Coronavirus, Border Situation And Personal Boundaries

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

The coronavirus is removing crowns from the heads of many people. We appear before others as we are, and others before us as they are. Our souls and minds are naked and vulnerable as never before. In an extreme situation, we become real. But what does the corona virus show us? Who are we? Who are each of us?

Society in the post-Soviet space is borderline, people are borderline. What does it mean? It is difficult for a borderline person to hold on to reality, especially when he is hurt, when his feelings are hurt, when he is afraid and in pain. Such people ply constantly from reality to trauma and back. But it takes time for them to get out of the trauma and stop projecting the drama from the past into the present. An extreme situation often does not give this time, and when everyone around is scared, the failure into the trauma of the past becomes protracted.

Since the frontier society is characterized by a loss of connection with reality, panic flares up very quickly. Irrational fears are transmitted from one person to another faster than any virus. Logic and reason turn out to be powerless at such moments, because a small child, frightened, helpless in front of something (someone) big, does not have the logic of an adult. Borderline people in their traumatic failures and departures from reality become small children and it is almost impossible to convince them not to be afraid, but to act rationally. Panic is a symptom of a loss of connection with reality, it is a symptom of a borderline state: when we panic, we lose our footing, we are afraid of what might happen to us, but that which is not in reality here and now. That is, you are healthy now, but you are afraid of getting sick and dying and panic, ignoring the fact that you are now healthy and alive. You seem to lose touch with reality - with the moment here and now in which you just need to sit at home, wash your hands often and keep your distance in supermarkets with other people. Calmly and intelligently follow the precautions.

But what does an extreme situation do to a frontier society? People are split into those who ignore the real danger and, like a teenage rebel, shouts: "And I will not take precautions!" Two opposite poles are characteristic features of the border society. There is only one step from greatness and omnipotence to helplessness and infantilism. But both of these poles are colored by the irresponsibility characteristic of all children. This is similar to how today we sincerely love, and tomorrow we also sincerely hate. “One step from love to hate” is a saying about borderline people. Today we are idealizing, and tomorrow we are overthrowing.

Border people are easy to manage, so it is convenient for our authorities that we never grow up and that we can be introduced into various affective states by creating extreme border situations. Our task is to overcome our immaturity, borderline and grow up at last. We are stuck at the border and are thrown from childhood to adulthood and back. We are so used to it. We are emotional shakers.

Borderline is the lack of a person's ability to draw the line between reality and fantasy, between you and me, between the past, future and present. And we need extreme situations so that we more and more clearly see our blind spots, our vulnerability and work on ourselves, on our soul, try and want to grow up and become whole, and not split in our borderline.

Drawing the line between … this is the most difficult task for the borderline and the coronavirus shows us how much we can do it. He diagnoses each of us for maturity and responsibility. We need to keep a distance of two meters between us. And how difficult this simple precaution is. We cross the line in everything. We are breaking and breaking.

Can't we do it well? Get a virus and learn to do it the wrong way. And if we see how in other self-organized societies people line up with a distance of two meters, then everything is sad here: people "huddle" to each other, not feeling their own and other people's personal boundaries. And when asked to move back two meters, they snap back and write angry posts: "Am I a leper?" In these screaming posts between the lines: "Why do you reject me, I am good and healthy!" Such people have seen a lot of rejection in life and the request to move away is perceived by them as pain, as a personal failure, as it was in childhood, when they want love, and their mother is busy or cold. And this is a dip in the borderline state. We fly out of reality into trauma instantly. We get angry when we find someone else's "Stop!" and "No!" to be close - we hiss and bite.

We were not taught what personal boundaries are, and very often we invade the space of another person, completely not thinking that the violators of the boundaries are us, and not the person who told us “stop!”. Many of us are offended, blamed, when we are not allowed to make violence. And this is the looking glass of the borderline person, in whom the upside-down world is seen like this: "you are bad - I'm good" and this is without options. The borderline person often has an outwardly accusing position and the word "responsibility" is like a red rag to him. "And you too!", "And you yourself are like that!" - this is the position of a borderline person and in this position his wounded soul cries, which once did not receive love and support.

This is what the coronavirus and quarantine showed us. We sit locked up and listen to neighbors yelling at each other, who for the first time in many years have stayed so close in a confined space for such a long time. You can't run away to work now. After the outbreak of the coronavirus, an outbreak of divorces is quite possible.

We find ourselves close to other people and it's great if we manage to observe ourselves and our reactions and devote this time to working on ourselves. We must accept our borderline and imperfection. Acceptance is the first step in development. Corona virus is a robotic stage over personal boundaries and over their fears. Let's go through this lesson with dignity.