Home » Posts tagged 'boundaries' (Page 2)
Those voices in your head
that say “You’re no good,
– you aren’t doing enough,
– why even try?”
Don’t let them in.
They are door-to-door salesman
standing on your front step
banging on the door
ringing the doorbell.
They aren’t your friends.
Those people,
or those thoughts.
Don’t let them in.
Notice them, through the window,
through the peephole
and say “Go away!
I’m not buying what you are selling!”
People have a habit of coming up to me and telling me the most amazing things. These are really deep, dark, personal things that are very private. I’ve taken classes on how to deal with this because it happened so often. I believe that since people are handing me very heavy stories, it is important that I learn how to receive them and carry them in a way that is safe for me. I believe it is also important to make sure that I handle what they have had to say in a way that is respectful to them. There are many ways to do this incorrectly.
I’m sure all of us have had the experience of when we say something really private and personal to someone that they will say something insensitive such as “Oh something worse happened to me,” or “Oh, it’ll get better,” or “It’s not that bad.” It is important not to diminish a person or minimize their pain. But it is also important not to attempt to fix them. Sometimes (often) the most healing thing you can do is simply to listen.
I know several people who have gone on to become professional counselors because the same thing happens to them. They get paid to listen to people tell their secrets and fears. I feel that to turn such a private and personal and beautiful experience into a transaction cheapens it. I believe that it is exactly the same as the difference between making love and being a prostitute. It has turned a very private and intimate experience between two people into a mechanical thing that has money involved.
Perhaps the answer is that people need to all be trained how to talk honestly, and how to listen with open hearts. We need to share with each other. The relationship needs to be two-sided, equal. And then people need healthy places to share.
Sharing with the bank teller or the store clerk isn’t healthy or equal. The employee is trapped there and is not allowed to share how she is feeling. They are not trained in this either. There need to be meeting areas where people can gather and speak on equal ground.
If somebody comes up to you and asks for $20 and you give it to them and it’s not a hardship for you, then everything is okay. They aren’t borrowing it – they just want $20.
But what happens when they come up to you the next day and ask for another $20? Do you give it to them? If you do and it’s not a problem, then again everything is okay.
But what about the next day
and the next day
and the next day?
If they keep asking you for money and you keep giving it to them you might start to feel resentful. You might think “I really don’t have this kind of money to give away. Why does this person keep asking me for money?”
Really the question is – why do you keep giving it to them if there’s a problem?
This isn’t about money, but money is a good way to get into this idea. Money represents energy. Someone can’t take something from you without your permission. Someone can’t take advantage of you without you letting them do it.
If there’s a coworker who is constantly shirking at work and you constantly have to pick up her slack, then that’s your problem, not her problem. She is a genius. She figured out how to get paid to do half her job. Meanwhile, you’re doing twice the amount of work for the same pay.
If you feel put upon and upset and hurt by this, then that is all about you not establishing safe boundaries for yourself. Time to say no, and mean it. The other person will push you and test you – this is normal. Keep saying no.
Why do we so often care about not hurting other people’s feelings, while feeling hurt and upset ourselves? Time to change things. We don’t need to turn this so far around that we aren’t considerate of how others think and feel, but we do need to factor in how we think and feel. It isn’t fair if feelings aren’t equal.
One thing that is very healing is reconciling. It is about balancing the accounts in your emotional and spiritual logbooks. It can be as simple as writing letters.
Write that letter to the person who you can’t stand, who made you mad, who left you. Who owes you? Who has slighted you / hurt you / betrayed your trust? Write a letter to each one. Tell them how you feel. Recall the situations that were difficult.
If you feel like you can mail the letters, then do so. If that is too much, then just write them. It may be difficult to send them – the other person may not be able to receive your message. Just writing them is very healing.
One option if you can’t send the letters is to burn them. It is a way of releasing energy. Imagine the anger and frustration disappearing in the flames. See the smoke rising up as a prayer to God, asking for healing in that situation.
Then think about who do you owe? Who have you slighted / hurt / betrayed? Write that letter to the person who you never thanked, who was kind, who helped you more than you deserved. Send those letters. People need to hear that they have done a good job or made a difference.
Moving onward, think about reconciling with yourself.
Write a letter to yourself when you were 12. Forgive yourself, and offer yourself guidance.
Write a letter to who you will be 12 years from now. Encourage yourself, and cheer yourself on towards your goals.
I can’t carry it.
I can’t carry the weight
of a thousand bad days,
of a childhood hurt,
of the broken glass
of leftovers, lonely, alone.
I can’t carry it
for anyone
anymore.
I’m tired of doing double duty
as teacher
as mother,
as counselor
as confidant.
I don’t have training in these things.
I didn’t sign up for these roles.
I can barely carry my own
fears
and sadness
and pain.
I can barely carry my own
abandonment
and loss.
You’ll just have to carry your own
and I’ll carry my own
otherwise each of us will be
weighed down
bent over
broken
by the
stuff
that makes up
a life.
It is enough for one.
I don’t remember saying any vows,
saying I would do this,
marriage or otherwise.
I don’t remember anywhere saying I had to do this.
I didn’t sign on the dotted line.
To hell with compassion.
Sounds like codependency anyway.
Just think about how hard life is if you don’t know the language. You’re always frustrated and you always feel that nobody understands you.
If you walk up to a food stand, you hope they have pictures so you can point at what you want. If what you want isn’t there, you are stuck because you don’t know how to ask for it. They also may have something really fabulous that you don’t even know you want. You’ll never know about it, because you can’t read that language.
We have ways to teach people language. For their first language, they learn by imitating their parents at the beginning. Then they go to school and learn more. They have to start with the basics of the alphabet and what sounds each letter makes. Once they can do that, they can then work on putting the letters together to make words. Then they can put the words together to make sentences. It is a long step-by-step process that hopefully, usually, results in us being able to communicate with each other.
But what if the language isn’t written down?
There are a lot of social rules that are just assumed, but if you “read” them wrong, you have failed at communication just as surely as if you read the book backwards. You don’t know what is happening or what to do next.
Everybody wants to be heard and understood. They want their feelings to matter.
We have a habit of assuming that everybody is like us and have had the same upbringing. We also have a habit of thinking that nobody is like us and we are all alone. Both have great fault to them. These ways of thinking cause the majority of communication issues. Often it doesn’t matter what you say, but what you don’t say that matters the most.
Sometimes the rule isn’t “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Sometimes the best way to interact with a person is to imitate how they are interacting with you.
Imagine this – if they are working on the premise of “do unto others…” then how they are interacting with you is exactly how they would like to be treated. So if your way doesn’t work, try their way.
If they stand too close, try standing close to them when you initiate a conversation. If they only talk standing up, try that. It may make you feel uncomfortable, but it may help them feel comfortable. If you keep communicating with them your way and not their way, they may feel like something is wrong. These unwritten rules of social interaction are often what make or break a conversation.
Just like different cultures have different conversational styles, so do different people. To make someone feel comfortable, try doing things their way – not yours. Often, it isn’t what is said, so much as how it is said that makes the conversation work or not.
One of the worst things you can do is make someone feel threatened when you talk with them. It is important to be mindful of the physical space between you and another person. A safe rule is to put out your arm, fingers extended, at a 90 degree angle away from your body. Don’t stand any closer than that to a person you don’t know unless they have given you permission. If you want to make them feel even more comfortable, stand even further away.
Just because you work with someone doesn’t mean you have permission. The boundaries are even more important if you are a manager, or of the opposite gender. Physical space is the same as people’s homes. In the same way that you wouldn’t invite yourself over to someone’s home you don’t know, you shouldn’t stand right next to someone you don’t know.
Cornering is another thing to think about. You may not be close to them, but they may not be able to leave. Your conversation will go much more smoothly if you pay attention to their physical comfort. If you are mindful of their physical comfort, they will mentally feel more comfortable as well. A simple conversation can become a confrontation if someone feels physically threatened.
Consider whether they are literally up against the wall. Are they able to physically back away from where you are when you’re having a conversation? Even if they’re not up against the wall are you blocking their method of escape? They may not want to escape but if you physically block them then they will feel like they need too. If you are essentially trapping them in a room it is very threatening.
If you need to talk to a person who is sitting in a chair at a desk, be mindful of cornering them there. They are blocked on their front and back, and depending on the chair they are blocked on their sides as well. If you are within an arm’s length of them at the same time, you’ve just doubled their discomfort. If they have to look up into a light to talk to you, and at an angle, you’ve achieved the trifecta of terrible communication styles.
Having a conversation while standing up is also a bad idea. It will make the conversation more confrontational. Sit down if at all possible, and make sure you are both at eye level. Having a table between you can make the other person feel more comfortable. Be mindful though that it might establish a sense of hierarchy. If you are a manager and the conversation is at your desk, it will not be an equal conversation.
Also it is important for you to consider your body posture. Is it open or closed? Do you have your arms crossed in front of you? Do you have your legs crossed? Are you looking away from them? All of these are “closed” body postures and indicate to the listener that you aren’t listening to them. Do the opposite to let them know you are fully present.
If you want them to listen to you, then you have to make it look like you are listening to them by altering your body posture. But you have to get some sort of middle ground. It is important not to fling your arms around a lot. It is important not to open your legs up wide and scoot your pelvis towards them. Both of those are very aggressive moves. They are too open. Look for a balance and remain neutral, not too forward, not too far back.
There’s a story that one day a boy was walking along the seashore. A lot of starfish were being washed up by the waves. They were slowly dying because they were being exposed to the air. He started picking up the starfish one by one and flinging them back into the ocean. A man comes walking by and he sees the little boy doing this. He says ‘Look at all these other starfish. You’re not helping them at all. You’re not making a difference in their lives.” The little boy said “I just made a difference in this one’s life.”
“What we focus on expands”, Oprah Winfrey says. It is very hard when you’re a compassionate or empathetic person. We tend to notice all the people we weren’t able to help. And while it is important to acknowledge loss, it is also important to not focus on just the bad. We have to open ourselves up and intentionally and consciously point ourselves towards that which we are doing which is helping.
We can’t save them all. We can’t help them all. But we are just one part of a huge ocean of people who are helping. We are not alone. We can’t all be Mother Teresa. But she didn’t do it alone either. She had hundreds of nuns working with her whose names we don’t know. Each one of them helped who she was given to help that day. Each one of them did what she could to make that person’s life better. She didn’t do it all but together they did.
If we focus on what we can’t do or who we haven’t saved then we lose energy. If we can help one person, it makes a difference in that person’s life. If we don’t help, locked up in our worry about all that we can’t do, then we’ll do even less.
Help who you can. Leave the rest for others to help. That gives them the joy of helping. By leaving something for others to do, you’ve actually given them a gift. Each of us wants to feel needed. A lot of people feel needed by helping others. When you do it all, you are taking away someone’s task. So you are actually doing a good deed by not doing it all.
Hoarding and overeating are the same things. They are both ways of trying to protect yourself from “out there”. More significantly, they are ways of trying to protect yourself from “in here”. Both build up defenses against the outside world by literally creating a wall between you and it. Meanwhile what you are really running away from is something that is irritating you inside.
In hoarding, you believe that you need more stuff to feel safe. You keep four of something, even if you only need two. You’ll pack five pairs of shoes on a three day trip, because you aren’t sure what you might need. You’ll keep twelve outfits that don’t fit that you haven’t worn in years “just in case”. You’ll keep things that are broken or were given to you and you’ve never used because you think you might have a need for them.
This is all a sign that you don’t believe that your needs will be taken care of. You feel that you are all on your own, alone, and it is all up to you to make sure that you are happy. Meanwhile you can’t even find what you need under the pile of stuff you don’t need. You’ve built up a wall, a fortress, between you and the world.
Overeating works the same way. You feel that your needs aren’t being met, so you try to fix them with food. If a little cake is a good thing, a lot must be great, right? That boss didn’t respect you – eat a cookie or twelve. Your wife is always angry at you – have another plate at the buffet. They can’t tell you not to. It is the one thing you can control – what goes into your mouth. And yet it is out of control. You don’t have control at all. You can’t make them stop being angry or randomly changing the rules, but you can eat something. You’ll show them. Instead of speaking up, you shut yourself down by shoving food into your mouth.
This is how children behave. Sadly, sometimes adults are just children in older bodies.
Consider the oyster. A little irritant gets into it. A piece of sand, a bit of shell – something inedible and foreign gets inside. It doesn’t know how to get it out. The oyster’s inner parts are soft and this foreign thing hurts. It puts a protective layer around that irritant to make it smooth. The only problem is that now that irritant is bigger, and presses up against more of the oyster. So it puts another layer around it. And it gets bigger. So it puts another layer around it. And on, and on, and on. Eventually the pearl that has been created is so big there is no way that the oyster could get it out without being cracked open.
We are like that. We build up these walls inside us against perceived injustices and slights, and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Instead of getting it out or absorbing it and letting it pass through us, it gets stuck inside us, making the situation worse. Eventually the only way to get it out is to be cracked open.
Sometimes being cracked open is literal – we develop a tumor from our worries, and it has to be removed by surgery. Or sometimes we have a heart attack that slows us down and makes us reassess our priorities. Sometimes everything is stripped away from us in a natural disaster. Or a divorce. Or a house fire. Sometimes our need to control is taken out of our control, and all we have left is ourselves. Then we are faced with the question – what now?
Sometimes what we are most running away from is what we need to sit with. Often the best way to heal is to not run away from our pain but to look at it and process it. Let it pass through. We run away when we drink or smoke or do drugs. But we also run away when we fill all of our time with things and events and noise. A busy life isn’t always a happy life. Silence and emptiness can be frightening at first, but they are very healing.
betsybeadhead 
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