To Maintain Emotional Balance, Recognize 6 Types Of Personal Boundaries

JAKARTA – Personal boundaries are personal boundaries. These boundaries are important for mental health and healthy relationships with others.

A study conducted in 2019 by a team of researchers from the Department of Psychology, Johannes Gutenberg-Universitat Mainz, Meinz, Germany found that both physical and emotional boundaries affect comfort.

The study used a distance of 40-250 centimeters to test comfort when interacting with other people, be it close people or strangers.

Interaction with the closest person does not cause discomfort when the instruction is the shortest distance. However, when interacting with strangers will feel uncomfortable at a certain distance.

Kurt Lewin in the psychological concept concluded from field studies that human behavior in relation to their environment is related to approach or avoidance which is measured by distance vector. These vectors are bound to individual perceptions to form distances in the form of different psychological fields or spaces.

Reported by PsychCentral, Wednesday, September 8, building personal boundaries needs to be done even though this is not easy. The goal is to balance the personal and external realms or outside the self.

To stay comfortable in interacting with others, there are 6 types of personal boundaries. Among them are physical limitations, emotional limitations, time limits, sexual limitations, intellectual limitations, and financial limitations.

Physical limitations

Physical limitations include personal needs related to how comfortable touch is, body needs related to food, drink, and when to rest. In the most obvious aspect, physical boundaries are built through agreement or consent.

The touch or physical distance between partners and coworkers is certainly different. Then, for physical needs internally, a person needs healthy food intake, hydrated enough, and adequate rest.

Emotional boundaries

Emotional boundaries are about appreciating and respecting feelings and energies. Building emotional boundaries means recognizing how much emotional energy you are capable of managing. Including when to share it and when to limit it.

Furthermore, emotional boundaries are about validating the other person's feelings and making sure you respect the other person's ability to receive emotional information.

Time limit

Since time is very valuable, it is important that one fills it appropriately. Setting time limits is very important, including how to divide time between matters at work, home, and social.

Having a time limit means that one understands priorities, which ones need to be prioritized and how much time to spend on filling them.

Sexual restrictions

Sexual boundaries include consent, respect, understanding of preferences and desires, and privacy. In short, consent includes discussing satisfaction, requests to use condoms, contraception, saying no to things that you don't like or hurt you, and protecting the privacy of others.

According to marriage and family therapist, Elizabeth Earnshaw, LMFT., these boundaries are important to avoid engaging in unwanted sexual acts.

Intellectual limitations

Earnshaw continued, intellectual limits refer to your thoughts, ideas, and curiosity. Healthy intellectual boundaries include respect for the ideas of others. Including what can be shared and what should not be violated.

Financial or material limitations

The last type of personal boundaries are material boundaries that refer to your belongings and possessions such as your house, vehicle, clothing, jewelry, furniture, and money. It is important to have sound financial and material boundaries to understand what you can and cannot share.

Plus, you need to understand the boundaries of how you want to be treated by others. Having material boundaries also helps prevent hate from being treated in a healthy way.