Guarding Your Heart-A How-To Guide
“It sounds like you could meet someone today, have coffee with them tomorrow and then you’d call them your best friend.” I stared ahead, disgruntled.
“Is that fair to say?”, my therapist asked.
“It is,” I begrudgingly agreed. It was no mystery to me that I have poor boundaries, yet I still felt as though I were being attacked. I know I latch onto people quickly, and this became even more exacerbated when I moved to New York City. I was making friends left and right and these fast-tracked friendships often resulted in betrayal, which added to the gaping wounds that made up my chest. I was literally laid out on the floor of my sister's bedroom one night crying and begging God to make me stop caring about people. I was tired of feeling like my feelings were never reciprocated, like nobody valued me as a person, and like I was being cast aside and rejected time and again.
In the Christian world there are numerous scriptures about guarding your heart and yet I grew up never quite knowing what that meant or how to effectively do it.
Proverbs 4:23 was the verse that has stuck with me the most: “Above all else guard your heart for everything you do flows from it.” I had a heart that was wounded and I was constantly bleeding all over people, desperate for someone to staunch the flow.
I used to think that caring a lot was my greatest strength and my biggest weakness until I realized it didn’t have to be a weakness.
When I first attempted to wisen up I started to guard my heart to avoid opening myself up to further heartbreak. New York City is an easy place to self-isolate. Turns out, guarding your heart and building a wall around it are not the same thing. Later that year I was at a church service and my pastor spoke about making room in your life for people and I literally wrote down in my notes, “I’ll come back to this.”
This picture was taken at that church service.
By pretending I cared about nothing, I was cutting off a piece of myself. What I was doing wasn’t working so I had to learn to guard my heart. Literally. This time by envisioning, not a structure around my heart, but a sentinel who diligently worked to keep my heart safe. Everybody who came near needed a background check before I allowed them access to my heart.
“What do you look for in a friend?”, my therapist asked me later that same session.
“Undying loyalty,” I responded with no hesitation. Guess what? That was not the right answer. I was told that I cannot have that expectation for every friendship I have, so I had to comprise my own list. Once you have that list, your sentinel can be on the lookout for those that match the description. Think of this initial stage as getting past the bouncer.
Recognize that it takes time to get to know someone fully and be patient. Give people time to prove themselves to you before you upgrade them from stranger to bestie. One thing that became clear was that I had a pattern of dumping information about myself by the truckloads onto people I just met in an effort to have them know me and understand me from the jump. I thought that I would be avoiding rejection if they knew everything about me first and still decided to be my friend. It didn’t work. I began to wonder if something was wrong with me- the more time I spent with someone, the quicker it seemed to drive them away. I falsified a level of intimacy with a lot of people this way, a level of intimacy that was not mutual.
I am now learning the art of getting to know people slowly and deciding how much further I want to continue doing so. For example if someone drains all the energy out of you in one evening, maybe only get together with them once a year, every six months, or never again!
A selfie with Raquel, one of the only friends I made that year that I retained because I took the time to get to know them slowly.
You don’t have to be friends with everybody and you can stop being friends with people when they are no longer a good friend to you. Think of this as having a security team inside the club of your heart that is ready to kick people out on command. “You will prune the people from your life who add to your instability,” my friend Cameron said that to me one night, when I was sharing my heart with them.
I used to think I was incapable of ever letting anyone go. I’ve always placed a really high value on people. The problem was that I didn’t place a high enough value on myself and was accepting behavior that was robbing me of my peace. Once I realized that I was only allowing people to stay in my life out of desperation I decided to put my security team to use. I had to learn what my boundaries were and enforce them when necessary. I stopped being friends with people who made me angry (on purpose, because they thought it was funny) and people who were untrustworthy. Those who could not honor the rules were kicked out of the club. Come to find out, Cameron was right and my life has been a lot more stable ever since.
Photo curtesy of @secondsapart on instagram.
One good way to help yourself guard your heart is to be wary of the labels you ascribe to people. We don’t use the word acquaintance enough in our culture. There are different categories of relationships, and all of them together make up a complete social life. Acquaintances that you occasionally get drinks with are important to have, but are not to be conflated with friends. I understand now that what I was looking for in friendship was someone to help me carry my load or someone I can turn to when I need help or support, and someone who feels comfortable turning to me when they need it. For obvious reasons that can’t be everybody and I noticed a lot of emotional labor was being poured into relationships that weren’t fulfilling me in the way I needed. My happy hour acquaintances were not the people for that, which led to unfair resentment.
Let people prove themselves to you before you promote from acquaintance to friend, to best friend. If an acquaintance continually flakes on you, upgrading them to a friend, even just in your secret heart of hearts, is setting yourself up for disappointment. It is necessary to keep your expectations of others low as you observe who is worth your friendship.
Now that I have learned to guard my heart a little better, all the relationships in my life bring me peace. Additionally, it is worth noting that I did not have to compromise my character by guarding my heart. I am even more loving and generous and caring with not only my friends, but my acquaintances and even people I barely know because I have learned this principle. Having these boundaries has protected me from further hurt and heartache and allowed me to enjoy people in a way that I never did before.
I’m glowing differently.
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