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Boundaries And Emotional Templates: The Right Way To Say No

Priya Sridhar
5 min readNov 23, 2019

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Wow. So wow.

Twitter, sometimes you disappoint me. On innocuous and well-meaning post blows up, and causes controversy. This tweet made the rounds a few days ago. Dr. Melissa Fabello talked about emotional boundaries and what to do to abide by them. She provided a template on how to establish them.

https://twitter.com/fyeahmfabello/status/1196581296564256768?s=21

People on my feed were split. One person, I respect highly said that someone using an emotional template on her would have broken her trust in confiding in others. Another whom I respect said that a template helps them as a neurodiverse individual so that they know what to say when they don’t have the spoons. Both are legitimate points.

I think the original poster had the right idea but did the wrong execution. If someone needs to turn you down, you’d rather hear a response that isn’t copy-pasted or says that they don’t have “appropriate space”. You have to make it personal.

Define Boundaries

We can’t carry the world’s pain. I wish we could. In a perfect world, we would lean on…

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Priya Sridhar
Priya Sridhar

Written by Priya Sridhar

A 2016 MBA graduate and published author, Priya Sridhar has been writing fantasy and science fiction for fifteen years, and counting.

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