How conscious are we of our personal space?


Personal space is something all of us have. We are often unaware of someone else’s personal space and it is something which doesn’t get enough attention in everyday life. I feel like sometimes we ignore personal space altogether. Now is a very interesting time because a certain kind of personal space is forced upon us. A world in which I actually feel more comfortable. Since I was small, I have always had a strong feeling about people coming too close to me. I never knew how to put it into words. The thing is, I never had a chance to decide for myself how much space I wanted to keep between myself and other people. From the moment I went to school this was forced upon me. We are thought to sit next to each other in class and hold hands when walking to the canteen. What if this is something you are uncomfortable with? I am not saying every child knows this about themselves already, but they should get a chance to say no if they don’t want to. The problem is that everybody else doesn’t know what my personal space is, and I don’t know what everybody else’s personal space is. So how do I know how far to stand from someone when I am talking to them? I just keep the distance I am comfortable with. That is also exactly what others do. What if their distance circle is smaller than mine?

As a child I often felt very uncomfortable in the surrounding of other people. I was always very shy with adults but also with people I didn’t know yet. Now many years later I feel like this could also have had to do with the personal space issue. Sometimes at school I would be obliged to stand in a row with all my other classmates, two by two, and I would have to hold someone’s hand. When it would be my friends hand I would be fine, but holding someone’s else’s hand was horrible for me. I would start to get clammy hands and be very nervous. Someone was invading my space. Someone I didn’t know anything about was in my space. My space. This is not exactly what went through my head the moment it happened but now that I think back to it, I understand that this was the reason I was so uncomfortable. It’s interesting because as a child you don’t question it. An adult says you have to hold hands, so you do it. ‘There must be something wrong with me’ you think. Over the years, I have learned that I am someone who is very sensitive when it comes to my personal space. I think there is both good and bad sides to it. Anyways, a few years ago I decided to do a project about this. I made a ‘personal space dress’ with the worldwide known distances of comfortableness for specific people. Since then I have been really fascinated by the concept of personal space. I am now about to start a new project about personal space because I want to explore more the intimate side of it. My personal space.

The situation we are in now, with this corona virus, is not fun at all. But it did make me think about personal space also. We are all forced in our own personal space at home now. Even if it’s a personal space that is not only your personal space, but one you have to share with four other people. And not only this but we are also forced (forced is maybe too strong a word, maybe advised is better) to keep 1.5m distance from everyone except the people we live with. How do we adjust so fast? How does this affect us physically? But also mentally? How do you go from that to this? What if we were all thought to keep 1.5m distance from people we don’t know from the moment we are born? Like at the supermarket, in other stores, or in public transport.

Now a few facts about personal space. Your personal space is something that varies per person, some people you might want to get closer to than others. Also culture plays a big role in how much distance you take from others. Personal space is invisible, which makes it very easy to ignore. We deal with intrusion of personal space much more often than we think. For example, men calling women on the street can already be an invasion of her personal space. It doesn’t have to be physical in my opinion, mentally is just as much a personal space. It is therefore so important for children to learn at a young age to say out loud what they are and are not comfortable with. Of course, this is different for everyone and many people do feel like they got the chance to express themselves that way. But it wasn’t for me, I feel like I was forced to act a certain way just because the teacher or parent ‘said so’.

I believe the impact of invading someone’s personal space is underestimated. We often don’t understand each other because we don’t feel about it the same way. It’s hard to step in someone else’s shoes. I grew up in France, maybe it’s different there. But I have been in schools in France and the Netherlands both and always felt like teachers were invading my personal space. Maybe it had to do with the classrooms that were small, I don’t know but somehow they were always too close. I feel like this is something which should have been addressed more during my childhood. So that I would know it’s okay, and know how to set boundaries for myself. Instead of thinking something was wrong.

I have learned from this that I will definitely make sure my children know that they have a personal space and they have the right to have one just the way they want it to be. I will teach them that having boundaries is okay, and yes you can say it out loud if someone steps over your boundary. You are allowed to have it, it’s part of who you are and nobody should be deciding for us how our personal space should be. This is also why I think this time in isolation is a good way to reflect on our personal spaces. Do we actually want to be this close to a person when we talk to them? Maybe now you will realise you wanted it differently all along. I think this time can also help us to see which people are the most important to us which people do we miss in our personal space? I think that is really important for all of us.


By Niki Sophia