Resilience requires boundaries

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: boundaries are an integral part of resilience.

I think people see emotional and mental resilience still as ‘nothing touches me’, or ‘get through whatever bullshit life throws at you’. It’s not the ability to get through life with nothing touching you. Part of it is about letting some of life’s little things slide off you, but that looks different for everyone, and it changes as life happens.

The reason getting your clothes caught on a door handle absolutely fucks you up on a stressful day is because you’re already stressed. It’s not that you’re not resilient, it’s that you’re using your resilience for bigger things, so you have no energy to let a hooked door handle that stops your momentum slide off you. (It’s also a ‘safe’ thing to vent your feelings on, but that’s a different thing).