Granting Space

The past couple of weeks, I have found myself at that place of feeling completely and totally overwhelmed with other humans. I have run out of patience…and more importantly, compassion. This happens to me when I am feeling especially pressured by people to be and do all of the things and no one can seem to find the means of granting me space in any capacity.

What does it mean to grant space?

To grant space to someone means that we are allowing them to BE. We are giving them space to feel emotions, consider feelings, and find their true self to respond to things without putting pressure on them to do so in a certain time frame or in a certain way. Often, we feel overwhelmed when we don’t feel there is time or SPACE to think clearly and for me, to process thoughts so that I can respond properly to situations and circumstances. I need space to THINK. Plain and Simple.

Why is this so hard to do?

When did we all lose the ability to offer this to other humans? It seems to be acceptable to push people for replies. To verbalize expectations. We hand off a gift and then get offended and hurt if the thank you doesn’t arrive quickly enough. We get upset if we text and there isn’t an immediate reply. Let’s not even discuss if someone doesn’t answer their phone the first time you call them.

When did we all become so perfect? We must be perfect ourselves if we can put this type of pressure on others, right? I mean, certainly, if you are grieving, you still managed to return emails on time. You have never had a bad headache that you can barely open your eyes, let alone answer the trilling phone. I will also guess that you have never been driving in a car and decided to remain safe and not text while you were on the road. These are the things that happen every day to humans that, in my opinion, would keep them from immediately fulfilling my need to have a response from them.

But none of us are perfect.

We all have emotional days with our parents that zap our energy.

We sometimes don’t feel like we can communicate effectively.

We get tired of the phone ringing…so we keep it tucked away.

We are exhausted.

And sometimes, we are off enjoying our lives instead of being tethered to our computers and phones.

Allow the space

We need to find it in ourselves to grant space to our fellow humans. Not one of us is perfect. We have bad days. We get caught up in emotions. We sometimes need to unplug and regroup. Sometimes, we need to nap…or walk….or drive in our cars without worry of disappointing anyone or having to explain ourselves.

I know, that from my experience, when I step away from my phone and computer, it is usually because I need to process some big emotions, deal with some heavy things, or have some big fun and none of that is going to take a backseat so that I can reassure anyone that I received the text, loved the gift or got the message. My self-care is that I live in a pretty big way. I sometimes have to deal with some pretty big stuff. When people have pressured me to be perfect during those times, it does absolutely nothing good for my mental health.

So What Do We Do?

Grant the space. Let your loved ones know that you understand their need to have an off moment sometimes. Let people be less than perfect and know, without a shadow of a doubt that it is ok for YOU to be that too.

For Discussion: Have you ever felt pressured to interact with others when you were emotionally not ready to? How did that make you feel? Let me know in the comments below. I would love to hear from you.