Boundaries

I’ve always been terrified of taking too much, asking for too much, or just being too much. This shows up in terms of restricting food intake, but it shows up in many other ways, as well.

I’ve recently realized, with the help of my therapist, that my panicked reaction when people put up a boundary is connected to this idea of being too much for people.

I hear, “I have to go—talk to you later!” and assume that the other person has been annoyed with me for some time, and it’s finally boiled over into them leaving.  My instinct is to apologize.  I’ve taken up too much time and used up their patience, and now they’re leaving.  If I’m really frantic, I’ll apologize again.  (Because that definitely helps…)  What if they never want to talk to me again?  What if I’m too much for them and they’re just done with me?

I try so hard to make sure I don’t overstep.  If someone puts up a boundary, that means I should have stopped sooner.

Maybe I should stop reaching out, stop talking to them, so they don’t have to tell me I’m too much.  I rarely actually stop, but I sometimes do.

The worst thing about being too much is that apologizing doesn’t help.  It just extends the feeling of being too much for someone.  Then they either have to put up with calming my fears or continuing their boundary, knowing that I’m struggling.

I’m actually glad when people put up boundaries, theoretically.  They trust me enough to do that.  They know I can be okay if they leave or if they don’t do what I ask.  I don’t want someone to stay with me because they’re afraid of what will happen if they don’t.

But when it happens, I just flash back to that feeling of being too much.

It’s happened before, in ways that I vividly remember and that still hurt.  In 9^th grade, a friend felt overwhelmed and told his mom, and his mom wouldn’t allow him to talk to me anymore.  Going through the rest of the school year with my best friend unable and unwilling to talk to me… it was so incredibly hard.

Even fairly recently, a friend stopped contacting me.  He stopped contacting anyone and was struggling with severe depression; it’s not just me.  I really do know this, and I try to support him as best I can with friendly notes and no response expected. But I still sometimes wonder if I could have done things differently to help him more.

It seems obvious in retrospect, but I just figured out that I don’t only fear this with people—I fear it with food and my body.  If I feel full, I have gone too far.  If I gain weight, I have gone too far.  The only way to make sure I don’t go too far is to not go far enough, and by enough of a margin that I don’t get close to full, that I don’t get close to gaining weight.

This obviously didn’t work for a year or so. I felt like I was constantly pushing past the boundary. My weight went up no matter what I did, and I felt like too much in so many ways.

Things are starting to get back to normal, but I feel boundaries on both sides, now.  That’s better than wanting to just eat as little as possible, but now I fear eating too much and I fear eating too little, lest my body go into “starvation mode”.

I feel caught in a no-win situation.  Too much and I’m wrong.  Too little and I’m wrong.

I think I need to remember, again, that this isn’t black-and-white.  There’s a gray area, a middle area, and it’s larger than I think it is!  I don’t need to calculate the exact number of bites I should have, and to stress if I am off by a bit.

My dietitian told me that there was no exact number of bites or calories to have.  I was half joking, but half serious, when I said that of course there was—it was 1 more than the point at which I would have detrimental effects from not enough food.  Find that magic spot, and that’s where I should be.

It’s the same with weight.  If I would have problems at or under a certain weight, then I should be one ounce over that.  That’s the only safe place to be.

But my body isn’t an equation to solve, or if it is, it’s one with multiple correct answers!  There is no single “perfect amount” of food or weight or anything.

Also, though it’s so hard, I’m trying to realize that boundaries aren’t signs that I’m doing something wrong.  Really, they’re signs that I’m doing something right.

Someone tells me they can’t talk with me right now—that means that they trust me enough to tell me that, and that they aren’t talking to me out of pity or a sense of obligation.

Someone tells me they have to go—they know that I’ll be okay when they do.

And if I feel hungry or full, that’s my body telling me how I’m doing in terms of my food intake.  It’s giving me the feedback that I want—helping me find that gray area.  It doesn’t mean I’ve done something wrong; it means that I’m learning what’s right for my body.

Here’s to finding boundaries and using them to guide my behaviors in the future!