I think it may be an Asperger thing, but I've always had a problem with boundaries, and not being able to reveal them.
So here is an example of something that happened today.
I live in a shared house, five of us share two fridge/freezers. It's not all that fairly divided because people were here first and have their things in place. I have enough fridge space, and ended up acquiring one of the four drawers in one of the freezers. Sometimes it's fuller than other times, but it's nice to know I can buy something spontaneously and put it in. Today, I go to take something out and it's full of someone else's stuff. They needed somewhere to put it, but it felt like an invasion of my boundaries, like it's a personal attack on me and my space.
I don't do anything about it because I know it isn't. But it doesn't stop me feeling like that, and I have to process it a while to first of all not react to the moment, to get something changed. Then, to realise that I didn't have much in there, and whomever put something in there hadn't anywhere else to put it. Why should I take it so personally as if it is my space when it is shared space? Everybody else has everywhere else though. I suspect that whoever put those things there was the latest person in who has no real space at all. So it's right that I let it go and not see it as a boundary issue or let it fester as if I'm being personally attacked, even though the feeling is there nevertheless.
So I'm wondering if it is an Asperger thing. I have heard other people talk about boundaries and so I suspect it is and perhaps it will always be something that bothers me, but I have a choice as to how I act upon that bothering. Whether I react. Whether I act at all. Whether I accept it is so minor and trivial in the grand scheme of things that I don't have to do anything about it. Because the reality is how has it affected me?
I wasn't expecting to find things in my draw and yet what difference did it make? It doesn't stop me using my things. It doesn't stop me having my things in there. Nobody will use my things because they'll get confused with what was theirs and what wasn’t, so there's really no reason for me to be affected by discovering stuff in that particular drawer when there was no room for them to put them anywhere else.
I see there's a sense of self-importance in thinking that this is “mine’’, and I have noticed that I do need a feeling of “this is my… whatever”. I've had it ever since I was a kid, and it could explain why it wasn't easy for me to be with other children.
I looked after my things and valued them and cherished them and kept them in good order and put them away in their box or their bag or their package, when other people used my things they didn’t, they would scratch them, make them dirty or even break them, because they were careless and thoughtless and it wasn't theirs. And it may have been that they did the same thing to their own stuff; they didn't care and so they treated my stuff like they would their own, not realising how much it mattered to me.
It became easier for me to deal with these issues by not sharing my things so that they were always where I left them, in the state that I left them in, and knew that they would last as long as possible, even longer in some cases because I'm okay with adapting to failing things, by being creative in how I deal with it.
For example, my laptop keyboard has been failing for a long time; many keys don't work properly. But I got round that by putting in dictation software that can also transcribe things that I’ve recorded, bypassing the keyboard altogether.
The laptop is nearly 10 years old, but everything else works fine and it feels wrong to simply discard it for something that would be quite expensive to replace. It does need replacing, but I'm okay adapting. I like having to overcome issues and figure things out even if it can take me time to have the idea.
When I first got my camper van, it took me almost 6 months before the idea of putting a solar panel on the roof occurred to me and yet without it, I could never have lived in it when I had to.
So it's interesting that still I get affected by somebody breaching what I feel are my boundaries. There is a part of me that understands that it doesn't have to be seen that way. It doesn't have to be acted on. It doesn't have to be sorted out or solved. I don't have to bring them into my world, where they have to take me seriously and attempt to accommodate what it is I'm trying to get across.
In my experience, for the most part, if I do, it doesn't come out in the way I was expecting it to, and they don't react to it in the way I was hoping they would, and the situation between us could now deteriorate over what is essentially meaningless.
So here is an example of something that happened today.
I live in a shared house, five of us share two fridge/freezers. It's not all that fairly divided because people were here first and have their things in place. I have enough fridge space, and ended up acquiring one of the four drawers in one of the freezers. Sometimes it's fuller than other times, but it's nice to know I can buy something spontaneously and put it in. Today, I go to take something out and it's full of someone else's stuff. They needed somewhere to put it, but it felt like an invasion of my boundaries, like it's a personal attack on me and my space.
I don't do anything about it because I know it isn't. But it doesn't stop me feeling like that, and I have to process it a while to first of all not react to the moment, to get something changed. Then, to realise that I didn't have much in there, and whomever put something in there hadn't anywhere else to put it. Why should I take it so personally as if it is my space when it is shared space? Everybody else has everywhere else though. I suspect that whoever put those things there was the latest person in who has no real space at all. So it's right that I let it go and not see it as a boundary issue or let it fester as if I'm being personally attacked, even though the feeling is there nevertheless.
So I'm wondering if it is an Asperger thing. I have heard other people talk about boundaries and so I suspect it is and perhaps it will always be something that bothers me, but I have a choice as to how I act upon that bothering. Whether I react. Whether I act at all. Whether I accept it is so minor and trivial in the grand scheme of things that I don't have to do anything about it. Because the reality is how has it affected me?
I wasn't expecting to find things in my draw and yet what difference did it make? It doesn't stop me using my things. It doesn't stop me having my things in there. Nobody will use my things because they'll get confused with what was theirs and what wasn’t, so there's really no reason for me to be affected by discovering stuff in that particular drawer when there was no room for them to put them anywhere else.
I see there's a sense of self-importance in thinking that this is “mine’’, and I have noticed that I do need a feeling of “this is my… whatever”. I've had it ever since I was a kid, and it could explain why it wasn't easy for me to be with other children.
I looked after my things and valued them and cherished them and kept them in good order and put them away in their box or their bag or their package, when other people used my things they didn’t, they would scratch them, make them dirty or even break them, because they were careless and thoughtless and it wasn't theirs. And it may have been that they did the same thing to their own stuff; they didn't care and so they treated my stuff like they would their own, not realising how much it mattered to me.
It became easier for me to deal with these issues by not sharing my things so that they were always where I left them, in the state that I left them in, and knew that they would last as long as possible, even longer in some cases because I'm okay with adapting to failing things, by being creative in how I deal with it.
For example, my laptop keyboard has been failing for a long time; many keys don't work properly. But I got round that by putting in dictation software that can also transcribe things that I’ve recorded, bypassing the keyboard altogether.
The laptop is nearly 10 years old, but everything else works fine and it feels wrong to simply discard it for something that would be quite expensive to replace. It does need replacing, but I'm okay adapting. I like having to overcome issues and figure things out even if it can take me time to have the idea.
When I first got my camper van, it took me almost 6 months before the idea of putting a solar panel on the roof occurred to me and yet without it, I could never have lived in it when I had to.
So it's interesting that still I get affected by somebody breaching what I feel are my boundaries. There is a part of me that understands that it doesn't have to be seen that way. It doesn't have to be acted on. It doesn't have to be sorted out or solved. I don't have to bring them into my world, where they have to take me seriously and attempt to accommodate what it is I'm trying to get across.
In my experience, for the most part, if I do, it doesn't come out in the way I was expecting it to, and they don't react to it in the way I was hoping they would, and the situation between us could now deteriorate over what is essentially meaningless.