Tag: boundaries

The new healthy

‘More interested in how my life feels than how my life looks to others.’

As this little challenge progresses I have felt the ease of my writing return. I will sit and the words will flow. I can talk both nonsensically and seriously and I hope at times I really make sense. I know at other times I let the words flow over the laptop keyboard, like ink spilling from an inkwell over stark white paper, so freely that it’s only when I pause that I realise I’m 300 words in and have no idea what was said. As a reader I can imagine you may have to reread the jargon in front of you on more than one occasion.

At other times, I force myself to write something, anything, to complete this challenge. To write every single day for 365 days. That challenge has been marred by the website I use when it didn’t publish properly one day and it felt like a failure on my part. So I gave myself a telling off and pledged to continue on and ignore a failing that wasn’t mine.

The easiest piece of writing I find is to do with travel. Whether it is a day out, a weekend away or a mammoth trip somewhere new it’s just easy. Sadly, I cannot travel all day everyday. This is a bad thing. It means when I do I make the most of everything and take nothing for granted. It gives me an opportunity to write something I am passionate about rather than the mess in my head that makes little to no sense to other people.

We are lucky to travel as much as we do. Owning a home and experiencing lockdown restrictions during a worldwide pandemic saw our relationship with travel change vastly. In a way it has made me so much more aware of how lucky I have been in the past and how lucky I am now.

The last week or so has seen me take you to Majorca through my memories, talk about mental health and share older blogs. I don’t feel like it has been my best contribution but I have felt happy enough that I haven’t broken the consecutive run of the blogs written so far. I have spoken before about how I get writer’s block and I feel this week has been particularly challenging with a combination of this and mental health.

In the past I have read endless articles online and heard several stories from friends and family where the word ‘boundaries’ has been used. I’ve always come away from such encounters wondering if having a boundary in place means you shut people out. If the people you construct those boundaries against are bad people. Or if you, the boundary maker, are a bad person by giving up on others. I could never truly understand what it meant and why people reached the point to set their own limitations.

I have spoken before about how in its way covid granted us the time to reset our social lives and redefined what being ‘busy’ meant. Mr W and I regularly block out days on a weekend now to stay at home and actually exist in the home we work hard to pay for and create. Covid gave us the opportunity to see just how busy our lives used to be. Entertaining on a Friday night, running endless errands on a Saturday morning, rushing home to get ready to go back out for a family event, up early on a Sunday morning to go shopping or head somewhere to explore before heading to a friends for a social get together. It was often the case that we were out three or four times during the week too. It often felt like our home was a shell that we sometimes saw the inside of. There wasn’t much complaining because none of the social engagements we had were chores or forced upon us. Between the two of us we have a large blend of family and friends. I have kept a lot of friendships from my school days and they are some of the dearest, most cherished relationships I have in my life. They are important enough to nurture and I would never give them up. By giving ourselves time to stop recently and relax at home we are better people when we do visit our loved ones.

I feel this strongly at times when I become a shell of a person in other ways. I have been realising for a very long time that I am a people pleaser. I will step in to help anyone at the detriment to my own ability or energy. I’m also married to another people pleaser. Now, this can be misconstrued as only helping people to fulfil some need to be a people pleaser. This is not true. We would only ever help when there is love there. When the relationship is genuine and you want to help. Plainly put, you want to help because it’s nice to do so. There is no wrong in this situation.

However, it becomes hard when you are tired. When life is getting too busy, too much, too stressful, too tiring. TO THE LIMIT. And you don’t realise. Your cup runneth dry and you are scraping the paint off of the china. No energy but still pushing on. It ends up feeling like a chore. The once happy days out are filled with yawning, attitude and with the mental capacity of a flea. Going through the motions would be an accurate description.

I think I have started to understand the need for boundaries. As long as I live I will want to help my loved ones. In any way I am physically able to. But I want to be fully able. I want to be in a place where I can help in the best way I can. I’m no good to anyone running on empty. Something has to give.

It is hard to say no. It is never meant in a bad way. It’s never intended with malice. When we are asked to help with something or to go to a get together my/our immediate response is, ‘yeah great.’ But we now take the time to check our calendar and figure out how it works for the rest of the week. Most of the time it works. Occasionally it doesn’t. Do I feel guilty? Absolutely. Is it necessary? Again, absolutely. It is the new healthy. And ultimately people that care about you will absolutely understand the need to make that decision.

In a morbid moment of tiredness I started wondering whether my saying yes all the time, in relation to helping people, had almost become expected behaviour. And by always saying yes, I had given up my right to say no. That the guilt of saying no far outweighed the feelings of tiredness I would feel when pushing myself to the limit. It is the fear of letting people down that controls the ‘yes’ response. Your life should not be about how guilty you feel being the deciding factor. It should be about wanting to help because you are a good, nice, kind person. And it’s rooted in a loving and reciprocal relationship. I will never be that person that sits and expects a give and take in order to help others. When you have the ability to help others it is regardless of anything other than love that is part of the decision making progress. If it’s about gaining something back you don’t fit into the good, nice, kind tick box. HOWEVER, and this is one huge ‘however’, there will come a time, when you keep helping someone and you feel used. When the roots of the loving relationship are only nurtured from your side. You nurture while they take. You help while they take. It is a drain on your mental health and when your mental health takes a hit it will inevitably cause you physical problems and it has to stop. The guilt is a short term problem. Your health in both senses is much more long term.

People pleasing is a great feeling. It is how we show love, concern and compassion. When we find ourselves going out of our way to extend those parts of ourselves it is so natural that when it is seen as something ‘other’ it is really quite harmful. Going out of our way to help without being asked was always something I saw as a plus. To help someone without them asking was just another way to make someone smile. To predict a need before being asked, I thought, was a way of truly knowing someone. Some people may see it as interfering and recently I’ve had to defend my actions. In a big way. It cost me a day of my life due to worry and anxiety. It made me question how I could be misunderstood in such a negative way and what I’d done wrong. It’s the worst feeling to think someone looks at you in such a bad light. I lost my voice.

The situations made me look at boundaries completely differently. That boundaries don’t mean you stop seeing someone out of anger or you change who you are and not help in the future. It made me see that boundaries on how people talk to you and react to you are within your control. That standing up for yourself and challenging someone’s treatment of you is itself a boundary. It questions someone’s respect for you. It gives you the answer of what you mean to them. If they think it’s okay to treat you badly without hesitation there is a reason for a boundary. Talk about why they are talking to you in that way and come to some kind of understanding about what has actually happened, rather than what has been perceived. To have a discussion about it may not be possible, there are some people who have their own mental health issues that stop them seeing past their anger or own views. And that is where another boundary would come in.

I used to think boundaries were there to stop people getting close. To keep people away. A real physical boundary. No invites to dinner. No days out. Making your excuses as to why you didn’t get to talk at a family party. But these days, with mobile phones and instant messaging on all kinds of platforms, the barriers of the physical world will always be beaten by the technological world. How do you politely ignore messages and phone calls and social media conversations? It makes sense now that the boundary is within ourselves. It gives ourselves a guilt free existence and the power to say no. To talk up despite our fears and question those around us about why they treat us how they do. To not place our sense of self worth in the way others behave towards us. It is a barrier in which we can peek over or close entirely. It is ours to control. It is unlike the walls you build up after a break up. One you hide behind. It is a barrier that you control and negotiate from. It is a safety barrier for our mental health.

My barriers are small, but growing. My newest one is a barrier from myself. My challenge to write every day, however great a feeling, will be met with the struggles of writer’s block and tiredness. It is a question of limits, not of laziness, that may stop me on the very odd occasion and that is okay.

I release myself from the guilt of not writing. I release myself from the guilt of saying no. I release myself from being a people pleaser.

I am allowing myself the time to be at home. To look after my health from time to time. To nurture myself so I can be the best person for those I love in my life. I am more interested in feeling good with my own mental health than being a person who always says yes. Saying yes all the time looks good on paper, being known for saying yes has its merits, but behind the scenes it can have its after effects, and those don’t make for happy feelings. So despite life looking good from the outside, it’s gone to pot on the inside. The smile that doesn’t quite reach the eyes and the fear of letting people down aren’t indicative of inner happiness.

Boundaries are the new healthy.

Photo by Dave Watson
Please check out his work on https://www.instagram.com/davewatson_uk/ or at https://davewatson1980.picfair.com

The important truth

The moment you place your self worth in the hands of others is the moment you fail.

Harsh isn’t it?

I’ve done it all my life. I’ve regarded myself as important as long as someone else thinks I am. It feels good to be loved, wanted and needed. But the harsh truth of the matter is, as soon as all that goes away, even for a moment, what is left?

You help someone move homes out of the kindness of your heart, it’s natural to want to help someone else. And soon after along with the empty boxes that person drops off your radar. You find yourself running around after them, texting, calling, asking when you can meet up. Are they doing the same thing? Do you have any messages they’ve sent and you’ve not replied to? Any missed calls? Are they chasing you?

You welcome a new family member into the fold, a relative’s new partner, it’s only natural for families to expand over time. They are lovely. You are two couples who gel well and talk for hours. You are glad because you would have missed the relative if you weren’t a part of their new life. And yet you find yourself embarrassed and confused when your asking to meet up is met with a constant stream of excuses and delays. After a while, you start to ask yourself, have I done something wrong? Was I the only one wanting to continue being a family?

You graduate university. You dragged yourself through it, you did not quit and got your diploma. You started because you weren’t sure which path to take, but as time went on, you wanted to feel the flush of accomplishment. To have achieved something just for you. If it leads to a job where it is useful, great, if not, it is still an accomplishment. So why now, when someone says you are wasting your degree, does it knock you for six? What right of theirs is it to make a judgement or any kind of assumption about your life choices? And WHY does it hurt so much when their feelings are impressed upon you?

I’ll never understand the harsh words or actions of others. And truth be told, I think it’s because I couldn’t treat others that way. Couldn’t is probably the wrong word. The word ‘couldn’t’ implies a choice is made. Like a fork in the road. Standing there deciding whether to take the left fork where you ‘could’ be rude or the right fork where you ‘couldn’t. I don’t think it’s a decision at all. I think it’s simply knowing right from wrong and subconsciously knowing what to do. Ultimately it is the lack of understanding of why someone treats you poorly that sets us apart. If, for one minute we understood, you may say we are giving them free reign and excuses for their actions. 

The truth is there are users in this world and then there are the oblivious folk. It’s hard to tell the difference between the two unless you actually approach them and say that what they did has affected you. I’d like to think in most cases this will be met with a desire to talk through things like adults and reach a common ground for moving forward. 

Other times, it might come to creating boundaries. 

Those that take the piss? In future, say no. Your time on this planet and your life is ticking away. You get no do overs, no time back and certainly shouldn’t feel bad more than you feel good. Do I think these people are sitting at home unhappy like I am? OH GOD NO! They are either oblivious to the fact or know exactly what they are doing and still don’t care. 

Those that don’t answer? Are not worth your time. Again, your time is ticking away and it is precious. For all the minutes you spend trying to get someone else’s attention and love is better off spent making your life worthwhile. Chase something that makes you happy and not sad. Life is fleeting. 

Those who judge your choices? To make choices in the first place took a lot of guts. You made it for you. And no one else. Again, you could question their choices, pluck apart their life and see what you find ‘wrong’ with it. But you aren’t that kind of person, who are you to judge or question. So spend the time you aren’t judging others and spend it in the pool on a hot summer day, singing to Disney songs on a road trip and with people who accept you for you. 

Placing your importance in another’s hands will always be hard to avoid, afterall we love to share our lives and in doing so opinions will be generated by those around us. It feels good to please people with your life story. Whether it is to celebrate or impress is really down to the individual. However you look at it, the need to feel love and acceptance is overwhelming. No matter how you look at it, when you are constantly pleasing people you may start to realise that the person who is no longer pleased is you. When you are constantly on the ‘pleasing others’ path in life you’ll be making choices based on what is right for everyone else. What would others do? How would others act? You fall behind on what you want. Just whose life are you living?

Guess what, it is yours! You are important because this life is yours. You are important because of your kindness, your choices, the way you love unconditionally and you are important enough to know when to instigate a boundary. 

Stop the ‘begging’ calls. 

Stop the 3rd ‘follow-up’ texts. 

STOP letting peoples opinions rule your head.

It hurts, I know. 

If you don’t chase, you might not see them again. 

If you don’t send that text, you might not hear from them again. 

If you ask someone to keep their opinions to themselves, they may not respect it. 

Yes it is all very painful, but the truth is, the important truth, why would you want those people in your life to begin with? What are they adding to your life? Because right now, they are taking away from it. 

It doesn’t mean you have to cut them out or block them in all forms of social interactions. The boundary is within. They have the parts of you that you allow. A ‘hi’ at a family BBQ, a wave at a birthday party and a ‘cheers’ at Christmas. Maybe even a boogie at the next wedding, but primarily you say when, why and if. When you take that power back, their actions can know longer affect your feelings of self-importance. 

And that’s the important truth.  

Photo by Dave Watson
Please check out his work on https://www.instagram.com/davewatson_uk/ or at https://davewatson1980.picfair.com

Comfort Zone

Today I saw my friend who is visiting the UK from New Zealand. 

We met in school over 20 years ago. I remember him from school. I don’t know how close we were. But reconnecting on facebook a number of years later led to very long conversations on summer nights in the garden. We spoke of our time in University and how life had changed or stayed just the same. We spoke so freely and unlike any other way I’d encountered until that point and when he left to go home I remember sitting and replaying the evening over and over. It fascinated me. 

Soon after he left the UK and travelled. I maintained my habit of working to pay for my travelling and then upon my return from Australia in 2013 my life changed drastically. Me became a we and I became an us. We would be travelling to Spain. Both of us made choices in our lives. As life does, time moved on and before long those chats with my friend seemed a distant memory. If it wasn’t for social media and emailing, the friendship would have struggled. 

It was in 2016 that we reconnected while he popped back to the UK and then flitted away again. And yet our emails remain to this very day. We are both married and settled. I was lucky enough to watch his wedding over zoom last August and was grateful to be one of the few who graced that group. Our emails now speak of how life is treating us and the next big goal we each have. 

He flew into the UK last week and his parents held a garden party today for family and friends to see him and his new wife. It seems I am the last friend to stay in contact with him, he points out that he also lost contact with others, taking ownership of his actions as usual. I felt extremely appreciative to be included. Mr W was there, naturally, but I felt extremely nervous to be surrounded by people I did not know. This was cushioned by the fact that after 6 long years I was seeing my friend again.

I was being flung between the zones of comfort and excitement. Something that took me by surprise was just how ‘known’ I was. His parents and sister all knew more about me than I expected and I felt like it acknowledged this friendship we had all the more. After 5 hours of talking and laughing with strangers I felt almost confident to step outside the comfort zone. To talk freely about nothing particularly important but let it bolster my nervousness and say ‘hey, this is how you grow.’ Would I see these strangers again, possibly not. But does that mean you don’t bother engaging with them? No. I think it goes a long way to have a voice no matter where you are. Or who you are with. I know that this time last year talking to strangers was really difficult for me. I felt I needed to be asked questions or find an instant common ground. But now, today especially, it felt great to just talk as if I’d known people for years because that’s when the ‘I’ comes out in me. How interesting it is for the other person I’ll never know, but it goes a long way down the path of self-awareness and acceptance. 

The biggest example of this dare I say ‘progression’ is discussed in ‘Coffee for four’ (link below). The best way I can describe it is feeling as comfortable talking to strangers about nothing in particular as talking to a loved one about something deeply personal. It resonates on a different level, from a different zone but gives you that same feeling of warmth and acceptance. I’d like to think it opens me up to new ideas and opinions. Which ultimately is what we seek in travel. To have our eyes opened to new cultures and places. So embracing that ideal in our home lives can’t be a bad thing. I think it’s just something that’s more accepted when you travel. As if your brain is ready for the onslaught of everything new, shiny and exciting. When you are at home it’s almost as if you don’t need to try. You are comfortable. 

Fundamentally, this is a question of confidence. It reminds me that somewhere inside still exists the girl who chases horizons and finds joy outside the comfort zone.

Coffee for four

Limits

It is day 876,352 of having Covid. 

Really, in actual fact, it is day 5 of testing positive. My life hasn’t changed apart from missing one day of work and allowing myself to watch as much tv as possible until my body needs sleep. Today has been a busy day considering that on Saturday I slept for over 20 hours. I woke up and no longer felt the fatigue in my bones. So I grabbed the laptop and started ploughing through the to-do list for our next big trip. 

To be fair it is a small list at this point, but two hours in and one of the days on the trip had transformed completely. Out of the 14 mornings while we are away, most of them start before 7:30am. In fact, most start at 6am. Paint me shocked. Tell the girl from 10 years ago who’s days usually started at lunchtime. Mr W has definitely had an impact. 

The plans I looked at today were busy enough to have us doing three big hikes starting at 6am. There’s maybe one day when we need to start at 5am to drive for two hours to witness the sunrise and I don’t mind it as a one off, but there are certain limitations when it comes to the body. Hell, in January, after a fortnight of deep research and planning for this trip, my limit light was blinking and my brain shut down! So, doing an endless fortnight of 14 hour days of photography, walking, driving and battling all the elements is going to be exhausting. So, when I found myself cutting parts out of the day in question, I was pleasantly surprised at how calm I was. When it comes to travelling I rarely know my limits. I will be up and ready for a long day and I will never go back to a hotel without completing an itinerary. It’s how I’m built. 

Or at least how I thought I was built. Today’s cut, pastes and deletes were owed to something new I found to do near Ben Nevis, a place which opens a lot later than the rest of Scotland. This caused a shift in the day’s plans and meant taking two things off the agenda. It made me choose between events rather than force myself to do everything. In light of these changes, I realised that we would be too late to another event and with a quick ‘delete’ and an ‘Oh well’ I made the necessary adjustments. This is not me!

Also, I know how frustrating it might be for me to sound so vague, but I really want my first experience of telling you about our trip to Scotland to sound fresh, so keeping details back as much as possible is really important. Stay tuned!

It’s not that I haven’t had limits before, I have, I’ve dragged my arse across Australia feeling tired up to my eyeballs. I’ve forced my feet up and down the avenues of New York because the itinerary calls for it. My limits are screaming at me like warning bells and I hear them, I just pretend I don’t.

It’s only since travelling in this country and the changes that lockdown brought about that the voice inside my head with all warnings about limits has started to make sense. In our personal lives we’ve even started to block out weekends so we can be at home, together, with nothing else to do. Inevitably, when I get a message asking if I’m free on those blocked out days, I will feel awful about saying we aren’t available because I’m a 1000% committed people pleaser. Being a people pleaser has ultimately stopped me looking after myself in situations and in turn neglecting Mr W. His limits are often dictated by my own. And that is not fair. Saying no to people is a crushing feeling. Especially as I never have. There’s a mass of guilt that swarms over me everytime I do. And that in particular is something I have to work on.

It just so happens that the weekend just past was blocked out. We needed to do this so we could spend some much needed time in the house we pay a mortgage for because June saw us come and go like passengers at a railway station. And then we got covid and were home anyway. Maybe fete stepped in and missed the memo.

During lockdown we found it hard at first to sit still, but as the weeks dragged on we found comfort in these walls. And as the world began to open up, we found ourselves dreading going backwards into the fray of events. It’s a complicated feeling. It isn’t the events that are the problem. It’s the sheer number of them. It’s knowing your limits. There came a time where we’d be seeing people for brunch on a Saturday morning, after a heavy night out the Friday, running a quick errand before seeing family on the Saturday afternoon and then heading out that night. Repeating ourselves on Sunday. Time flew and it felt difficult to enjoy it. How could we be in the moment, when we were thinking of where we had to race off to next?

When lockdown ended in July 2020, I particularly found it difficult to return to normal. To hug again, close the window and enter the crowds. An afternoon with friends was beautiful and yet saw me sleeping after the exposure to filled hours. Since we’ve put a curb on our weekends, we feel lighter and have to remind ourselves that doing things on other weekends shouldn’t be classed as ‘busy’ but ‘enjoyable’ instead. Yes, we still get rather busy, but it isn’t work, it is socialising. It’s freedom. It’s life. 

For the first time in my life, I’m appreciating the limits before they appear. I realise now that the fear of limiting your life, your time, yourself is very real. Push just a bit harder. Strive for more. You can do it. However there is a very large part of life that calls for boundaries and the ability to say no. It is self preservation. It is knowing that no matter how hard you try, keeping the pace is not always possible. Saying no every once in a while has to be a good thing. Choosing to stop instead of being forced to stop is always going to be win-win. Lockdown taught us that. And for that I am grateful.  

Photo by Dave Watson

Please check out his work on https://www.instagram.com/davewatson_uk/ or at https://davewatson1980.picfair.com