Surviving Abuse

... by Protecting Your Boundaries

by Kathy Krajco

I'm almost afraid to talk about boundaries, because we're talking about the right to privacy here -- the right to be your own private property, so that you alone have rights of ownership in yourself. Otherwise, technically, you're livestock. It's a touchy subject. Partly because parents, religion, and even society in general cross these boundaries and partly because it reminds people of the abortion issue.

I don't mention it, because it's a poor example. The right to privacy isn't really the issue. The issue is whose right to privacy are we talking about in the matter -- the mother's or her unborn child's? For what little it's worth, in my opinion both extremes seem to carry things too far. Is a fertilized egg cell any more human than a sloughed off skin cell? All cells have the "potential to become a human being." But that's not the same as BEING a human being. On the other hand, when you start supporting even partial-birth abortions, clearly you are cruelly taking the life of a little human being, one the mother could even legally sue a third party for injuring. So, where to draw the line is debatable. Therefore, I just set the abortion issue aside as a question about when an embryo should be judged a human being and guaranteed the rights of one -- not a question of whether the right to privacy is implicit in the Constitution. If it weren't, none of the private-property rights referred to, and implicit in, in the Constitution would be there. The right to justice is another unenumerated right implicit in it.

The most invasive violence to boundaries is treating another person's very mind as your property. A good example of what I mean is the Inquisition, which enforced Church laws against heresy = choosing for oneself what to believe.

Again, your mind is YOUR house. You're the one who has to live in it. I have no right to just barge in and furnish it as if I own the place. I won't incur the consequences of what I put there -- YOU WILL. I can be totally self-serving in what I put there -- to your harm.

The way people (including narcissists) usually do this is by presuming to be your judge. They judge everything you think, say, do, or even just feel. Their judgements are value judgements they impose on you for it. This judges your worth as a person.

Not all judgements fit into this category. Here is a simple example to illustrate what I mean. One of the statements below judges something I am fit to judge, the other crosses the line:

* I might say, "You are doing a good job."
* Or I might say, "You have a lot on the ball."

Notice that in this example the judgements are carrots, not sticks. Which one judges YOU personally? That's the one that crosses the line. If I'm your boss, you might not think too much of it, though even then it rubs you the wrong way. If I'm your co-worker, it really strikes you as presumptuous.

A common example of this that victims of narcissists encounter is judging you for your feelings about the abuse. You get it, not just from the narcissist, but from every side -- people judging you for your anger. That's presumptuous and absurd. It's also a powerplay.

There's no way to win the perverted game a narcissist plays. But you can keep it from driving you yourself into mental illness by just protecting the borders of your mind. Your head is YOUR house. Don't let anybody else inseminate it with their ideas. Examine all ideas at the gate. If an idea doesn't make sense, if it ain't logical, keep it out. You wouldn't let anyone feed tainted information into your computer, so don't let anyone feed tainted information into your head. The resulting mess hurts only YOU.