When you expose a defenceless side of you, many will begin to expect more from you or try to take more than what you are willing to give.

As a result you begin to compromise your well-being.

SIGNS THAT YOU ARE LACKING BOUNDARIES FOR YOURSELF

When you don’t set boundaries, many times you begin to exhibit avoidance behaviours:

• Ghost certain people or groups. You cease all communication without any sort of reasoning.
• Make excuses to avoid telling certain people what you feel or that you don’t have the time to be in their company.
• Isolate yourself in certain situations by keeping yourself ‘busy’ or occupied.
• Anxiety comes from a place of worry that you have let others down; therefore, you make partial eye contact and give little verbal cues.

• Frustration towards your friends and family. You may lash out those that are close to you because you are avoiding confronting those that drain you.

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO SET BOUNDARIES

In short, it’s good for your subjective well-being. By setting boundaries, you’re sending out a strong message about how you value and honour yourself. You are protecting your energy from leaking and keeping yourself from feeling drained.

When you don’t set boundaries or set loose ones, you become an open ground for every type of situation and people to come onto ‘your land’ and violate your space. Having boundaries will help attract more of what you’re aligned with and restrict that of which appears toxic to you.

Think of it this way: the boundaries that you set for yourself will give you the necessary conditions to grow and to flourish by keeping out ‘foreign invaders’ that may contribute towards stunning your growth.

TYPES OF BOUNDARIES

It’s important to set these five types of boundaries: emotional, physical, cognitive and time.

• Emotional boundaries are about separating your feelings, moods and attitudes from that of others. In other words, not letting others emotions dictate your feelings.

• Physical boundaries allow you to communicate what level of physical closeness you are comfortable with and what you feel is inappropriate.

• Cognitive boundaries are for your thoughts so they don’t fill you up with worries and fears.

• Time boundaries allow you prioritize your schedule based on your needs before taking others into consideration.

• Professional boundaries foster healthy relationships in the work place by establishing clarity and trust.

HOW TO SET BOUNDARIES

Setting boundaries isn’t as challenging as it may appear to be as long as you are clear on how you always want to feel in each moment. Follow these four simple steps to set effective and self defining boundaries for yourself:

• Write down three feelings that you constantly want to feel in every moment of each day

• List certain experiences you’ve recently had where you feel that your level of well-being declined. Do you see a pattern in what types of boundaries that you need to become better at setting? Are they mostly physical? Emotional? Cognitive? Time? Professional?

• Write down a script for the three main types of situations where you notice your lack of boundaries are set. For example, if you are noticing that certain people keep taking up your time, you can say; ‘Thanks for the chat, but I need to get back to (the task that you are engaged in).

• Create an if/then strategy. Outline possible responses that you may receive in refute of your boundaries.

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B.F. SKINNER AND OPERANT LEARNING Skinner was an American behavioural psychologist. He was interested in learning more about how the consequences of people’s actions influenced their behaviours. This later became known as operant conditioning – a type of learning where rewards and punishments are used to acknowledge certain behaviours. Skinner invented the ‘Skinner box,’ an enclosed apparatus with a key or a lever that an animal could press to obtain food or some type of reinforcement. There was also a device that recorded each response provided by the animal. Over time the animal (a pigeon in this case) learned that by pulling the lever, they would be rewarded with food. Later, Skinner incorporated green and red lights into his experiment. When the lever was pulled as the green light flashed the animal would be rewarded with food. When the lever was pulled when the red light flashed, the animal was punished with an electrical shock. Over time the animal learned to avoid pressing the lever when the light was red. Through this experiment, Skinner learned that specific consequences are associated with voluntary behaviours in natural settings. This meant that rewards increased a behaviour and punishments decreased a behaviour.

REINFORCEMENT SCHEDULES

Skinner went on to discover that the timing and frequency of reinforcements influenced how new behaviours were learned and old behaviours were modified. There are four schedules of partial reinforcements that impact the operant conditioning process.

1. Fixed-ratio schedules – Responses are reinforced only after a certain number of responses have occurred, i.e. receiving a gold star after turning in homework for five days in a row.
2. Fixed-interval schedules – Responses occur after a certain amount of time has passed, i.e. cleaning your room every Friday because you know you will receive a present.
3. Variable-ratio schedules – Reinforcing a behaviour after a varied amount of responses. This keeps you motivated, i.e. your teacher rewarding your class with pizza on any given day for consistent positive work habits. (unpredictable). Gambling is another good example.
4. Variable-interval schedules – Providing reinforcement after an unpredictable amount of time has passed, i.e. being given a treat after an unpredictable amount of time has passed between you doing something nice for someone at work/school.

UNDERSTANDING THE REWARD CENTER OF YOUR BRAIN

There are ‘reward circuits’ at the top of your brain stem called the ventral tegmental area (VTA) comprising of the amygdala and the nucleus accumbens it’s where dopamine (a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and rewards) communicates with dopamine producing neurons. The dopamine is later transported to areas of your brain through two dopamine pathways: mesolimbic and mesocortical. In the 1950’s it was recognized that dopamine neurons are activated in your brain when it is exposed to pleasure and rewards. This is why certain actions such as: eating certain types of foods, ingesting certain drugs, sex and gambling give you a ‘feel good’ experience.

WHY SOCIAL MEDIA IS DESIGNED THE WAY IT IS

Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter all may be used for different purposes, but they are designed with four things in mind: trigger, action, attention and investment.

• Trigger – a human need for everyone is to belong. In other words, you crave acceptance – well, all do. Social media creates a community where you can easily be recognized.
• Action – you go on social media to share something, or to see what others are doing.
• Attention – you are rewarded with likes, comments and follows, your attention is now captured.
• Investment – the more you spend time and money, the more market research social media outlets acquire. Social media follows a variable-ratio schedule similar to slot machines. You receive likes, follows, comments and DMs at random times and the swipe down feature to refresh acts like the lever to pull on slot machines. Having an AHA moment now?

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