I have a family member who tends to dump on me: she purges all of her problems, all of her judgments about me, my life choices, what she perceives as my personality flaws, and any transgressions I have committed that “hurt her feelings” over the years. The good news is, it only happens every few years. The bad news is, I take these attacks on my character very personally. It usually starts with “we need to talk” and ends with me getting my feelings hurt and crying a lot because I value this person’s opinion, even though I really shouldn’t. So the time has come again for the emotional dumping, this time in the form of a letter that includes lots of accusations and hurtful stuff.
This time things were different though because I didn’t allow it to get to me (I should say “as much as I usually do” – it’s still hard to get a letter like that). I thought, What if it isn’t true? What if her perception isn’t based on anything I have done? And then I also remembered something I read in the book Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. And this is the real reason I am writing this post, not to complain about a mean letter but to tell you about this cool idea:
“…Every single one of us at birth is given an emotional acre all our own. You get one, your awful Uncle Phil gets one, I get one, Tricia Nixon gets one, everyone gets one. As long as you don’t hurt anyone, you really get to do with your acre as you please. You can plant fruit trees or flowers or alphabetized rows of vegetables, or nothing at all. If you want your acre to look like a giant garage sale, or an auto-wrecking yard, that’s what you get to do with it. There’s a fence around your acre, though, with a gate, and if people keep coming onto your land and sliming it or trying to get you to do what they think is right, you get to ask them to leave. And they have to go, because this is your acre.” —from Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott 1994.
Setting boundaries is like building a fence around it and putting a lock on the gate. My emotional acre is more like a really cool backyard with pretty flowers, a pond, a kitty, and lots of trees. Some people get invited in, and some people, well, they just don’t. They have to go trample on someone else’s flowers and nice yard instead. Some get invited for a short time, and they are watched carefully. The reason this appeals to me is it’s simple. It gives you permission to protect your emotions and not be called “too sensitive.” You can say, “I am not ready to have this conversation right now,” which means, “no, you can’t come in to my acre at the moment.” You get to be the bouncer of your own emotional acre.
So back to the letter. At first, I feel hurt and pissed off. But then I imagine I am standing outside the gate of my emotional acre and I re-read the letter. Then I kind of leave it out there, outside the gate. I think on it. Then when I’m ready, I respond to the points in the letter like a mature person who is not taking things personally; I am outside the fence. I stand up for myself with this person on paper, send the reply, then rip up the original letter and leave it outside the gate. Then I also make a deal with myself that I won’t read any other letters that may come from this person.
What was the response? A phone call from that family member, who said, “okay, we’re fine now.” That’s it. Which again made me mad because I thought, that’s it? You said all this stuff that I carefully responded to, and your response is “we’re fine?” So, okay, that tells me that it really isn’t personal, that it really isn’t true, and that I am glad I took all this stuff in outside the gate of my emotional acre. Try this out, it works.
1 Comment
February 5, 2008 at 4:33 pm
I do like this theory. I, too have been trying to cleanse my space and not let in so much of other people’s negative energy. I truely hope you are able to utilize this theory more and more going forward because, from what you have said in the past, you had a shabby fence and no gate around your acre.
I love reading your blog.
Tiff