The Art of Emotional Boundaries: Jasmine’s Journey to Self-Preservation
“The thought of disrupting workflow or underdelivering filled me with dread. I was the quintessential team player and people-pleaser.”
Jasmine had always taken pride in being an invaluable linchpin at her corporate workplace. She eagerly raised her hand for stretch assignments, pulled relentless late nights to ensure deliverables were met on schedule, and reflexively subordinated her own needs to those of her colleagues and leaders. Her zeal, dedication, and willingness to constantly go the extra mile earned her a reputation as a high performer.
She was lauded with superlative ratings, effusive praise from managers, and the unspoken anointment of a rising star. But this came at an insidious personal toll that Jasmine was blind to for far too long. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the taut lines between her professional and personal domains became tenuous and permeable.
“I was the quintessential ‘crackberry’ addict, compulsively checking my inbox at all hours, on weekends and vacations. The psychic weight of obligation was utterly consuming.”
Japanese philosophy has a term for this mindset: ‘gaman’, which refers to the ability to stoically endure onerous burdens, persevere through adversity, and shoulder unbearable strain with noble resilience and grace. While a virtue when practised with prudence, taken to pathological extremes, gaman devolves into self-deprivation, utter depletion, and the smouldering tinder for burnout.
Enveloped in the maelstrom of ceaseless meetings, tight deadlines, ever-shifting priorities, and ballooning workstreams, Jasmine soon found herself operating in a perpetual state of depletion. Her energy reserves were drained, yet the corporate culture she was marinated in celebrated this situation. It venerated the ethos of overwork, lionizing those who projected an unflappable air of busyness and unrealistic availability as consummate “team players.”
Yet this mentality carried a cruel price: her relationships languished as facetime with friends evaporated, hobbies and any semblance of self-care became untouchable luxuries, and sleep was an infrequent salve as restless nights were consumed by fretful ruminations over unfinished tasks and looming fires. Jasmine’s entire identity had become subsumed by her role.
“It was a vicious, lucrative cycle of over-functioning and guilt. The more I invested, the higher the Sisyphean bar of expectations rose.”
The Japanese principle of giri, which denotes the sacrosanct duty to acquit one’s social obligations and repay the debts of gratitude, further stoked Jasmine’s predicament. She felt bound by honour to meet or exceed any responsibility heaped upon her, even when honouring those commitments exacted a steep cost to her well-being. The concept of instituting boundaries, however necessary for self-preservation, felt like an alien, almost heretical notion for someone so culturally hardwired to default to people-pleasing.
It was during a particularly punishing fire drill that Jasmine’s reserves were completely depleted. A mission-critical, bet-the-company project had gone sideways in a major way, sending proceedings into a tailspin. As the trusted Workhorse and Rockstar, Jasmine was immediately escalated into the red zone to put out the five-alarm blaze.
She abandoned all propriety and personal considerations, working round-the-clock with blank periods where she neglected to eat or rehydrate for days at a stretch. Jasmine was propelled by blind adrenaline and a pour consommé of anxiety and guilt, utterly heedless of the toll she was incurring. The immense, unrelenting pressure built to a terrifying crescendo that culminated in a severe panic attack, forcing her to go catatonically dark for several days as she sacrificed on the smouldering battlefield of burnout.
“That was my much-needed wake-up call. I realized that unless I elevated self-preservation to be my deepest priority, there would scarcely be a self-left to offer anything to anyone, including my roles.”
Drawing from a wellspring of unshakable self-belief and an inner lode of reserves she didn’t know she possessed, Jasmine began the arduous process of instituting boundaries. She figured this would be an incremental process, so she started with smaller, discrete changes — limiting her crackberry use to set schedules, drawing a hard line on working past a certain hour each day, and defensive calendaring to protect advice blanks of intermittent renewal time.
This marked departure from her established status quo was met with murmurs of surprise and subtle yet discernible rumblings of skepticism from her teammates, many of whom had grown not just accustomed but alarmingly dependent upon her perpetual, frantic availability, and unmitigated zeal for a heroic working ethic.
“There were muted yet audible whispers that I was no longer a ‘team player,’ that my priorities had indelibly shifted. And those sceptics were right — my priorities had realigned, but towards a path of greater sanity and sustainable peak performance.”
Jasmine found much-needed solace and handrails in the Japanese concept of ikigai — those rarefied sources of inspiration that imbue one’s life with meaning, purpose, and spiritual joyfulness. By adamantly recalibrating her priorities to nurture her mental and physical well-being, she could rekindle and deepen her sense of professional purpose and personal passion across all domains. Drawing these boundaries would empower her to live out her truest ikigai, rather than deplete herself into a state of disengagement and resentment.
Demarcating and vigilantly enforcing new boundaries was not without its interior pangs of discomfort. Jasmine still frequently grappled with insidious pangs of guilt, worries that she was letting down her teammates, or appearing outwardly ungrateful for the golden professional opportunity she had been entrusted with. The Japanese notion of, the solemn spiritual duty to repay the debts of gratitude shown to us, weighed heavily on her at first.
“I had to constantly remind myself that safeguarding my mental and emotional wellbeing was not an act of arrogant selfishness; it was a non-negotiable prerequisite for truly showing up as my best, most catalytic self across all life domains without burning out into apathy or resignation.”
Yet gradually, almost imperceptibly at first, Jasmine’s newly instituted guardrails and reservations of white space began paying outsize dividends. She found herself more focused and engaged during core hours, able to work with deeper fulness and generate breakthroughs. Her personal life regained equilibrium as she reintegrated parts of herself that had lain long-dormant. While stochastic pangs of Indigenous Guilt would still tear their heads, looking back, she no longer perseverated with regret over having drawn firmer boundaries.
“In hindsight, I wish I had instituted these boundaries sooner. The anxiety and norm-defying discomfort of swimming against a powerful cultural tide was a humble price to pay to reclaim my sense of self and long-term sustainment.”
In an organizational culture that still romanticizes and incentivizes overwork, self-abnegation, and the stamina-centered persona, Jasmine’s transformational journey serves as a clarion call for the importance of radical self-preservation. By aligning with the empowering ethos of ikigai while loosening attachments to the potentially toxic underpinnings of pathological giri and gaman, she crafted a path towards sustainable performance, fuelling harmonious interplay between her ascendant professional and personal realms.
For Jasmine, emotional boundaries are anything but the indicia of disengagement, entitlement, or lack of commitment. Rather, they represent profound acts of self-compassion, self-love, and radical self-care — cultivating priceless white space and erecting ramparts against the relentless undercurrents of insidious burnout culture. Her catalysing story underscores the power of unflinchingly prioritizing one’s holistic mental health, even when societal and organizational conventions loom large.
“I take immense pride in the calibre of my work, but also in the PMO-mind boundaries that empower me to bring my integrated, catalytic self to every commitment and relationship without dimming or distortion. After this rite of passage, I’m no longer ‘Just Going Through the Motions.’”
