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Boundaries
Step Four: Your Family and Other Animals
Jennie Miller and Victoria Lambert
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018
Copyright © Jennie Miller and Victoria Lambert 2018
Jennie Miller and Victoria Lambert asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Ebook Edition © January 2019 ISBN: 9780008324711
Version: 2018-10-18
CONTENTS
STEP FOUR: YOUR FAMILY AND OTHER ANIMALS
Possibly the most challenging section, in this step you will learn how to use boundaries in connection with those who shaped you first: your parents or other caregivers in particular, before gathering the skills you need to bring up your own children and interact with your wider family.
Transactional Analysis: An Overview
Do you often feel you can’t say no? Do you feel spread too thinly between work, emotional relationships and family, and your responsibilities and chores? Perhaps you feel overloaded with to-do lists, promises to friends, financial obligations, or that intangible pressure to succeed in everything you do all at the same time. You may feel frustrated that there is never any time to do those things that really matter to you – whether it is to write a book, spend unpressured time with your loved ones, or just be alone guilt-free. With demands coming from all sides, it is surprisingly easy these days to get buffeted along without ever really feeling in control.
Yet, there is an alternative to living in this twenty-first-century chaos – a way of reframing your own attitude and behaviour so that you can take charge of your life and not allow others undue influence or control. A process which will enable you to improve your quality of life (at work, home and play); to build self-respect; and to lead to a healthier way of being on all levels.
The solution to all this is: boundaries. A complete concept that will allow you to reach past any obstacle and make real change happen in every area of your life.
What are boundaries? In short, these are the decisions we make which govern our own behaviour and the way we interact with others. A sort of personal code which may change with time and circumstance. We’ll explain the concept of boundaries in more depth in the next section but for now hold in mind that a boundary is where you choose to draw a line in the sand in any scenario.
Why do they matter? Because we can’t just follow patterns of behaviour that worked for previous generations as life on this planet has changed beyond recognition in the past thirty years. We are now a 24/7 culture, invisibly connected from our homes to the entire world.
We live in the fast lane, yet few of us have developed strategies to cope with the new problems that have arisen as a result. These issues include burgeoning social media, high-speed and high-turnover lovers, growing workloads in the face of new technology, constantly conflicting opinions on diet and health, and a culture of perfectionism in parenting and relationships. There are familiar problems too which many of us still struggle with: the impact of divorce, personality clashes, the stresses of being caught in the generation gap and career dilemmas.
But there is no doubt that the arrival of the Internet, consumer society, medical advances that are giving us decades of extra life and career expectations have changed life as older generations knew it beyond belief. The way we humans interact with each other has also undergone fundamental shifts, and we believe the way to regain our own equilibrium is to re-examine our lives and behaviour and use fresh boundaries in response
