Wait - Did That Just Happen? - Pt. 2 Setting the Boundary Line

Wait — Did That Just Happen?

You know that moment. The conversation ends, you walk away, and then it hits you — wait… did that just happen? You replay it three times, screenshot it to your group chat, and spend the next 48 hours questioning your entire reality. Same, honestly.

In this episode, we're diving into those moments that leave you absolutely shook — the plot twists, the audacity, the things people say and do that make you look directly into an invisible camera like you're on The Office. Whether it was something someone said at dinner, a text that made your jaw drop, or a situation so unhinged you had to tell a stranger about it — we see you.

We're getting into:

• 😳 Why our brains get stuck on "wait, WHAT" moments
• 🤯 The fine line between shock, disbelief, and full-on chaos
• 📱 Why we immediately need to tell someone when something wild happens (it's actually science-ish)

Because sometimes life throws something so bizarre, so bold, or so deeply not okay at you that the only reasonable response is to stop, blink twice, and go — did that just happen?

Spoiler: yes. Yes it did.

2107 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. Hello and welcome back to Life Guide 365. I'm your host, Miss Straight Talk, and there's no sugar added, none added at all. Did you enjoy or did you get something from setting the boundary line? We are continuing this conversation. So hopefully, if you have not had a chance to listen to that episode, go back and check it out. Um, and then you can check it out after you listen to this one. So I want because I don't want you to stop listening to this one right now, but it will make sense if you if you catch both of them. So let's talk about weight. Did that did that just happen? How many times have you said that? Like, you know that thing where you're driving home or maybe you're in the shower or you're lying in bed at night, and suddenly you think of the perfect thing to say. I've done it thousands of times. Like, man, why didn't I think about that? Oh, that would have been such a good comeback. The things you should have said in that moment two hours ago, two days ago, a month ago, and you're almost annoyed at yourself, like, why didn't I say that? Why didn't I think about it? Like, when it was happening, why didn't I do it? And that delay, that foggy, disoriented feeling in that actual moment, that's not a character flaw. That's not you being slow, that's not even you being weak, or you're not even too much in your head about this. That is what it looks and feels like when a limit gets crossed and your nervous system is trying to process. What the heck just happened? Faster than your conscious brain can catch up. Like, you like, what? Wait a minute. It's like it's whizzing by like darts, and you can hear the wind happening. You know, so welcome back to you know, setting the line. This is a three-part series I'm doing on boundaries. And the last episode, we laid kind of laid the foundation of all this. What limits actually are, why we struggle to hold them, and and what happens when we don't. And today we're getting into the recognition piece of it. So, and before you can do anything about a crossline, you have to be able to feel it, name it, trust it, and for a lot of us, that's the hardest step of all. So, let's get into this. Let's let's dig a little bit deeper into this. So, here's here's what I want to start with because I think it gets overlooked almost entirely. Your body knows before your brain does. This is not mystical, it's just how the nervous system works. Or at least how my system works. Yours may work a little bit differently, but before you've consciously registered that something felt off, your body has already clocked it. Here's the here's the classic one that we all feel. The stomach drop, that's that little lurch you get when you read a message, and something in you just sinks. The shoulders tense, the way you physically brace or close in on yourself during certain conversations, the hollow yes, where you said it out loud, some but some part of you felt the opposite, which is a no. The jaw tightening, the shallow breathing, the weird irritability you you can you get and you can't explain on the drive home. Like that stomach knotting yourself. We all know that. I don't even have to keep going into that. And then there's the overreactions. They're not it's not that you're being dramatic. These are your these are signs that your body is sending you a memo. You know, a memo is different from a letter. You know, it kind of is brief, it's typically one page, um, and it kind of bullet points some things. This is a memo. The problem is most of us have gotten so good at overriding those signals because we've spent years learning that our discomfort matters less than someone else's convenience, that we barely notice them. Remember in the last episode, if you were able to check that one out when I talked about the loose change, you know, in our cup in the car, or we have a jar at home, and how a penny has a value of a penny, but if you put a thousand pennies in a jar, it adds up to a thousand dollars. That's what happens when we have these emotional things that keep happening to us. So, one of the practices I'd encourage you to start to do is it's really simple. There's not a whole lot to it. When something happens, whether it's a conversation, a request, a comment, just do a quick body scan. Nothing informal, meditation, you don't gotta put your fingertips together and close your eyes and lay your head back. Not not in that formal way. Just ask yourself, how do I feel right now? How do I actually feel right now? Is there any tension anywhere? Does my chest feel right? Does it feel tight? Here's another one. Do I want to leave the room? Those are answers and those are valid data points. So, and I think the one that you probably will most likely uh feel is that tension, and then you may want to leave the room. You just or escape from the conversation or the situation. The gut reaction is information, it's not drama. It doesn't need to be a full-blown emotion to count, even a subtle sense of hmm, something's off when you feel that, that's worth paying attention. So here those are real. So this is something I want I want to bring to you. So let's talk about what cross lines actually look like in real life. Because as I mentioned in the previous episode, if if we're if we've lived a life where we have not had any set boundaries to identify, then things will continue to keep happening to us. So here's let's take a look at what cross lines look like because sometimes they're obvious. Someone yells at you, someone takes something without asking, someone says something that's outright cruel, you know it immediately. But a lot of time it's subtler than that, and the subtle stuff is what tends to accumulate. Them pennies go from one cent to one thousand. I might do it, I might do a uh an episode on that. So, so in relationships, and I mean broadly, like friendships included, some of the most common ones are dismissiveness. Think about when you share something that matters to you, like you're excited about it and you really want people to kind of feel it. Now, no one's ever gonna feel 110% excited about something like you are or emotional as you are, but you do want people to kind of lean into it. So when you share something that matters to you, and the other person just like shrugs it off or changes the subject or one-ups it with another thing. Ooh, those one-uppers. Those people, now for those of you that don't know what a one-upper is, that's the person where you tell them that, oh, I just got me a new pair of shoes and I got a deal for like 12 bucks, and they'll say, Oh my god, I got two pairs of shoes for 45 cents. That's what I mean. That's that's a one-upper. They're gonna always try to say something that one-ups what you said, and so the that's a diminishing feeling, that's real. Your thing mattered and it was treated like it didn't. Your excitement mattered, and it was treated like it was nothing. Then there's the emotional dumping, which is different from a friend venting or needing a needing support. Emotional dumping is a pattern, and this is something that I would strongly encourage that you start to pay attention to in all of the relationships in your life to see who's the emotional dumper and who and who's not. Emotional dumping is a pattern where one person consistently unloads on the other with no awareness of the impact, no reciprocity, no particular desire for the other person to be okay. If you regularly hang up the phone feeling worse when you answered it, that's worth noticing. Because those people they will call or they'll text or they'll come and have a conversation with you, and they'll unload, unload, unload, unload, and they're not paying attention to your reaction, they're not paying attention to your responses, they might not be even re paying attention to like your facial expressions that may say, Oh my god, I don't really want to hear this, but they're still dumping on you. Pay attention to that. So then there's a classic where you know, 90% of us encounter there's some things at work, and some of the big ones, you know, are these goalposts and they just kind of keep moving. You meet a standard instead of acknowledgement, you get a new high standard. You know, when you when you uh perform well, you get more stuff to perform well. You perform well again, you get more stuff to perform well. I think you get the the hint. And these request these requests creep up beyond your role without conversation, like someone just kind of coming dumping dumping stuff on you. Being talked over in meetings. Now, that doesn't really happen to me, um, but I I have seen it happen to other people, and I've sat there and I've watched, I'm like, man, that is so crazy. Like they just dismiss and disrespected that person. Being being given credit less readily than your than you know your other colleagues, especially like we talked about in the other episode, you know, where women kind of you know get looked at as being angry while you know men are just being you know necessarily assertive. And then the classic, the quick question that's never quick, never quick. And and you know, I'm gonna share something with you, and this is so funny, because I have something, and it just recently happened to me because I was telling a long story and someone kind of pulled it on me. I always, you know, you can always tell when people kind of get into that long version of something, and sometimes you really don't need to hear the whole thing, you really just want to get the meat of it, and then you will ask the questions. So when I feel that that's about to happen, so that I don't feel emotionally drained, I protect my space, I protect my piece. I will typically say, Can you just give me the short version? And then if they still kind of go long, no, I need it a little bit shorter than that. And you may, you know, an onset outside looking in, it may look rude, but I have to protect my space, I have to protect my time because sometimes people want to come and just tell you these long versions because they just want to take up your time and they think they have the right to. And then here's the other one family. With family, it tends to be the comments, the ones about your choices, your body, your relationship, your parenting. We talked about this, and the way they're delivered, often with a smile and framed with concern. Well, you know, we're only just looking out for your best interest. Well, you know, I was just thinking, you know, maybe you shouldn't do that because, or maybe you shouldn't move there because that's so far away from family. And what they're really saying is, no, we really need you here so we can continue to abuse your availability. You know, it may seem genuine and hard to call out without, you know, you making a scene, but you know your family members, so you know who to look at and who to look out for. So these are just some quick scenarios I just want to give you. I can I can give you a whole bunch more, but we try to keep this within a certain time drive time frame. You know what I'm saying? So now I want to spend some time on the subtle stuff because I think this is where most of us get stuck. And from time to time I get stuck, but I have developed some tools and some tips and tricks to help me to identify and to get myself through those things, navigate. Death by a thousand cuts. We've heard that phrase. I haven't heard it a lot, but I've heard it. That's the phrase that comes to mind. It's the things where no single incident feels worth addressing. It's not that bad. Maybe I'm reading too much into it. Oh, they didn't mean it like that, and so you let it go, and then the next one, and then the next, and slowly you're carrying this weight that you can't even fully articulate because each individual brick felt too small to name, and now someone has built a whole mansion with your with you having hurt feelings, is a whole building, whole house, and you hadn't dealt with it because one brick at a time you keep you kept letting it happen, dismissing it, and then there's particularly the insidious thing that sometimes happens uh when you do try to name it, you get told you're too sensitive. Ooh, I hate when people say that. I I do you're too sensitive, you're imagining things. Now I'm gonna this one right here. Don't even let anyone minimize your experience because your experience is your experience, and it may seem or feel like it should have been handled a different way from someone else, but if that's how you're feeling it, then that's how you're feeling, you know. So you're not overreacting. Um, and if that happens enough, especially if someone you love or respect, you start to doubt and and misread your own feelings, and you start saying, Well, is this true? Is it am I really overreacting? Is am I really just putting too much into it? No, that's that's not a consonant coincidence, you know. Making someone making someone question their own perception is one of the ways of controlling behavior. People try to control how you feel, how you think, how you respond, because you're not speaking up for yourself. But when you begin to develop your own tools and your tips and tricks, you start to push back and they're gonna start looking at you a little funny, but that's okay. That's okay. Because right now, what we're trying to share and I'm sharing with you is about creating boundaries and creating your perspective of the things around you. So now, and I want to say this because it's important. Trusting your gut does not mean every discomfort is someone else's fault or that every cross line is malicious. People overstep accidentally all the time. I'm raising both hands on this because I do that, and if I recognize that I do that to a person, I try to correct it as soon as possible because I don't want them to feel like they have to walk around wondering what they should have said to me. So it's reciprocal, it's not just about you, it's about how you respond to others as well. Relationships are messy and imperfect, but intent doesn't cancel impact. Let me let me change that. Intent, I mean, let me repeat that. Intent doesn't cancel impact. You're allowed to feel what you feel and name what happened, regardless of what the other person meant by it. So let's talk about, you know, that was good. I still want to kind of go back and get some more stuff in that one, but don't want to keep you too long. Retrospective versus real-time recognition, recognition. So here's something I really want to normalize. It is completely fine to recognize a crossing after the fact. Most people do because we we're thinking and we're processing. That's the drive-home phenomenon phenomenon that I started off with, if you remember. You don't have to catch it in real time to deal with it. Naming it later, even days later, is still valid. It still counts, it's still worth processing and potentially addressing. But over time, it is useful to get faster. You got to be a little more quick with it and be able to kind of deal with it in real time. Not so, you know, you can at least so you can at least buy yourself some time to think about it because some people like to think. But the moment where instead of either freezing up or automatically saying yes, you create a tiny bit of space. So I'm just saying you can create that space to think, but then that's where your your tools come in handy. And the simplest way to do that is to give yourself permission to pause. Let me think about that. I'll get back to you. Can I have a day on that? These are not stalling tactics, they're completely reasonable responses that are being put instead of being put on the spot. And they give your nervous system the time to catch up with what just happened. Remember, we talked about the nervous system in the beginning. So that so the next time when you do respond, you're responding from a place of actual choice rather than automatic reflex. The goal isn't become isn't to become hyper-vigilant, walking into every room on high alert, analyzing every interaction. That's exhausting. That's simply exhausting. And it's and it's not what it's not what I'm going for. It's not the conversation that I'm trying to have with you. The goal is just to be a little more fluent in your own internal language. So when something happens, you hear yourself. So now let's zoom on self-zoom ourselves on back down to earth. Today we talked about recognition, the body signals, the stomach drop, the tension, the hollow, yes. We walk through what crossings actually look like, like crossing the like crossing the line actually looks like in the real world, at work, and relationships, and with our family. We talked about subtle stuff, the stuff that kind of accumulates. Your homework this week is to write down one one crossing. If you if you have more, you can write them down. But right now, write at least one. You know, it doesn't have to be dramatic, it could be small, but what happened? How did you feel? And let's be honest, what did you wish you had said or done? You don't have to do anything with it. Just get it out of your head and onto paper. Because that's that's what we're that's what we're aiming for with this. Because now when you can get it on paper, get it out of your head and get it on paper, you can begin to establish those lines and you will know and be able to identify instantly when they're being crossed. So I'll st I'll end where I began. Wait, did that just happen? The next time you say that, you will be able to say, Yep, I stood up for myself, I responded the way I wanted to respond, I gave the reaction that I felt, and I feel good about it. This has been another great episode of the Life Diet 365 with your host, Miss Straight Talk, and I hope that you've enjoyed it. And if you know someone else who is driving, sitting somewhere for 15 minutes, they could take the time to join this podcast. Take care. Bye-bye. 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 Mr. Great Talk. Thanks for listening, and I hope you will subscribe and join me the next time. Take care. Bye bye.