What are emotional boundaries? Your emotional boundary is setting limits without feeling like you have hurt or disappointed another person and being able to ask for what you want or deserve.




Good boundaries:

Asking without worrying about feeling:

Hurt

Attacked

Disliked

Abandonment threat

Ability to refuse sexual interaction without fearing the other person will be:

Hurt

Angry

Rejected

Likely to abandon or punish you

You may find that saying “no” brings up many different emotions for you.


Below I have included some exercises and information... for whenever you are ready to work on your boundaries.

***Safety Warning***
It is important that you feel safe and secure while working through your PTSD... and if you feel like you are getting too upset doing any of the “exercises” or suggestions by myself or anyone else in this forum, please stop immediately, and call your local crisis hotline or someone you trust if required.

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What have you noticed about yourself from the above statements?

If you have emotional boundaries that are too restrictive, you feel emotionally numb. To others you may seem to be insensitive, unaccepting, and not interested in others. You may avoid reacting or showing your feeling to others and have problems asking for or giving help.

If you have emotional boundaries that are too loose, you may be unable to contain your feelings and you may overreact to yourself or others. You may tell others too much about yourself, may depend too much on others to meet your needs, and may trust too quickly or get into intimate, sexual relationships too fast. You may also agree to do things when you to really want to say “no.” You may also give too much, take too much, and not respect your own or others personal rights.





You have the right to set limits on your physical and emotional space and ask others to respect those limits.
Use the below exercise when enforcing your boundaries... it helps to make sure that your behavior is realistic and will not bring you unneeded criticism.




All references are from, “The PTSD Workbook”, New Harbinger Publications, 2002, authors Mary Beth Williams and Soili Poijula