Setting boundaries is one of the most difficult things I ever had to learn to do. As I grew up I was taught, by my family, my teachers, movies and TV that it was important to feel other people's feelings. I was taught that I had the power to make other's feel feelings that they didn't want to feel. I also believed that they had the power to make me feel things I didn't want to feel too. Now, you may be saying to yourself, "hey, isn't that true though?", and I would have to say, from my experience, "no, at least not for me." You see, one of the things I was taught to do was to give away my power. I let others tell me how to feel, what to think, and what to do. I didn't make informed decisions, I didn't think things over, and I ignored my own feelings about many matters, and then wound up in a quandary of emotional pain, because life was not like I wanted it to be. The main reason that it wasn't was because I was giving away most of my personal power by allowing others to manipulate and use me.Learning to take back my personal power was a primary part of my healing process. Because everything that went wrong with my life was always someone else's fault, my life ceased being in my control. Because I kept denying my personal feelings and yet continually allowed others to set me off, my feelings ceased being my own, because I was allowing them to be manipulated and controlled by others. I was unhappy with my life and yet couldn't seem to make any important changes in the way things were going for me. The reason? Because I was giving away my personal power, my God-given right to determine my own destiny. Until I could to take back my personal power, establish boundaries and start taking personal responsibility for my own life and actions, I would remain in that quandary.
The first step in taking back my personal power was to come to believe that I was having a problem with it, and that the problem was causing me to become sicker and sicker. It sapped my energy, it made me reclusive, it caused emotional cramps and it was scary. I didn't want to live like that anymore. I had to come to terms with the thinking that caused me to continually do these things to myself. I had to realize that I was allowing others to tell me how I feel. I also had to recognize that it was all right to feel
