Stress and personal space: when they invade our privacy

Personal space is a private, intimate and exclusive territory that no one can invade or make their own.. It not only refers to the physical component, it also has to do with the invasion of other stimuli, such as noise, the emotions that others transmit to us, with information overload or with constant interruptions in our moments of solitude or intimacy.

It is often said that there are people who go through the world like pachyderms, like large elephants invading other people’s spaces, trampling on rights and violating privacy. This effect usually occurs a lot in our work environments.undoubtedly affecting our productivity and generating a high level of stress and discomfort.

Now, there is one aspect that we cannot leave aside. Personal space does not refer only to the exact centimeters that each person tolerates with respect to the physical presence of others, where the voice, breath or body heat of others is uncomfortable and even threatening to us. Personal space is also a bubble that can burst due to any type of psychosensory stimulation.

That is, aspects such as furniture, decoration, lack of lighting or the smell of a certain environment can also be a source of stress. At the same time, not being able to have time for oneself, being watched or controlled, is also a clear invasion of our personal space.

Personal space and stress

Ana and Pablo have just become parents and they feel overwhelmed . The stress they experience has nothing to do with their baby, but with their environment, their family, friends and co-workers. Already in the hospital, they saw their personal space continually invaded by those people, close and excited, who with all the good intentions in the world took turns seeing the newborn, holding it in their arms and giving the parents a thousand pieces of advice.

This small example is an example of how our environment sometimes crosses that personal bubble that we need to preserve for ourselves. Not only does it take entering a crowded elevator to experience discomfort, Often the most serious “aggressions” come from our closest people. Hence, the prevailing need to know how to set limits.

Thus, something that psychologists see very often in their consultations is precisely this reality. They encounter people who have spent half their lives feeling unable to protect their personal space. This immobility or inability to manage personal boundaries generates a very high emotional cost, leaves a dent and weakens completely the deepest foundations of our psychological architecture.

Let us take into account, for example, that The fact of defining, delimiting and protecting our personal space is a very important key to survival. It is also an exercise in self-knowledge where we understand that we all have red barriers, lines that no one should cross because that is where we find our self-esteem, where our balance, our valuable identity, is contained…

Take care of yourself, protect your personal space

Ralph Adolph and Daniel P. Kennedy, neurologists at Caltech University (United States), discovered that There is a structure in our brain that is responsible for telling us where the limits of our personal space are. This is the amygdala, that small region associated with fear or our survival instinct.

This discovery is undoubtedly interesting and reveals something essential: It is our brain that measures the personal limits of each one. It is like a personal alarm button that tells us that something or someone is bothering us, invading our privacy or violating our integrity to the point of being threatening. It should also be said that these limits are different for each person. There are those who at the very least experience a feeling of overwhelm and stress while others, on the other hand, have a much greater tolerance.

For its part, proxemics, the science that studies the effects of our interrelationships on the use of space, reminds us that one of our greatest sources of anxiety is seeing how every day we feel more “crowded” in every sense. Not only do we have less physical space for everything, Now we receive so many stimuli, so many pressures and interactions from all sides that we barely put filters on anything.. We let everything come, catch us and surround us…

We must be able to manage our personal limits. We talk, of course, about learning to place physical and psychological distances from all external dynamics that attack our intimacy and that arise as powerful sources of stress. Sometimes it’s our co-workers, other times it’s an excessively noisy, crowded, tiny, or oppressive environment.

At other times, it is our clear inability to give denials, to make clear what we can tolerate and what we cannot. Being explicit when indicating where our personal boundaries are will help us relate much better to each other.because only in this way will we shape more respectful, productive and, above all, healthy social environments.

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