The Therapy Corner – on boundaries and limitations
We can love people without letting them drain us, but it takes some time and effort.
A note about resources: While I do engage with and watch every minute of resources included in my newsletter, I do not deeply vet each person or their background extensively. As such, including a video of someone is not a blanket endorsement of their ideology, their instutition or their work.
My favorite television show of all-time is the Mary Tyler Moore Show. In one of the early episodes of the final season, Murray, a colleague of Mary’s at their Minneapolis news station, schools her on a book he’s been reading about selfishness, and the importance of choosing your own needs, desires and well-being over that of others. I didn’t know if the book was an actual point of reference, or a fictitious aspect of the show, but it got me thinking, nonetheless.
Mary, apt to bend to a largely loving yet still patriarchal world, asks Murray if she can borrow the book. Murray, true to the principles he’s been reading, and thus making a genuine effort to live them, politely declines. Mary gets her own copy, reads through it, and then manages to implement some of the key aspects of the book into her own life, only to cave when marginally pressured. It’s true to Mary, both her character and arguably to who she was in real life. And for the most part, we can all stand to learn quite a bit from her example.
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