A few years ago when I first went to treatment for my eating disorder, my brother flew to LA for 24 hours to see me. He was the first family member to visit and to say I was elated is an enormous understatement; I literally couldn’t wait to see him. When he sent me his flight details, I took them to the clinical director who proceeded to inform me that I would not be able to see him when he arrived because I would be at a lunch outing. It was a compulsory group activity and she would not make an exception. I would have to wait until 2pm to see him, 2 hours after he was scheduled to arrive.
I was livid. I thought she was totally unreasonable as it meant that I would only be able to spend a total of about 5 hours with him out of 24. I also had not seen him in more than a year. As it turned out, I ended up not seeing him until 3 hours after he got there as we were running late back from the lunch outing. This further infuriated me. I really felt that an exception should have been made given he was flying in from Australia for the day.
I didn’t react kindly to her and I avoided her for the next few days. When I finally told her how upset I was about it all, she said she totally understood. She was so calm and composed and then I apologized to her for being upset. She asked me why I was apologizing; I was so confused. I told her I was apologizing for being angry with her. She asked me if I thought I shouldn’t have been angry and I was even more confused. I sat there very awkwardly feeling like I was in some sort of trick situation. I will never forget what she proceeded to say to me:
“You know Phoebes, I am a good and loving person and I try to do my best to be thoughtful and considerate towards others. But being thoughtful doesn’t equate to being a pushover or giving in to others when you have made a thoughtful decision and think it is the right one. Sometimes you just have to listen to your gut and back yourself.” We talked more about how important boundaries are and that people are never going to be happy with everything you do. But if we start turning our lives upside down and changing our minds so that other people will be happy, then not only will we never happy ourselves, but we will waste so much time and energy that is better spent being who we are rather than worrying about who people think we are.
In this situation, she was in charge of my care and saw that my meal plan was a very vulnerable thing. Missing a chance to eat out in public with the other clients was not something she thought I would benefit from at such an early stage in my recovery and she felt structure was what I needed most. Her job was not to make me happy but rather to do what was best for my recovery. She made the call and she never expected me to be happy about it but she expected me to accept it and I did.
I am a pretty sensitive person. I care a lot about people and I don’t like upsetting them. That is not to say I don’t speak my mind; I am sure my brothers and sister, parents, fiancé and close friends will all attest to that fact. But as for setting boundaries in relationships, standing up for myself and finding a voice in difficult situations, this has not been an easy thing for me to learn.
Recently, I was accused of being too sensitive and told that I needed to get a thicker skin. I was struggling again with caring too much about upsetting other people. When I talked to my sister about it later, she said “you do need to get a thicker skin. Get back to having the confidence in yourself I know you have. You have good values and you’re fair but that doesn’t mean you abandon yourself just to please others.” It was awesome advice and spot on.
The thing I realized afterwards is that I already have a thick skin, I just sometimes take it off!
No matter how much we work on ourselves, some things often arise again and again and we need to remind ourselves, or be reminded when old habits are creeping in. I am reminded that upsetting others is a part of life. I am never going to please everyone. I certainly care about others and don’t set out to hurt but I cannot do things to please people when pleasing that person means compromising my values, my ability to make a well balanced decision and the plethora of other things I should be doing in this life instead of worrying about what others think of me.
Very conveniently last week a client came to me and talked about a problem he had with a work colleague. The long and the short of it was the only way this colleague was going to be happy was if my client stunted his own potential, treated said colleague as their boss even though she wasn’t and engaged in office gossip and criticism of his other colleagues. This client knew that if he were to do any of these things, he would be compromising his own values, gifts and potential and that staying true to what he knew to be right was the only way to resolve the problem. For the record, this client had tried being honest and direct with the colleague and it didn’t work. We forged a plan for him to detach from this colleague and remind himself multiple times a day (we came up with a mantra) of who he was and what his values were.
When he came back this week he said that nothing had really changed that much in terms of the behavior of the said colleague, but he said that by reminding himself of who he was and who he wanted to be, the colleague took up less energy in his life and he felt lighter than he had in weeks. We can’t change others, but we can change how much energy we allow them to take up. As a beautiful friend of mine recently said 'sometimes, people just need to learn how to have a care factor of zero.'
Getting a “thicker skin” does not equate to being insensitive; it means having more confidence in who you are as a person which in turn enables you to let what others say about you and how they feel roll off your back. I would hope that anyone would come to me directly if they felt that I hurt them or had done wrong by them. I would listen to them and how they feel and take the time to decide whether I should rethink my view. However, that doesn’t mean that I am necessarily going to change my position just because someone didn’t like what I did.
So next time you get hurt by someone’s comments, whether they are made directly to you, in a passive aggressive way or behind your back, before you go down that rabbit hole of feeling guilty and hurt and allowing the inevitable feeling of self doubt to creep in, remember who you are! If you are a caring and kind person, chances are you just used your voice and that may have rubbed someone up the wrong way. Trust in yourself and the person you are and do what my Grandmother did, she literally would make a flick on her shoulder as she walked away from the person or situation in order to signify that she had let the comments go and they would not take up any more of her precious energy.
There are a lot of real problems in this world that deserve and need our time and emotional energy; caring about what other people think of everything we do is not one of them! I don't like to use comparisons too often but sometimes they are important to bring us back to the real world.
Love Phoebe