How do you start to set new boundaries in your ILR practice?
I’m a recovering people pleaser who suffers from Human Giver Syndrome. (See the amazing book Burnout for more on HGS.)
ILR is filled with people pleasers and human givers who decided to give their lives to language revitalization. Boundaries are not exactly our strong suit. We are always taking on more than we should like, for example, the life or death of an entire language.
Let’s just pause for a moment for this sidenote:
NO ONE PERSON SHOULD BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE FATE OF A LANGUAGE.
I used to think that setting boundaries was about learning to say “NO” (which I suck at) and that’s part of it, but the bigger part is understanding your emotional landscape.
Most of the skill development you need isn’t about other people. It’s about setting boundaries INSIDE YOURSELF.
These boundaries often don’t require negotiation with anybody else. They are just you choosing to not work more than 8 hours in a day or to keep writing grant proposals even though you hate them.
In my experience, one of the places in the emotional landscape that people get tripped up (me included) is the feeling called “If I don’t do it, nobody else will.” That feeling, sometimes, might be true. But a lot of times it isn’t true.
It’s just something your big human giver heart decided was true. Often, if you stop doing the thing somebody else will fill the gap. Or maybe it just doesn’t get done. For anything small, it doesn’t really matter.
It’s often a whole bunch of small things that are eating away at the space we need for rest and recovery.
Also, sometimes “not doing” creates an opportunity for important conversations about shared responsibility.
Like if you always cook dinner for your family, try going home and just not cooking dinner. Everybody will figure it out. Or if they don’t somebody will come complaining and that creates an opportunity for a conversation.
There’s like a thousand things that somebody else could do. Often human givers don’t even think about that possibility. It just feels easier to take care of it ourselves.
Sure, sometimes that’s true. Mostly it’s not. Mostly it’s that we feel uncomfortable asking. Or we feel it’s our responsibility. Or we are worried that we will upset somebody. Or because we are control freaks.
(ILR is also filled with control freaks. I’m not judging. Human giver control freaks keep ILR programs going under intensely challenging conditions.)
The point is that the key to setting new boundaries in your ILR practice isn’t putting up walls. It’s opening to vulnerability. It’s expressing that you’re overwhelmed. It’s asking for help.
Worst case scenario everybody is overwhelmed and needs help. Yet if that’s what vulnerability reveals, it’s still good.
Because now you can have a conversation about what to do about it.