Personal Space

I am currently living in Florida, and I try to get to the beach for 2 hours every week.  I like to get a little sun and go in the water.  It is so peaceful and relaxing to me and I love bobbing in the waves.  Yesterday on my weekly visit as I was enjoying my bliss on a very quiet beach, two women came and put their chairs approximately 3 feet directly behind where I was sitting. (Really I am not exaggerating)  It is a big beach and there were only 2 other people in this particular large area.  It really bugged me!  They were in my space!

  So it got me thinking about personal space and personal boundaries.  Personal space is more about our physical space, but it is also about our relational experiences as well because it is part of our interactions with others.  This was definitely a personal space situation I was experiencing.  Personal space is defined as: the physical space immediately surrounding someone, into which any encroachment feels threatening to or uncomfortable for them.

 These women were encroaching on my space.  I tried to understand it.  First I thought it was rude, and then I realized they were speaking Spanish, so I thought maybe it was a cultural thing. I didn’t want to move, because I didn’t want to be rude, but I was clearly agitated. 

Edward T Hall called this concept of personal space, Proxemics, which is a subcategory of nonverbal communication, and “he argued that human perceptions of space are molded and patterned by culture,” and can lead to “serious failures of communication and understanding in cross-cultural settings” http://www.csiss.org/classics/content/13  

Our personal space boundaries develop at around 3 to 4 years of age and are mostly defined by the time we reach adolescence.  The personal space response takes place in the amygdala, which is part of the brain area involved in fear and caution.  As the illustration shows we have very defined spaces which seem comfortable for us in different situations with different people.  I have been to the beach plenty of times where there are many people very close together and it didn’t bother me.  The theory behind this is that when we are in crowded situations we tend to observe others as if they are inanimate objects. (I am going to pay attention to how I observe others in a crowded situation next time I am in one.)  In this instance the beach was almost empty, and they could have sat anywhere, but they chose to sit very close to me and they were very comfortable doing so.