We all need relational connection. Connection and collaboration are essential to thriving. But how we connect matters. I have often found relationships to be incredibly draining, frustrating, and even disempowering. A major way I’ve grown in freedom this past year is in building better emotional boundaries.

I’ve realized: Just because I am an emotionally intelligent, attuned, caring person doesn’t mean I need to carry everyone’s emotions. That’s what I’m used to doing. That’s what people might even expect of me. But is it the best way?

Is there such a thing as being too caring?

Empathy: Gift or Curse?

Empathy is often extolled as an important virtue. Which it is. Empathy is the ability to feel what others are feeling, to understand them on a deep, emotional level. Rather than pitying them, which is a form of looking down on someone, empathy puts us on level ground with another. (Brene Brown has a great video about this.) Empathy is vital to connection and repair in relationships.

However, there is an underside to empathy that doesn’t always get talked about. It’s this thing called over-empathizing.

Over-empathizing? How could feeling for another human being be wrong? Wouldn’t closing myself off to another’s experience be callous? One thing I’ve been grappling with the past several years is how my empathy has been harmful rather than helpful. I have taken in others’ emotions too deeply at times, and this has been detrimental not only to my well-being, but also to my relationships.

The strange, counter-intuitive reality is: My empathy can keep me from connecting well with people.

Longing for Connection

Ever since I was a kid, I have been good at emotionally attuning to others. I could feel when people near me were angry, stressed, or sad. I could feel those emotions in my body. Sometimes I tried to soothe the people around me, sometimes I tried giving them space, and sometimes I tried to entertain or distract them. Sometimes, I numbed myself emotionally or distanced myself physically because feeling it all was too overwhelming.

As an adult, I didn’t magically become less sensitive to others’ emotions. If anything, I’ve become more aware and attuned. I have seen it as my responsibility to help all the stressed, wounded people around me, and that has taken a toll. As a kid, this sense of responsibility was largely subconscious, a way for me to feel more in control of my life or to earn love. As I grew older, I more consciously took on this responsibility (or avoided it and then felt guilty). Christian rhetoric about the importance of loving others sacrificially fed into the idea that distancing myself from others’ emotions was wrong.

My empathy helps me connect with people deeply. It helps me be a comforting, safe presence to others. But it can also make me into a fly trap that catches all the tensions around me. Sometimes I have felt swallowed up by the emotions of others. Often I have felt extremely fatigued. And more and more I realize that I have participated in unhealthy, codependent relational dynamics––others relying on me in unhelpful, disempowering ways; me not feeling okay unless the people around me are okay.

Emotional Boundaries: Separating to Connect

The past few years, I have been practicing something new and unfamiliar: laying down the emotions of others. If someone near me is upset, I remind myself that I do not also need to get upset. I allow myself to be separate.

This is especially challenging when someone is upset at me, is a close person in my life, or is actively expecting me to join them in their emotions.

But, instead of immediately attuning to what they need or want from me, instead of leaning into their emotional world, entering the bubble of whatever they are feeling, I am learning to check in with myself first. How am I feeling? Are their emotions unsettling me in some way? Is my heart racing? Are my shoulders tight? Am I feeling guilty, anxious, or ashamed?

Rather than trying to change their mood––so my mood can also stabilize––I tend to myself first. I check in with myself. This might just be a couple seconds of taking a deep breath or reassuring myself that I’m okay. Or, this might require physically separating myself from the situation to gain clarity about what I’m feeling and what I need. I do what I need to do for myself. I take care of myself first. Then I consider the other person.

PUTTING MYSELF FIRST?

Thinking about myself in this way used to feel wrong. (Sometimes it still does, because these impulses run deep.) Put others first, I was taught. Prioritize others’ needs. Don’t think about yourself. A good person is self-less. A good person is what everyone else needs them to be. A good person makes everyone around them feel good.

What I have found, however, is that when I prioritize my needs, I am better able to help others. I may not appease them the way they want. I may not fulfill the role they expect me to. But I have the energy, calm, and presence of mind to offer a genuine connection. Rather than doing what they want of me, rather than pursuing a quick fix, I’m able to consider the situation more holistically. Rather than reacting out of discomfort, I can take action from a place of wisdom.

This enables me to offer a higher quality love.

Taking Responsibility for Myself

I used to take responsibility for others’ well-being and happiness. I used to think that was love. But is it? Often doing what others expect of us isn’t actually what’s best for them.

I am sometimes haunted by the question Cain asks God in Genesis: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Growing up, I thought the answer was yes. We are supposed to take responsibility for each other. But I’m not convinced of that anymore. Cain has just murdered his brother; he has actively caused harm to another person. That is what God condemns. But this other extreme Cain describes as a deflection––being responsible for his peer––is not the way of life either. If Cain had taken better responsibility of himself, if he had dealt with his jealousy and anger toward his brother, things could have turned out very differently.

God never said we were responsible for each other. God never said it’s our job to fix each other. What Jesus did say, however, was that we should love others as ourselves. Self-care is the implied first step. We are responsible for ourselves. We care for ourselves. And then we are to extend that care to others.

The order matters. Thinking of myself before others has been revolutionizing my life.

That feels like the most un-Christian thing I have ever said. And yet it also feels like common sense. You put the oxygen mask on yourself first before you help the person next to you, because if you run out of oxygen, what good are you to anyone? And yet so many of us ignore our own oxygen mask all the time. We focus on helping everyone around us, completely ignoring our own needs. We ignore our emotional turmoil, cognitive dissonance, and the increasingly intense signals our bodies are giving us. This can only lead to collapse.

I am deeply thankful for my own collapse, because it shook me awake.

I thought I was loving people by taking in their emotions, but what I was really doing was managing them and my own inner turmoil in an unhealthy, unsustainable way.

Freedom to Love

Building emotional boundaries doesn’t have to be about shutting others out. When I separate myself physically and emotionally from people, I am free to choose to connect (as I am ready). When I tend to my own emotional needs, I am able to do more than react to others’ emotions.

I don’t have to betray myself in order to love others well. This is the central truth I am embracing. There can be space for both my needs and others’ needs. Love is not a zero sum game. On the contrary, love can multiply. Loving myself can go hand in hand with caring for others.

Love is not appeasement. Love is not hiding. Love is not about making everyone around us happy. Love is meant to come from a place of wholeness. When love comes from the calm, centered place of knowing who I am and my worth, I am free to love others as whole people––separate from me and worthy being known and connected to.

How might the quality of our love change if we loved ourselves better?

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In the next post in this series, I’ll discuss another relational burden I’ve been learning to lay down, one Cain also struggled with: Comparison. If you missed the last post on perfectionism, you can find it here.