When people share their stories of their struggle to ‘snap back’ to the way things were after something has happened and the seeming pressure from others to forget about an issue, to speed up their grief fast, to ‘talk’, to ‘be friends’ and to basically get over something or someone at somebody else’s speed, I can’t help but wonder, Is personal space dead?
Why do we feel so much guilt, blame, shame and resistance to having our own emotional, mental, physical and spiritual space? It’s our right. Since when are we supposed to be able to process everything in an instant like those cheap microwave noodles? We’re humans and we need time and space. Granted some of us need less or more of it but why the hell do we keep judging ourselves for 1) being human, 2) being ourselves and 3) not being over something yet?
Let’s be real here: the reason why some people move past things quickly is because they never ‘stopped by’ in the first place.
They do avoidance and aren’t too keen on the feedback they could get from what they experience on their life journey which is why they don’t experience too much growth and ultimately why they don’t learn and why you’ll probably find yourself in the same situation with them in a matter of time. Some people have about as much compassion and empathy as a stone so of course they’re over something quickly – they never felt it or weren’t affected because they weren’t the one experiencing the brunt of it.
It is normal to need some space whether it’s emotional, physical, spiritual or all of them. It is your right.
It’s normal to need some space after a big discussion or argument. You don’t have to make up or have a conclusion and resolution right now this minute. It’s not about dragging it out but you’re probably not going to feel better or make sense of something if you’re being hurried to forget about it or agree to the other person’s perspective.
It’s normal to need some space while grieving.
It’s normal to need some space while trying to come to terms with a trauma, a big change or a big revelation.
It’s normal to not want to emotionally babysit someone when a loved one is sick, dying or has even died and it’s most definitely normal to not want to emotionally babysit someone when you’re ill or even fighting for your life. Some people want everything. I think they’d take your pee if they thought it would benefit them in some way!
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There are many situations and topics in life that you can have discussions about, but when it comes to the recognition of shady behaviour and what in fact might be repeat shadiness, it’s time to stop discussing, get to flushing. Your boundaries are yours to uphold and if someone would go to the trouble of busting them, you having a chat about it is only going to give the impression that you’re not really that serious and are open to having them crossed again.
Your job in life isn’t to raise adults from the ground up. If you don’t think that a person knows the fundamental difference between right and wrong and you feel that they lack an affinity with basic respect, it’s time to step.
When a reader asked me what she should do after discovering that her commitment dodging ‘boyfriend’ had stayed with another woman for three days (it’s not the first time he’s done this) and he was refusing to discuss it, I replied, “You don’t discuss him being away with another woman; you flush his ass fast.”
Sometimes you have to ask: What is there to discuss? More importantly, it’s time to ask, what the beejaysus are you doing ‘discussing’ boundary busting behaviour?
There is no explanation that covers screwing someone else for a few days. What are they going to say? “I forgot my way home…. I was held hostage by a sex crazed woman/man for a few days… I ran out of clean drawers… I was so afraid to tell you after the first day that I decided to stay for another couple of days…”?
When you consider the amount of time that some of us have spent judging and punishing ourselves for a mistake or ‘wrongdoing’ on our part or even that of others, it’s safe to say that we can end up serving prison sentences that are far longer than what some people serve for serious crimes. Think about it: if you’ve been giving you a hard time since you were a child and are still informing your opinion of you with judgments based on a perspective gained during childhood and let’s say you’re in your thirties, forties, fifties or beyond, you’ve possibly served a longer and very painful unnecessary sentence than say someone who was given a life sentence and got out on parole.
If you’re still judging you as inadequate due to the inadequacies of your parents/caregivers and/or the mistreatment of bullies or mistakes that you’ve made, it’s not your criticism you need – it’s the extending of some self-compassion.
Why be so hard on you? If others have deserved your forgiveness, why don’t you? Do you really think that you deserve what you’re thinking and doing? When does the longstanding punishment end? Until it does, you’re effectively frozen in time while life continues on around you and you’re prevented from growing.
I’m all too familiar with the ‘beating’ that seems to go on and on because it’s what I used to do to me. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world to just keep holding onto stuff and rubbing my face in mine and everyone else’s screw ups.
Until you’re truly empathetic and compassionate with you, you’re not being anywhere near as empathetic and compassionate with others as you think and are instead engaging in over-empathy while marginalising your own needs, expectations and wishes.
Empathising with the ‘me’ that I’ve been at different stages of my life and in specific situations where I’d been incredibly judgmental towards me has been pivotal in changing what has previously been a super-critical relationship with me. I dragged my experiences wherever I went and used them to inform my opinion of me and my options – I basically considered me to be a numpty and a failure who invited harassment and abuse. I was not allowed to move on from my past, any mistakes and Other People’s Shady Behaviour.
Let me tell you now – I haven’t and would never speak about or regard another person in the inhumane manner in which I have done to myself.
When my body literally broke down and I was faced with making major changes in my life, finally having some compassion and empathy for me helped me see why I was doing what I was. It was like using the head I used for others on myself.
Having some self-compassion and empathy is recognising that you’ve erred, what contributed to that position and loving you through it anyway.
Unpicking my past and my pain and seeing these experiences from a different perspective, helped me to understand who I was at that time and to gradually learn to like the very person who I used to hate. I saw a little girl masquerading as a woman that needed some help growing up. Having my daughters has been a constant reminder that I can’t just decide to turf me out every time I so much as put a foot wrong.
Withdrawing basic love, care, trust and respect is not empathy or self-compassion and is more akin to torture. It’s a stripping of dignity.
When you consider what you may have been punished for as a child, sure it deserved natural consequences such as being grounded, no pocket money, more chores, a telling off, withdrawal of privileges and of course emphasising what has happened and why the punishment was happening but withdrawal of love, care, trust and respect? No bloody way!
Each time you choose to continue holding on instead of working on letting go you’re saying, “I don’t deserve my compassion or empathy. I don’t deserve to move on from this. Until such time as I feel that I have learned my lesson, I want me to get out of my sight and I’m going to withhold love, care, trust and respect.” You may follow it up with name calling, berating and even physical harming of the self. You do not deserve this.
Often the reason why self-forgiveness via compassion and empathy is so hard is because it’s perceived as ‘letting you off the hook’. It’s this sense that you don’t think you’ve spent enough time in purgatory to justify getting the keys back to your life.
It’s putting you in a prison of your own thoughts which is no doubt compounded if you’re also inadvertently agreeing with the mistreatment you’ve experienced from others.
Practicing self-compassion isn’t about engaging in copious amounts of pity and finding quick-fix justifications for why you may have done something to somebody – “I was having a bad day” – because it’s of no benefit to you or anyone else if every time you cross boundaries, you put it down to a “day day” because actually, it’s not a “bad day”; it’s a bad habit of you experiencing X and reacting with Y where you do a series of things that affect others that brings about Z where you and those affected experience consequences as a result of that.
Compassion takes empathy and you can only empathise with a position that you’re willing to do the work to recognise what that position was in the first place.
Similarly, if the first and only real overriding conclusion that you can draw from your various experiences is “I’m not good enough”, “I’m a failure” and other such self-esteem depleting beliefs, you haven’t truly empathised with who you were at that time and before and understood how you came to be in that position.
In fact, when you blame you for what others do, not only do you strip them of their responsibility and accountability, but you’re effectively over-empathising with these people and saying, “Yeah, I can see why you do what you do. I’m not good enough and that’s why you __________.” This is bullshit of the highest order that will seriously derail your sense of self and quality of life.
I knew that what a harasser did was wrong but I ignored this because I decided that he felt safe to do it because I ‘provoked’ it with my worth. Of course this logic came crumbling down when he was sacked for sexually harassing other staff after I’d left… I had personalised what he did as if I got a ‘custom-made’ version of him just for me. When it happened again in another job, I handled the situation better but I still gave me a hard time over it because in there lurked this fundamental belief that if I were a “better” more “loveable” person, nothing bad would ever happen to me. Again this logic was flawed because I didn’t believe that bad things happened to unworthy people but unhealthy beliefs work so well because they’re often irrational and unchallenged so just automatically treated as truth.
Empathising with my younger self has helped me to forgive me and these experiences no longer have any power over me.
Moving on is not about doing something to somebody or making a mistake and being over it in a hot minute but it’s safe to say that you don’t need to run into years and decades and you could actually live out the consequences of the mistake, learn from it and empathise at the same time – writing Baggage Reclaim for the best part of eight years is part of my journey of self-compassion and empathy. Sure I chose to move on and let things go, but I’ve had to support that choice and still be open to learning more about me as I’ve gone on. Some days, some months even (like last year with the ‘breakup’ with my father) have been harder than others but the net result is I have my own back, I’m never down for too long and I’m learning and living. You can too – they’re not mutually exclusive.
Forgiveness is a decision. Make the decision to forgive you and see the commitment through.
Your thoughts?
It’s painful when the realisation hits you, that when it comes to a certain someone or even certain people in your life, nothing, and I do literally mean nothing is ever enough. You could literally walk over hot coals, limbo under a bar held 5cm off the ground with spikes on it, have fireworks shooting out of your bum, agree with everything that they say and do everything they’ve requested to the letter of their criteria, and they’ll do the equivalent of, “You missed a spot…”
Nothing is ever enough with The Unpleasables and if you try to do ‘everything’ you will only bust the hell out of your boundaries – they’re just not that special!
The first Unpleasable in your life tends to be that exacting and critical parent or caregiver and if your perspective on their behaviour and how you respond to it hasn’t changed in adulthood, you’re likely to have felt tormented by a similar boss, ‘friend’ or romantic partner.
It will feel like the most natural thing in the world to be a people pleaser because it’s all you know and you equate happiness and worthiness with pleasing somebody all of the time and associate other people’s displeasure with this sense of you being inadequate and ‘provoking’ their behaviour with it. It’s easy to put what happened in childhood together with what is happening now and form the conclusion that it ‘must’ be you.
You can’t please everyone all of the time but also these shenanigans aren’t about you, your worth and your ‘inadequacies’.
It’s also easy to trick yourself into believing that ‘other people’ are able to satisfy an Unpleasable but not only is this bullshit used to personalise their behaviour to you but you’re actually signing on to their sense of entitlement that you and these people are just here to serve their ego.
I’ve been on a few trips with people where one or both of us have suggested that we ‘go with the flow’ instead of making firm plans. I found that we were either on the same page and had a great time or… it turned out to be a clash of ideals because one of us had firm ideas about what they did or didn’t want to do which reared their ugly head while ‘flowing’. Since then, I know not to take the easy route of suggesting ‘the flow’ if it’s not my true want, especially because it paves the way for an honest conversation about what we both want to get out of the trip.
Similarly in relationships, if you’re both travelling in the same direction (similar outlook, needs, wants, expectations etc), it’s easy to ‘go with the flow’ organically, especially when you’re both willing to have an open dialogue in the interests of going with that flow. Where it becomes problematic is when one of you is doing your best to stall the flow or to steer down a different path, possibly while still claiming that you’re ‘going with the flow’.
In dating and relationships, the suggestion of ‘going with the flow’ can create unease if it crops up in a conversation where you are essentially seeking clarification about the other person’s position and/or the status of your relationship.
Time and again I’ve heard people express how the moment they heard this, it was the start of a slide down a slippery slope of self-doubt (Am I being needy/uptight?) and not listening to their own needs, expectations and wishes to ensure that they tallied up with the ‘flow’ that was being suggested.
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