Are you really protecting your peace, or are you just a bad friend?

If you have an internet presence, you’ve probably noticed content creators joking about how they protected their peace too far and are only left with one friend, their mom and a cat. Although it can be funny, at what point does protecting your peace truly go too far? 

This concept makes one wonder what is truly peaceful and if it’s attainable as a living and growing individual. This trend has manifested itself to an extreme — an unhealthy place of solitude as an excuse for ditching your friends.

To protect your peace is to set boundaries in an effort to cut out all “toxic energy” from your life. Right now, the word toxic is thrown around everywhere — at friends who can’t give everything at every moment or at a recurring challenge in life.

When you think about it, it becomes clear that someone “protecting their peace” is a justification for putting themself first at all times and ending relationships, romantic or platonic, with no real reason other than deeming those relationships toxic. 

The main reason I’ve noticed people doing this is for self-improvement. It comes with discipline and a narrow-mindedness that closes you off from any interaction that doesn’t aid your success and potential well-being. Wake up early, go to the gym, journal and cut out toxic energy from your life. This sets a high, and unmeetable, standard for those in your life. 

Removing every interaction that may cause you distress, doesn’t serve your needs for five minutes or will distract you from self-improvement isn’t going to help you become more successful than the people around you. It just makes you worse to be around. 

Cutting valuable relationships from your life is not what will give you peace in life. Nurturing the close relationships and communities you have is the real answer. Learn to embrace forgiveness, not elimination, in relationships. Determine if cutting someone or something out is actually a deferral of “negative” emotions, or just you centering yourself in the lives of those around you. 

Prolonged isolation isn’t the solution to your problems — the practice of self-care has gotten so extreme that people would rather be alone than experience any type of situation that doesn’t benefit their life in every aspect. They would rather spend the weekend in and watch their friends go out to avoid spoiling their progress or partaking in activities that they believe aren’t worthy of their time anymore. 

It is common to see people joke about coping mechanisms, attachment styles and setting extreme boundaries and standards for friends. In therapy, these things are important to talk about and understand, but it reaches a point where it’s purely disrespectful and indecent as a human being to use this type of “therapy speak” in your interpersonal relationships. It detaches you from the situation.

Basing how good of a friend someone is on the favors they do or don’t do for you and seeing your friendship as transactional will not protect your peace or push you further in life than others. Navigating life with an air of “I don’t owe anyone anything” translates to indecency and inhumanity. Whether you stop talking to a friend out of the blue for not being a perfect entity to serve your “needs” or leave someone hanging for your wellbeing, that’s messed up.

Part of me understands where this is coming from, though. We are constantly told to be as productive as possible and to keep our future in mind, so if something doesn’t serve this, it can feel like a simple reaction to cut it out. The pressures of capitalism are dominating our existence, and it’s harder to ignore them than to go along with them. 

However, this could cause you to miss out on important experiences and life lessons that are needed to grow as a human being. You can’t safeguard your feelings from the basic events of life. Say yes to the spontaneous invitation, go to a party and reach out to those around you. If you’re feeling down, reach out to a close one, but offer the same support if they need it. Relationships aren’t one-sided. 

When was the last time you asked your friends how they were doing? It can feel like a second thought if you’re not doing amazing yourself, but starting that conversation opens the door to a human connection worth everything. I urge you to have these conversations and to spend quality time with people. 

Human existence is a web of relationships or varying closeness and social webs that add to different aspects of our lives. Every interaction you have is unlikely to be all-encompassing and unflawed, but that’s what life’s about. To be present in your interactions with others is more important than to be the center of them. You’re a 20-something — you don’t have to be perfect and productive all of the time. Life comes with lessons to learn, and you can’t learn them if you don’t live life with a few mistakes.