How do you know What is Good for You When Your Body Doesn't Tell You?
How we set limits is deeply influenced by survival strategies developed during childhood and early life experiences. Often, we continue behaviors that once protected us, even when they’re no longer beneficial. But when we continuously ignore bodily signals and personal needs it conditions the brain to associate self-sacrifice with safety, contributing to chronic symptoms such as burnout, chronic anxiety, fatigue and pain.
Why the Embodied Perspective on Boundaries Matters?
Boundaries are shaped by the state of our nervous system, our interoceptive awareness, our ability to define the physical boundaries of self in relation with the external world, our sense of peripersonal space and our cognitive beliefs about what benefits us. Together, these elements form a complex, dynamic system that outlines our personal limits.
The nervous system state dictates our capacity for connection, our interoceptive awareness helps us physically feel our limits, our perception of peripersonal space provides us with the framework for reactive self-defensive actions and cognitive mapping allows us to enforce what is safe and healthy for us.
The embodied perspective is crucial because survival instincts often override logic, particularly when boundaries are crossed. In these moments, your autonomic nervous system quickly assesses whether it's safe to assert yourself. You may intellectually understand that you can say "no," but when stress hormones activate a threat response, your access to that "no" diminishes if your nervous system doesn’t perceive it as safe enough to express your boundaries.
Understanding boundaries in this way shifts the focus from just informing yourself about what's acceptable to cultivating somatic awareness of what you need and what is good for you, while teaching the nervous system that it's safe to enforce your limits.
shifting from simply acknowledging your limits to truly feeling them
Developing an embodied perspective means shifting from simply acknowledging your limits to truly feeling them through your body. This involves building a better interoceptive awareness, which improves your ability to detect internal physical signals such as changes in heart rate, shallow breathing, or muscle tension, early signs of distress before they build up to full blown physical symptoms.
Additionally, understanding your peripersonal space, which is the physical boundary between your body and the world, can help you notice when others are too close or when you instinctively pull back. The peripersonal space acts as an adaptable interface between the body and the environment, serving a dual purpose: preparing the body for voluntary actions to interact with appealing stimuli and readying it for defensive responses against potential threats. If the brain lacks an accurate perception of peripersonal space or internal body signals, it may misjudge self-defense needs. When this system misfires, the nervous system often defaults into protective "freeze" or dissociative states
Cognitive reframing
Once you have cultivated bodily awareness, you can begin the conscious work of setting boundaries. Start with micro-steps by asserting small, low-stakes boundaries in safe environments. This helps teach to your nervous system that you can speak up and survive the discomfort. Cognitive reframing is essential here; remind yourself that asserting a boundary is an act of connection and self-care, rather than a threat to your relationships or survival. This leads to the reprogramming loop, a cyclical process of rewiring the brain's safety cues. It involves feeling the physical cue of discomfort, consciously choosing to state a boundary, and experiencing the safe resolution of that action. Over time, this repeated sequence teaches the nervous system that your needs are safe to express.
A Holistic Approach to Establishing Personal Boundaries
This comprehensive method combines mind and body to help you set personal boundaries through four essential elements:
Nervous System State: This influences your capacity for connection. When your nervous system is in a calm state, connection comes naturally. Conversely, when it perceives threats or is overstimulated, it activates survival responses (fight, flight, freeze), affecting your ability to establish boundaries.
Interoceptive Awareness: Often referred to as your physiological "sixth sense," this interprets internal bodily signals into emotions. It enables you to recognize when you're stressed, fatigued, or in danger, providing crucial indicators for stepping back.
Peripersonal Space: This is the invisible boundary surrounding your body where interactions occur. It functions as a personal alarm, triggering defense responses when breached, aiding in managing your comfort zone.
Cognitive Mapping: This involves the mental narratives, logic, and beliefs that articulate and support your needs, helping you determine what is beneficial for you.
When these elements are aligned, setting limits becomes instinctive and protective.
In the next part, I’ll talk more about how we can restore our physical sense of self that may have been distorted due to long term chronic stress, pain or trauma. Our understanding of the body is essential to how we perceive ourselves and to our sense of agency providing us the strong internal anchor that allows us to both: know our limits as well as have the foundation of asserting to these limits.
Make sure to sign up to my newsletter, so you won’t miss it!
-Ansku
