Are You an Over-Functioner? The Problem of Doing Too Much

Are you living with a narcissist or a stressfully demanding person? These types of relationships often require us to step up with extra emotional labor without us even realizing it. 

This week, psychotherapist and author Terri Cole joins us to explore the hidden costs of high-functioning codependency. Learn why over-helping is often a trauma response, not a personality trait—and what to do if you're living with a boundary bully.

Looking for the Podcast Extra Interview with Terri Cole? 

🔹What should you do if you can’t leave a toxic relationship yet? Terri shares practical boundary strategies for surviving emotionally while you’re still in it. Subscribe to our Podcast Exclusive newsletter to hear the extended interview.  

Get immediate access to the interview with Terri Cole along with expert tools and support to help you reclaim your peace.

👉 Join today: https://substack.com/@breakingfreenarcabuse

Learn more about Terri:

Website: https://www.terricole.com

Books:  Too Much: A Guide to Breaking the Cycle of High-Functioning Codependency - https://amzn.to/4jeqIRH

Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free - https://amzn.to/4i2yvB6

                                      ****************************************

Stay in Touch Dr. Kerry!

• Youtube
• Instagram
• TikTok
• Facebook

More About Dr. Kerry

Kerry Kerr McAvoy, Ph.D, a retired psychologist and author, is an expert on cultivating healthy relationships and deconstructing narcissism. Her blogs have been featured in Mamami, YourTango, Scary Mommy, and The Good Men Project. In Love You More, Dr. McAvoy gives an uncensored glimpse into her survival of narcissistic abuse, and her workbook, First Steps to Leaving a Narcissist, helps victims break free from the confusion common in abusive relationships. She hosts the Breaking Free from Narcissistic Abuse podcast and offers trauma-related advice on social media.

Transcript

00:00:04:15 - 00:00:29:16

Dr. Kerry McAvoy

Toxic relationships push survivors into way too much emotional labor. To talk about this, Terri Cole, author and expert of codependency who just recently released a new book called Too Much, is joining me to talk about what happens inside these relationships that cause us to over-function. Thank you so much, Terri Cole, for joining me today. And I just recently came across your book, Too Much.

00:00:29:16 - 00:00:41:04

Dr. Kerry McAvoy

I love that title. We hear that constantly. How much work. Too much. So tell me a little bit about yourself and how you got interested in the topic of boundaries, codependency. What happens in toxic relationships?

00:00:41:07 - 00:01:03:02

Terri Cole

Well, what do they say you teach what you most need to learn. So for me, I was a boundary disaster and I was highly codependent in my relationships, although I didn't know either one of those terms at that point in my life. And through the therapeutic process, I came to discover for myself that, you know, a lot of my unhappiness in my relationships.

00:01:03:04 - 00:01:19:22

Terri Cole

I really thought it was other people because, you know, it is. I was like my boyfriend just wasn't a jerk, or my boss didn't do this, or my best friend, know. Of course, then I had a great therapist who was like, hello. You're the common denominator of all of those relationships. So it might be you, which is very helpful to find out it's you.

00:01:19:23 - 00:01:38:08

Terri Cole

Because if it's you, then the you can do something about it. So I think that every single thing that I write about and everything I'm very passionate about teaching about are all things that cause me great pain in my life. And I really my my goal, my dharma, is to help other people lessen their own suffering and elevate their own joy.

00:01:38:08 - 00:01:41:18

Terri Cole

And I feel like I do that very specifically with the books that I write.

00:01:41:20 - 00:01:54:19

Dr. Kerry McAvoy

Very cool. So let's dig in to your definition of codependency, what you sort of discovered to be your own journey, but what you were also seeing in other people as you work with them, define what you sort of see is the codependent relational style.

00:01:54:23 - 00:02:15:18

Terri Cole

Well, for me, that's I'll give you my definition of codependency. But what I was seeing in my practice for it, I have very, highly capable, competent women in general is my practice, and I'm an alpha females. Maybe you'd call them. And if I were to say to them, oh, hey, what you're talking about, that's a codependent pattern in that relationship, they would immediately reject the notion of codependency immediately.

00:02:15:18 - 00:02:33:23

Terri Cole

Like, no way. And they're like, everyone's dependent on me. I'll make it all the money. I'll make it all the moves I'm doing all the emotional labor. What are you talking about? I'm not dependent on squat, Which, you know, and it made me realize my clients don't know what codependency actually is. And I feel like There was a lack of information out there, even though we had Codependent No-More,

00:02:33:23 - 00:02:51:03

Terri Cole

by Melody Beattie, Rest in peace. And, you know, this was the seminal text forever and ever. I was like, it's got a bad rap. There's all these myths around codependency. People do not see themselves. So obviously, for me as a therapist, you can see my conundrum how can I help my clients if they do not see themselves in the problem?

00:02:51:06 - 00:03:14:04

Terri Cole

And so codependency, according to me, is when we are overly invested in the feelings states, the outcomes, the situations, the circumstances, the finances, the careers of the people in our lives to the detriment of our own internal peace could be our financial well-being, could be our psychological or emotional well-being. So making the distinction, it's not just I'm concerned about my friend.

00:03:14:07 - 00:03:33:07

Terri Cole

My friend calls me and is in a crisis. I'm compassionately concerned. That's not we're talking about when you are a codependent. And I'll talk about the high functioning piece in a minute. you feel responsible for your friend's crisis. It is now your crisis. It is not your friend's crisis anymore. Now you are putting down everything you are doing.

00:03:33:10 - 00:03:55:12

Terri Cole

You are underlining stuff in a book. You are texting the person you know who works at Sloan-Kettering. You are in action to solve the problem. So when you look at when I added high functioning to codependency, because with my clients, irony is that the higher and more capable you are, the less codependency looks like codependency, but it's still codependency, so we're still suffering in the same way.

00:03:55:12 - 00:04:17:21

Terri Cole

It just doesn't look like that because the external package looks like we have it all together. I don't know what my clients thought. I mean, some would be like, well, I'm not like waiting at home for like my debting partner to come home after they've spent all the rent money. Right? I'm not that pathetic person. that's like the 1950s idea of what codependency is. But I did really feel like codependency itself needed an upgrade.

00:04:18:01 - 00:04:36:02

Terri Cole

And then even the Melody baby, Codependent, No More definition and all of that, because so much of that had to do with being involved with an addict. People would be like, well, I'm not enabling an alcoholic. I'm like, you don't have to be to be codependent. So let's look at the foundation of any kind of codependency, garden variety or high functioning.

00:04:36:05 - 00:04:42:08

Terri Cole

And it's a covert or overt desire, attempt or bid to control other people's outcomes.

00:04:42:08 - 00:05:01:15

Dr. Kerry McAvoy

Yeah, I often see it as taking on the pain of another person's problem and then resolving that pain for them, and thinking somehow that we saved them or made the situation better, not realizing that we often have. We certainly they didn't learn because pain is often a really great teacher, but it's often at the cost. It's so much when we do that.

00:05:01:18 - 00:05:21:12

Terri Cole

Absolutely. And I think that, you know, there's something very addicting about putting on the cape. And you know, there's a lot of savior complex happening. There's a lot of hyper helping. There's a lot of auto advice giving that goes along with being a codependent to high functioning codependent in particular where we're the people that everybody comes to for things because we got it together.

00:05:21:14 - 00:05:39:14

Terri Cole

So when I added high functioning to codependency, my clients could all sort of raise their hand and say, I'm the problem. It's me. Now, to quote Taylor Swift, but I will, and without shame, realizing I am exhausted, I am burnt out. And I do feel kind of resentful because this is where this behavior ultimately leads us.

00:05:39:17 - 00:05:50:14

Dr. Kerry McAvoy

In fact, I remember when I was challenging myself around this type of behavior, telling myself that when someone's asking a question in the grocery store, in the next aisle over, they're not directly asking you, don't go find them and help them out.

00:05:50:17 - 00:06:10:18

Terri Cole

Totally. Oh, with so many scenarios, it's like ridiculous where, like, I'm playing, I can't wait to move my seat for you guys so you can sit together. I can't wait to help you with directions. I can't, and what'll happen is people on the interwebs will be like, well, Terri, maybe I'm just nice. Ever think of that? I'm like, listen, buddy, if you can't not do it, it is not you being nice.

00:06:10:18 - 00:06:12:23

Terri Cole

It is a compulsion like any other compulsion.

00:06:13:01 - 00:06:15:03

Dr. Kerry McAvoy

You're right. You're not in control anymore than are you

00:06:15:05 - 00:06:37:13

Terri Cole

know, you are not. So let's not, confuse or complete niceness with control. Yeah, because this is what we're talking about. People are like, well, how do I know if I'm caring or controlling? I'm like, well, let's start with taking a resentment inventory. Because your resentment is like an absolute gem of a GPS to bring you to where something needs your attention in your life,

00:06:37:17 - 00:06:54:03

Terri Cole

where you over functioning, over giving, over controlling a lot of times is what it brings us to. We We feel underappreciated so much of the time for our great advice that we give people. A lot of times they haven't asked us for it, but still we took the time to give it to them and we're like mad that people don't appreciate it.

00:06:54:03 - 00:07:01:09

Terri Cole

Like you said, the person in the aisle, right? It's like, wow, thank you for walking over two aisles and helping me, even though I didn't really need your help, you know?

00:07:01:09 - 00:07:32:19

Dr. Kerry McAvoy

Right, now, those that know me, know that I really struggle with this term because my platform is all about narcissistic abuse, toxic relationships. And one of the things I know that happens to a lot of survivors and these bad relationships with narcissists, is that we start to function for the narcissist, and the narcissist is actually looking for us to pick up and stabilize their under functioning psyche, and we end up augmenting them in all these sort of ways so that it's not so much we walked into these relationships codependent, but to survive the relationships, we then start to pick up a lot of these tendencies.

00:07:33:01 - 00:07:52:16

Dr. Kerry McAvoy

Have you heard of the term echo ism? I just had Lynn Stratton. She's a new, up and coming social media creator also a therapist, been doing a lot of research on egoism, which is really the opposite of narcissism. From the story the Greek mythology of Narcissus and Echo. I just had her on a few weeks ago, which is why it's really fresh in my mind.

00:07:52:18 - 00:08:13:01

Dr. Kerry McAvoy

She sees echoism sort of the way to capture all of this the people pleasing, fawning and codependency that we're really trying to talk about, a survival mechanism that some of us learn to, where we defer our sense of self in the benefit of other people. I struggled with for a couple reasons. One is I struggled because definitions seem to be so squishy.

00:08:13:01 - 00:08:32:01

Dr. Kerry McAvoy

I mean, to go out and research it. There's lots of different ways that people kind of try to describe it. And for the very reason that you just mentioned, which is typically it's been seen as, it's a woman who can't help herself. She's sort of this pathetic, over functioning person who's intrusively involved in other people's business, And this is the other part that I don't think is universal.

00:08:32:05 - 00:08:41:17

Dr. Kerry McAvoy

She's doing it so that she can look like the savior or the martyr. and so when people get resentful that she insert herself. So that's why I, I've resisted it for all those reasons.

00:08:41:21 - 00:09:08:23

Terri Cole

But there's so many different versions. Like when you think about high functioning codependency, we come in all shapes and sizes. So you have the more overt right? You have the extroverts, you have the introverts. Right? The real question is where are we crossing boundaries? Because that's the question, right? Where it's interesting. My first book, Boundary Books, so much of that book was about how do we establish boundaries and withhold them, uphold them, make people respect them, understanding the difference between a preference and a deal breaker.

00:09:08:23 - 00:09:32:13

Terri Cole

Like, you know, there was so much about boundaries, but a lot of it was, how do I protect myself in this book, I talk about boundaries from a different lens, because if you're a high functioning codependent, a lot of times you are inadvertently the boundary trampler Fixing other people's problems like if we would say what traits and behaviors of a high functioning codependent, one of the top ones would be feeling compelled to fix other people's problems, like immediately. And for me, I was completely indiscriminate.

00:09:32:14 - 00:09:51:04

Terri Cole

It could be my mailman, I don't care, I don't care who you were. You had a problem. It wasn't. There was not a problem that I couldn't fix that and that I wouldn't try to fix, you know, that I felt was for me to fix, going above and beyond doing things for people a lot of times that they can and should be doing for themselves, doing things for people that they may not have asked you to do, but we're doing them because we think they should be done.

00:09:51:09 - 00:10:06:19

Terri Cole

Getting kind of pissed when people don't take our great advice that we so lovingly gave them. They want to talk about the same problem the next week when we already fixed it last week. You're like, what the hell is wrong with you? Just do what I said and it would all be fine. Yeah. Feeling a little bitter, feeling a little resentment, feeling a little underappreciated.

00:10:06:22 - 00:10:23:23

Terri Cole

The auto advice given is one of the behaviors, the self-sacrificing, where when you're an HFC, high functioning codependent, you're kind of always willing to take one for the team or a little bit like, whatever. It's not a big deal. Sign this. You guys do what you gotta do. I'll. I'll stay back or I'll take the Uber or I'll figure out the check or whatever

00:10:23:23 - 00:10:42:08

Terri Cole

the thing is. Auto accommodating. So this is a behavior that I discovered this behavioral pattern and certainly saw it in my clients as well, but I discovered it within myself just I was at a hair salon getting getting my hair done. It was busy as hell. And they put like, a mask on my hair. So I'm like laying in a sink, but not like using a sink, you know, so you can lay there for 20 minutes.

00:10:42:09 - 00:10:58:21

Terri Cole

Now suddenly the sink line is starting to back up and I'm getting like anxious and more anxious while people are waiting. And I'm like, I could just move. Like I don't even need consent. I could be sitting on that chair. They could use the sink, like, what are they doing? I'm now figuring out. I finally call over the assistant like, hey, you know, I could move.

00:10:58:21 - 00:11:17:09

Terri Cole

She's like, yeah, bet we do this every Saturday, Terri. We got it. You know, like they were like, we're good. But I had such an epiphany around that. When you are high functioning codependent, you do not know how to stay on your own side of the street. You feel like the whole neighborhood is your neighborhood to clean up yours, to manage, yours to control, like even that.

00:11:17:09 - 00:11:37:03

Terri Cole

Some people would say, well, you were just being nice and being thoughtful. No, I wasn't, I was trying to avoid conflict that wasn't mine to avoid. I was anxious for what happened in my childhood. This is not being nice. This is being controlling and trying to control everything. So, anyway, you know, the, auto accommodating can happen in anywhere.

00:11:37:03 - 00:12:00:12

Terri Cole

It can happen at work. It can happen where you're doing more than your share. Maybe you're on a team with other people, but seeing a problem and just feeling like it's on you to fix it, that's auto accommodating, auto accommodating, a difficult person in your family. You know they're going to be over, you know, I had these two uncles who didn't talk to each other because of two idiots anyway, so I would have them over and I would in my mind, I'd be like, okay, so Uncle Jimmy, the drinks this, uncle Bobby drinks this.

00:12:00:12 - 00:12:18:12

Terri Cole

I'm going to make sure they don't sit near each other. I'll have my sister. Kathy is assigned to Uncle Jimmy. My sister's name is this, and I'll like, like literally marionettes. Like I'm just puppeteering rather than telling two grown adults. If you two idiots can't get along for two hours at my house for Christmas, then don’t come, like, I mean, eventually I got to that point much more respectfully.

00:12:18:16 - 00:12:41:12

Terri Cole

But the point is, it never entered my mind to expect them to act like grown ups. It was on me to figure out how do I avert disaster at Christmas? By controlling the situation that also sort of rolls into what I deem anticipatory planning, right? You know, you're going to be with rough people. You figure out what to do, not to have there be any problems.

00:12:41:12 - 00:12:56:03

Terri Cole

Because so much of the time when you're a high functioning codependent, the main thing you want is peace. We just don't want there to be any problems. We just want to have peace in the relationships, peace in the backyard, peace in the valley, peace everywhere. And that's what we're trying to do in the process. There's two things that happen readily.

00:12:56:06 - 00:13:10:13

Terri Cole

We are over functioning, which, as I like to say, when I was in my 20s, I could inspire a perfectly capable boyfriend to become an under functioning and like two weeks or less. Right. You know what I'm saying, Kerry? Yeah, I know you do. What? You're just like, I got it, I got it, I got it because I did,

00:13:10:13 - 00:13:34:02

Terri Cole

but That does not create an interdependent relationship that is stoking the fires of codependency. When I'm over functioning and the other person is under functioning, and then you have more cynical aspects of that which is feigned incompetence. We've got all of the emotional labor that we're doing. We have people doing crap wrong because they know it'll drive us crazy. We'll be like, forget it, I'll just do it myself.

00:13:34:02 - 00:13:48:18

Terri Cole

It's easier, which is also an affirmation for high functioning codependent. And then the second thing that happens readily is a certain amount of self abandonment that even though we're doing sort of what we want with the controlling aspect, we're really not. And it's exhausting,

00:13:49:00 - 00:14:06:13

Dr. Kerry McAvoy

Yeah, that that really hit me when I read that in your book that self abandonment was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. what I see is there's a common assumption that everybody is born like this. I kind of is I was reading through this and I this is what by the way, I love the way you laid the book out. I love the way that you included gems in there for people to take away.

00:14:06:13 - 00:14:24:00

Dr. Kerry McAvoy

You asked assessment questions. you even have a dig deeper section in the back for people to take it further. I just, what a great book. Thank you for that. So one of the things that I struggle with in general is that, I see there's people who are naturally that way. They're just naturally giving. They see it as part of who they are.

00:14:24:00 - 00:14:45:13

Dr. Kerry McAvoy

It's even part of their integrity. I can even picture those individuals that I've met in life. I also, though, when it comes into an unhealthy relationship dynamic, which I survived one. That the fascinating part was there was research done by Sandra Brown in 2014 and Purdue University that looked at the personalities of women. It was primarily women as well. She looked at women who got into a pathological love relationship.

00:14:45:15 - 00:15:11:22

Dr. Kerry McAvoy

Two thirds of them had no history of a bad childhood or traumatic background. It was that they had two personality traits that they were overly agreeable and overly conscientious. And you could see based on those traits how that individual could be trained or groomed into over functioning for a very scary, intimidating, even threatening kind of a person who is making her or his life a mess just by the chaos and drama that they're creating.

00:15:12:04 - 00:15:22:06

Dr. Kerry McAvoy

So that's one of the thoughts I had, is that it's not always that we're raised this way, that sometimes it's what we've learned to survive, but that we have these vulnerabilities that get us into these relationships.

00:15:22:06 - 00:15:36:22

Terri Cole

Yes. But Let's unpack that a little. Because when you really think about most of us were raised and praised to be self abandoning codependents, if you were raised as a girl, “Where's my happy girl? Turn your friend around. If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything.” I know people love to tell you about their friend Betty.

00:15:36:22 - 00:15:56:21

Terri Cole

Who would give. You'd love her. She'd give anyone the shirt off her back. Keep your attention on Betty. Like, why are we stripping for anybody? Like, why is that praised? So the thing is, you don't have to have an abuse background to be vulnerable to the very sneaky, tricky ways of, you know, cluster B personality disorders, including narcissist,

00:15:56:21 - 00:16:24:03

Terri Cole

right? Right. You don't you can be an empath, you can be a highly sensitive person. And you could also just be a good girl through and through. And that we don't want to confront. We give the benefit of the doubt. I find that women who fall into this category in particular, we suffer from positive projection, where we project our positive traits and qualities onto others, even though we do not have proof that those people possess those positive traits qualities.

00:16:24:07 - 00:16:46:08

Terri Cole

So part of my work with women and helping people get into recovery, because this is all we're hoping for with high functioning codependency, it's just like any other recovery. There's no curing it. You just get to recovery is slowing down right when we are too polite and we let our narcissist accelerate a time frame. The timeline of we've been on three dates and they're like, do you want to go to a wedding with me in 2040?

00:16:46:08 - 00:17:06:08

Terri Cole

You're like, what? How are we talking about so long from now? Right? Or say, next summer, why don't we all of this future pacing to create security. You have the love bomb. You have all all of these ways of just hooking us hook, line and sinker. So again, I even write this in, too much in this book that and it's the same thing with The Father

00:17:06:08 - 00:17:31:11

Terri Cole

Wound, that's the book I'm writing right now. People think to have a father like you needed like it had to be like a horribly abusive situation. Not true at all. Not to mention the patriarchy is the OG bad daddy right there? That's right. For sure. For sure. So we all have father wounds to a degree. And this is the same thing that we've been socialized in such a way that we've been praised to not protect ourselves.

00:17:31:14 - 00:17:56:14

Terri Cole

We've been praised to not ask questions. We've been praised to be agreeable, be nice. I mean, we've been all of us inducted into the cult of Nice. It's more important to be perceived as being nice when I was growing up. Definitely more important than actually being nice, for sure. Being perceived as being nice and to be thought of as being rude, asking questions is like, rude is like, you know, like, look at all the labels that women get put on them.

00:17:56:18 - 00:18:15:10

Terri Cole

If we fight back, if we question, if we go, what, what are you saying? Then they're like, oh, she must be on her period. Like, we know the misogyny. Listen, shit is not new. This is the way the world has been. Is it better today than it was 50 years ago ish? I mean, I don't know. We've we've taken some steps back in the past, you know, ten years for sure.

00:18:15:14 - 00:18:33:07

Terri Cole

But what you're saying, I think is really important and that let's not make it pathological, right? All I care about is helping women become empowered in their lives and in their relationships. So if people reject and I even say this in the beginning of this book, I'm like, hey, if you don't identify with being codependent, don't even worry about it.

00:18:33:07 - 00:18:52:01

Terri Cole

It doesn't matter. What I care about is behavior. What I care about is how you feel. What I care about is your nervous system. Are you in a relationship where you feel safe? Are you in a relationship where you're walking on eggshells? Are you in a relationship where you put your head down at night and you're anxious? I mean, if you look at the Love Lab, right?

00:18:52:01 - 00:18:53:21

Terri Cole

You look at, Doctor what's-his-face and his wife.

00:18:53:21 - 00:18:54:16

Dr. Kerry McAvoy

Yeah. Gottman.

00:18:54:17 - 00:19:16:19

Terri Cole

Yeah. That have been doing just such amazing work for just so many decades. We're just so blessed to be alive while they're alive. Thank you to them. But, you know, all of the studies that they've done where they have the EKG or EEG things on people sitting next to their partners, and how in relationships that are the disaster relationships just sitting next to the person, their heart rate is like going through the ceiling.

00:19:16:19 - 00:19:27:16

Terri Cole

Yeah. And People live like this forever and ever. And being in a relationship with a narcissist, you can never get too comfortable. And you do. That's why it's a cycle of abuse. You get comfortable-ish. But then the cycle begins again.

00:19:27:19 - 00:19:52:22

Dr. Kerry McAvoy

yeah. In fact, my new motto is that I realized that I was sacrificing personal safety for connection. And that never to do that again, to always ask myself, it's like, almost like to me, it's like a fence, the top of a fence edge to sit between those two places, those two poles to think, Am I trying to preserve the connection too much, to preserve the relationship, to stay in a relationship, to have a sense of belonging? Or am I sacrificing myself and my safety in order keep this relationship alive?

00:19:52:22 - 00:20:14:20

Dr. Kerry McAvoy

And I man, when I look back, I sacrifice safety way, way too much in my life. Yeah, yeah, it even did come in a positive projection. Sheesh, and future pacing really powerful ways to put that. You're exactly right. and I remember the degree of the hyper vigilance and just the lack of safety I felt sitting. I mean, this man terrified me.

00:20:14:21 - 00:20:34:20

Dr. Kerry McAvoy

I mean, I'm living with a guy who terrified me. And how many people are existing in that reality for long periods of time where they're just trying to get on a little bit of at least like a little normal, a little less stress instead of like comfortable and feeling happy and being able to be expansive. It's just it's terrible. It's terrible.

00:20:34:22 - 00:20:53:22

Terri Cole

I remember after one particularly not good relationship that I had, where I was afraid of the person, and it was more of an emotional fear, and it was like jealousy. And it was just a codependent relationship, sort of in your very typical way of like, you're out with your friends and the person's text you a million times and being like, I don't like it when you go away with your friend,

00:20:53:23 - 00:21:14:04

Terri Cole

like all the, you know, isolating you from friends and family, not wanting to share you with anyone on the gram. And I made a real commitment to myself. I was like, I would literally never be in a relationship with someone who I fear again. And I never did. I was in my late 20s and I was like, that is the one and only time I'm doing that because it was so exhausting and not joyful.

00:21:14:04 - 00:21:27:14

Terri Cole

You're like, wow, this could be my whole life where I feel responsible for this person and I'm fixing them and they get anxious at an event. And now we have a sign that they say to me, so then we leave the event like, oh my God, no, please.

00:21:27:14 - 00:21:44:07

Dr. Kerry McAvoy

Yeah, yeah, have so many questions there's angles I would have loved to pursue today. Like, what does it look like in men? Because I think men have their own version of it's a little different than women. But what I'd love to do in the podcast, extra is if somebody is resonating with this and then they would say to you, “Terri, the relationships are not safe.

00:21:44:07 - 00:21:59:18

Dr. Kerry McAvoy

It's not that I don't want to have boundaries is that and this is a word I picked up from you that I love. Boundary Bully, I swear, Terri, I'm using that. That's a great way to capture that, right? But I'm living with the boundary bullets. Every time that I try to set a boundary, it just goes disastrously wrong. And

00:21:59:18 - 00:22:13:17

Dr. Kerry McAvoy

obviously this person says, I know I need to get out, but I'm not in a position for lots of reasons that I can't right now leave. So let's jump over and talk about what to do in that situation. But where can people find you as well as find the book to match? How can they learn more about you?

00:22:13:21 - 00:22:28:22

Terri Cole

All right, well, I have a little present for you because we talked about a lot, but there's more to talk about. So there's like, I have an HFC toolkit that you guys can access to. Just go to TerriCole.com/HFC. And there's like a video and there's a downloadable thing to just sort of walk you further along this path.

00:22:29:02 - 00:22:45:21

Terri Cole

I have a beautiful community that people can join, which you get the toolkit, it'll be on there to hang out. Mostly on Instagram. Just a@TerriCole. I have a podcast I've had for the past ten years called The Terri Culture. So if you're into this podcast, you've probably been to my podcast. Yeah. Or TerriCole.com is where everything is.

00:22:45:21 - 00:23:13:05

Dr. Kerry McAvoy

All right. That's fabulous. Thank you so much. This was a very rich conversation and I'd love to have you back sometime. We can talk more about these topics. So thank you so much Terri. Well, that's a wrap for this week's episode. Are you following me on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube? You can find me at Kerry McAvoy PhD. Or you can learn about me and more about my resources, such as the Toxic Free Relationship Club at KerryMcAvoyPhD.com..

00:23:13:07 - 00:23:20:10

Dr. Kerry McAvoy

If you found this episode helpful, please do me a favor and leave me a five star review and I'll see you back here next week.