Boundary Setting in the Time of COVID

A complication that gets little air time

Happy New Year and welcome to 2021. Have some coffee.

One complication of the COVID crisis that I don’t see talked about as much is the trouble, effort, and frustration of drawing boundaries. Maybe it seems like small potatoes in the face of a deadly and worsening pandemic, but if individuals are expected to bear the brunt of stopping the spread of the virus because of gross national negligence, I think it’s important to talk about the things that complicate that process. I don’t know how common the problem of boundary-setting is, but it’s occupied a great deal of my pandemic experience.

Back in 2019, some fifty years ago now, and before all this pandemic business started, I was in therapy for the first time. I needed it so badly after twenty-six years of ignoring my declining mental health that I was on something called a “trauma grant” for eighteen weeks.

For those eighteen weeks, I cried about my childhood, lamented my paralyzing fear of driving and job-searching, delved deeper into why I feel so calm in the midst of chaos, and investigated my guilt around drawing boundaries. When my trauma grant ended in February 2020, I left therapy with the goal of feeling less guilty for taking time for myself.