Boundaries Benefit Everyone

Transcript:

(Intro)

You deserve to know that you won't get it right all the time. It's okay to make mistakes. Unfortunately, some people won't like you, and it's okay to not be liked. Other people's opinions don't have to define you.

Those statements that I just listed off can be some of the hardest things for those of us coming out of people pleasing and codependency. They can be some of the hardest things to come to terms with. I won't get it right all the time? I need to get comfortable making mistakes? I shouldn't shame myself when I make a mistake? I shouldn't be hard on myself when I don't get it right?

Before I even started recording I was having issues with my Zoom and my screen sharing, and I'm telling you, a few years ago that type of thing would have tripped me up! After this event - or during it - I would have been replaying that in my mind. Oh my gosh how stupid! How silly that looks! You don't know what you're doing.

What the healing journey offers us is this place where we can come to terms with the fact that, you know what, there's going to be blunders we're all going to make. If we can just get comfortable within ourselves and stop shaming ourselves and stop getting into everybody's heads and creating stories about things that yeah they might be thinking, and a lot of times they're not thinking, we can live which with so much more peace. We can live so much more regulated. A lot of that is deep work and some of it's basic

We're gonna get into a little bit of of boundaries tonight and what and how boundaries can benefit us. Really, you have to come to terms with the idea that everybody won't like you and it's okay that everybody doesn't like you in order to practice boundaries. What are some of the benefits of boundaries?

It's super important to have boundaries as a way of honoring ourselves, because we are being sure to meet our own needs when we place boundaries. I grew up in a culture that said you should focus more on other people and not on yourself, you should meet their needs - don't worry about yours. Even though I think there's so much good to those statements, and I think it's certainly a wonderful beautiful way to live where we do for others what we hope to receive in return and where we live out of love, it's also really important that we take care of ourselves. Because if we do not take care of ourselves we eventually, at some point, will not be able to take care of those other people that we want to take care of. It is not humanly possible to constantly be pushing ourselves and pushing ourselves to the extreme without it catching up to us at some point. If you've read the book or heard about The Body Keeps The Score - it certainly does!

For someone who became a parentified child and just stopped listening to her own needs and focused on everyone else, I can tell you, I came to a physical breaking point and I was pretty young when I did, mid20s, but for me at that point it wasn't because I'd had three babies in 37 months. It wasn't because of anything that was really going on at that point. That might have been what tipped it. It was because I was a 10-year-old taking care of my siblings. I was helping to homeschool them. I was at 15 doing adult responsibilities in many many many ways, running a household and working a side job.

Why I bring that up is because for any of us that have that voice in our heads that says, Yeah but we can't always focus on our own needs because we need to be doing the right thing, the kind thing, by making sure we're meeting other people's needs. This message isn’t for the person who has only met other people's needs and has stopped meeting their own. A balance is great, but when it's lopsided in that way you have to start turning the tide so that you are no longer meeting everyone else's needs and not meeting your own. You actually start to balance it out where you meet other people's needs, but now you also meet your own. That's what I'm talking about, I'm saying instead of disregarding yourself start to bring yourself into the equation. Start to include yourself in the other people that you take care of! You deserve that. That's a part of self-parenting which I could go on and on about. There's so many practical ways that self-parenting is what we need to do. Boundaries are a part of self-parenting.

Another benefit to boundaries, it helps other people know how to relate to you, which is super kind. Because they know the expectations, they know, oh if Corinne says she can't do this on Tuesday I don't need to ask her three more times, because I know her well enough that if she's able to do it on Thursday she will, and if she can't do it for another month there's a good reason for that. Whatever the hypothetical situation might be, people will learn and it will help them define the relationship more clearly. That creates a sense of safety - when there are clear parameters, and expectations are understood, everybody feels - they really do they feel - safer. It's like, Oh I can land here! Maybe I don't like it in some cases, but at least I I know what to expect.

What are boundaries? Boundaries can look and sound very different, but sometimes it's as basic as setting a limit for yourself on how often you're going to see someone; how long you're going to spend time with them; or specific activities, how often you're going to do them; how long you're going to do them for.

Think about the number of events we can be invited to, the number of things we have the opportunity to say “yes” or “no” to. If you are the person who always says “yes” “yes” “yes” because you don't want to disappoint somebody; you don't want them to think you don't like them; you don't want them to think you're not playing your part and putting in enough effort. If you say yes to everything then you're going to find at some point - prove me wrong, I would love it if you do - but I would think at some point you're going to start getting resentful. Resentment is one of those great indicators that you are probably not listening to what your body needs and you may be pushing past your own inner wisdom.

Boundaries can look like defining what you'll eat or drink and not letting other people persuade you to do differently in the heat and pressure of the moment. To be really honest with you, I went gluten-free (there have been times I have done many things in my diet.) I went gluten-free cause it felt a lot better to my body. To people please and because it was tricky and I was uncomfortable being just honest, somebody made something that wasn't gluten-free, invited me over, and I'm sitting there eating it because I didn't feel comfortable saying "Oh I'm sorry I I know you made that for us today but I don't eat gluten so I'm just going to pass on that." Nope! I was sitting there eating it. This is not just one time, this is the type of story that I could repeat over and over and over to you.

Practicing a boundary may be you figure out how to tell somebody your dietary restrictions before you hang out with them, or you do it when you're there even though they've made it for you! You're going to sit there and not have anything, or of course one could decide to eat it because they decided that's what they would do in a situation but that is very different than sitting there in the back of your mind saying "I really don't want to eat this, but I don't feel comfortable telling them." Those are two different reasons.

I love bringing up this example because it's so important. Cognitive dissonance can be really harmful to our to our psyches, to us overall.

Let me try to track back. Here's an example. Someone might say "I want to get up at 7:00 every morning," but they know they're really tired and they often click their alarm off. They hit snooze enough times that they don't get up till say 8:00. They go to bed the next night saying “I'm going to get up at 7” and they hit snooze again multiple times and they keep doing this.

It's better for the brain and the body that you actually say the night before, "I know I want to get up at 7:00, but I find I'm too tired and it's better for my body that I sleep till 8." You determine the night before that you're going to allow yourself to sleep to 8:00. That is so much more effective than setting this intention to wake up at 7 and then to disregard it time and time again. So say you're like, I'm just not comfortable telling the host that I'm not doing gluten. You determine, if I go to somebody's house and they are serving me something that I don't typically eat I'm going to allow myself whenever that happens to be and I’ll enjoy it with them. That can work out really well and you can still be practicing boundaries. You can still be supporting your mind and body. That way is very different than that first example I was giving.

Cognitive dissonance is when we say we're going to do one thing but we end up doing another thing… and we do that all the time. I’m going to take the walk and then we don't take the walk. Instead, you could determine, you know what, it's not working out for me to walk, so I'm not going to put that pressure on myself yet. Maybe in two months I will be able to say I'm going to make a practice of walking for five minutes a day, and then I walk for five minutes a day.

I know I'm getting off track, but there's something about this… so I'm going to sit here for a minute. That's also way better than saying, I'm going to take a walk for 30 minutes, and never doing it. Nope. Just just set a very realistic expectation of yourself. I'm going to walk for five minutes. That's a lot easier to do than 30 minutes! Then when you see yourself meeting that expectation and walking five minutes each day, you can increase it to ten. All right, so that's super super important …. and even though it's not really about boundaries, that's for somebody! So run with that!

So again, a boundary could look like respecting yourself in a way that you don't allow others to disrespectfully speak or interact with you. It's not up to the other person. They might be speaking disrespectfully; they might be treating you disrespectfully. You choose to walk away; you choose to remove yourself from the situation. It's not up to other people! it's up to us.

Prime example: if you want to go to bed by say 10:00 p.m every night, somebody can still text or call you … you do not have to answer or respond. That might look like turning your phone off at a certain time if it's too difficult for you to see that somebody texted or called you, and to not respond, or silence your notifications. You might have to leave an event before it's over, because you know, I need to leave now to get home … to be able to do what I need to do, to still be in bed by 10:00. It doesn't mean the person running the event needs to end it in time for you to do all that!

Boundaries, and the practice of them, are not about other people. They are about us. So much of what we need to do boils down to, what are we willing to do? We can start getting “blamey.” We can start putting the responsibility on other people. But in the end, each one of us is responsible for our self. That's another reminder how important self-parenting is, because self-parenting looks like us saying, “I need to be in bed by 10:00 p.m so I'm going to do what I need to do, starting at whatever time in the evening, so that I'm in bed by 10 p.m. That's how we practice self-kindness.

That is so important. These are all components of the healing journey, and really big ones. What is one of the harsh and beautiful realities of setting boundaries in place and then practicing them? People learn who you are and what to expect. Going back to that example of being gluten-free, if I just said it once to my friend she likely would remember for the next time, and probably would make something that's gluten-free, instead of me never saying it and repeatedly having gluten, when I really didn't want to.

Now if you are a people pleaser, it's going to be a shock to some when you start saying “no” to things, or when you start speaking your mind. Over time they will get used to it. Some people won't like it; some people will not want to deal with you in that way. They'll want to still persuade you to do something else, or they'll still interact with you in the way that they used to. I say it's an indicator that the relationship probably needed to change, and probably needs to change, as harsh as that might sound. It can be very relieving to put boundaries in place and then to be able to see clearly, oh this relationship is toxic. It doesn't mean you need to let them all go. Sometimes you just have to change the dynamic; you have to spend less time together, or have boundaries around what topics of conversation you're willing to talk. It really is relieving for those of us that have have gotten accustomed to focusing on keeping the peace, because it starts to…. it does the opposite of that! It kind of turns the soil, and how much better is that for the garden when the soil gets turned! So much more growth can happen.

So three ways…. and I told you we were going to get practical, and bring, you know, something to write with …. your notes app, pen and paper …. So let's take a little bit of time right now to get practical! How can we start placing boundaries? Literally, take notice of what boundaries you need to put in place. I don't know if it's in regards to relationships, your lifestyle and the amount of commitments you're agreeing to, if it's something about you personally and self-care that you need to start implementing, but sit there and write down some things that are coming to mind.

You're going to hear me say, I don't want you to focus on everything you write down. Just allow yourself to like see what comes to you though, and then afterwards look at the list and see what's like the one thing - the one main thing that's jumping out at you - that you feel like you need to focus on to start with. Because small incremental change is the way to sustainable change. You don't want to try to conquer 10 things, and place boundaries and start practicing boundaries around 10 areas. It's not going to be lasting and sustainable. But if you start one new practice and have established boundaries around one thing, and you work on that for a while, that can definitely be sustainable. Then you can start to practice something else after you've seen, oh okay I'm doing… I'm really getting comfortable in this area; this is feeling like second nature to be in bed by 10:00 every night. I've got a routine in place, I'm not having to work hard at this! Okay, now what's another practice I need to start putting in place?

All right, reflect about your feelings… maybe they're in regards to certain people, events and activities you're saying yes to that really deep down you're feeling like, I don't think this is… I don't think this is right for this season, or maybe, I've done it for a while and it's time to take a break. Like I said before, if you're starting to feel that inner resentment, that inner frustration - that's an indicator that you you've probably been disregarding your own inner wisdom. You've been pushing your body past its limits. We're capable of doing a lot but sometimes capacity is different. We got to say “no” before we get to that point where we are so frustrated that we aren't acting like our true self. It's not better off for anyone around us and it's not better off for us!

All right, and like I mentioned, boundaries are not requests or commands that you leave in the hands of other people. They are things we need to take full responsibility for. We need to be the one who makes it happen and who keeps it going.

More things that you can write down: What are boundaries that align with this particular season you're in and the direction that you're headed? Because, seasons are constantly changing, not just in nature but within our lives. I mean, we are a part of the creation so of course there's seasons for all of us. But sometimes we have to put the brakes on something, and other times we start pedaling fast. It varies, and you know best the season of life you're in and what you need in this season.

Secondly, What is true to your authentic, true self? (Not you trying to people please, and appease, and make sure everybody's okay before you consider your own needs!) What do you need to do for you?

And then lastly, Do you have a hard time setting boundaries in general, or do you notice it's just with certain people? Now I get that probably the people closest to us, we have more opportunities where we need to set boundaries. But when you think about all of your interactions, are you often bypassing your own inner wisdom? Are you often looking at other people and trying to assess, What do they need? and, How can I say or do something that's going to make them feel comfortable and make it so they like me? Or no, is it really just like a couple of your relationships where you realize, ooh I interact differently with those people than the majority of people.

Maybe you only need to start setting boundaries with in a couple relationships. Again, you know best, so just reflect and take notice. And it might be that you're not even sure right now, but you start to witness yourself and to notice as you go through the next several days, and you interact with people, and you interact with yourself and that can be super informative!

(Outro)