#boundaries reference

[abuzd]

What are your boundaries with people messaging you or wanting to befriend you?

i cannot put boundaries on others! as in i cannot ask people to uphold my boundaries. i just have boundaries i personally set with our blog. which is a kinda new thing to us.

our boundaries lsdkjfjskldfj are that we WANT to, and WILL reply IF/when we can!!!

we as Dogwood have been stretched far too thin, unfortunately. and asher, the usual main fronter/face is too overwhelmed. and has been. for too long. so we're working on not being an emergency department nurse for everyone else's needs before we allow ourselves to prioritise our own immediate needs and emotions, as they happen.

because of this, your question is tricky for me to answer for 2 reasons:

idk who i am 80% of the time now lmao so idk who i AM for anyone to BEFRIEND <.< this is tricky for us hahaha

we feel EVIL and VILE and WRONG and DESERVING OF DEATH when we cant reply to messages for whatever reason DW cant reply o messages. and then a backlog of unreplied-to-messages builds up and we panic and shut down and can't function because we FEEL like people NEED things from us (that people don't NEED they just WANT and there is NOTHING WRONG WITH WANTING!! especially nothing wrong with anyone wanting connection and friendship!!). this is why our askbox says [easily overwhelmed] it's a Disclaimer or Warning of some sorts like SORRRYYYYY WE ARE EASILY OVERWHELMED!!!!

see, we LOVE engaging with people, as a whole!! but we are also deeply deeply deeply permanently disabled with a HUGE lack of ability to maintain societally-conventional-friendships. those require somewhat consistent memory, and present-awareness usually. this............ does not come easy for us lol for hopefully obvious reasons lol

we WANT to interact and engage with everyone! not just mutuals, but anyone!! we love hearing about people and learning and reading and listening but GODDAMN we are BAD at FORMING REPLIES.

so if you're happy being the one who mostly does the talking in the friendship, by all means!!! if you can try to not take it Personally if we can't/don't reply, then pls message any time!!!! and double message and tripple message! if you like info dumping to strangers (not like.. traumadumping jlksdf i mean like special interest info and stuff) HOLY SHIT PLEASE SEND US ENDLESS MESSAGES <3333

every interaction we have online, we see as having with a whole-ass person on the other side of the screen from us, also a whole-ass person, and we want to have a human-to-human connection and interaction!!!

we always try not to make assumptions but like we do go off vibes and pattern recognition. we get to know people over-time. first impressions mean very little to us because we can't remember most first impressions lmao

everyone on here, whether we like them or agree with them or not, is a human. and we will interact like a human. like you're standing right there in front of us. we work.. uh... "phonetically." kinda like we're "live-tweeting" our thoughts at all times because i lose my memory so fast, that i actively lose memories as i form them.

so i'm typing this reply to you, but i only have the vaguest recollection of anything i've typed. and i lack the ABILITY to re-read everything. because i'll OCD spiral and edit and re-edit over and over again and end up not replying at all and having an anxiety attack instead. so instead over trying to tailer perfect replies, you just gotta hear it all lol and heeeeelll yeah!!!

if thats aiight with YOU then fuck yeah i/we can be friends!!!! unconventional friendship unique to just you and us because i/ we are incapable of meeting societally-accepted expectations on friendships, and are not able to be limited to conventional forms of friendship expression!

[ahiddenpath]

Boundaries

A friend sent me this today, looks like it comes from one Sharon Martin (this person, I assume)?  

I was raised to have weak boundaries, basically to go along with whatever my family suggested, to absorb their beliefs, likes, and dislikes.  Looking at this, I vividly remember how I used to apologize whenever I approached someone- “sorry I’m taking your time/asking for your attention.”  God, that’s so sad.  And I remember how calm assertiveness came off as, like-  Almost a slap in the face?  Like, almost aggressive.  It was so easy to confuse confidence with arrogance.

Yeah, looking at this, I definitely see how it’s easy to confuse “clear about how you want to be treated and what’s your responsibility” with “inflexible rules/things need to be done your way.”  Basically, you can’t try to control other people; you can only control how you behave.  I can’t stop someone from talking about x thing, even if I calmly say it makes me uncomfortable.  There’s no point raising my voice or being upset about it after I calmly make my stance known.  But I can get up and walk away if that topic comes up, delete asks on my blog, etc.  Disengaging and saving my precious energy for people I love has become my go to technique.

I’m still learning to refuse responsibility for other people’s feelings.  Obviously, if I hurt someone with a personal mistake, I will apologize, try to make amends, and avoid that hurtful behavior moving forward.  But if someone expresses that they are mad or upset because I won’t do something they want me to do, agree with their opinion, or talk about something they want to discuss...  That’s their issue, not mine.

To be clear, this isn’t some passive aggressive post, lol!  It came up because a friend shared this image, and it reminded me of how nonexistent my boundaries were, and how difficult this stuff is.  I think this is such a helpful diagram, so I’m sticking it on the bloggity and tagging it for reference.  (It could also be useful for creating characters- a character with weak boundaries behaves this way, etc).