Setting boundaries isn't just about what you want to keep out. It's about seeing a situation clearly and learning to decide what's truly nourishing for you in a particular context and being able to negotiate with others about that. This class series is for anyone who would like to like to learn to use to set boundaries from a place of self-connection
Is this you?
You want to be generous and kind, yet find that you are giving yourself away. Or perhaps you want to be closer to others and find yourself feeling distant and disconnected regardless of your hope to be close. Or perhaps you find yourself hanging out for toxic interactions wishing you could rely on yourself to set a boundary.
What's it all about?
Learning to set boundaries with yourself and others helps you create a life that is balanced and nourishing. From the framework and consciousness of Mindful Compassionate Dialogue (MCD), a life giving boundary means having clarity about what meets needs and what doesn’t relative to incoming contact and expression – physical, verbal, emotional, mental, & energetic. In sum, it means discerning the level of connectedness you would like in any given interaction and the needs you would like to meet. Such clarity allows you to consciously welcome more contact and/or expression or consciously shift the level of contact and/or expression.
How it works?
For each class we will begin with ten minutes of guided meditation. I will present a particular concept and skill. There will be an opportunity for questions or requests. Then you will practice the skill in a short structured exercise in either pairs or a small group or within the whole group. Exercises can be modifed to give you more or less challenge depending on your learning edge. You may also engage in role plays. There will be an opportunity for debrief and questions after each exercise.
You will receive a detailed handout as a part of the class that you will need to have with you for each class.
Topics for the series:
Introduction to Boundaries
An essential part of setting boundaries is being aware of and honoring your own needs. The series will begin with exercises to teach you how to stay grounded in yourself in difficult interactions.
You will also learn about six different types of boundaries and work with examples for each. In structured exercises you will have an opportunity to study how you set boundaries and organize priorities. Specifically you will have an opportunity to notice how you may have systematically excluded certain needs from being met while others are tended to regularly.
Evaluating Boundaries
You will learn tools to evaluate the boundary that will best meet your needs and the needs of others in a variety of relationships such as with yourself, work, school, family, friends, and intimate partnership. You will then practice ways to set the boundaries you want in those relationships.
Boundaries and Power
You will study power dynamics in experiential exercises. You will have the opportunity to study how you engage in power over or power under and make distinctions about how to maintain equitable power (power with) in personal relationships, hiearchies at work, and in community.
Boundaries and Family of Origin
You will identify boundaries that you learned as a reaction to difficulties in your past and what it looks like to create boundaries that really meet your needs today. This will mean taking some time to reflect on patterns in your family of origin and patterns in your past relationships. You will have the opportunity to study and practice compassion for how old patterns of boundary setting met needs when you first learned them and how they are costing needs now.
Repairing Boundary Violations
Repairing boundary violations can happen in a variety of ways. You will practice offering and asking for repair in relationships in which you want to maintain healthy intimacy and those in which you want to maintain healthy distance. You have a chance to practice staying in MCD consciousness while sharing at a level and in a way that is in alignment with boundary you want to maintain.
Boundaries and Life Decisions
Boundaries isn't just about specific interactions, it's also about creating structures that support you and your loved ones in living from your deepest values. You will have a chance to study the structures in your life and how they are meeting and not meeting your needs. You will have a chance see how core beliefs and reactive habbits influence your decisions and how you can ground in a sense of agency in your life.
Need more information before deciding whether or not to join? Send an email with your questions or concerns to: info@wiseheartpdx.org
LaShelle Lowe-Chardé is passionate about helping people express their deepest values in their relationships and creating clarity and connection with self and others.
She began her professional career with a master’s degree in school psychology. In addition to nine years in public schools, she spent several years facilitating group healing work for adolescent youth labeled “at-risk”. During that same time she led leadership and teamwork trainings for businesses and organizations around Portland, Oregon.
Along the way she found Compassionate/Nonviolent Communication (NVC) and began training with Marshall Rosenberg and other internationally known NVC trainers. She immediately knew that Compassionate Communication was the missing piece. It offers a deep and broad yet simple understanding of human nature along with a concrete set of tools to help us act and live from a place of clarity and compassion. For LaShelle, Compassionate Communication is the hands and feet of spirituality. In 2006, she was certified as a NVC trainer.
In addition to certification in Nonviolent Communication, she has completed a three year training in Hakomi - Body Centered Therapy and introductory trainings in Emotionally Focused Therapy and with the Gottman Institute.
In 2004, she founded her business, Wise Heart (www.wiseheartpdx.org). Since that time she has served as a trainer, private coach, and mentor for the learning and practice of Compassionate Communication and mindfulness. LaShelle teaches locally as well as through video conferencing online. She has offerings for couples, women, and the general public in addition to trainings for local nonprofit organizations. Her offerings focus on combining NVC with mindfulness and a subtle understanding of reactivity and relationship skills.