Boundaries as Levels of Access

Article #5 - Boundaries as Levels of Access

Access the podcast format of this article on my Spotify channel here.

July 11, 2024

“Our stories are not meant for everyone.  Hearing them is a privilege, and we should always ask ourselves: ‘Who has earned the right to hear my story?’"

Brené Brown

In the last article, I covered the basic definition of boundaries, what a boundary statement is, and how boundaries help us behave in ways that align with who we want to be and the values we want our lives to espouse.

Part of boundary-setting includes evaluating the access we give others to our mental, emotional, and physical selves.

Boundaries as Levels of Access

As we covered in the last post, you can’t control how someone treats you, but you can control if you will continue to expose yourself to that treatment.

In her book Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are, Lysa Terkeurst writes the following excerpt on the access we give others:

“We must require from people the responsibility necessary to grant the amount of access we allow them to have in our lives. Too much access without the correct responsibility is detrimental. That is the tension we've all been wrestling with in relationships, that we've never quite been able to put our finger on - granting too much access without the correct level of responsibility.

"Think of how much clarity we could have by just asking ourselves these questions:

• Have we required people to be responsible with the amount of access we've granted them?

• Do we have the appropriate consequences in place to help hold them accountable if they violate our boundaries?

“If we've given them level-ten access but they are only willing or capable of level-three responsibility, that's the real source of the problem. The mistake I've made is trying to get the other person to increase their responsibility. And if they refuse, l've just felt so stuck.

“Now, instead of feeling stuck because I can't control the choices of the other person, I take control of reducing the access to the level of responsibility they are capable of. That solution is called a boundary.

“Setting a boundary is being responsible enough to reduce the access we grant to others based on their ability to be responsible with that access. People who are irresponsible with our hearts should not be granted great access to our hearts. And the same is true for all other kinds of access as well - physical, emotional, spiritual, and financial” (2022, pp. 20-21).

How do I Know if Someone Deserves a High or Low Level of Access?

The easiest way to think about this is to consider that people earn higher levels of access to you based on consistent behaviors that demonstrate emotional maturity.  This will look different for everyone, based on what you need to feel emotionally safe.  When working with clients to identify which level of access is appropriate for varying people in their life, I have them make two lists: red flag and green flag behaviors.

The red flag behaviors define actions that are unsafe, unhealthy, or not aligned with that person’s values.  Some common behaviors clients have put in this category are:

• Talks negatively about others when they are not around

• Puts themselves down

• Fails to take accountability for their actions

• Is inconsistent or unreliable

• Makes assumptions or believes they know others’ intentions

• Engages in harmful or destructive behavior, such as drug use

Some green flag behaviors many clients have identified are:

• Is non-judgmental and curious

• Accepts things out of their locus of control

• Focuses on problem-solving rather than problem-seeking

• Respects others’ boundaries

• Holds people accountable in a healthy and appropriate way

• Is willing to be held accountable and takes responsibility for their behavior

How do I Know if a Behavior is a Red or Green Flag?

If you’re struggling to identify behavioral prerequisites for levels of access, educating yourself on the Tenets of Emotional Maturity is a great place to start.  These clearly define healthy and mature behaviors that help us know if someone is a safe person.  If we have experienced a high level of dysfunction in our relationships, it can be challenging to know if a behavior is healthy or not, especially if it feels familiar.  In these situations, patterns that feel familiar (e.g. triangulation, gossiping, negating responsibility) are not indicative of what is healthy.

How do I Maintain Connection with Someone at a Lower Level of Access?

A roadblock my clients and I have encountered when processing the need to move someone to a lower level of access is how to still maintain connection with that person.  This often happens in family relationships.

Choosing to move someone to a lower level of access based on their behavioral patterns doesn't mean you are being "rude" or even "superficial" to share less vulnerable content with them. It means you value your inner reserves and understand the depths of you are only to be handled with care by trustworthy people.

The great news is that if we want to maintain a relationship with someone who has consistently proven with their behavior that they can only be trusted with a low level of access, there are many ways to do this.  It might look like sharing about a movie you recently saw, a recipe you tried and loved, or a funny story about something your pet did.  If they ask questions that you feel are too personal, you can give a vague answer or even express you're not up for discussing that topic. None of this involves sharing the more valuable and vulnerable parts of yourself, yet it allows you to stay in connection with that person. This practice recognizes that you have complete control over the information you disclose and who is entrusted with it.

One therapist explained it to me this way: If you had someone housesit while you were gone, and you came back and the housesitter trashed your house or took some of your items, you wouldn’t give them the keys again and ask them to housesit next time you’re out of town.  Just like you would not entrust this person with access to your physical space and belongings again after they demonstrated they did not have the responsibility to manage them properly, you wouldn’t entrust an emotionally immature person with the most vulnerable and valuable parts of yourself after they have consistently demonstrated a lack of emotional safety.  Your physical possessions at least have a price, but your mental and emotional health is invaluable - how much more then should we be diligent about who has access to these things?

How do I Know What’s Appropriate to Share?

When deciding if you will share something with a person at a lower level of access, some helpful questions to ask are:

• It is important to me that this information is received in a particular way?

• Will I be disappointed if it is not received a certain way?

• Is it important to me that this information stays private between just the two of us?

If the answer to these questions is a yes, that’s a good indicator that the topic is one that is best reserved for people at a higher level of access, because they have proven that they will be supportive, receptive and honor your privacy.

What if I Really Want Someone to be at a Higher Level of Access than They are Capable of Managing Responsibly?

This question inevitably comes up in every session as I process this information with clients. When we deeply desire to connect with someone at a deep level but they have consistently proven that they are not able to meet us in that place with emotional safety, there is a deep sense of grief.

In my own experience, I would often continue to invite someone to a higher level of access than was appropriate in an attempt to deepen the relationship in the way I desired. Part of my own personal work was recognizing that by doing this, I was continuing to expose the vulnerable and valuable parts of myself to unnecessary disappointment and I was doing this to avoid the grief that would come when I took stock of the relationship for what it was and not what I wanted it to be. I was attempting to fight the reality of where the other person was in their emotional maturity, and my emotional well being was the collateral damage.

In order to place this person at an appropriate level of access, first I had to accept the reality that they were not the person I wanted them to be. I had to take accountability for the fact that I was imposing upon them my preferred version of them instead of accepting them for who they were. Then, I had to be open to accepting the grief that accompanied my acceptance of reality.

Using that information, I made a game plan for how I would engage with that person to keep the communication lines open and friendly while still maintaining boundaries on how much access I gave them.

To be candid, the grief about this still comes at times. But my emotional well being has improved drastically, because now I focus my energy on investing in relationships where I feel seen, safe, and loved unconditionally.

This is the beauty of going through this hard process: when we move emotionally immature people to lower levels of access, we have more room to invite safe and healthy people to the higher levels. The result of this is that we begin to experience relational nourishment in ways we once thought were never possible, and life becomes more fulfilling than we could have imagined.

Where Can I Learn More About This Topic?

Lysa Terkeurst wrote the brilliant book Good Boundaries and Goodbyes, and this is an excellent resource on understanding more about boundary setting determining the access we allow people to have to the most valuable parts of ourselves.

Resources

Terkeurst, L. (2022). Good Boundaries and Goodbyes: Loving Others Without Losing the Best of Who You Are. HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc.