How Accessible Are We?

a metaphor for thinking through personal boundaries

Over the past several months I have spent less time with people, and with fewer people, than ever before in my life. I’m not depressed, I simply don’t have a lot of energy or motivation for being social with many people. I don’t know if this is a long term shift, if I’ve come to appreciate alone time more since pandemic lockdowns, or if I’m just in recovery mode from deep compassion fatigue. (This is a particular kind of burnout that mainly comes from absorbing the emotional stress, pain, and trauma of others.)

I made up a metaphor that’s helping me think through the different ways we make ourselves available to the people in our lives. It’s a work in progress, so let me know what you think! And feel free to suggest any additions or tweaks.

How Easily Can People Access Me? 3 different vibes.

7-Eleven: Available 24/7. 
Whenever someone needs something, you’re there for them. Your door is (quite literally) always open, and people feel some expectation that if they’re in need, you will drop everything to help. (Brené Brown calls these “move-the-body” types of friends, as in, friends you could call at 4am to help you move the body (I guess of someone you killed?) and they’d be right over.)

Bank: Regular business hours. 
Available sometimes, and a good chunk of time most days, but also with significant amounts of time when people cannot access you. People feel some freedom to reach out when they are in crisis, but you aren’t at the top of the list. Like, they’d be grateful if you were to help them, but wouldn’t really sweat it if you didn’t, since they know sometimes you’re closed, or it’s a holiday.

Art Gallery: By appointment only. 
You get to decide when you will open your doors and when you won’t. And you don’t open them very often. You would not be the frontline for someone in a crisis, or if they needed something right away. Maybe you’ll open up for someone, maybe you won’t, but it will go according to your own sense of schedule and availability. 

This metaphor is more of a vibe thing than a strict definition thing, but I think the basic idea is clear. Different people in our lives would have different levels of expectation for and access to us, and we would feel a different level of responsibility to different people (and this isn’t meant to be rigid — these could certainly ebb and flow, as needed). And there’d be some level of understanding that while maybe a lot of people in our lives might be at the bank level, the number of people any one person can invite into the 7-Eleven level of access is necessarily quite small. 

This has been a hard thing for me to learn, to own, and not to feel guilty about.

Feeling the responsibility to grant 7-Eleven level access to too many people rendered me emotionally inert with compassion fatigue. I gave far too many people easy access to my time, emotional care, and attention, dropping everything and pitching in to help if they needed something, no matter how I was feeling. And I take full responsibility for this. Part of it is (unfortunately) often an aspect and expectation of ministry work; but for me this extended even beyond church work and into other relationships in my life too.

When I was in seminary, I took a class in Jamaica called “Alternative Context.” When one of the professors on the trip with us learned I was an only child, he said it made sense, because he noticed that on the bus, in restaurants, wherever we went, I would form little groups around me – like I was trying to make siblings for myself. 

And I think there’s something to that. 

I grew up in a pretty small family, where my interests and perspectives didn’t quite fit (enneagram 4, reporting for duty). So I’ve had a deep sense of loneliness at a lot of different times in life. For a long time I tried to make all my close friends into family members, prioritizing supporting them with a high degree of sacrifice and loyalty people don’t often extend in friendships.

In some seasons of life I’ve felt unsure which people would be there for me, so when other people reached out to me when they were in crisis, I wanted to try to be there for them if at all possible, knowing how lonely it can feel not to have anyone show up when you’re hurting or in an emergency situation.

This was only underscored by the theology I learned, where things like servanthood and laying down your life for others were emphasized as the way God wants us to be. And the thing is, these are still values I hold. I want to sacrifice for other people and serve where I can. I don’t want to stay in my comfort zone all the time, I want to give and help out, even when it stretches me. But the learning curve is doing this in response to the nudges of the Spirit instead of just saying yes to every need that comes my way and turning into a resentful emotional zombie. Allowing myself to be a Bank with more people, instead of a 7-Eleven. (Even typing that, that I might not help with certain needs, makes me feel a pang of guilt. Eek. Pray for me!)

Dunbar’s Number says that based on our brains, there are only a certain number of relationships we can hold at any of these various levels of intimacy. For him it’s only about 4-5 who can be at 7-Eleven level access/intimacy. And for her part, Brené Brown says that it’s a myth that we can have more than one or two move-the-body types of friends. 

And I guess that makes sense. We can’t be moving bodies every night. We have to sleep sometimes.