Recovery from anxiety — Removing negative people thoughtfully by setting boundaries

A friend of mine asked:

Been awake since 3AM due to a massive panic attack. Time to cut out the people and things in my life that don’t benefit my peace! Anyone have any additional tips for stress management?

~ A friend on Facebook

Removing negative influences is harder than it sounds

Remove negative influences for more peace and quiet… easier said than done! It turns into a vicious cycle unless done thoughtfully.

I thought I had it figured out, and I removed several people from my life. Things got better for a while, and then I ended up having panic attacks again. After some therapy and soul searching I realized I’d replaced the people I’d removed with new people who made pretty much the same kinds of problems. Learning to identify behaviors and habits I should avoid led to sustained improvements. Anxiety and panic attacks still bother me sometimes, but it’s much better now that I’ve identified how to set better boundaries.

Identify what makes you happy

Too much of my self worth off was based on the opinions of other people, and I was neglecting my own needs to “help” people who didn’t actually respect me. When I couldn’t drop what I was doing to deal with their problems, those people would get upset. I had to learn the difference between being happy and comfortable. You see, I realized those people were holding my comfort hostage. It wasn’t making me happy to help them. Rather, if I wanted to have any peace and quiet at all, I had to constantly cater to them.

I tend to have an overblown sense of personal accountability. If someone’s upset I default to analyzing my own actions to see what I could have done differently. I didn’t realize how other people were taking advantage of me through that. Removing overly needing people, especially those who felt entitled, was a big step forward. That was only a temporary fix though. Removing them without replacing the space they occupied led to inviting new toxic people into my life. Setting healthy boundaries was the true key to lasting peace and happiness, but it takes continuous work.

Identifying what makes me happy helped set my primary boundary

Through some soul searching, I figured out helping others does make me happy, but only when it leaves a lasting impact on their life. Right there, by noticing that, I was able to set the most important boundary in my life right now. I no longer offer to help people with random problems unless they’re paying me. I mean, if a person has a self-inflicted problem, like being late on their rent, I’m fine to help them identify ways to prevent that in the future, but I won’t lend money. In other words, I’ve learned I’m happy to teach someone how to fish, but I won’t give them my own fish for free.

However, self-identifying something like that is hard to do until the static is gone. If you’re surrounded by people and situations that place demands on your time, the first thing to do is put more simple boundaries in place.

Set simple boundaries early and often

I learned to set simple boundaries early and often. I mean boundaries that should be easy for any person to follow without making huge changes to their life. Putting these in place helped me figure out who actually respected me. I had to start with things that I felt comfortable standing my ground over.

Now, I tell acquaintances I don’t appreciate rapid-fire texts or being social on Sundays. I’ve found some people respect that and others don’t. At first it felt weird to make this one of the first things I tell new people in my life… it felt strange to just be like “yeah, don’t bother me on Sundays” or “if you want to text me, please just text me once, and if I don’t reply I’m probably in the middle of something, so don’t keep texting until I respond”.

Likewise, telling existing friends felt weird. It showed me something though. My true friends were very supportive when I explained why I was doing this. The other people outed themselves by telling me all the reasons it wasn’t fair (to them). Some were so upset and unreasonable about it, they actually made it easier to cut them off.

Pay attention to how people react to your boundaries

Watch how people respond when you set boundaries. People react differently depending on how much they respect you. Setting simple boundaries like “please don’t send me rapid-fire texts” should be easy for most people to follow. In my case, a lot of people said something like “well, I don’t expect you to respond right away, so just mute me”. Others simply said “okay, I can respect that”.

The old me would have been like “yep, you’re right, I could just mute my phone”. Now I evaluate that differently. A person who can’t respect such a simple boundary is the same type of person who’ll call me at 3am on a work night to borrow money, and act like I’m the asshole if I say no. I’ve noticed something else too. The people who generally respect this boundary will send me longer-form texts that explain what they want. They don’t just say “hey” or “sup”.

Your boundaries might be different from mine, but they should be things any reasonable person shouldn’t have trouble respecting. If someone struggles to respect your boundaries, or even worse tries to make you feel bad for setting them, use that as a giant red warning sign the person is not healthy to be around.

Challenge the notion of who is entitled to your time and attention

Social norms make us think certain people are entitled to our time no matter how they act. Flip the script on this.

For my business, I’ve told customers I only do business over email or scheduled calls. If they have a real emergency there’s a dedicated number they can call at any time, but it costs $950. I had to do this because a lot of customers felt I should be at their beck and call all hours of the day, and respond immediately to WhatsApp messages. In my industry, customers generally only have an emergency when they made a mistake. I found the people who value my services are happy to pay the $950 surcharge for interrupting my personal time with their self-inflicted emergencies. I consult with them about how to prevent problems in the future, and they actually listen.

Meanwhile, the horde of people who expect immediate responses over WhatsApp are generally a waste of my time. Cutting those people out has left me with more energy and focus to help the customers who actually respect the value I provide. Believe me, a 4am wake-up call that comes with $950 puts a smile on my face, much more than 12 texts asking something like “my package came yesterday. did you get it? Are you there? Did you get my last text?” because the person is too lazy to check the dashboard on my website that says “Bob unloaded your package at 3:25PM yesterday, and here is a picture of it”.

Set boundaries with family too

Family can feel entitled to ignore your boundaries. This can be trickier to navigate because cutting them out carries a different weight than other acquaintances.

I have serious dental issues that were mostly caused by neglect from my parents. It effects my life every day, and just eating is a constant reminder. That said, I still want to have some kind of relationship with my dad. The problem is, just about every time we talk he apologizes for my teeth. I finally told him if he wants to have a relationship with me, he shouldn’t mention anything about my teeth unless he plans to pay to have them fixed. It just doesn’t serve a constructive conversation point.

Family who actually love you will respect boundaries like this. There are bound to be topics or situations that are best avoided, and family who respect you will respect these kind of boundaries.

Identify things that make you procrastinate and develop micro-habits

Procrastination is a manifestation of anxiety, at least in my opinion. Try to catch yourself procrastinating and ask yourself why. You may find you’re avoiding doing healthy things because you’re worried something bad will happen (like failure). Developing micro-habits helped me get out of this rut.

In my case, I found myself endlessly watching Youtube or re-writing papers because it didn’t matter if I got interrupted. I’d grown so used to people disrespecting my time I coped with it by planning to be interrupted. In doing so, I grew into the bad habit of avoiding complicated projects of any kind, especially ones that required sustained focus.

I got out of this rut by establishing micro-habits that are so easy to adhere to they basically can’t fail. For example, I want to exercise and spend more time outside. For ages, it seemed like every time I tried to do that I’d miss an important call or something. To break myself of that I started the habit of walking to the end of my driveway in the morning without my phone. I don’t commit myself to going for a walk or anything, but I find that just getting outside without the phone has accomplished a few things:

1. I gradually feel less and less anxiety about setting that time aside for myself.
2. Since I’m already outside, I’m more likely to actually go for a walk, but since that’s not the point I don’t kick myself if I decide not to.
3. People who’ve made a habit of trying to text or call me first thing in the morning have stopped doing that.
4. My head is more clear after I come back inside, and I have a better idea what I want to spend my day on.

Expect to backslide once in a while — analyze why it happens and adjust your boundaries instead of beating yourself up

Accept the fact anxiety will still surface and hold you back sometimes. Try to be at peace that there will still be difficult people and situations in your life, and you can’t prevent all of them. Step back and identify improved boundaries when that happens.

In my case, I found myself still having a tendency to go out of my way to help other people because it made me feel better. I realized a simple problem: when I help people around me too often, they start to rely on my (free) help, which then turns into a toxic situation. Now, I do something else instead. I help strangers who don’t know how to contact me. That virtually guarantees I don’t become surrounded by people who feel entitled to my help. For instance, there’s a foot bridge over a highway the city often neglects to mow. It becomes overgrown with weeds and cluttered with trash. If I’m feeling stressed out, I take my machete and tools over there and clear it. That brings me a sense of accomplishment, but since it’s basically anonymous I don’t have to worry that anyone expects me to do it.

In closing: coping with anxiety requires constant work on boundaries

This might not apply to everyone, but I hope this perspective is useful to someone out there. Anxiety is a perfectly normal reaction to the fear something bad will happen. Boundaries help us remove unnecessary sources of negativity from our lives, and identify sources we might otherwise overlook.