Making aggravators respect your boundaries

[Vaom]

I noticed that my post is not up anymore for some reason and I can’t find this type of information anywhere on the internet so I just thought I would repost.

I know that a common thing that people say is that you need to learn where your boundaries are and communicate to people where they are so that they don’t overstep them. However, I have a lot of difficulty when it comes to enforcing my boundaries with people because I can never tell if the person is going to be cool with what I tell them or whether they are going to take that information and antagonize me with it.

I’ve encountered people in my life that just seem to get a rise out of aggravating people (i.e., trolls), and I know the worst thing you can do with these people is tell them what bothers you because they feed off of this information and will deliberately start engaging in the behaviour that they know bothers you. When I get the sense that someone is this type of person I end up being really guarded and can’t stop myself from lying and pretending that something doesn’t bother me so that they can’t use this information against me.

Does anyone have any solutions with dealing with these people that doesn’t require endless lying, because I can’t think of anything. Is the solution to just get to a point where those things don’t bother you anymore so that you don’t have to lie to trolls? Or is the only solution to try and avoid these people at all costs and just lie to them when I can’t avoid them?

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