Boundaries

Boundaries are a healthy necessity for all of us. We need to create boundaries with and for ourselves, and with and for others. At this moment, boundaries of all types are coming to the forefront of our emotional consciousness. For some, isolation and six feet of separation has been a welcome boundary for recouping much needed time to reflect and digest, this moment, and perhaps many moments prior. For others, the influx of time with family, children, partners, roommates, etc. has been difficult to handle, and has revealed to us our own shadows and triggers, that in all truthfulness we may have needed to sit with, and would have been difficult to tackle under the best circumstances, let alone under the present crisis. 

Either way, in all instances, it is the boundaries that we are able to claim for ourselves that allow us to maintain enough energy to care for ourselves. Boundaries give us the time and space to sit with our emotions, see the origin of our triggers, and acknowledge our thoughts and patterns. With this acknowledgement, you can take the power away from what is blocking you from showing up as your best self or keeping you in a negative thought pattern. To build a healthy boundary can look like creating different spaces in your home that are dedicated to certain activities, answering emails during work hours, choosing to take your hundredth zoom call as a phone call, or asking for space alone from your quarantine buddy, or placing into practice non-attachment for those things, people, and places that keep a hold on you and pull you out of your present moment. 

Outside the walls of your own mind and house is the collective panic felt across platforms, conversations, and the world. The beauty in this is that we are all interconnected, but the harm is that what is good in this moment for one person's mental health is not necessarily good for all people’s mental health. Boundaries from the feedback loop can give you the space to evaluate your own emotion and cognition in order to seek and create the comfort you need. 

What boundaries you need are entirely personal, but know that we all need them. Often we can feel guilty for carving out that space for ourselves, but when we do, some pretty wonderful things can happen—we can sit with our discomfort. We can show ourselves compassion by protecting space for our self-work. We can create structures and environments for us to show up as our best selves. We can practice clear communication with all and particularly those we love. We can practice not holding so tightly to that which we cannot control. We can give permission to someone else to express their own boundaries. We can give more space for things to just be what they are going to be day to day. And perhaps we even carve out space for entirely new opportunities. We often assume boundaries divide us, but quite the contrary—when we set boundaries we communicate the rules of engagement, and it is then that we know how to interact with one another, while being able to show up as our best selves. Perhaps six feet of separation was all we needed to get closer.