How to Keep Your Peace Without Isolating Yourself
In the past few years of doing this work I’ve noticed a big shift. In the beginning, most people were connected, which really just means they had relationships and support systems. Even if those support systems were dysfunctional—which so many of them were–those support systems still existed.
Now, I notice a lot of people doing this dance between maintaining those relationships and the stress that comes with them, and isolating from their support systems to avoid the dysfunction and keep their peace.
I think this is one of the primary struggles a lot of people are facing right now, so we’re going to talk about how to practice keeping your peace while staying connected.
Why This is Happening
From what I can tell, here’s what’s going on:
We collectively started a healing journey. We picked up the books, joined communities, therapy, and coaching, and together we realized one central thing: we’re allowed to matter.
Knowing that we matter is what gives us security, or “peace”. Kids cross the street on a college campus looking down at their phones because they inherently trust that they matter enough that cars will avoid hitting them.
Relationally and socially speaking, knowing that we matter allows us to relax. Mattering is important to us and that’s what this healing work is giving us access to.
So we learned we’re allowed to treat our needs, feelings, and how we experience things as important. We’re allowed to do this not just in secret, but out loud. We’re allowed to expect that we matter to others too—which is something a lot of people really wanted, and realized they were actually really starved for.
This is the peace we’re after. Knowing that we matter enough to exist, be accepted and be supported, and that our intentions matter enough to not be attacked.
So, collectively, we started practicing that: mattering. This practice was defined by specific things: expressing our feelings, naming our discomforts and our hurts to the people who created those discomforts and pain, and—the big one—we started throwing boundaries all over the place. (I have a lot of thoughts about that one we’ll get to in a bit).
Look, we’ve done a lot of good work. But the struggle of isolation vs connection is really telling. And what it tells us is clear:
We’ve been taught to matter, sure, but we have not been taught to matter in proximity to other people who also matter.
So, this isolation vs. connection thing is us really choosing between “to matter alone, or to not matter with other people.”
And when I look at it this way, the dance so many people are doing between the two makes a lot of sense to me.
That’s okay. It happens. But I imagine if you’re still here it’s because you’d like to matter without sacrificing connection, and you do have options for what you can do with that.
It feels best to matter both by yourself and in relationship. It feels better to keep your peace in both places.
We’ve made a ton of progress, now let’s keep going.
How to Keep Your Peace Without Isolating Yourself
To put it simply, we were taught a lot of self-worth building skills. But if the main skill we have there is that of holding people to account for our feelings and erecting boundaries when they don’t follow a script—that practice of self worth is limited, which makes it brittle, and us, bitter.
So we’re going to go over a lot more practices we can build in that will help us keep our self worth and peace without sacrificing relationships in the process.
Practice No. 1: Embody The Central Tenet
Something I think a lot but don't say out loud enough:
A relationship is about two people getting their needs met simultaneously.
Whether those needs are largely material (housemates), or emotional (the need to feel seen and understood that’s met in close friendships), or both (romantic partners)—that’s what we’re here to do, get our needs met. And we happened to choose one another to do that with because, for some reason, we like one another. And that’s really cool.
But it’s important to remember that this relationship is, at all times (good or bad), about both people, not just one of us. And at any point one of us is sacrificing our needs for an hour, day, or season because the other person is having a high needs moment—that’s not sustainable. At that point, the quality of the relationship is challenged at minimum, there’s a clock on the longevity of it at worst, and it’ll require us to address the imbalance to keep the relationship alive and well.
This means that to maintain any relationship in a healthy way, I can’t abandon myself. My needs matter and must be supported here for this relationship to work. But I also can’t abandon you. Your needs also matter and must be supported here for this relationship to work.
And both of us need to have the same mindset here to be able to make that happen. Neither of us can bridge this gap alone. We have to do the critical thinking to figure out what works for both of us.
Relationship is inherently collaborative in this way.
The reason I bring this up is because if you hurt me, or cross a boundary, and my honest intention is to remain in relationship with you, I don’t get to throw your needs out the window out of anger or resentment at the violation and expect the relationship to feel any better from that.
I also don’t get to throw therapy scripts of “I felt ___ when you did ___” and expect you to return a popular script of accountability at it to make it better. We are not robots. Pressing a prescribed button to get an easy response is not the truth of how we function.
If there’s a conflict, it’s usually because we have conflicting needs and all of those needs deserve space in the discussion.
The relationship doesn’t suddenly turn one-sided because I’ve determined myself the victim of this moment.
Also, for the record, it doesn’t fucking feel good to operate that way anyway.
Outside of the occasional vindication of “winning” the argument and forcing a compliant apology, the relationship doesn’t actually improve. I don’t feel more secure or connected, seen or understood, I just feel right. You feel defeated and ignored and probably some other stuff like shame and resentment.
And all of it will come back later and bite us in the ass.
It’s not a working formula. And you don’t have to take my word for it. Look at all the times you’ve done it, seen it, or had this done to you. Think about how each person really feels about conflict that’s handled in this one-sided way.
To repair the rupture—or any rupture in a relationship—I’ll have to hold my needs and address them—yes—but I’ll also owe it to the relationship that I want to have with you, to address your needs as well, and how some of those needs might play a role in what happened here for you to cross the boundary or hurt me to begin with.
The repair of the boundary, then, becomes a conversation about how both of our needs conflicted in this moment, and how we can work together to make sure they’re met in a way that works for both of us moving forward.
For Example:
Your mother doesn’t ask you about your day. You say “Mom it hurts my feelings when you don’t ask about my day.”
Yes, it’s simple enough for your mom to say “Oh I’m sorry honey. That is hurtful, and I’m glad you brought my attention to me doing that. How was your day!?” and correct the behavior moving forward.
And sometimes it is that simple. The cases when it is that simple are usually due to an equally simple sort of distraction, forgetfulness or mindlessness. Nothing personal is happening here. I stepped on your foot by accident and saying sorry is the beginning and end of it.
But let’s say your mom responds, “Oh… well I’m sorry. I honestly hate to feel like I’m prying, you know? I’ve done that before and people got upset or uncomfortable.”
Something personal is happening here, for her.
And you have options for how you respond to it.
Like, you could go in on her. You could get frustrated and demand that she just care about you in this simple way that you’re asking for. You could take it as a rejection and accuse her of deflecting and never showing up for you.
These are all options. My question for you is, what would that do to the relationship you want to have with your mother?
Cultivate that step toward closeness you just asked for? I doubt it.
An alternative is you could notice something incredibly relational just happened here: you both took turns expressing the needs that happen to be in conflict here.
Your need to matter and be noticed by arguably one of the most important people in your life, and her need to avoid upsetting and subsequently being rejected by arguably one of the most important people in her life (that’s you, love).
And now you both have an opportunity to fully discuss those conflicting needs. How healthy is that?
So instead of getting upset by her response, another option is you can get curious and also clarify.
“Oh, is that something you worry about? I’m over here thinking you just don’t care.”
“No! I care, of course I care! You’re my baby girl I care about everything happening with you. I just don’t want to be the prying mom that’s always in my kids' business, you know. So I wait for you guys to share when you’re ready.”
Well that explains a lot of missing conversations in the past. She’s not trying to be neglectful, she's trying to be considerate. It’s not working for you, and that matters. And, her intentions matter, too.
“You're just trying to be considerate."
"Yeah! exactly."
"Okay, that makes sense, but mom, hear me out."
"Okay what's up"
"It would mean a lot to me for you to start asking, because that makes it clear that you care and aren't just forgetting about me or something, as if I'm really not being considered at all. If I’m not ready to talk about something, I can say that. And it’s not prying unless you push more, I promise. Don't push, but I do I want you to ask.”
“Okay *experiences flashbacks of all the times in your teenage years she said one benign thing and you bit her head off for it*.
…I can try that. Well, how was your day?”
Now, she’s going to attempt to meet your need of mattering and being noticed. And you can attempt to meet her need of you not being harsh toward her for voicing the interest she has for you and your life.
What do you think happens to the relationship then?
This central tenet of relationships being about two people getting their needs met is something to meditate on, reflect on, journal about. What’s been your participation? Have you carried that in conflict and in good times?
How will you practice it?
We’ll get into some more specific practices moving forward in this that will help, but this is honestly the big one. You can stop here and spend a couple weeks on it and you might come up with some pretty good stuff.
Practice No. 2: Install Doors in Your Boundaries
A while ago I wrote an article about boundaries vs. barriers, but I'll give you the simple version:
Boundaries have a way in. Barriers don’t.
Fences are boundaries because they have gates. Houses are boundaries because they have doors.
The solid wall without any doors or windows in your bathroom isn’t a boundary, it’s a barrier, because the only way to get inside of a solid wall is to break through it. You have to violate it to enter.
In the example above, mom was operating under the assumption that a barrier was in place: she’s not allowed to ask questions. Maybe she was projecting her own experience, or maybe she really was operating from your old teenage rule of “stay out of my business mom, ugh”. Either way, she stopped asking questions to avoid violating the barrier, which in her mind was a way of being considerate and respectful of your independence.
But what I want you to notice more is that in that same example, the boundary of no prying was clarified—with a door. Don’t push, but please do ask. I want you to.
That’s a door. A fully formed boundary gives a no and a yes.
A lot of the time we set boundaries without doors and don’t realize we’re erecting barriers, closing off any option for people to access us for connection. Out of respect for those boundaries (barriers), people distance, and we feel alone, not understanding what happened or why our boundaries are causing us to lose people.
I suspect a lot of that is going on right now.
Even unintentionally, we might communicate a barrier when we don’t verbally offer the door of the boundary.
“Don’t call me after 9” doesn’t offer a good time to call.
“I’m not going to make it this weekend” doesn’t give an alternative option for when we can see one another or even offer a desire to make up for the missed time together.
Solution:
We’ve done a lot of good with both/and. Let’s now try “No, but…” to practice offering doors with our boundaries.
“I’m getting off the phone now because we’re starting to yell, but this is still really important to me. So I do want to talk to you after we take some time to cool off.”
“I’m not available to talk after 9, but I do want to catch up. What’s your weekend look like?”
“I’m not going to make it this weekend, but girl I fucking miss you to death. Do you have time next week to grab lunch or something?”
“I have to go now, but I want to hear more about this later, it sounds interesting!”
Every single one of these has doors and that’s what makes them boundaries: the fact that they keep the opportunity for connection open, instead of closing it off completely.
For anyone who wants to pick nit: clearly the door itself is implied in a lot of our boundaries.
“I’m not available to talk after 9” is not implicitly a 24/7 boundary.
But hear me out: the larger point is that if you’re consistently communicating your boundaries in absolute “no’s”, and without doors, it makes sense for people to simply feel rejected or pushed away, instead of invited to connect with you.
Because the invitations to connect in your preferred ways simply haven’t been there.
A rule of thumb? If you want to invite people to connect with you while maintaining your boundaries, consider it on you to communicate both the boundary and the invitation. Not on them to read your mind about it.
Luckily, the practice is simple:
Practice saying “No, but…”
That’s it. Every time you catch yourself saying no to someone you do want to connect with, just add but and offer an alternative way to connect that works for you.
If you don’t want to connect, let the barrier speak for itself and move along.
Kick off this practice retrospectively by journaling about some firm “no” boundaries you set where you didn’t offer the door recently. And write about how you would communicate that differently with “no, but…”
Bonus points if you go correct the script with the people you erected those barriers with.
Practice No. 3: Practice Depersonalizing Other People's Actions
I’m one of those people with a large personal bubble. Meaning: I don’t stand close to people, and you’ll notice I move away when people stand close to me. I don’t sit near strangers in the movie theatre if I can help it. Stuff like that.
So it’s no surprise that this morning at the gym I was elated to see most of the treadmill rows were empty, and I proceeded to do my cardio far away from other people. I too find peace in certain types of isolation haha.
It’s also no surprise that I was utterly bothered when someone got on the treadmill right next to me.
So bothered, in fact, that I blatantly looked at him, then turned my head to look at the completely empty treadmill row across from me, and then looked back at him, with I’m sure a transparent look of disapproval on my face.
He didn’t seem to notice, and still, I went on to do what many women are used to doing in those moments: wondered why he would do that. Was he being creepy towards me? Maybe he prefers to be closer to people but then why me? I wasn’t the only option for someone to do cardio next to.
Immediately, I personalized it by thinking his choice must somehow be about me. It’s protective. It happens. But as I was wrapping up the cardio session I glanced back at his direction and noticed, my dude was absolutely fixated on the tv right in front of his machine, leaning in as if he was squinting a bit to see it.
His actions had nothing to do with me at all. He wanted to watch his show. I walked away chuckling at my own drama.
It’s easy to weave stories in our heads that the things other people do are somehow about us. But, like with treadmill guy, most things other people do have fuck all to do with us. People are in their own worlds, reacting to their own stories—just like we are.
But here’s why this matters in the context of isolation vs. connection:
Something I'm reminded of pretty often when I witness my clients do this, is that we're not usually isolating to get away from people and their choices. That's what we tell ourselves, yes. But I think we're really isolating to get away from the stories we make up that center us in those choices.
The actions trigger the story that it’s somehow about us, says something about us, or how they feel or think about us. And instead of healing the trigger, we avoid it.
Avoiding the trigger is trauma 101. But what makes this harmful is when we start removing otherwise safe, meaningful, and viable relationships that come with those triggers. Then we end up at peace, sure, but lonely, doing the dance of trying to connect again later, just to isolate again in a few months, and so on.
So, back to the example above: we make up a story that our mom doesn’t ask about our day because she doesn’t care. Like I said, stories happen. All minds create stories, it’s their job.
But what do we do with that story is the question here.
What’s harmful is when we commit to that story without ever glancing at it again and getting curious and really allowing a different, probably more truthful one, to emerge.
We don’t give ourselves a chance to have corrective experiences and heal, when we do this.
And now, because we’ve committed ourselves to one piece of evidence that this behavior must say something about how she feels about us, we’re inevitably going to look for more evidence that further justifies our frustration with the “fact” that our mom doesn’t care about us.
Six months later we’ve collected so much evidence we can’t bear the weight of it. Now we’re going no contact.
But right here is where we need to distinguish something truthfully for ourselves:
Are we going no contact with the way mom (or anyone) treats us? Or are we going no contact to get away from the story we’ve made up about what their behavior says about us and their care (or lack thereof) for us?
If that question makes you uncomfortable it might be worth sitting with for a while.
In the meantime, I have an alternative for you:
Practice depersonalizing things. Like truly, truly practice this. It will transform your life.
Notice when you're assuming someone's behavior says anything at all about you, and then give yourself a chance to assume otherwise. Find a different story.
Not fantastical stories, but equally believable ones. Sound ones, that are just as likely true. That you can find evidence for.
That person on the treadmill next to you? They're here for the tv, not you.
Mom not asking questions? Mom is skittish about being invasive. Distracted. Has ADHD. Whatever. Her actions are about her, not me.
The friend who keeps talking when you say you have to go now? They get fixated on a topic and can’t drop it. That’s their own shit. It has nothing to do with my boundary not being valid or whether I’m communicating clearly or not.
By the way, you can always ask them what their story is and take that into account.
And you don’t have to like these things any more than I have to like that dude used the machine next to mine (I maintain that I don’t prefer it).
But it’s really nice knowing that I wasn’t creeped on this morning, that my mom does care about me even if she doesn’t always ask what’s going on with me, and that my friends also care about me and my boundaries even if they need an extra “hey hey, I really have to go. Hold that thought for next time. Lol love you bye”
IF I was committed to believing the stories that the guy at the gym was creeping on me, my mom doesn’t care about me, and my friends don’t care about my boundaries—I’d surely never leave the house.
But why would I put myself through that? Because that’s who I’m putting through it, to be clear. It's not like I'm teaching anyone else a lesson from self-isolating. People don’t notice you isolating and think “maybe I should change my personality so they come outside.”
We just end up lonely, hiding from these stories, which is what’s happening to a lot of people right now. Like yeah, I feel more peace. But it's a matter of time before I miss having someone to share it with.
So maybe practice letting go of the stories instead of the people. Replace those stories with something more fair, and true. See how much peace you get back from that practice, without sacrificing these connections that are meaningful to you.
Practice No. 4: Choose the Inconveniences You’re Okay With
Sometimes keeping your peace means keeping your distance, sure. But sometimes keeping your peace means making peace with the inconveniences people come with.
Personalized stories are heartbreaks. We romanticize the tragedy of not being the center of anyone else’s attention in the right way whatever percent of the time. (I’m not coming for you, remember I also create these stories lol).
But when we depersonalize the story, a beautiful thing happens: those things other people do? Most of them boil down to simple inconveniences. Some inconveniences will still, for whatever reason, make our blood boil and maybe we really do need to maintain a certain type of distance from that person. Maybe we prefer them in doses or something.
But other people come with inconveniences that allow us to say, “alright fine. I still like this chaos gremlin. I want them around.”
I plan to spend the rest of my life with my partner. This means for the rest of my life, whenever I drive with her in the passenger seat, she will try to direct my driving somehow.
For what reason? Who knows. I don’t have a story tied to it. It’s just an inconvenience I experience pretty regularly.
I’ll be following the GPS, minding my business, and she’ll be like “babe turn here”, and I’ll be like “girl, let me drive,” and she’ll be like “oh yeah sorry sorry” and then she’ll do it again Wednesday or whatever.
It’s inconvenient because it distracts me sometimes. Like, sometimes it causes me to make a mistake or take a wrong turn, which can bring me to feeling downright annoyed.
It’s fine. I like her anyway. I want her around.
I even like that she gets on my nerves sometimes because I know I get on her nerves sometimes too, so it evens out a bit and we both get to be human instead of perfect. Which is nice.
That’s how inconveniences work. Humans aren’t particularly convenient creatures. We take up a lot of space and we’re clumsy about most of it. When we let go of the stories, most things are just about choosing which inconveniences and clumsinesses you’re okay with dealing with.
Now, next time mom folds to her old habit of not asking about your day, you can be like “ask about my day mom” and let her roll her eyes about the callout.
Annoy her ass back. You know she cares. She’s just weird about that shit.
We’re all weird about some shit, though, aren’t we?
This list of practices isn’t exhaustive. I’ll write about more soon but these are good to start with. You’re also welcome to comment some other practices that have helped you keep your peace while staying connected in relationship, below.
And, like always, if you want support with any or all of these, read about my coaching package. I’m happy to help.
Rooting for You,
Tori
Tori Reid
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