Setting the Boundary Line- Part 1- Setting the Boundary Line

We throw the word "boundary" around constantly — but do we actually know what one is? In this episode, we're getting real about what boundaries actually are (hint: they're not walls, ultimatums, or punishment), why they're so hard to set, and why they feel even harder to keep. Whether you've been boundary-stomped by a family member, guilt-tripped by a friend, or you're not even sure you've ever set one in your life — this one's for you.

We'll dig into the difference between a boundary and a preference, why people-pleasers struggle most with this, and what it actually sounds like to hold a boundary without over-explaining, apologizing, or blowing up your relationships in the process.

Spoiler: a boundary isn't about controlling other people. It's about knowing yourself well enough to say this is where I end and you begin — and meaning it.

Checkout my 2017 TEDx Charlotte Talk, "The Gift of No" https://bit.ly/thegiftofno2017

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello and welcome to the Life Diet 365 Podcast, the place where we detox the pressure, the people pleasing, and the patterns that keep us overwhelmed. I'm your host, Miss Straight Talk, and I keep my model simple. I'm not here to change your mind, I only want to offer you another perspective. And here's the truth: it doesn't take an hour-long conversation to create a shift in thinking. So whether you're driving to work, sitting in traffic, taking a lunch break, or trying to decompress after a long day, for the next 15 minutes, this is your opportunity to breathe, reset, reflect, and reclaim yourself. So exhale, release the pressure, and let's get into it. Well, hello there, my Life Diet family. Here we are again with another awesome episode of the Life Diet 365 podcast. And again, I am your host, Suzanne Stroud, also known as Miss Straight Talk. So I want to talk about something where it's going to be a couple of episodes of this. So it could be a series or just a just a bunch of single episodes. But let's talk about boundaries. What is a boundary? And I know that seems like such a silly question, but some people aren't even really aware that they don't have boundaries. Now I'm gonna tell you, for a long time I always thought that I had boundaries until I wrote my book, The Life Diet 365, Life, Liberty, and a Pursuit of You. And it wasn't up until that point that I realized that I did have boundaries, but maybe I was letting people cross them. Or I did have boundaries and I didn't know when they were being crossed. So let's let's do some real talk. Real talk. Have you ever said yes to something like a favor, an invitation, a request? And before the word was even fully out of your mouth, you felt this sinking feeling like, oh my God, you had this hollow dread. Why did I just agree to that? Why did I just say, why did I say yes to that? I don't really want to do it. Or maybe, now this is common for most of us, or maybe you left a conversation feeling weirdly drained, not tired, but more like something was taken from you. You know, like when you feel that, like when life has been sucked out of you, or a piece of life has been sucked out of you, or some energy has just left your body, but you couldn't quite name what. You just knew you needed to just get out of there, just lay on the floor, stare up at the ceiling, and be like, I just want to get through this. You just like you may not have made that sound exactly, but you made some kind of sound. And then so if any of this sounds familiar, I'm guessing that it does. And this is where we have to be honest and transparent with ourselves. It's not really all about saying, you know, that you're weak. You are just strengthening your boundaries. And maybe you're just saying to yourself, I needed something, but I don't know what. So welcome. We're gonna set this line. We are going to set the boundary line, and you may have to go back and just listen to a couple of nuggets of this um a couple of times so you can just kind of remember. And so, for over the next few episodes, we're gonna we're gonna dig into to boundaries, um, what they actually are and how to notice when they have been crossed. And what do you do about it? Because you shouldn't feel helpless when a boundary has been crossed. You shouldn't feel helpless in a situation where you should be empowered, meaning you are empowered over you. You control what you say, you control what you do, you control um where you go. And you have to protect yourself. This is how you protect yourself. And so let's just really just talk about you know what the boundaries, what what boundaries actually are, what is a boundary. And so let's start with this. Because I think the word gets overused, I think it gets thrown around so much, and it kind of loses its meaning because it's just kind of bouncing and just hitting the wall or hitting the floor, and nothing has actually happened. You know, you see it all over social media, you know, you hear it in therapy sessions. Um, I need to set a boundary, but what does that actually mean in practice? How do I actually, you know, get that done? And so here's what I think about a boundary, and I believe that this is the the general uh overarching definition of it or the meaning of it, but a boundary is basically you, meaning you, meaning me, communicating to ourselves and to others what you're actually okay with and what you're not. That's what a boundary is. Plain and simple. It's not a wall, it's not shutting out people, it's more like it's a way of being honest about who you are and what you feel that you need. That's it. That sounds simple, right? It's very simple to say. It's very simple in theory, but now how do we put this into practice? Now there are different kinds. There are physical boundaries, you know, which are most obviously, you know, your your personal space or who can touch you, how close someone stands, or where you live. But there are also emotional ones. How much of your inner world you share and with whom? There are time boundaries, how you protect your hours and energy, digital ones, your phone. Oh my god, we have to protect our digital, we have to have our digital boundaries, you know, meaning your availability and how accessible you are at 11 at night. I'm just gonna tell you, like the people in my world, they understand that after 8 p.m. every night, like my phone goes to silent. And so that lets them know that if they don't get an answer from me or a response, that means that I'm already in bed or I'm already shutting myself down. And if it's something that definitely, definitely requires a brief attention, you know, I may respond and then say, hey, you know, we could talk about it um tomorrow. And so, and then there are some value-based ones, which are about what you're willing to compromise on and what you're not. Those are often the hardest to articulate because you know, when we think about compromise, you know, it's nothing wrong with compromising. I agree that in some instances we must compromise, but we shouldn't compromise ourselves, you know, to make others feel good or to feel valued by others. Does this make any sense? Nod your head, wave your hand, snap your fingers, wherever you are, you can just do that. You may look weird doing it, but don't worry about it. So here's one thing I really want to nail just before we get any further, because people get this wrong all the time. A boundary is not about controlling someone else's behavior. I cannot set a boundary that makes another person stop doing something. But what you can do is set a limit around your own response. You can say, if this continues, here's what I'll do. That's the distinction. Your choices, your responses, that's what you actually have control over. You can't set a boundary. You can't set a boundary to say, this is what you need to do to make me feel better, this is what you need to do to make me feel like I have control over my life. If you don't like the way someone is speaking to you, you don't like the way uh someone is handling you in a certain way, or how you're being treated, you basically have the power to step up and say, you know, this this thing that you said or done to me, I don't like it. And if this continues, I'm just gonna have to separate myself, or I just won't be in these certain settings with you. And so I know that seemed a little kind of awkward for some, maybe not for everyone, but for some, but here, why do we struggle with setting them? Why do we struggle with setting boundaries? So if having limits is natural, it's a healthy thing, and and it really is. Why is it so ridiculously hard for so many of us to actually do? And I have my personal feelings on that, but like I always tell y'all, I'm not a therapist or psychotherapist or a psychologist. So I'm just sharing with you my experiences that I've had based on my personal experiences or the experiences I've learned from others. I think the big one is guilt. There's this deeply ingrained idea that if you care about someone, you should be available to them. Listen to that again. If you care about someone, you should be available to them. Now that may have some truth to it, but it has to have some truth with some boundaries. That that saying is it's not selfish. That needing space means you love someone less. No, we all need our space. That needing that the message you're that you're really trying to give to your family and your friends is I don't want to be bothered, that's not something that you're doing. You're actually learning to set your own limits. And a lot of us absorb the message really young from family, from school, from just watching the adults around us run them live their their lives into the ground without ever asking what they needed. There's also people pleasing. We've talked about this, we have talked about this, but this always ties in. We'll always talk about people pleasing and burnout. By the way, this is not a personality flaw. So, people pleasing is not a personality flaw. And I think that some people look at it that way and they look at it as being weak or being used. Um, it's often a survival strategy. And if you grew up in a home or an environment where keeping the peace was how you stayed safe for where other people's emotions were louder and more important than yours, you learned to prioritize everyone else and not prioritize yourself. Now that was smart probably at that time, and that survival strategy helped you to the key word, survive. But it was just a strategy that doesn't serve you anymore. It shouldn't serve you anymore, and you shouldn't allow yourself to be walked over like that. And then there's the fear conflict. Let's let's talk about that fear conflict. Most of us were never taught how to have difficult conversations that didn't end in someone getting upset or someone shutting down. So we avoid it. We swallow things, we tell others it's not that big a deal, even when it is, and that adds up. Just imagine that every time you keep yourself from conflict or having those difficult difficult conversations, just think about adding a penny to your piggy bank or adding your loose change to your piggy bank or adding you know change to your your car ashtray or your little cup. After a while, that adds up. So just imagine all of the things that you're withholding and not sh you know not having a conversation about, it adds up. And sometimes when we all go back to those jars or jugs, and you know, it can add up to maybe like 10, 15, 20. But when we think about the coins, we don't think we're thinking about them individually, their value, but not what they would amount to. So think about this in comparison to your feelings and the things that you are holding back or holding in. And I also I I also want to name something that I think is particularly real for women, though it affects a lot of people, regardless of gender. Here we go, we ready? There is a very specific cultural pressure to be agreeable, to be accommodating, to make sure everyone is comfortable. And the word difficult gets applied to women who advocate for themselves in ways that would be considered totally normal for a man. We all know this. You can get labeled as the angry black woman, or this woman is just too difficult, she's too aggressive, um, just not a good fit. I seem to think that's the new phrase now, just not a good fit. And that's not in your head, that's real, and it makes the whole thing harder. But you still have a right to speak up for yourself. So let me just give you a paint a few pictures for you, see if they sound familiar to you. So here's one: there's a colleague who consistently sends you messages at 9, 10, 11 at night. Nothing urgent, nothing important, just stuff. And they're questions that could wait until the next day. And you answer them because you don't want to seem unhelpful. And for some people, you know, some of you out there, you may get like that pit in your stomach, or you kind of put the phone aside and you say you're not going to answer, but you can't stop thinking about the message that they sent. But slowly you start dreading your phone when you feel like you you're never really off. You're tired in a way that sleep doesn't fix because that subconscious is still going. So whether you answer the response or not, the subconscious is trying to is telling you to take you back to a familiar behavior or familiar habit. Does that sound familiar? Maybe it doesn't. Maybe this one sounds familiar to you. Think about a relationship, could be romantic, it could be a friendship. Someone in your life vents to you constantly. You're always the one they call. Remember that emergency contact we talked about in a couple of episodes back? You're always on call and you care about them. I mean, like genuinely. Like, so you listen because you just feel like you're being a good friend or a good family member every time. But afterwards, you feel kind of hollow. Like you just poured something out and nothing came back. Like you just, you just gave all kinds of energy and now you just feel totally depleted. And if you ever found yourself managing someone else's emotions for them on a regular basis, that's emotional bandwidth being spent without permission. That means like you have those people, okay. I'm gonna say this. You have those people that they call you and they want to get your advice. They say, Well, what do you think about this? And you just like pour in and you give them like the best advice that you know, like you feel like an Oprah or something. You just like, man, that was really good. And then they fall back in the same behavior and then they come back and ask you almost the same thing, or they don't, they do absolutely the opposite of what you suggested. That is emotional bandmyth, bandwidth being spent without permission. Okay, and then here's one right here. We all have probably experienced this when it comes to the family. Classic relative comments on your choices, you know, who you marry, who you date, and about your children, about your job, where you live, your weight, your career. And every time they do it, you sort of freeze. And in some instances, you may laugh it off or change the subject or just get quiet. And then for the rest of the day, you feel like terrible, you feel awkward, and that that that's a valuable base boundary being knocked into again and again without anyone acknowledging it. Because while someone can make a comment about some choices that you make in your life, but you should be able to stand firm in whatever decision you make, whether it's good, bad, or indifferent for them, you should be able to stand firm in it. And then maybe when you get by yourself, you can go back and process their what they said and your response instead of processing what they said, and you just stood there and did nothing. So, want you to take some boundary inventory. So before we before we close out today, before we end this episode, I wanted to walk you through something quick. You don't need a pen, you don't need a journal, but though if you have one, it's it's great, it's worth writing down because I think everything I say is worth writing down. Me patting myself on the back. Think about the different areas of your life right now, work, relationships, family, your own time and space. And in each area, I want you to notice where do you feel the most resentful? Where do you feel the most drained? Where do you where do you regularly do things that leave you feeling worse than before? That's that's something there. Go back and write those things because this will help you to understand where boundaries need to be created and why. Those feelings, that's your roadmap. That's where the limits are getting crossed. Not because you're weak, and I keep expressing that, you're not weak or too sensitive or bad at life, but because nobody held that space for you, and now it's time for you to start holding it for yourself. You don't have to do anything with that information today. That you know that this is homework that's gonna just kind of go on, and you're gonna build a found this is your foundation to build that that boundary. And it's really just you taking notice of where things are happening, happening. And when you feel that pull, that uh, that tension, that dread, just notice it. Name it quietly to yourself. That's it. There's no action required because now you're starting to pay attention where the boundaries need to be taking place. So now as we go in and we take place, we land this boundary plane. We talked about, you know, what limits actually are, not walls, not control tactics, but honest communication about what works for you and what doesn't. And we also talked about why they're hard, you know, guilt, conditioning, fear, and conflict. And we looked at what it costs us when we don't have them. There's resentment, exhaustion, a slow erosion of who you actually are. So until we get to talk about this next time, we're just gonna talk about, you know, we're gonna talk about how we got there. Like, wait a minute, what happened? So hopefully you found some great nuggets um in this segment and that you learned some ways of how to address the lack of boundaries or how to build your boundaries. And please share this. You know someone who's sitting in a car or sitting somewhere for 15 minutes at a time, they can take advantage of this conversation. And I'm looking forward to hearing from you. You can follow and just take care until we meet again. I'm Miss Straight Talk, and this is the Life Diet 365 Podcast. Take care. And just like that, another conversation, another perspective, and hopefully another step toward reclaiming yourself. Listen, every time you say yes to everybody else at the expense of yourself, you are teaching people that your boundaries are negotiable. Listen, constantly sacrificing yourself to keep everybody else comfortable will eventually leave you emotionally bankrupt. You do not have to earn rest, apologize for protecting your peace, or explain every boundary you set. Because around here, we don't say no with guilt, we say it with clarity. Until next time, protect your peace, guard your energy, and remember, what drains you will never sustain you. This has been the Life Diet 365 Podcast with Ms. Great Talk. Thanks for listening, and I hope you will subscribe and join me the next time. Take care. Bye bye.