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Mental Real Estate: Who or What is Taking Up Too Much Space in Your Head?
And are they at least paying you RENT?
Didn’t think so.
This blog is about mental real estate. It’s a bit of a follow up to the boundaries part of last week’s blog, “Unpacking Difficult Emotions.”
This is my brilliant insight:
When it comes to boundaries and dealing with boundary-pushers, it is not just the time spent setting and enforcing boundaries with another person we need to be aware of; it is also the time and energy spent thinking, worrying, stressing, fussing, and fuming about the fact that we DO have to deal with them, as well as figuring out how best to.
When it comes to dealing with the people in our lives who want, expect and/or demand more from us than we are willing or able to give, it is important to be aware of how much time and mental energy we are expending on them…likely without them even realizing it (nor caring, probably).
I don’t think we necessarily always realize how much mental space WE are allowing another person to occupy in our head.
An incident (such as a nasty comment) that triggered the need to set a boundary may have only taken a few minutes in real time.
But the emotional and mental aftermath — in our heads and hearts — can take up an awful lot of precious time and energy that could likely be spent far more productively…
