Allison Bottke - Setting Boundaries® with Negative Thoughts and Painful Memories: How to Stop Hoarding Your Hurts

I encourage you to make a copy of this page and post it where you will see it regularly. The beauty of SANITY is that anyone can follow the steps regardless of the situation. Posting the list where others can also see it may even open the door to discussions about setting boundaries in our thought life and taking God-honoring control of our thoughts and memories. For example, a husband facing a challenge on his job, a child dealing with a bully at school, or a roommate struggling in her relationship with a drug-addicted boyfriend can all use the tools of SANITY to make better choices that can bring about healthy change in their lives.

Six Steps to SANITY

S Stop Hoarding Your Hurts

A Assemble Supportive People

N Nip Excuses in the Bud

I Implement a Plan of Action

T Trust the Voice of the Spirit

Y Yield Everything to God

Setting Boundaries with Your Adult Children

Setting Boundaries with Your Aging Parents

Setting Boundaries with Difficult People

Setting Boundaries with Food

Setting Boundaries for Women

A Young Womans Guide to Setting Boundaries

Other Allison Bottke Books

God Answer PrayersMilitary Edition

One Minute Prayers for Your Adult Children

The Setting Boundaries books have been born out of my own experience. Driven by sheer necessity, I walked the walk that led me to write these books.

The first book in the series was a result of the pain I endured parenting my adult son, Christopher. Time after timethinking I was helping himI bailed him out of trouble. The truth was, I was merely enabling my son to continue his inappropriate behavior. My own negative thoughts and painful memories drove me to make unhealthy parenting choices. Choices that had their roots in my unhealthy and often nonexistent boundaries.

Plus, my struggle to say no, combined with my control-freak tendency to enable, was taking a toll on other areas of my life. I was driving myself crazy trying to keep up with the many other demands on my life. Life simply wasnt workingat all.

But learning from that sad experience, I developed the SANITY Steps. They helped me gain control of my life and acquire a deeper understanding of Gods plan and purpose for me. As readers of my earlier Setting Boundaries books have implemented these steps, they, too, have been helped in getting their lives back on track. And Im confident youll be among that number as you allow these steps to guide you in implementing the healthy boundaries you need for your thought life.

In those early days with Christopher, I was living out the well-known definition of insanity: I was repeating the same behavior and expecting different results. I now call that running on the gerbil wheel of insanity. Youve seen those wheels that allow pet gerbils and hamsters to run long and fast but take them nowhere. Thats essentially what the person without boundaries is doing: running, hoping, praying, waiting for change to happen, and expecting a new result from the same old tactics, but never employing the steps necessary for good change to occur. It took me awhile, but eventually I made the move Im now asking you to make: I invite you to move off the gerbil wheel of insanity into the world of sanity by following the six SANITY steps.

Think about your present situation. Surely its not a new set of circumstances. Im guessing youve been on that gerbil wheel for a while, and nothing has worked. Youve been ruminating on the same negative thoughts, or youve been repeating the same behaviorprompted by old tapesand expecting different results, only to be disappointed again and again. Perhaps youre experiencing difficulties in your relationships with those people closest to youa common occurrence when we find ourselves responding to others from emotional places of complex feelings rather than from rational places of clear thinking.

What Exactly is SANITY?

SANITY is what we gain when we shift our perspective, when we stop focusing on the painful situations and challenging circumstances of life and instead begin to focus on changing our own heart attitudes and the behaviors those attitudes prompt. SANITY comes when we make the heartfelt commitment to stop allowing our dysfunctional thoughts to destroy our peace of mind. SANITY comes when we begin to understand how much God loves us, that He has a plan and purpose for us, and that He wants to meet our every need in healthy, satisfying ways like nothing and no one else can.

SANITY is living in the peace that comes when we dig ourselves out from under the heavy weight of emotional burdens and confidently put our trust in God. In Philippians 4:6-7, God calls us to not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. And this instructionlike all Gods commandsis for our own good.

The Heart of SANITY

The goal of SANITY is to help us protect and nurture our heartsthe center of all the vital activities of body, soul, and spirit; of our personality; and of our character. In our heart, we hide Gods words of truth (Psalm 119:11), and our heart is where the Lord dwells. The apostle Paul put it this way: I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me . The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me (Galatians 2:20, emphasis added).

Furthermore, the New Testament teaches that no man or woman is able to lead a life that pleases God apart from Jesus Christ because of the evil and treachery that naturally exist in the heart. Remember this key Scripture: Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it (Proverbs 4:23).

We need a heart that is both strengthened and softened by God, a heart filled with the Spirit. And God promises to provide exactly that kind of heart: I will give them singleness of heart and put a new spirit within them. I will take away their stony, stubborn heart and give them a tender, responsive heart (Ezekiel 11:19 NLT ).

Only with such a heart can we fulfill our highest calling as Christians, that of being in a heart-relationship to Jesus. Only then can we begin to sort out how to live an obedient life in this deeply painful, immensely precarious, and often seemingly haphazard world. Only then can we accept the senseless and be able to trust that God is at work always in all ways.

How to Practice SANITY

Its important to keep in proper perspective any man-made program we may follow no matter how spiritually sound it may be.

Furthermore, finding SANITY isnt the end result, but a means to an endwith the end being a more intimate heart-relationship with Jesus Christ and a passionate desire to read His Word and understand His truth, a desire that will continue growing for life.

This fundamental truth needs to be rooted in the deepest part of our heart: we were created for one basic purposeto love and be loved by God.

Healthy boundaries do not develop in a vacuum or in isolation. They develop as we developand we develop as we grow in the character of Christ, acknowledging Gods love and sovereignty, and depending on His sustaining grace, mercy, and forgiveness. This kind of healthy dependence doesnt happen overnightit takes time to develop.

Take time. Remember we have all the time there is. The majority of us waste time and want to encroach on eternity. Oh well, I will think about these things when I have time. The only time you will have is the day after you are dead, and that will be eternity. An hour, or half an hour, of daily attention to and meditation on our own spiritual life is the secret of progress.