Some personal notes on managing different relationships
This post was originally posted here on October 19, 2022
So I'm currently trying to process how to do boundaries in relationships where people have clearly been harmful but I can't remove them from my life. I'm disabled so I don't have the liberty of just up and leaving or kicking people out entirely. Maybe someday it'll change but it is what it is for now.
I found myself thinking about all the controls social media platforms have to controlling people's level of access to you and I wished I could have something similar in real life. And it hit me - why not? Like I can't set all the terms but I can set some of them. So I jotted down the notes below.
I've been thinking on this kind of thing for a long time but I realized I had this deep fear of hurting people or being perceived as cruel. But beyond just knowing intellectually that I don't owe people my time and energy, it took really sitting with the fact that true kindness can only spring from a genuine place of compassion and that it's unskillful to practice beyond my current level.
My current level requires some measure of distance for some people in order to protect my compassion for them. They may not like that. But tending to that sensory social pain, trying to prevent it through being agreeable and giving them what they want - that's only going to feed their attachment to narratives and patterns that harm them.
Maybe in the future I can be closer to people who are harmful but in the meantime:
So I hope this sparks some ideas for someone else. Open to good faith thoughts from others too.