Ok, this one stings a bit. I am absolutely positive that I have confused this for decades. I thought, for a long time, that showing up for people and violating what felt right or good for me, was a way to show how much I cared about someone else. I thought about what I had to offer and it seemed that self sacrifice was what others wanted most from me, so that is what I gave...I gave way too much, to way too many, for way too long, to way too many.
Boundaries, so I have learned, are never really for the other person. No one can really respect you boundaries. My experience is that most people don’t even recognize you have them. They just have theirs and their wants and needs and that is what compels them into action, or inaction, as the case may be.
Boundaries are for us. We decide we need them, we set them, we hold them (or don’t), we pay the consequences for allowing others to trample on our needs, wants and desires. They are forever ours...
Empathy - the ability share and understand the feeling of others, is a next level kind of thing. Which I have learned, the hard way, many people do not possess and are not really interested in ever possessing. Empathy means you are able to leave your side of the street and really examine life, a problem, an issue or perspective from the other person’s perspective as if you were actually them. This takes time, and effort and a willingness to set aside your own ideas for a minute and really consider where another person might be coming from...
Empathy requires heroism. And most people, don’t want to be heroes. I mean they want the glory and fame that comes from heroic acts, but they don’t want to do the actual work. And except in cases where the job requires a certain level of everyday heroism, most heroes I know are ordinary people who in a dire moment do the right thing and it all works out. There is a lot of chance involved in the whole deal. Those people didn’t wake up that day thinking I am going to save that kitten, or person, or whatever. They just happen to be in the right place at the right time and make a decision to engage and it all works out. We call these very same people something completely different when it fails completely.
Boundary setting and empathy are two entirely different skill sets. Empathy doesn’t require boundaries. It isn’t needed, the actual barrier between one being and another operates just fine. Empathy also doesn’t require engagement with the other person...empathy just requires that you are mentally capable of thinking about this other person and their plight from that other person’s perspective...there is nothing you really need to actually do.
Of course, feeling empathy, might compel you into action. It might help you ignite some compassionate action on the other person’s behalf. But empathy in and of itself is just a thought process.
Boundary setting is born perhaps of empathetic consideration. Perhaps, after careful and thoughtful imaginative empathetic inquiry, you make some decisions to do or not do some things. Empathy can be part of the boundary setting process and boundary setting might be part of empathetic engagement but they are not the same thing.
I can see that another person has a hard time and perhaps I might even see the legitimate reasons for that hard time. I might even be able to see why that person is having a hard time and what they might be doing to contribute to making it worse, or better. Empathy requires that I take on the feelings and perspective of this other person. Hell, it might even give me the idea that I should allow this other person to do some things that I might not otherwise allow. But boundary setting is the hardline that exists between empathetic thoughtfulness and allowing this other person and their situation to move in with you, literally and figuratively.
I have gotten this wrong a great deal. I have taken empathy way too fucking far, a lot. I have allowed my ability to see this other person and all their issues with so much empathy that I have blurred the lines between me and them. I have crossed over to their side of the street and picked up their issues and made them my own. I am pretty sure we call this codependence. And that is the danger, for me, about empathetic inquiry without a firm and stable basis upon which to set boundaries for myself.
I think also believing that the boundaries you set are for other people similarly spoils the whole deal. When I think I am setting a boundary for someone else...that is when I am in big trouble in this whole empathy ordeal. I think I am setting them for you, so that I then think that it is your job to assure they are upheld and respected. Nope! No fucking way. It is and always will be mine.
Sigh.
Fuck.
It is hard.
So when I fail to maintain my own internal truths and respect my own boundaries all in the empathetic pursuit, all I have really done is screwed up the whole deal from start to finish. I can’t be empathetic if I have failed to care for myself. If I am the bait or the reward or my willingness to extend myself way fucking past what is good for me is being considered empathy, then I have lost the thread. I am losing ground.
When I allow some other person to just walk all over me, to take advantage, blur the edges of where I begin and you end, all I have done is create a situation that is ripe for conflict...and disappointment and heartbreak.
On the other hand, setting boundaries, while maybe isn’t empathy, it is compassion, which I believe to be empathy in action. But I should not have idiot compassion, whereby I so overly invest in someone else that I hurt myself in the process. There is sacrifice in the whole relational equation...but there is less of that than I think there should be...again, another thing that I have gotten wrong.
Failure to examine the person and their issues with compassionate inquiry sets us both up for a toxic and unhealthy relationship in short order. I need boundaries and empathy to live my life with authenticity and vulnerability. How can I take care of you if I am not willing to first take care of me? It is the whole put the oxygen mask on yourself first. Otherwise you will just become a problem that everyone else has to resolve...likely putting all of you at great risk and peril.
Listening is empathy.
Feeling is empathy.
Setting boundaries is empathy.
Saying no is empathy.
Saying yes is empathy.
But none of the above will ever get you to a place of compassion if you aren’t considering yourself, your needs and wants, with an eye to ensuring those things are protected, valued and held dear to you. How can you ever do it for someone else, if you have no capacity to do it for yourself?
Empathy starts at home. With you. With those you love best and spreads like a ripple in a pond outwards in all directions. And sometimes, the most empathetic, kind and compassionate thing you can do, ever, is set and hold a boundary on a dealbreaker issue for yourself.
It isn’t easy. But it is the best practice of empathetic inquiry I know.
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