BOUNDARIES IN THE NOUVEAU-NARCISSIST PARADIGM?

Reclaiming Our Hearts in a me-first-and-always world

For months, been pondering what went so painfully wrong.
So many people just stopped getting along…

There’s been mounting tension between people - at least from my perspective -  and growing disagreement and distrust between friends and within groups.
And i know stress and trauma have people on high alert.

For three years i’ve watched peoples’ personalities morph into self-absorption; culture and traditions vanish; and young people glued to technology and unable to hold a conversation face to face*.
Too many people out there just don’t see you, and have dead stone cold eyes.

Because i forever wonder how brains change (for better and worse), i ask what’s going on and seek why.

Then last year i got embroiled in something i couldn’t ever imagine or expect.
It’s taken three months of internally untangling my wires to disengage, and i can’t say all the triggers are calm and tamed yet…here are pieces of the story and what i can at this point conclude.

Transparency, for perspective: long ago i noticed when i’m too emotional nothing good comes out of my mouth, and at those times people can get angry or feel hurt. Then i always feel bad.
i’m still emotional, as i imagine all sensitive tender people alive on earth might be.
But now i think about words, and how best to voice my thoughts - perhaps writers all do - and i prefer not to speak when i’m emotionally upset.
Instead i wait, and then write out my thoughts and edit multiple times, until it feels clean and clear and succinct.

i like to learn about others and make agreements so that i can respect their needs and also meet mine.
i work by appointment, and schedule important calls when both or all parties can attend. i try to give things enough time. That just seems conscious and efficient to me.

Yet despite my best attempts at clear communications, some people have chosen to ignore all this, which i can no longer allow. Last year i hit a wall where i was not being heard where it mattered most, and confess that the opposition and disregard finally drove me mad.

i also confess i took some risks to grow in my work that put me at a disadvantage; and affirm i would not do this again.

This thing called healthy boundaries seems to have no place any more, and before you know it, you’re in over your head and your energy’s gone. 

It’s like a sticky web that snatches and wraps you from behind; and then you can’t breathe.

Here are some scenarios encapsulating last year that were wakeup calls for me and a couple friends. To move beyond this drama is a learning curve - often involving the self-discipline to stop trying so hard especially in relationships where we bend too far and give too much and end up drained. 

Compromising our life force for illusion is unacceptable any more, period, the end. Reflect how equally Yin and Yang embrace.

Situation 1: You say to your friend “i need to keep this short, because my schedule is full” and they force the conversation to continue for 2 hours.
You can never get off the phone, and so start to dread the thought of a call. Dread >>> Anxiety

Situation 2: You ask your friend to only send short texts because you can’t read long texts, especially during work and on such a small phone; they continue to serial-ping you with more and more of their philosophical or emotional thoughts, rants, and ideas.
Rumbling solar plexus and clenching jaw, after a few such interruptions you feel invaded, which causes alarm bells inside >>> Anxiety

Situation 3: Your friend has lots of responsibility or some other challenge which grabs at your heartstrings, so you always try to help by bringing things over, cleaning up for them, and offering solutions  and a listening ear - but they have these episodes of jeckyll-and-hyde-ism that come on suddenly and are a shock. It’s also hard to get a word in, so you become the listener, supporting the wounded child who never got acknowledgment for their individuality and  brilliance and on and on it goes.
As much as you adore their interactive charming side, you kind of dread the tyrannical, dictatorial side…like, yikes, when are they going to snap and lash out again?

In these stories, and any others you could add to this list, the script is the same. These relationships highjack time and energy without your consent and when it is not convenient or even reasonable for you.
They push you to compromise your schedule, your personality, values, interests, and self-care. After a while you feel anxiety.
They are not nourishing; they exhaust your mind and body and speed up your heart. 

How does energy get co-opted?

Little by little, just like two weeks to flatten the curve became three-plus years; just like every ambush on our rights and freedoms - one step, one click, one injection at a time - until you’re perforated through and through.
The elite stole the gold for their reserve in 1913-1917, then the twenties roared for a while until they crashed. Are we there again now, already…??? …but i digress…

Back on track with giving too much and being taken from.
It’s classic so don’t feel bad.

At some point if you’re lucky and basically awake, you rally for life and climb into your quiet cave for relief.
So i gave myself a much needed time-out over the holidays, decided to talk less, and committed to activate my writing again.
i represent holistic medicine and self-healing, and am fascinated learning and integrating cranial osteopathy into bodywork to catalyze deep tissue and nervous system release. i also love anatomy, biophysics, and the Vedas; so just seeing one photo or medical lecture or Sanskrit script can send me flying higher than the moon…
and this is magnificent medicine for the soul…

Boundaries fundamentally baffle us, and we can’t imagine needing them until we wish we had.

 
i got forced to contemplate what healthy boundaries might really be when my nervous system crashed in December after too many boundary lines got crossed - by careless albeit well meaning people whose own (trauma?) patterns make them push too hard all the time.

It seems most of us only wake up for real after a few hard shoves, face pressed to the wall. 

December was a hall of mirrors for me, reflecting my relational deficiencies and the endless ways boundary crossings can hurt and harm…most of them rumbling somewhere deep inside us, unseen.
Truth be told, i’m still in the process of self-repair and believe many of us are.

Shortly after i disengaged from overbearing aggressive environments, that universal not-a-coincidence known as synchronicity brought friends into my sphere who are tender, humble, and also mending their seams from far too much aggressive and self-entitled disrespect.
We all went through it last year, and it brings us to one humble place.

On the whole, our selfie culture are highly trained narcissists, who in the process of promulgating their glory as the center of the universe, have been tricked into a dopamine-driven matrix fueled by emptiness that separates them from the sentient universe and the fabric of all life. 

Simply put, they’ve lost touch.

The rest of us are processing trauma triggers every day and all the time as fast as we can, because down at the core of illness and societal dysfunction is unresolved trauma that is at once personal, ancestral and cross-cultural.

I DO NOT CONSENT.

We’ve been trained and propagandized to disconnect and self-obsess; convinced it’s the only roadway to success.
We could choose to create our own universe within a small digital circle that shields us from ever actually showing up, and end up stuck in the grid. 

I DO NOT CONSENT.

Everything alive is at stake right now. More and more i long to step away - no, I YEARN TO BOUND AWAY like a young doe - from all that chains me to the grid. 

If all else fails, i vow and vote to keep the soulful open-hearted sensitives in my life, to speak gently and with respect at the most helpful time, to listen deeply and heed the call of infinite goodness, to inhale the sweet spring wind and summer breeze, and weave my living breathing essence willingly into the tapestry of wholeness, to ripple healing out through the jeweled grid of light.

This may sound deluded or extreme, but ask any introvert, highly sensitive person, or someone with a painful brain injury how they feel in this world. For a lot of us, it’s all too harsh, loud, aggressive, self-preoccupied, and selfie-obsessed; relationship happens if we’re lucky on social media and in fragmented texts.
Technology and its addiction hurts our heads and hearts in unsustainable ways. We have no choice but to set stronger and stronger boundaries with that, stay real, guard our health, and keep compassion alive in our hearts.

We know this is the assignment for this passage and these times.

We must reach deeper than ever inside ourselves to find and extract the diseased roots of eons of colonial seige.

We must break the chain of subconsciously cruel, survival-terrified acting out.

And as the world population splits like mitosis in the primal cell and we are forced to choose our way…

i believe that you too could be sensitive, tender, and perhaps feel a bit lost in cyberland - and thus stake my claim as pronounced above with this famed invitation:

“Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down the dulcimer.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”
- Jelalludin Rumi

“and once we have each and all trysted with the gods, my beloveds, let us meet each other with great caring and devotion to join our light; for pure hearts fan and vibrate the eternal sacred flame…thus healing all, and becoming that we seek.” yph