Healthy boundaries, wrote an article about it, wanna read it? Here we go …
I’ve never been particularly good with boundaries. Not as in respecting them, but in enforcing my own. Like my nickname should have been Pangaea: just one borderless mega-continent where people could walk all over me. And I’m not saying this with a violin in hand. I’m saying it as someone who has finally woken up to the fact that boundaries don’t make you a bitch; they enforce self-respect.
I think it stems back to advice my father once gave me (sorry dad). It came from a good place, and helped me in many ways, but he told me that no matter how busy you are, if someone writes you (or reaches out for help), that you always have time to respond with at least one sentence. I took it to heart, and it served me well in business (and made me decidedly millennial, because what does a girl need to do to get a Gen Z to write you back?!). I’d respond to practically every DM and email (which used to be a lot), and in retrospect, I think it made people love me. Even though I would often sacrifice my energy and time to do so. Which — ding! ding! ding! — is precisely why I’ve always been so afraid of setting boundaries. Boundaries could mean someone won’t like/love me anymore. That they could make negative assumptions about me. And baby, that is 100% gloriously true.
I got to thinking about this after a week of spilt tea and being attacked online. I recently taught one of my Moving Mythology classes for my online platform Haus of Phoenix. It’s an incredibly niche offering, but I pull from myths around the world, retell the story, and weave it into a yoga practice. It fuses my loves and give me immense joy, and my most recent topic was the myth of Narcissus. I made a reel to advertise the class, and like an idiot, checked the post before going to bed. Never check your phone before going to bed.
Someone had written a scathing comment on the post, claiming they met me years ago at a public event, and that I had been aloof, dismissive, and was clearly a narcissist myself.
Cue intense dysregulation, confusion, and needing a sleeping aid.
I had no idea who this woman was, racked my brain from that night (still couldn’t remember her), and even reached out to my friend who attended the event with me. She too, had no recollection of anything like this. All the while, I’m contemplating whether I should DM this woman when it hit me: I don’t have time to defend myself from an absolute stranger. And certainly not one who picks a public forum, years after the alleged fact, over a civilized person-to-person interaction. She didn’t want resolution; she wanted war. She wanted to be right.
But it got me thinking: where did this fiery reaction come from? This was years ago and I’m still not convinced we even spoke. Then a little lightbulb went off when I thought about a recent book I read around Carl Jung’s philosophical approach. He believed that individuals do not experience objective reality directly, but rather filter and shape it through their internal, unresolved unconscious process. He famously stated everyone responds from this unconsciousness, and it appears projected onto others, with the outside world and people in it serving as a mirror to that self.
Take a moment to digest that.
Strong reactions/accusations are a projection of the internal turmoil or unresolved trauma of someone else.
Oh the disasters I could have prevented if I had only understood this sooner.
So theoretically, with this woman, I’m posting about Narcissus (read: origin of narcissism). I can only assume this is a subject that hits close to home, as in she may be a narcissist or has been deeply affected by one. Or she saw me at this event and interpreted the way I looked or dressed as elitist (I love fashion, which often gets me mislabeled), misinterpreted being quiet as uninterested; smiling as flippant; not knowing her or giving her enough time as arrogant. Again, I don’t know, because I have no memory of her, but these all feel plausible when you understand Yung’s philosophy.
I then had lunch with a friend, who divulged years ago, before we ever met, that an acquaintance had claimed that my ex-wife and I were known as ‘those snobby lesbians around town’.
I almost choked on my Beluga caviar.
It actually made me laugh, but underneath the smile, it stung. I love my city and being a patron to the talented people who work in it. I consider myself to be a warm and friendly Gemini, kinda like a human pug. I love fashion, and don outfits that are more suited for Paris than Charleston, but hey — they make me happy, and clothes are meant to be worn.
It all started to click again:
Projections, projections, projections.
Especially if you’re a woman. (Side note: a straight woman calling lesbians snobby — I’m so tired of the power lesbian cliché. So trite.)
Think of it in culturally binary terms. If you’re a woman or female identifying and you keep to yourself, you’re labeled dismissive and aloof. A quiet cis man? You’re mysterious. If you’re a stylish woman? Materialistic and self-absorbed. A well-dressed dude? A renaissance man; a catch! A woman who enforces boundaries? A total bitch. But a man? Probably a high-paid boss, and — is he single?
I felt this deep in my bones as my mother tried on clothes at a local boutique. I was there for moral shopping support, sitting outside the dressing room as an associate I hardly knew talked to me. A lot. Like so much that my mother opened the curtain, tried to talk to me, and gave up and went back in. The woman was demanding way too much of my time and attention, when I simply wasn’t there for her. I was there for my mom. She deeply values this kind of time with me. I eventually had to shut the conversation down in order to direct it back to my mother. She later introduced me to someone else as my ex-wife’s name (they both start with the letter K: Revolutionary), to which I re-introduced myself as Kathryn. I could feel my own projected, unresolved anger bubbling up. Battling years of heteronormativity. Of people being flabbergasted, or worse, degradingly stating ‘so cute!’ that we were married and had the same name (we didn’t). Oh, how hard it is to tell those snobby lesbians apart …
Projections, projections, projections.
I let my simmer cool — after all, this was my own shit — then stood with my mother as she purchased her clothes, gave her a big hug goodbye. I realized this woman might now find me rude because I corrected her and had cut her off when she demanded too much of my space. But could I control her interpretation of me? No. Did that make me snobby?
Well, that is in the eye of the beholder. But the one thing I can control moving forward? Enforcing my boundaries in both friendship, love, and everyday interactions. Locking down the borders, committing to never sacrificing myself again, and only granting those with a Kathryn 2.0 passport to enter.
Not me digging out my fisticuffs. As someone who got to know you through public teachings - I want to throw down in your honor. You have always given so much of yourself. This article resonated with me so wholly bc everything you said is SO true when I think about you. Also, as an introvert who literally turned around bc I saw a neighbor out while on a walk the other day, and I was not in a “talking mood” - people do not give enough credence to what someone’s emotional state or current circumstance is when engaging with them.
Someone once said “other people’s opinions of you are none of your business” and I think about that often (as a recovering people pleaser I really do have to think about it a lot).