What Are Signs of Unhealthy Boundaries?

 

  • The family of origin is allowed to negatively  affect your new family
  • You play second fiddle to someone or something else; you feel like you get the ‘leftovers’
  • An adult who doesn’t stand on their own financially
  • An adult who is a perpetual child
  • Triangulation instead of one-to-one communication
  • A child is overly responsible for his/her parents
  • An individual is overly responsible for another person
  • Working too much overtime
  • Taking work-related stress home
  • Expecting too much of  work
  • Conflicts with authority or the law
  • Trying to change or control other people
  • Misplaced priorities
  • Minimizing stress caused by others
  • Inability to delay gratification
  • Inability to follow-through
  • Goal-setting that is not value-driven
  • Isolating from friends, family, or the world
  • Non-stop talk; dominating a conversation
  • Not owning one’s own behavior or consequences
  • Unrealistic or grandiose expectations of ourselves or others
  • Excessive fear, anger, anxiety, passivity, or over-involvement
  • Making decisions for people who should be making their own decisions
  • Frequent phone calling, tracking another, phoning another at unwanted times of the day or night
  • Out-of-control eating, drinking, spending, use of time; drug use; or inappropriate sexual activity

For more details visit:
Boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud & Dr. John Townsend, ISBN 0-310-58590-2
“Boundaries define everything from football fields to nation-states, yet our culture has pretended it could violate boundaries in human relationships without serious consequences.”

Cal Thomas Syndicated Columnist
Boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud & Dr. John Townsend   ISBN 0-310-58590-2
Where are you?

Make it a practice in your family to have every member promise to keep each other informed of your whereabouts. This includes parents! This means telling someone:  where you’ll be, who you’ll be with, how  you can be reached, and when you will return.

Healthy Communities/Healthy Youth Berks County
Building Assets, Volume 4, Issue 7, July 2004

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