Back

But it doesn't usually seem to mean having boundaries against the biggest things in my life that may be harming and depleting me.

Things like institutions – one’s workplace, one’s school, one’s government, the competitive societal structure in general.

And...

2/9

And those (now I’ve done the thread on ‘twelve ways to know when you’re exploiting someone’) who I realize are extracting something from me they need.

https://mas.to/@KatyElphinstone/113581417015412079

Often they're the same people telling me I should have boundaries.

3/9

The power differential issue around 'boundaries' isn’t often considered.

The people who advise me about my boundaries aren't very interested in this aspect.

One therapist got angry when I talked about society’s power structures as my biggest problem.

4/9

I get that.

After all, how can you have boundaries against something overwhelmingly powerful & on which you’re dependent?

You might end up alone, poor, homeless even, futureless. In prison. In the old days, in a mental institution (and perhaps sometimes, even now).

5/9

So it doesn’t work that way around.

‘Don't look up!’...

But yet – why can’t we talk about power differentials? Observe them, at least?

I’m a parent. I live among extended family. If I’m burning out... yes, there are those who react by telling me I must have more boundaries.

6/9

No! I won’t have boundaries against the people who need me, those small ones, who have no one else to go to who’ll listen.

Who’re dependent and therefore trapped in their situation. They have to just take whatever they’re given.

"You can count me out of that one!” I yell.

Because if I can change even one or two people’s lives, in this way, I will.

8/9

And the other way about?

Well. I can’t easily have boundaries against exploitation if those who’re doing it hold such power to punish me, if I do.

Though I'll do my darned best to!

And I've found it helps to share & exchange thoughts with my #autistic comrades here.

9/9
End of

#Hierarchy #Capitalism #Exploitation #Punishment #Abuse #Society
#ActuallyAutistic

@KatyElphinstone it might be related to the fact that you need new approaches in psychotherapy when you are dealing with people who have mental health problems because of climate change. no amount of "changing your own attitude" will help against the effect of seeing the world around you decline. so how do you go on?

@KatyElphinstone I live half an hour from anything, so it was EXTREMELY stressful for me. The only saving grace was that I'm retired and it was winter and not, for the most part, dangerously cold, so I could take her wherever I went and leave her in the car while I ran errands.

It was *extremely* stressful for me, and it was months of behavioral desensitization, and ultimately medication, before I could leave her more than an hour and a half.

(2/n)

@KatyElphinstone My therapist and my coach both urged me to take her back to the pound, but there was no way on gods' green earth and seven hells that that was going to happen. She's a sentient being, a traumatized one at that, and no WAY was I going to abandon her (never mind what it would've done to my own abandonment issues).

It's not my right to have boundaries against someone so dependent on me. Which makes me think about who doesn't have the right to boundaries against *me.*

(3/3)

@ireneista

I love it when other people here have had or are having same thoughts!

I wonder if there's some group synchronicity among us all...

@KatyElphinstone this topic was a few years ago for us, so not chronological synchronicity, but we do expect that similar experiences led to it