For people who have been socialized to please others (wait, is this play about us??), boundaries can feel spooky and scary. And that’s so real.
Cue any number of frightening thoughts based on your very real experiences and your incredible pattern recognition:
What will someone think of me? Will they still like me? What if they think I’m a monster? Will they be disappointed? Angry??
YEAH MAYBE, and also, they might say “thank you for telling me!” or “oh my gourd, yeah of course!” or “I totally understand, and also I’m a little disappointed.”
Whatever someone’s response is, it’s their responsibility. That doesn't mean you don’t care about how you impact others; it also doesn’t mean their response to your boundary doesn’t affect you. It might! That’s information.
Boundaries Are Body Armor, Not Weapons
I also like to think of boundaries as a shield or body armor, NOT a weapon.
You use this tool to make sure you stay whole. So you feel like yourself and can do the things you want and need to do within your capacity.
Boo(undaries) are not meant to be a dagger used to harm others, and we can communicate them with compassion for those we love, and urgency and protection for those we know are actively hurting or harming us, intentionally or not.
Of course, we won't communicate the same way to some creepy guy following us on the street as we do to a friend who keeps hurting our feelings.
Sometimes the body armor fails or isn’t enough. That's where another tool comes in. Sometimes, but not always, it’s a weapon. Sometimes it’s a consequence, and that’s not the same as a punishment.
Boundaries give others an opportunity to learn how to treat and care for you.
They are a way to know yourself and live your values. They’re the way you connect with people you wanna do things with. And they can be a way to protect yourself from the things you don’t want.
Discomfort, Danger, and the Capacity to Say No
Easier said than done, right?
Because sometimes, it really does require capacity to hold someone’s response to you.
Sometimes when we think we don’t have the ability to handle someone’s response, that means we don’t share the boundary or request or preference, and instead do the thing we don’t really want to do.
Sometimes your brain says DANGER before you’ve processed that you weren’t actually in danger, just annoyed or uncomfortable after you said no.
Sometimes you, someone you love, or your neighbor is actually in danger, and you freeze.
Knowing what’s happening takes patience with yourself and a little bit of skill.
It often (not always!) comes down to:
Are you in danger or are you uncomfortable?
Are you in danger, or do you just not like that person?
Are you in danger, or does that person’s coping skills rub you the wrong way?
Are you in danger, or do you just need a break?
Are you in danger, or do you just not wanna do that?
AND “Oh shit, people are in danger, how do I stay here right now and take action?”
Clarity Is Kindness
Clarity is kindness, especially for neurodivergent & disabled bodyminds who want certainty and details.
We can make room for that for ourselves and the people in our lives.
Saying:
“Thank you for thinking of me, not this time. I’m just really wiped. But keep asking!”
Or:
“Thanks for thinking of me; hiking isn’t my thing. I’d love to do x with you instead sometime!”
Goes a long way.
Boundaries, Family Systems, and Collective Responsibility
Sometimes boundaries feel even harder in biological family systems, where hierarchical collectivism often comes at the cost of individuation. It’s easy to lose your sense of self.
It can also be difficult in a family system/society where independence is valued over A LOT of things. It’s easy to weaponize your boundaries, cut people off, dispose of them. It’s easy to take on too much on your own.
Especially for my fellow white-bodied folks, it’s important that we take a close look at what our capacity truly is.
On one side of the capacity spectrum, WE ARE NOT SAVIORS.
We cannot and do not know everything. We cannot and should not do everything.
Point blank: that’s controlling and not respectful of others’ autonomy.
If we do everything ourselves, we rob others of their chance to show up how they want to, and show care & support.
When Helping Becomes Overfunctioning
In my many years of community organizing, I ran with a self-proclaimed mutual aid crew.
Two white-bodied folks continuously took on an immense amount of labor with the intent to ensure we had free food/supply distributions in the neighborhood three times a week.
While it seemed like a “good” and “noble” thing on the outside (they’re feeding people! Three. Times. A. Week.), they constantly took on too much and became resentful.
One of the two finally asked for support by way of a cram-packed, 6-page document of all the things she was doing regularly and asked other people to take that on for her.
The whole thing was shrouded in anger and frustration. And when no one would take on the bulk of the work, she got mean.
This is also, of course, really tangled up in a gendered division of labor, because the person taking on the most was a woman. So of course part of it was her embodying what she always had — “I’ll just take care of it” and “If I don’t do this no one else will” — and folks around her propping that up.
One morning, in the organizing group chat, she sent message after message about everything she had to do that day, so I replied with the specific things I could take off her plate and when.
Her response was essentially that she couldn’t accept my support because it would just be too complicated.
Because I am who I am, this felt like my lane. I am a white-bodied trans person and socialized to do the same thing.
Just take care of it. It’s easier to control it than trust someone else will do it.
So, I responded to her by saying something along the lines of, “Hey, I see how much you’re taking on and that you’re overwhelmed. That makes sense. You’ve been consistently asking for help, which is awesome. It’s frustrating to see that you’re not really accepting it.”
Cue a huge amount of pushback from her and very weird, guilt-laden dm’s from her boyfriend.
All of that was information for me.
On the surface, a woman was carrying too much labor. But some layers deeper, white people were controlling a mutual aid space that was operating instead like a charity.
She was resentful because other people didn’t have the capacity to dig her out of the situation.
I’m wondering, what would it have looked like if she had understood her long-term capacity up front and boundaried up with that in mind?
What would it have looked like for her to communicate that she could no longer do these tasks and let the group experience the natural consequences of that decision?
What would it have looked like for her community to tell her earlier to think about her capacity and decisions?
What would have happened if we could process our guilt together if a group truly couldn’t handle three supply distros a week?
Mutual aid doesn’t mean doing so much you burn yourself out. Mutual aid is giving what you can reliably, communicating what you need, and building collective capacity for the hard stuff.
Sometimes We Have More Capacity Than We Think
On the other side of the capacity spectrum, we might actually have more capacity than we say we do.
And honestly, relationships — queer found families, polycules, biological families, neighborhoods, and other communities — require us to be inconvenienced sometimes.
To be inconvenient. To be annoyed and annoying.
To give where maybe we would have historically guarded our resources or need for control.
To hold ourselves and others to our shared values, even when it’s hard and costs something.
Could other folks in the community have done a little more to support the continuity of those supply distros?
Could the group have found a way to reorganize things that didn’t require 6 pages’ worth of tasks and the breakdown of trust?
Answering these questions requires learned skills that will help us build the communities and futures we want to live in.
Futures that actually hold us with all our complexities, traumas, and disabilities.
A lot of us were never taught how to do this, and that honestly and rightfully pisses me off.
That’s what makes it uncomfortable, right? We’ve never done it.
And from where I’m sitting, we’re gonna need to do a lot scarier stuff now and into the future.
Wanna Practice Together?
So! If you wanna:
Practice setting boundaries with safer people first?
Know what to do with all the information you received around setting a boundary?
Discern when to use armor vs. a weapon and all the possibilities in between?
Vent or verbally process some shit that’s bothering you when you don’t even know where to start?
Know what to do when you’re ruminating on a response that hasn’t even happened yet?
Map out your values and politics?
Work on embodying those?
Figure out what your capacity really is right now?
Expand your tolerance for personal discomfort?
Discern the difference between discomfort & pain? Discomfort & danger?
I’ll be here and would love to see if we vibe enough to build something together.
<3 Carson
