Carers need boundaries

You are a kind person.  You like to think of yourself as someone who looks after other people.  You don’t like the idea of rejecting other people, and you always believes others should have a second chance.  You believe in compassion.

The problem is, every now and again you meet someone who takes advantage.  They see life only from their point of view, and are out to maximise their interests.  You are defenceless against these people.  Every time you encounter them, they exploit you until they have what they want, regardless of your limits.

Whenever you get close to having to defend yourself, you feel afraid.  It reminds you of your childhood, when you constantly had to give in to other members of your family who were more demanding than you, or to schoolteachers who pushed for results.  You feel that you will be punished if you don’t get everything done perfectly and on time for everyone around you.

Whenever you have a lot going on at once, you feel overwhelmed.  You don’t want to give up, but feel yourself close to the edge.  Your nerves are compromised by the pressure, and you start to get anxious.  This makes you withdraw and feel burdened.

You have become like an exhausted butler to everyone around you, serving their requests without enough attention to your own health and happiness.  You have less and less of a private life, and it becomes a constant battle to please unpleasable people who just want more and more.  You smile to others, but inside you feel weak and tired.

Your happiness increases when you are with caring, undemanding friends, or when you are absorbed in focused activity such as routine work, exercise, or absorbing leisure tasks.  You are happier in non-competitive, non-aggressive activities, and you become disturbed by complication or confrontation.

This is what compassion without wisdom feels like.  You give your time, energy and resources away without thought for how much you have to spare.  You have well developed habits of productivity and performance, but you are still working on developing habits of strategic self-assertion.

You haven’t yet fully learned to protect your own self-regenerating activities inside a controlled, bounded space.  Not wanting to reject anyone, you don’t know how to cope with being unavailable, with causing discomfort, with asserting yourself in ways that might displease them.

Neither have you fully learned to respond to overwhelm by resting.  You push yourself beyond reason, not pausing to afford yourself the time to work at a pace that suits you.  Other people become, for you, a source of oppression, as you have no language with which to keep them at bay and express your own limits.

No wonder your undemanding friends, and your solitary activities, are such a relief – they are your only rest from the onslaught of worldly demands, against which you feel defenceless.

You need to discover some wise boundaries.  Before you get overwhelmed, you need to explain your limits to others, and lower their expectations.

You need to reduce your working time, and increase your recovery time.  You need defend your interests without worrying too much about what others will think of you.

You need to give yourself longer rest periods, to work at a more sustainable pace.  You need to see yourself as equal to others in terms of operational power, and to state clearly the limits of the help you will give.

Suitable things to practice are:

1. Creating a low-stress routine
2. Working at a sustainable pace
3. Building in ample rest and recovery time
4. Conceiving others as equals, not superiors
5. Explaining to others the limits of your availability
6. Stating the limits of the help you are offering
7. Leaving others to manage for themselves

OVERALL

Think of this saying from the Christian bible:

“Consider the lilies, how they grow:

they neither toil nor spin,

yet I tell you,

even Solomon in all his glory

was not arrayed like one of these.”

This quote encourages us to take a lesson from nature, which has practical wisdom built in, and to stop being so anxious to fulfil worldly demands.

The demands can come from other people, or from targets and deadlines.  To avoid being overwhelmed, we can choose to act at a sustainable pace.