Setting healthy boundaries is an important skill we all must master from the time we are children throughout our adulthoods to preserve our sense of self. If you put your arms straight out, making a 90-degree angle with the rest of your body, everything inside that space is considered your own “personal space.” This gets tricky in crowded areas but is generally a good rule of thumb. However, our emotional boundaries are often much more difficult to navigate than our physical ones. In particular, as women, we’re taught to “be nice,” which often translates into putting our needs aside at our own expense to make others happy. This is definitely not a healthy thing to do on a regular basis. We can feel diminished over time, resent others for this, and suffer from emotional and physical symptoms like depression, anxiety, and insomnia. We all need to figure out what matters most to us and where we draw the line with those we care about and those we may not. This includes family members, friends, work colleagues, acquaintances, and strangers. It also includes online “friends” and “followers.” This last group is the cohort I’d like to focus on here.
We all know how politically and even socially divided this country has been at times. While I am very much of the mind that we’re all much more similar than we are different, the last several years have dangerously highlighted our differences. Social media has grown in popularity over this time, and so has unpleasant discourse, sometimes to the point of being hateful. People can quickly feel emboldened to say anything, particularly when there is so little accountability behind an anonymous screen. Guess what- we don’t need to listen, and we don’t need to respond. We can respectfully express our opinions if we choose and then set healthy boundaries in which we literally and figuratively walk away. We can also check our privacy settings, block people, report them for off-color and even heinous remarks they may share, unfollow them, and never follow them to begin with. WE ABSOLUTELY DO NOT NEED TO ENGAGE WITH THEM!!!! (This is different from a civil in-person discussion.)
I just wrote about dealing with offensive voices online, focusing on this area of interaction in lieu of our upcoming election in two-and-a-half short months. Why waste your valuable energy and time to engage with someone who clearly disagrees with you or TRY to convince them of something that you believe, and they do not, particularly someone you don’t know? Protect yourself. Protect your energy and your well-being. Save your energy for those things that really matter to you. If it is politics and the election, then go and work with your political party. There are many things they can suggest, like knocking on doors and writing postcards. If it’s bike riding, then do that.
The same is true for those we do know in our non-virtual lives. We do not have to agree with people when they don’t share our viewpoint. We can be civil and express ourselves if we think it’s worthwhile to engage. We get to choose if we believe it’s worthwhile. We do not have to give our time when we don’t have it. We do not have to put ourselves out when others don’t reciprocate. We get to stand up for our basic rights of speaking up, walking away, or not answering a question. As women, we need to learn what our brothers are taught from a young age—to think about ourselves. This is not “selfish,” obviously within certain bounds; this is self-preservation. It’s always easier to do this when we have actual external limitations like job and family responsibilities. In addition, we need to learn that we always have a right to our own time, space, values, and priorities. Clearly, childcare can limit our time, but even with this, there are usually ways to make sure we can carve out some time to rest, take a walk, talk to a friend, take a bath, read a book, or watch a movie. We must learn the art of saying “no,” and assertively live our lives without apology.
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