thought this was neat
if on something like giving the option of a gift of food you are like “but what if i AM crossing a boundary/being rude” i’ll share an exchange between my therapist and myself i often think of:
me: “i just want to respect their boundaries”
therapist: “you can’t respect boundaries when they haven’t expressed them. those aren’t their boundaries, those are your assumptions.”
this is a post i’ve been thinking about for a couple days and i think i can explain this kind of reaction a little more than just “toxic individualism”
in the past, much of the older generation would often passive aggressively give “advice” through unsolicited acts of “kindness”, and because of this the younger generation learned to associate this with normativity and social pressure. because that was the norm back then, we learned to avoid it by simply not making any unsolicited acts of kindness (which IS still influenced by individualism), but nowadays in most social contexts that sort of passive aggression is no longer the norm. the negative gut reaction to unsolicited kindness as an infringement of personal boundaries is an outdated bit of trauma that gets in the way of building and maintaining relationships with genuine kindness
the lesson we should’ve learned instead of self-isolating is to have the humility to recognize that your good intentions don’t always result in good things, to actively consider where you might go wrong and try to do good anyways in spite of that, and to be ready to change your behavior if it isn’t good for other people
