Tag: boundaries

Noticing when someone is using your triggers to disorient and confuse you

Real Social Skills

When someone is using your triggers to disorient and confuse you, it’s confusing. It can take a long time to figure out what’s going on.

Here are some things I think are red flags:

If someone seems to like you more when you’re triggered than when you’re in control, something is seriously wrong

  • For instance, if a therapist only listens to you when you’re sobbing and otherwise acts as though you couldn’t possibly understand anything about yourself
  • Or when a friend suddenly finds you fascinating when you’re triggered and they’re supporting you through it, but they half-ignore you most of the rest of the time

If someone feels entitled to discuss triggering subjects with you (absent an immediate practical reason to), something is seriously wrong:

  • For instance, if you say that you’d rather not discuss dogs right now because it’s triggering and you’re close to the edge already, and they say “but I thought we were friends! How can you shut me out like that?”
  • Or if a therapist tells you that you’ll never get better unless you are willing to discuss once again, in graphic terms, the ways people abused you – and they refuse to say, help you figure out whether the medication you are taking is working, or whether the side effects are dangerous, unless you do this over and over

If you end up triggered every time you try to reject personal advice, something is seriously wrong:

  • For instance, if someone regularly wants to tell you how to dress, and every time you try to wear something different, they push you until you end up sobbing and apologizing, something is wrong
  • This is particularly the case if they’re always bringing triggering things into a conversation that didn’t need to have anything to do with them
  • Your desire to wear a red hat rather than the blue on they want you to wear is probably because you want to wear a red hat
  • It’s very unlikely that it’s because you have no perspective on clothes because your abusers damaged you
  • And even if that was the reason, it would still be ok for you to prefer a red hat, and wrong for someone to try to force you to wear a blue one by triggering you

Not everything is your problem

Real Social Skills

When someone is abusing you:

  • It’s ok not to care why they’re doing it
  • Their circumstances aren’t your problem
  • Neither is their childhood
  • Neither is the possibility that they’re playing out abuse patterns they learned as an abuse victim

These are larger social issues. It’s important that some people work to address them.

But not you. Not with regard to your own abuser. You don’t have to wait for huge social problems to be solved to be allowed to demand that a specific person stop abusing you.

It’s ok, and advisable, to focus on protecting yourself.

Meeting sensory needs without violating boundaries

Real Social Skills

Sometimes people feel a strong need for a certain kind of sensory input, and then use other people’s bodies to meet that need even over their objections.

It’s not ok to do that. Not for sex, not for comfort, not for any other reason. People’s bodies are their own.

But sensory-seeking isn’t the problem. Failing to respect boundaries is the problem. There are other ways to get sensory input that don’t hurt anyone.

Here are some things that can help.

Squishables. These are giant big round stuffed animals. Hugging them feels like hugging, and hugging them and rocking can be very satisfying.

Fidget toys, like the ones available at Office Playground, can be helpful for some people.  Having something satisfying to do with your hands can make things feel a lot better.

Dollar stores and cheap stores and the cheap kid toys rack that a lot of stores have can be a good source for cheap fidget toys, too. (Silly putty works well for some people, for instance).

Wooden baby toys like this one and this one can be good. So can marbles. (Because they are hard and smooth and round and cold and can be rolled).

Listening to music on headphones can make being in spaces bearable. (Sometimes spaces are bearable either by holding onto people, holding objects, or listening to music with headphones. It’s good to have options that don’t require hanging onto others).

Stimming without objects can help too – flapping and rocking, in addition to being expressive body language, can be really useful as ways to regulate oneself and meet sensory needs.

Sensory Squids is a good blog about this for adults. (Because, you know? Most of us don’t outgrow this).

Liking something vs wanting it from everyone

Real Social Skills

These are all things:

  • Liking an activity or kind of interaction
  • Wanting to do that activity or interaction with everyone or most people who want it from you
  • Wanting to do that thing with every nice person you like who wants it from you.

These are often conflated, but they shouldn’t be. They are different. It is possible, and ok, to like something but not want it from everyone.

Here is a common example; the next couple of posts will be different common examples

Touch:

  • Some people like to be touched; some people don’t
  • Some people are ok with being touched by strangers; some people aren’t
  • Some people like to be touched by friends, but not people they aren’t close with
  • Some people who like being touched by friends like being touched by everyone they like; some people only like being touched by some people
  • Some people only like affectionate touch from sexual or romantic partners
  • Some people only like affectionate touch from close relatives
  • All of these things are ok, and liking some forms of touch doesn’t mean you have to like or accept touch from everyone

Keeping your touchy-feely off others.

Real Social Skills

“I’m a touchy-feely person.”

Some people say this a lot. Some of them are really, really scary and dangerous people.

Sometimes what people mean by this is “I’m the kind of person who is allowed to touch and feel people, and I don’t have to consider whether it is welcome”.

Sometimes this is physical. Sometimes it means people feel entitled to hugs. Or to stroke someone’s hand or hair. Or they think routine interpersonal touch is a basic necessity, and that the mainstream-expected physical boundaries are bad, and that they can make things better by unilaterally violating them and touching people.

Sometimes it’s emotional. Sometimes it means that they want to be an intimate part of people’s emotional experience. Sometimes it means they unilaterally share personal things, and act as though that creates a reciprocal obligation. Or they think that our society is too emotionally closed off, and by unilaterally imposing an intimate emotional tone to their interactions, they are making things better.

Sometimes people who do this think that people who don’t like this are just repressed. Or, worse, sometimes they think that people who don’t like this don’t actually exist, and that everyone likes it, deep down. That’s really dangerous, especially when people do this to people they have power over. (Which is really, really common, especially with people who work with children, especially with people who work with non-verbal children.)

It’s really important to interact with the person you’re actually with. You can’t do this by constructing an imaginary person you see as the Real Them, and by acting as though they want what the Real Them would want. You have to interact with the actual person, and respect their actual communication. Which means, if they don’t want you touching and feeling them, physically or emotionally, you need to take that seriously and back off.

Intimacy is a beautiful and important thing, but forced fake touchy-feely intimacy is a horrible thing.

If you want to be touchy-feely, touch and feel people who want that from you, and keep your hands and emotional feelers off others.

Hearing no

Real Social Skills

Sometimes this happens:

  • Person 1: X?
  • Person 2: No, because y.
  • Person one hears: Yes, if not-y. (And then acts accordingly).

No-because doesn’t mean yes-if. It doesn’t necessarily give you all, or even any of the reasons the answer is no. Changing things so that the no-because no longer applies doesn’t automatically make the answer yes. All it gives you is some information that might be useful in asking another question.

Some more concrete examples:

  • Hat-asker: Hey, can I borrow your hat?
  • Hat-owner: No, it’s raining and I don’t want it to get wet.
  • Hat-asker then assumes: If there’s no risk of getting the hat wet, then Person 2 agrees that it is ok for me to wear it.
  • Hat-asker  borrows the hat without asking, but only wears it indoors.

In this example, it would probably be ok for Hat-Asker to ask Hat-Owner, “Actually, I just wanted to wear it for a minute in the other room to entertain my friend. Would that be ok?”, but it would not be ok to assume without asking that it would be ok because the hat definitely wouldn’t get rained on.

Or this:

  • Person 1: Hey, let’s sit together
  • Person 2: I’m really not in the mood for company; I want it to be quiet.
  • Person 1 thinks: It’s ok if I sit there if I don’t make any noise. (And then sits next to Person 2 without verifying that this is ok).

In this situation, it might be ok to ask if it was ok to sit there quietly without having conversation, but it also might be better not to ask. (I’m not sure how to explain the difference, though.) But it would be invasive to just sit there and assume doing so quietly was ok.

Or this:

  • Person 1: Hey, do you want to go out on a date?
  • Person 2: No thanks; I’m too busy for dating this semester.
  • Person 1 thinks:  Person 2 will go out with me during winter break.

In this case, it’s important to bear in mind that wanting to date someone doesn’t necessarily mean they want to date you, or that they should date you, or that they should consider dating you. No-because doesn’t mean yes-when. In this case, it would be probably ok to ask again when it gets to be around that time, but it would not be ok to assume that the answer will be yes, and it would not be ok to demand an explanation of why the answer is still no.

Because people have the right to say no to requests for favors, attention, and use of their possessions, and they don’t generally owe you an explanation.