Having boundaries is very important. We need to communicate to people around us what we find acceptable and what we don't.
But some people weaponize boundaries. They use boundaries as means of torturing everyone around them, humiliating, shaming. They abuse the very concept of boundary in order to inflict pain and hurt and discomfort and embarrassment on everyone around them.
And this is the topic of today's video. Are you Boundaries or are you just an A-WOL? Five signs.
Boundaries are on a spectrum. You could have healthy boundaries, which as I said, is just a mode of communicating or communicating wishes to others, or you could have unhealthy boundaries.
And today we are going to focus on unhealthy boundaries.
How can we tell if someone is abusing his or her boundaries in order to hurt other people to discomfort them, to damage them somehow, to demean them or shame them or debase them or criticize them or how can we tell if someone leverages boundaries weaponizes boundaries there are five signs.
Number one, the boundaries are gratuitously offensive.
In other words, the boundaries are communicated in a way which offends other people, grates on their sensitivities, harps on their vulnerabilities, hurts them, pains them.
Gratuitously offensive boundaries are weaponized boundaries.
Number two, these boundaries are arbitrary and they're shifting. This is known as identity diffusion or identity disturbance.
Today there is this boundary, tomorrow there's a boundary which is the exact opposite. Contradictory boundaries, mutually exclusive boundaries abound and flourish and proliferate with such people.
You can never tell if you are acting rightly or wrongly with them. You can never tell if you're about to trigger them and provoke them into an aggressive display or whether you're complying with their wishes, however communicated.
So arbitrary and shifting boundaries.
Number three, aggressive and sadistically punitive boundaries.
Boundaries which can be implemented only at your expense, only if you were to sacrifice your own self-interest, your own self-love, your own self-preservation, your own well-being, your own mental health, boundaries which tax you, boundaries which minimize you, boundaries which diminish you, boundaries which hurt you and offend you.
These kind of boundaries are sadistic, punitive, and they are the manifestation and expression of aggression.
In other words, when aggression is externalized in the form of boundaries. Aggression could be of course passive aggressive. Aggression could be expressed in a covert way.
People who are fragile, they become hypervigilant, they become paranoid.
And then the boundary is obsessive-compulsive. The boundary becomes a form of nagging, a form of testing, a form of attempted behavior modification, a form of brainwashing and entraining.
So that's an unhealthy boundary.
Next, when the boundary is grandiose, when it reflects an underlying fantasy which is untethered to reality, far divorced from reality.
And you're supposed to comply with these boundaries. You're supposed to never challenge the fantasy or the delusion, never expose the falsity behind it all, never insist on being grounded and realistic.
Because if you do, you are breaching the boundaries.
These are unhealthy boundaries.
And the last sign is when the boundaries are not communicated, non-communicative boundaries.
I call it coercive telepathy. There is an expectation of telepathy.
You're supposed to read the other person's mind. You're supposed to comply with his expectations or her expectations when there has been no communication of the expectations.
In an environment where communication is lacking or disrupted or cryptic, enigmatic, non-decipherable, in this kind of environment, boundaries are used as weapons. They're alluded to, you're expected to divine them somehow, to guess, guess the boundary.
But they're there just to trip you up. You're being set up for failure in such an environment.
So these are the five signs of unhealthy boundaries.
They are gratuitously offensive, weaponized.
They're arbitrary and shifting, reflecting an uncertain, diffuse, disturbed identity. They are aggressive, they are sadistic, punitive, or they are passive aggressive and covert.
And then there's hypervigilance and paranoia.
They are grandiose. They reflect an underlying fantasy, which has nothing to do with reality. And they're not communicated properly or not at all. Forcing you to guess the boundary or to second guess the boundary, or to somehow penetrate the other person's mind and read it, and then to comply with whatever that person is thinking. Coercive telepathy.
If these five signs exist, then we are not dealing with a boundary. We are dealing with a sadistic implement whose sole intention is to torture you, diminish you, put you in your place, render you submissive, or else coerce you into a shared fantasy, a cult in effect.
Let us start by making a distinction between people with narcissistic personality disorder and people with a narcissistic style.
They are not the same.
The question of spectrum or variability is very important here.
Because when we discuss boundaries, some people impose boundaries, and it is a sign of mental health, and some people impose boundaries, and it is a sign of incipient or latent sadism, actually.
So there's a spectrum here.
And similarly, there's a question of spectrum in mental health disorders and traits.
This is intimately connected to the topic of today's video.
Let me clarify something: narcissistic personality disorder is like pregnancy either you have it or you don't, last time I checked. There's not such thing as a spectrum of narcissistic personality disorder.
However, the traits of pathological narcissism, they are known as domain traits. These are on a spectrum.
How antagonistic the person is. Lack of empathy. Anhedonia, in other words, obsessive-compulsive behaviors. All these are on a spectrum.
But traits are not the same as the disorder. You could have many of these traits and not be diagnosed as a narcissist.
So the numbers of actual narcissists, people diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder or people who could have been diagnosed had they attended therapy. These numbers are very low.
The ignorant statements, the nonsensical statements that one in six people are narcissists, well, they are just that. Ignorant nonsense. The numbers are very low.
And there is a spectrum of traits, some of which are common to narcissism and many other mental health disorders.
For example, grandiosity is common to narcissism, antisocial personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder, paranoid personality disorder, all these always share the trait of grandiosity and grandiosity is indeed on a spectrum.
Remember this, traits are on a spectrum, disorders are not, disorders are also not gender specific. There is no psychodynamic or psychological difference or clinical difference between a male narcissist and a female narcissist.
Self-styled experts online are corrupting the profession out of profound ignorance. And I'm referring to self-styled experts with and without academic degrees.
So we make a distinction between subclinical versus clinical in other words people who can be diagnosed and they are clinically diagnosable and people who cannot be diagnosed, then they are subclinical.
And we make a distinction between disorder and style.
For example, malignant narcissist. A malignant narcissist is a person who can be diagnosed, is diagnosed with narcissism, narcissistic personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, psychopathy, and sadism.
But someone with a dark tetrad personality is someone who has narcissistic traits but cannot be diagnosed as a narcissist. Has psychopathic traits but cannot be diagnosed as a psychopath. Has sadistic traits but cannot be diagnosed with sadism. And he's also Machiavellian, which is common to many mental health disorders.
So when we discuss behaviors and traits, we can definitely introduce the idea of spectrum.
When we discuss diagnosis, when we discuss disorders, when we discuss mental illness, there is no spectrum. Either there is a diagnosis or there isn't. It's a binary state.
The situation is similar with boundaries.