The gift of limits - what if limits are not punishment or deprivation?

I confess - today's audio was a life changing understanding for me!

In today's audio, we'll be exploring a new way of looking at limits.

Many of us need support when we face limits, for limits touch our vulnerability. Whew, they can bring up strong emotional reactions!

All of us have defenses and ways of caring for ourselves that can be messy, compulsive, or painful. These attempts at nurturing ourselves are based in a core of goodness - we're hurting, and we're trying to stop the hurt.

When we set limits around these painful - but well intentioned - forms of self care, it can hurt. We face the vulnerability and pain of letting go off something we're attached to.

Even if the thing we're attached to causes us harm and its own pain, its been a source of refuge, and a source of care.

This is one reason why setting a limit can bring up feelings of fear, deprivation or loss - because on one level, it is a loss.

Limits can also be challenging if you carry emotional residue from the ways limits were handled in your family or culture as a child.

If limits were handled in ways that were harsh, shaming, or overly rigid, limits can bring up feelings of anger, resistance, or rebellion.

They can feel like a form of criticism - somehow if you only 'knew' better, you wouldn't 'need' to set this limit.

Or limits can feel like punishment or deprivation.

All of these reactions and responses make so much sense!

Today, we'll explore how you can lean into limits as a source of support, rather than a source of punishment, deprivation, or criticism. It may sound counterintuitive, but limits are the form of love that holds and contains you.

Limits are the riverbank to the river.

Limits gently tell us, "there, there, you've had enough" - whether it's enough work or tasks for the day, enough food, enough doing, or enough fun.

Limits bring rest.

Limits bring protection and nurturance.

Limits hold us when we notice we're being hard on ourselves.

Limits - irony of ironies - bring freedom.

I look forward to hearing what you uncover as you explore an alternative way of looking at limits.