From Boundaries to Breakthroughs - Testing the Waters and Stepping Outside Our Comfort Zone - A Social Media Case Study
A practical guide to temporary boundaries and priority shifts. Testing healed strength through expanding our horizons.
When we embark on healing journeys it is common to identify and remove harmful things from our lives: people, places, substances, habits, apps, etc…
In some cases, our goal is permanent removal. In others, it’s temporary.
We can choose to handle both types in different ways.
Today I’ll share what I recently learned from one of those temporary removals along my healing journey.
I’ll share how I set it aside, successfully stayed away while I needed to, slowly stepped back in when I was ready, and discovered I was stronger than I thought.
More importantly: I’ll share how you can do this too. :)
Writing publicly over the last year changed me in many ways. I’m not sure how much was study, healing, writing, or some combination of the three... but I am not the same person I was a year ago.
I recently wrote about what I learned in 2025… but I didn’t mention what I lost.
In 2025 I lost:
a large measure of naiveté
an unknowingly well-protected sense of idealism
many illusions about myself
many illusions of my fellow man
With those ‘losses’ now behind me and some healing accomplished, I’ve become deliberate about expanding my horizons.
As my military career wound down and my PTSD ramped up, I found myself backing away from social media. Though it wasn’t initially a conscious decision, it proved to be wise. While I enjoy the connection and occasional rousing debates, the chaos of the space became more intense and harmful than fun, useful, or healthy. Around the time I started writing here, I chose to step away from social media almost entirely. For about a year, I stayed away to free up more mental space to focus on my writing and healing journey.
But, the social media ban was never intended to be permanent, and the time arrived for me to start expanding my horizons…
…so I tested the waters by going by back.
That has been a fun adventure.
This week I learned:
I’m stronger than I thought
The healing journey is working
In some ways, I’m stronger than I was before I started
This week I also learned the healing framework of the first three chapters of my book are a surprising fit to this specific scenario.
I didn’t even notice I was building this precise path, but it is well paved.
If you have something in your life that you removed or want to remove - temporarily - to allow space for healing or any other reason, today’s missive illustrates a practical approach to tackling some of those associated challenges.
Today I’ll use social media as my example, but you can apply this to anything in your life that fits this model of temporary boundaries, priority shifts, and reintegration.
If you can think of something in your life where you want to add some space, maybe even a hard boundary for a while, but reintroduce it later when conditions are more favorable, then stay with me, dear reader.
Assessing Priorities - From Big Rock to Dandelion
In Chapter 1 of From War to Writing we addressed stopping the spiral. We did so primarily by assessing our priorities.
The book uses the analogy that Glass balls are urgent needs. Big rocks and little rocks are our important priorities. The lowest priority or fun stuff is sand. Dandelions are the priorities we can allow to wait, and often should allow to wait, because they often distract us from our main priorities.
Assessing our priorities and assigning them to that scale is a way to help stop the spiral, get a handle on overwhelm, and gain a solid footing to begin our healing journey.
As I assessed my priorities early in my journey, I had to recategorize a very large rock (and occasional glass ball) to a dandelion.
When I first tried to be deliberate with my social media use, I treated it like a pebble or a small rock... keep in touch, but maybe just once or twice a day. Trying to find that balance was a fun exercise. It showed I was often treating social media like a glass ball when I really didn’t want to... I needed to stop, actually.
It became clear my compulsive need to respond to conversations online was unhealthy and unsustainable. I had to move social media to the dandelion category and fully walk away. Treating it like a small rock was disrupting my peace and my healing journey - not because it was uncomfortable, but because it had become harmful.
The catch was, I was practically incapable of walking away. Casually dabbling in social media wasn’t working. Before I started my healing journey, the idea of ignoring a social media notification was completely foreign. Leaving a conversation mid-stream was right-out. To stop allowing myself to get carried away, I had to disengage completely.
When I noticed the heated debates were creating tangible anxiety and hindering my healing, I started pulling back from combative conversations. Not too long after that, I realized the notification pings were as big a challenge as the heated conversations… so I muted the pings.
But no matter what I did, as long as I considered social media a little rock, pebble, or even sand to play in, it would spiral out of my control and occasionally become a glass ball.
I needed to see it as a dandelion.
The break didn’t need to be permanent, but it needed to be total.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but that was a first step toward stopping the spiral… assessing my priorities and letting my ‘dandelions’ grow.
What we see on social media does affect us. Just as I didn’t notice or appreciate how I was impacted by the emotions of others, I also didn’t notice how much social media was impacting me.
- Terry Duke
For me, social media needed to become a dandelion — something I could ignore — so it would not flare up as a priority and commandeer my focus, or my peace.
Placing social media in the “dandelion” mental space allowed me to protect my peace, set a boundary that was authentic and sustainable, and continue along my healing journey with noticeably less friction.
Protecting Priorities - Fortify Your Battle Lines
Staying away from things we want to avoid is often easier said than done.
In Chapter 2 of From War to Writing I addressed this as protecting our priorities by setting healthy boundaries — similar to setting defensive battle lines:
They require strategy - deliberate planning and thought
We set them to protect our vital interests - protecting our priorities
We adjust them as the situation dictates - to be more effective, or as needs evolve
Boundaries are battle lines for survival, and we need to protect our time, energy, and identity.
In the deepest parts of my healing journey, I came to realize 80-90% of my mental capacity was constantly devoted to re-wiring, healing, and re-building a mental framework used to organize my thoughts and my life. Dabbling in social media quickly added a crippling load when I was already almost ‘full.’ In addition to time, I was wasting energy I didn’t really have to spare.
I still wanted social media in my life, but it needed to be prioritized appropriately, rather than exist as something that held power over me.
This meant I had to step away fully for a while to ensure I could hold space for my own healing.
That required boundaries … battle lines.
While trying to align my life with my values, I came to the conclusion that social media needed to be a dandelion for a while. Because that decision was well-thought-out and based on my authentic needs and desires, crafting ways to implement the decision (and stick to it) became possible.
Recognizing that my choice was important, aligned, and deliberate gave me strength to respect my own boundaries.
I also recognized that as long as notifications held me captive or disrupted my peace, I was out of alignment. I was granting that app power over me without my consent.
Life doesn’t need to be like that. Healing journeys probably shouldn’t be like that either. ;p
Recognizing that helped steel my resolve as well.
But, this particular break was always intended to be temporary. I knew those battle lines would evolve, and eventually I’d find myself back on social media.
Recently I’ve started reassessing the battle lines around my social media blackout and begun dipping my toe back in the water. As I started to expand my horizons and reacquaint myself with social media, I learned:
Going back to something you’ve deliberately avoided can enjoyable, but challenging.
If the reasons to avoid ‘the thing’ still exist, be cautious when approaching it again.
When popping your head up out of your foxhole, maybe start with no-man’s-land instead of rushing behind enemy lines.
Testing the Waters
On healing journeys, we may find ourselves focused inward for a while to regroup. Assuming we want to expand our horizons, we have to leave the safety of our battle lines at some point.
The trick is to avoid getting burned.
Balance.
Baby steps.
When we emerge, we may find we are stronger than we thought, or possibly stronger than we were before, but we should still start slow.
It Started with Dishes - And an Escape Hatch
Trauma advice typically says to stay away from people, places, and things likely to retraumatize. I agree with that concept, but sometimes it’s not always that simple.
I started with dishes.
At one point my world got so small even doing dishes was a significant challenge. I never thought dishes could be traumatic.
In the depths of my healing journey, doing my part to help the family was hard. But it was an odd kind of hard. Not like I simply didn’t feel like doing it. That’s easy to understand. Actually doing the dishes felt like entering a traumatic situation. It wasn’t like a war zone... I didn’t feel like I was under attack... it just felt extremely uncomfortable for reasons I can’t yet explain.
But at some point I realized I wanted to do my part in the family and simply had to figure out how to do them. Without the luxury of categorizing dishes as dandelions, I needed to find a solution.
The trick that finally worked was to give myself an escape hatch. I had to remind myself I could simply walk away and come back later.
Over most of my life and my entire 24 year military career, my mindset was basically: If I’m in it, I’m committed ‘til it’s done. Retreat and escape generally didn’t seem like viable options.
That mindset has a place, but when we’re testing the waters expanding our horizons on healing journeys, it’s important we give ourselves ‘an out.’
Ensuring we protect a lane to retreat and regroup, even when tackling smaller difficulties like dishes, allows us to expand beyond our comfort zone and reach goals while minimizing the chances of overextending ourselves or getting ‘trapped’ in our attempts to grow.
Expand with Confidence
In hindsight, the dishes were easy. Social media was a bit trickier.
As I tested the waters wading back in to social media, the engagements went well. Having embraced my boundaries for so long, it was surprisingly easy to not get caught up in the conversations or the scrolling more than I intended.
Equipped with a well-oiled ‘escape hatch,’ I was able expand with confidence.
One of my more questionable tests didn’t go quite as expected... but it was certainly educational and surprisingly encouraging.
I posted something in a space where I could expect a predictable response. I knew it could get contentious. I expected loud and a little unhinged, but personal attacks and open ridicule weren’t exactly how I saw things going down.
For most of my life… that would have crushed me.
Even planning ahead, I had not prepared for the mess I started.
But I was more ready than I thought.
With the escape hatch in place (log off, ignore the notifications) finding safety was easy. With my priorities in order (dandelions can wait) I even protected my peace.
The expected lingering feeling of a need to respond or engage simply did not exist.
That’s success.
That’s evidence of healing.
That’s an important milestone on the road From War to Writing.
“Old Self” vs “New Self” — Evidence of Healing
After the criticism started rolling in, the intensity of the mess I started quickly became obvious.
“Old Me” would have been compelled to engage at every notification. Worse, “old me” would have labored under the weight of the conversation even while offline.
These were the main reasons I initially chose to move social media to the dandelion category. I didn’t realize keeping it in that category for a while would allow me to build the strength to wade back in with confidence and consider moving social media back into the ‘sand’ or ‘small rock’ category.
Read. Respond. Return.
Those were the big differences I felt… evidence of healing success…
I didn’t feel compelled to read all the comments and certainly not respond to all of them. When I chose to step away, even the growing number of notifications failed to force my mind or my fingertips to return to the chaos.
In a way, the new perspective almost felt like magic. Handling stressful situations like that wasn’t even one of my goals. Experiencing evidence of healing in such a personal and profound way added more confidence that the work I’m doing here is valuable and headed in the right direction.
Frankly, in this specific case, I felt healthier than before I embarked upon this healing journey.
… and I’ve shared every thought, idea, trick, and tool I used to get there, right here on Substack, free for your use on your journey as well. :)
Wrap
Unless we want to hide behind our battle lines forever, we have to come out and look around eventually. When we start expanding our horizons and emerging from a healing journey… when it’s time to step out of the foxhole… we can do so with confidence.
When we rebuild a new framework through a healing journey, we likely build it stronger and more robust than our previous one.
When you step outside your comfort zone, you may be surprised at how far you’ve come... and at how much more capable you are of handling incoming fire.
When you choose to leave the safety of your battle lines, consider testing the waters slowly and keeping an escape handy. If you dip your toe in and it’s still not sustainable, maybe skip the cannonball. :)
Thank you for reading! I hope you found useful insight today that allows you to bring back something of value you had to set aside for a while.
If something caught your attention today, I would love to hear your thoughts.
Until next Saturday, take care!
Yours, from war to writing,
- Terry 8^)