When you begin to trust yourself and your own intuition your boundaries begin to change as well. Things you once accepted in silence no longer feel acceptable. Situations where you constantly had to bend at your own expense begin to feel heavy. In relationships you become increasingly aware of whether you are allowed to be yourself or whether you have to keep adapting in order to preserve the connection.

A Starseed’s sensitivity makes the importance of boundaries especially clear. You sense other people’s emotions, atmospheres and even the smallest changes around you. Another person’s sadness, restlessness or anxiety can easily become part of your own experience if you do not recognize where the other person ends and you begin. Then helping easily turns into carrying, listening turns into responsibility for another person’s wellbeing and compassion turns into forgetting yourself.

Stronger boundaries change this. You begin to understand that it is not your responsibility to save every person, solve every problem or constantly maintain peace around you. You do not have to take everything in simply because you are able to feel deeply. Compassion does not mean allowing others to cross your boundaries, love does not mean constant agreement and kindness does not mean abandoning yourself. One of the hardest things to learn is how to say no without a long explanation.

If you are used to pleasing others setting your own boundaries can feel difficult at first. You have learned to watch other people’s reactions and wonder whether someone will be disappointed in you, become angry or change the way they see you because this time you choose to put yourself first. Your attention can then shift away from what you need and toward how the other person reacts to your boundary. But another person’s disappointment does not make your boundary wrong and their anger does not make your needs unimportant. Someone wanting more from you does not mean that you have to give more.

At this point relationships also begin to reveal their true structure. Some people respect your boundaries without a fight. Others resist them because they benefited from the fact that those boundaries were not there before. Boundaries do not break a healthy connection. They reveal whether the connection can withstand you being fully present in it as a whole person. On the Starseed path learning boundaries is also connected to your own energy. Not every person, situation or environment deserves constant access to it. You have the right to choose where you spend your time, who you share personal things with and where you direct your energy. When you help, when you step back and when you simply say: "This is not mine to carry."

The purpose of boundaries is not to build a wall between you and the world. Their purpose is to create a space where you can meet the world without losing yourself in it. Then giving changes as well. You no longer give because you are afraid of losing someone, you do not help in order to gain approval and you do not stay in a situation simply because leaving would disappoint someone. You give when you want to give, you stay when you want to stay and you leave when you know it is time to leave. There is a freedom in that which does not come from controlling others. It comes from taking responsibility for your own life.

Not everyone will like your changed boundaries and they do not have to. Your task is not to make yourself so easy to deal with that no one ever has to hear the word no. Your task is to learn to live in a way where your yes does not mean no to yourself. Because every boundary you set with self-respect says the same thing: "I am worthy of this love too."