillating between the development of friendship,
only to abruptly retreat in response to perceived threat. They have
the opposite type of presentation concerning their problems with
intimacy, but both types of manifestations prevent healthy intimacy.
The invulnerable person can also develop ineffective coping
mechanisms leading to the abuse and exploitation of others by
violating their boundaries through an exaggerated response, motivated
by manipulative behaviors and poorly controlled negative emotion, the
extroverted expression of lack of respect. These are the classic
abused people who go on to repeat the same type of abuse as their
abuser modeled for them.
One might think that the person with
excessively collapsed boundaries is more vulnerable to manipulation,
but because the invulnerable type of person who hides behind walls
craves intimacy and attachment, this basic human need can also be
exploited, making this person just as vulnerable to the right
influences.
Self Awareness and Self Regulation
Many adults who grew up in
dysfunctional families of origin struggle with knowing themselves
because they were never permitted to own their own experiences and
feelings, constrained to feel only that which was set for them by
someone else.
Because their boundaries were never respected or because the parent
fails to realize that the child is not an adult with the capability of
setting limits, the adult who uses
their child as a companion or requires the child to be someone that they're not overrides that child's sense of self. The
interaction is too intimate and interferes with the child's development of a sense of self.
The child has
no choice and does not even realize that the relationship is emotionally
inappropriate or damaging to them. (An adult can set limits and protect their sense of self when overwhelmed by another, but the child is obligated to absorb the parent's reality because of their dependence on the adult to protect and provide for them.)
Instead of awareness of self, the child's inner world must be negated (their heart denied) in favor of the adult's experience, wants, and needs.
These adults struggle with finding satisfying
vocations, pastimes and relationships because they are unaware of their feelings and
emotions and do not have much awareness of their true strengths and
weaknesses. They were not encouraged to make their own decisions
regarding their life choices and were required to sign the right to
direct their lives over to someone else or some religious system.
When they work on recovery, learning self awareness and experiencing the liberty of choice
can be a very difficult, anxiety-producing challenge.
Erratic patterns in relationships are
common in people who suffer from complex PTSD, both craving
attachment and fearing it and feeling unable to modulate their own
behavior. So in the person with patterns built around long-standing
trauma, they may have a very complex mix of incomplete boundaries,
varying from the extremes of walls to the enmeshed type of unhealthy
attachment found in the person with little to no boundaries at all.
