BOUNDARIES & MONEY

This is a journey of stepping out of our comfort zones, opening new relationships, removing barriers in our community and unlocking guarded parts of our hearts. It might feel odd to talk about boundaries now. But we have found there’s a vital difference between societal barriers and healthy relational boundaries. Let’s talk about some of them this month.

CODEPENDENCY

There are a lot of people out there like me, Chris, whose early life experiences of relationship shaped us to be codependent. We can be super compassionate, responsible, and quick to create human connections. But there’s a tragic confusion of boundaries just beneath the surface that can get us into painful tangles with those we want to love and be loved by. 

When we were little, there was enough chaos in the lives of our caretakers that they weren’t able to see—or help us recognize—our own needs. Instead, we learned how to become caretakers in our homes at a very early age, often tangibly or emotionally supporting our own caretakers. This is where the boundaries and roles first went askew. Without really being aware of it, we learned that making sure everyone else was okay . . . was the best way to make sure we would be okay. Does this sound familiar to you?

Unlike with other coping mechanisms young people learn (aggression, withdrawing, addiction, self-harming, and risky behavior), codependent kids like us gained trust and praise from adults as we grew up. We can sense another person’s need, or what a group requires, before it’s named. We’re on it!  This is a relief to many people around us: they can lean back a little, do less. But we end up taking on too much—both tasks and an emotional sense of responsibility for others. We don’t have healthy clarity about different peoples’ roles. 

We often don’t know it’s too much (we think we’re fine, since we have a hard time knowing what we need) until it’s too late. When accompanying someone in great need (like our releasing friends), maybe we’ve done too much of their work for them. We can feel burnt out, suddenly resentful, and increasingly controlling—not trusting that others will do their part.

A tragic cycle begins. This kind of energy understandably leads those around us to back away. Teamwork collapses. We become lone rangers. This is when we are the most vulnerable: left to only our own judgment, unsupported, desperate to fix situations beyond our control, we can make really bad decisions.

Sadly, our unconscious hope is that the person we are caretaking will love us in return and meet our needs (remember, this pattern was set as kids, hoping to stabilize some of our own caregivers). We can become enmeshed with our friend who’s now become a personal rescue project. We can get into a mix of controlling others and situations while also being manipulated by people who have their own unhealthy relational patterns.

This is often what’s happened when something’s gone off track with our OPOP teams: one person has derailed, and the rest of the team has backed away.

The solution is not to point fingers or diagnose each other. The solution is to come back together as a team. The remedy is to reclaim our shared roles and responsibilities. In these situations, please: lean back in. Let this team member know you all see their big heart and their struggle, and that they don’t have to carry the load alone. Healthy boundaries are much easier when there is balance and shared belonging.

These struggling team members, like me, can step back from poor boundary patterns when we have a team around us, holding us; each of us holding our roles and our releasing friend together.

STICK TOGETHER

Whether there are  codependent patterns in your team makeup or not, sticking together is the solution to just about any challenge you’ll face. Don’t split up. Don’t go rogue. Also, don’t let some members drift from participation. Those are just different coping mechanisms when old wounds come up:
fight (go into overdrive),
flight (back away, disengage),
or freeze (go silent, do nothing).
So what do we do when our wounds feel exposed? We stay. We stick together. We re-learn trust. We face it and name it and feel it.

This is the foundation for trauma repair.  “I welcome everything that comes to me in this moment, because I trust it can be part of my healing.” (from the Welcoming Prayer.)

NO SECRETS FROM THE TEAM

If the stuff above is true for some of you reading—whether you’re on the church team or releasing from prison —there’s no shame. I learned these boundaries the hard way. A critical part of ensuring there’s healthy openness and no shame within the team is drawing a line: no secrets. When we are asked to keep secrets “the others wouldn’t understand” it is a red flag, friends. 

If we can’t loop the rest of the team in about something, that should tell us something is off. Take the risk: come clean with your team. Bring it to the table and help everyone understand. We are healing together.

CONFIDENTIALITY

We went over this in your Kickoff Orientation, but just a reminder as we’re talking boundaries: we only share things outside the team about our releasing friend with their permission. Yes, even with our spouses. This includes our releasing friend’s last name. (We’ve had worried spouses Google names, see only the worst about them in courtroom print, and spread waves of panic and gossip. That’s bad boundaries. It damages trust all around.)

If you want to process with others, talk about what you’re learning–what’s happening inside you, what the larger story is, what your team is sharing with the wider community, what kind of questions your team is exploring, and what new questions you want to ask of others. Tell them about this journey, and how they can get started themselves.

NO ONE WANTS TO FEEL USED

Our incarcerated friends are wary of folks on the outside using them for a feel-good project, an ego boost, a story to tell—then leaving them hanging when the relationship is no longer convenient. Our released friends warn us of how common it is inside prison for folks to tell pen pals what they want to hear in order to get money on their books or have a proxy or personal secretary doing their bidding on the outside.

None of us signed up for this journey with bad intentions, but there are longstanding patterns of using people, on both sides. We want to be aware of these and avoid temptations like this taking  us off course. Healthy boundaries are part of this ongoing art of building trusting relationships.

NO SWITCHBOARDING

That said, we on the outside aren’t a switchboard to relay messages, texts, social media posts to people on the outside, nor to relay communication to others in prison. That’s a messy role. We are here to focus on our relationships with each other, not be proxies or relayers. If there’s a housing lead, reentry resource, a family or loved one for the team to reach out to together, wonderful. Reentry planning is the goal.