Book Review || Setting Boundaries by Dr Rebecca Ray

Monday, August 16, 2021

 


Setting Boundaries
Dr Rebecca Ray
29th June 2021

This was actually a joy to read, even though it was also calling me out on all of my *cough* less-than-helpful *cough* behaviours and mindsets. It gave me the perspective I needed to just step back and realise that I was allowing myself to be walked on, and then getting mad about it later, among other things. 

Setting boundaries is something that I have generally always been interested in, as I just don't feel like the average person is given much help in knowing how to do these things. It's only been in recent years, even, that I've seen individuals who have a good twenty or thirty years on me notice that their relationships with their parents have been intensely warped due to non-existent or extremely permeable boundaries: this is just not something that most people know innately how to do.

This book arrived at a time when I was really suffering with some difficulties with my neighbours, as well as wondering if a friendship of mine had reached its natural end (though that natural end came with some resentment, at least on my part). Reading this book brought home to me, once again, that good boundaries start with me, rather than some outside force, or expecting people to just know innately what my needs are and meet them using some kind of intense telepathy (honestly, when I think about it, people I know having intense telepathy skillz actually freaks me out a whole lot - better to just set the boundaries and monitor them myself...)

I felt a bit nervous that Dr Ray was going to make this into a gimmick, but, aside from a couple of naming techniques which I found a bit cheesy (but have to acknowledge that it makes it easier to remember and understand certain concepts), everything felt down-to-earth, logical, and, best of all, welcoming. I didn't feel like I was being judged for not having good boundaries or not knowing how to enforce them - Dr Ray draws on years of experience as a clinical psychologist, but also as a boundary-setter herself, and she doesn't talk down to the reader or cloak everything in useless jargon - it's all straightforward and helpful.

Basically, I really enjoyed reading this one, and will be returning to it a lot, I think.


10/10 boundaries in place.

{I received a review copy of this book from Pan Macmillan in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and feelings are my own. Thank you!!}

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