Episode 2 Let’s Talk BS

Boundaries and standards! How they help us heal, rebuild, and live the life and lifestyle we want.

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Hi, welcome to Exhale. I am Laura Batchkar. And if no one has reminded you today, take a deep breath. Healing and rebuilding doesn't happen all at once. They happen one breath at a time. So let's exhale. Welcome to exhale. Um, thank you for being here. And today we're gonna talk about something that's one of my favorite subjects. We're gonna talk about BS. So let's talk about BS. And no, I don't mean that BS. I mean boundaries and standards. Um, the foundation of peace, rebuilding, self-love, self-confidence, healing, and rebuilding is all beginning with boundaries and standards. And um, I just I cannot say it enough how important that it is for you to establish some boundaries and standards. But last week we talked a lot about treating ourselves the way that we would treat a friend, and um through all of the things that we had been through with trauma, abuse, grief, and all of the things that we were trying to heal and rebuild from. And the thing is, a lot of times we feel like we can move forward while still living in that same lifestyle that we were in when we were experiencing those traumas in our lives, and it's just not true. At some point, you have to start changing the coping mechanisms, and you have to start letting go of those old ways, and it doesn't mean that you are a bad person or that those choices that you made are reflective of the person that you are at your core because that's simply not true either. It means that you did what you had to do to survive, but now you are in a state where you are trying to heal and rebuild, and you're going to have to change your um boundaries and your standards. You've heard the expression um you have to change your playmates and you have to change your play pin. And often that is the case. Um, it doesn't mean that everybody in your life is bad for you, or that every place in your life is bad for you, it just means that you need to try to figure out what the um negative ones or unhealthy ones are and start cutting those out of your life or loving them from a distance. Sometimes you have to love people from a distance and even a place and a lifestyle from a different distance because that's no longer what serves you to move you into the place that you're wanting to be and the life that you're wanting to build, and the lifestyle that you want to live. So here are some of my favorite quotes for um helping you look at this in that way and start building those things. When people show you who they are, believe them, and believe them the first time if possible. But if some reason you miss it the first time and then believe them the second time, and sure don't let it go on and on and be repetitive. And that is a quote by Dr. Maya Angelou, who is my favorite poet of all time. And I have another poem that I love by her. Um, that this quote is one of hers, and it is when you know better, do better. And that goes back to what we talked about before and what I talked about on my live this week in the Soft Again and Community group, is that um you maybe didn't know better back then, or even if you did kind of know better, you were not in a place that you were strong enough to make the better decisions. So now that you are in a better place and you do know better, this is the time for you to do better, to use what you've learned through those experiences and through the things that you're doing, like watching this podcast or being a member of Soft Again, or um even going to the retreat. We have a retreat coming up in October, or reading books, or doing research, or doing prayer, meditation, yoga, um, any of the things that you are using to help heal yourself and rebuild yourself, those are things that you um are setting a standard for yourself and setting a boundary for yourself. And here is one that is from um my all-time favorite human of when I was a kid, my papa. And he said to me, and I'm very thankful he said it to me, and he said it to me often, you can do and be anything you want if you're willing to work for it and you want it bad enough. And while that may not seem like a lot, it was huge for me. It was a foundation that helped me through all of the things that happened in my life when it was trauma and abuse and grief and back-to-back things going on. And it was um a steady lesson that I carried with me, that if I wanted it bad enough, and I honestly believed it then, and I believe it now, that um there are the only limitations that I have and you have on our lives are the ones that we place on ourselves. So I do believe that if I want something that I can have it, I have to do what it takes to get it. I have to believe it and have faith in it. And first and foremost, I believe that's the first thing you have to do because how are you gonna get anywhere beyond that if you can't first have faith in it and believe that it is it can be yours, and then the next thing you have to do is be willing to work for it and do the things that you need to do to achieve it. So exhale and let's dive on in. Um, here's one not many people like about creating standards and and boundaries because we're not all big fans of change, but and and we're gonna learn to make friends with it. But you have to change your habits and create new standards. It's not our fault that we learn the bad habits, but it is our responsibility to recognize them and make the changes. So you might have learned a bad habit during your healing and um your coping through the things that you were going through, but we do now have to recognize that okay, while this did help us get through, it's no longer serving us, and it's not gonna help us get to where we want to be. So we need to release it and let it go so that we can have room for the things that we need to replace it with, with our new standards, and boundaries that will allow us to continue to grow. Um, change is hard, but people change when the pain of their circumstances becomes worse or heavier than the fear of change and doing something different, and um that is so true. I mean, I have experienced in that time and time again in my life that I was afraid of the change, but I needed to be more afraid of what I would be missing out on or what I would not be able to accomplish if I didn't do the change that I was afraid of. I mean, we can go back to um probably several times in my life where that's true. Um, after with we've talked about with my move to Florida and leaving the state and making that big change, how it was fear that was fear of change and you know, feeling guilty about leaving people and that kind of thing, but the fear of never fulfilling a dream of mine, and um, and the that was something that was bigger than the other fear, and it wasn't necessarily that I was even afraid of not fulfilling the dream, but having regret later that I never even tried was um a power that drove me to not let the fear of change win in that situation. When um and back in 2017, when my late husband, uh, his name was Terry, when he passed away, um I had lived for years in fear of losing him. Like we had been on more ambulance rides and emergency room trips and hospital stays than anyone should ever have to do in the 17 years that he was sick. And um, the night that he passed away, I remember, you know, I knew the motions. We had done this so many times. So um the fear was always there that this would be the last time and that um he would be gone, but the reality had always been that he came through it again and he came home again. So um part of me was in that fear, and part of me was gearing up for okay, what's next? What are we gonna have to do to get past this one and get back home? And what are we gonna do here? And um I think when I realized that this was the the time that we weren't going back home and that he was gone, and it was the fear realized that it had actually happened this time, that um something just happened because that's when you have to face your fear, and when you face a fear that big, um you have a choice, and it's not a choice you make in an instant per se, but over the the weeks and days after you're having to make a choice of are you going to let this break you? And are you going to sit in it, or are you going to find your way out to where you can move forward in life? And the grief and the pain was worse and heavier than the fear of the change. So I did have fear of having to change and heal and rebuild, but the fear of how heavy the grief and how much pain I was in was so much worse than that pain of um fear of change of the rebuilding and the healing. So that is where the healing and rebuilding won. And I called the counselor and I went to counseling, and I found the methods that helped me heal with the yoga and the prayer and meditation and painting and journaling and um learning all of the things about wellness and and what was going on and how to combat it and how to help other people do the same. Because as hard as all of those things were and even still can be, sitting in that pain of that grief and that brokenness that was where I was at the time that I realized that he was gone was so much worse than any of this could possibly ever have been. So I made the choice to choose my change and not sit and wait for it to happen to me and just be in what was. I created boundaries and standards every step of the way because every step of your healing and every next um plateau that you reach, where you are getting to your main goal that you've set way up high, and you're doing your little steps and goals that you're reaching to get there, each one of them is going to require a new version of you that you might have to create a new boundary or a new standard with a person, with your career, with where you're living, with your family members, with friends. There may be people you have to cut out of your life, there may be people you have to love from afar, there may be jobs that you have to leave, there may be places you have to leave. Those are all part of setting new boundaries and standards, and those are things we have to do whenever we are changing our lives and rebuilding and making a better life for ourselves. Here's some things that I did that you may not have even thought of as being a boundary or a standard. I stopped watching the news. Everything on the news was negative, and it just made everything that I already was carrying that felt so heavy, it made it feel that much heavier. And so I made the choice that that was going to be a boundary in my life that I didn't need to see that every single day, every morning before I went to work, every evening when I got home, at night before I went to bed. There's a million apps that I can check the weather or anything that imported that I just need to know. So there's no need for me to sit for hours at a time, several times a day, letting all of that um crime and abuse and murder, robbery, whatever's going on. I don't need all of that in my head several times a day. Um I stopped watching violent TV shows and movies. Now, you know, I'm not saying you have to do all of these things forever or that you can't do them in smaller increments at some point, but if you're carrying a lot of sadness and you're dealing with anxiety and depression and things like that, you don't need to keep putting in all of this stuff that's just going to enhance that and make it that much bigger and harder and heavier. So you have to find ways to start setting some boundaries so that those things aren't what you're inputting all the time. Because what you take in all the time is a direct reference to what you're going to be feeling and what you're going to be putting out all the time. So you really have to limit that or cut it out. Whether you cut it out permanently or you cut it out for a time, it's time that you do that. It's a boundary that you need to set. Um, and in in uh comparison to that, instead of watching the news and watching violent movies and TV shows, I started listening to music, upbeat music. I couldn't listen to the side music that was another contributor. So I set a boundary of the types of music that I listened to. I created a playlist that I listened to so there was no accidental songs that came in there that would make the grief come flooding back or whatever, because it it came back on its own. It didn't need any help. I didn't need to try to do things to make it be worse than it was. So I created a playlist called Healing Playlist, and um it had upbeat like reggae, or it had some uh different uh classical music that I liked that were upbeat, and um I watched comedy. I like to watch stand-up comedy. A friend of mine, she um it went through a similar situation where she lost her husband, and um stand-up comedy was her thing, and that's what got her through it, and she would send me videos all the time and share them with me because we were going through it a lot at the same time, and she still does, and I'm very thankful for that. Um, and I'm extremely thankful for her turning to that as a positive boundary in her life for her to concentrate more on that and help her move forward in her life. And those are some things that you can do. I like to watch old sitcoms. I had trouble going to sleep at night um after my late husband passed, so I would um turn on old family sitcoms like you know, Full House or something like that, that I could watch that wouldn't be so heavy or traumatic. And some of those episodes can be, so I would skip those and just watch the ones that were light and funny and wholesome so that I was able to calm my spirit and calm my mind and my soul at night so that I could rest and not be in that state of mind. Then when I got a little further along and I needed something more than just these changes, I started to take classes and read books, and I learned how to heal through those life coaching classes and um yoga teacher classes and meditation uh instructor. I mean, there's so many in public speaking. I took just whatever. I'm an avid learner. I still will take a class just to be taking a class because it interested me. But that's a way that I fed my soul and kept myself from being in that place, and it's also gotten me to where I am so that now I'm able to help other people who were going through some of these same things through what helped me get through it, and also like reading books. I I remember the first thing I did, I accidentally came upon a documentary. I also love documentaries, I'm a nerd that way. I love books, love documentaries, I love to learn, take classes, but um the documentary I came upon was called The Secret, and um it's it I had never heard of it before, so I sat and I watched it and I was very interested in about how it could teach you to think differently and to have different things come into your life by what you put in and what you put out, and there's a whole series of books. I ended up buying all of them and reading all of them, and that was how my journey to reading the type of literature that I was reading that helped me heal was, and then I've moved on to so many other books since then: Change Your Brain, Change Your Life. That was another one I read in the beginning that helped me a lot and ended up even buying the flashcards and carrying those around with me as reminders. And lately I have been reading the Let Them Theory um by Mel Robbins, and I love her podcast, so I'm a big fan of her. She's another person you can listen to that will help you get what you need. And I drive a lot, I travel because I'm a regional property manager by day, so I listen to a lot of podcasts in my car and um music and even audiobooks, and uh currently I am listening to an audiobook that um I'll tell you about whenever I get further into it because I just started it. But all of those things are ways that you can put positive things in, healing things in, so that you can put them out, and again, we don't do toxic positivity, so we're not saying everything has to be a hundred percent always tox uh always positive because that would be toxic. We are gonna feel things and we're gonna acknowledge them and sit in them for the time allowed, but we're gonna set a boundary there too, where we're not gonna allow ourselves to just stay in that place. We are going to find these things that can pull us out of it. You can choose also with people, choose people that are living in peace or that are at least healing and rebuilding themselves and learning from their life experiences instead of people that keep repeating them or making excuses for what they're doing or how they're living, instead of doing something to make good choices. Because it really does matter who you are surrounding yourself with, and if you're with someone who is negative all the time or that all they can do is find a problem for every solution, then that's gonna hold you back from your healing and your rebuilding. So you really need to try to seek out people that you feel um at peace around and that you can be happy around and and feel lighter and it's not always so heavy to experience space with them. If every time you're with someone, you leave feeling drained or you dread meeting up, there's a problem, and you need to start limiting that and have that standard to where you're not allowing that in your life, and then inclement that boundary where you choose how much of your time you're gonna allow, if any, with this person, and that also matters for places that you're going or a job. You might not be able to just quit the job, but you can start looking for another one so that you can leave that situation if it's something that is really uh bad for your mental health that you're not gonna do well if you continue in that. So let's go to our roots just a little bit and talk about how I learned about some BS, some boundaries and standards. Um, I had this or had, unfortunately, she's gone on as well, but I had this sweet, strong, and stubborn mama of mine. And I have a little thing that I like to call um blessings soaked in buttermilk, buttermilk blessings. She made the absolute best buttermilk biscuits, and something she taught me, the way that she always taught me about strength and love and loyalty and family, was just a core foundation that helped me become who I am, and some of it in ways that you might not even understand. Some of your greatest gifts are gonna come to you soaked soaked in buttermilk. Your choice is you can sit in the soggy mess of buttermilk and it smells bad and it is no fun to be soaked in, or you can make biscuits. The best biscuits in the South, mama's biscuits. She always found strength to kept going. Like she always would keep going. The woman had no quit or give up in her at all. It did not matter how things were, and she had it rough. She had it rough growing up. Her and papa had a rough start, they didn't have money, they were farming, they were raising six children, and she still loved to laugh. She sang and played gospel music. She went to church and sang in church. She took me to church, she made biscuits with me, she made apple pies. I stayed after school. She was a custodian at the elementary school, and I stayed after school with her every day after school, and she would always have in her little room, we called it Mama's little room, she had a refrigerator and she had a shelf that had snacks. And in the refrigerator, she had uh milk boxes she would get from the cafeteria, and there was always things there for us when we stayed after school with her, and I stayed the most, and I would always carry around a sleeve of saltine soda crackers because that was my favorite little after-school thing, is to have one of those little milksums and soda crackers. So, but she was always teaching us how um to be resilient and how even when bad things happen in life, you can't just give up, you have to keep going, and that you need to create change and boundaries and standards as you go through life so that you can heal and rebuild and get to where you want to be. Um, although I will say she tried really hard to teach me how to be prepared to live the life that she knew and she lived, because that's what we do. I mean, if you don't know any different, this was the only life that she knew because this was the life that she was raised in, and this is the life that she lived. And I was very young at the time, so they were still, you know, do growing most of their own food, and they were still living in that life, and um, so she was always trying to teach me how to cook or to can vegetables or to work in the garden or to sew. She made the most beautiful quilts. I still have some of her quilts. She made my baby quilt, and then I have a Dutch doll quilt that she made for me as an adult because she would give them to us for Christmas or our birthdays, and she would always be like, Come sit with me and learn how to sew these quilts and learn how to do some quilting and learn to how to do some canning, and she was always trying to teach me how to do these things, and I was not about it. I just wasn't. I was not trying to do that, and I remember fussing with her, and I would say, Mom, I don't need to know how to do that. And she'd say, Yes, you do. You're gonna have your own your own house one day, and you're gonna need these things, and you're gonna need to know how to do them. And I was like, No, Mama, as long as they make stores, I'm not doing that. I just I'm not doing that. I'm gonna go outside with Pawpaw. We're gonna go hunting or fishing or feed the feed the his um hunting dogs and run around behind him with whatever he's tinkering with that day. And house was the last place that I wanted to be doing all of those things, but it's like she was teaching me standards from where she was and where she had been in life, and even at that age, I was starting to set my own standards and boundaries for my own life and where I wanted to be. Of course, I was like four to seven, eight range here, and I didn't really know exactly what I wanted to be and do, but I knew what I didn't want, and sometimes that's where you start to set those boundaries and standards by starting for where you don't want to be and what you don't want for your life, and then figuring out okay, if this is not where I want to be, and this is not the life and lifestyle that I want to live, then what am I gonna have to do to make that not be my life? So that's where you start creating some boundaries and some standards so that you can go in a different direction than where you thought you might have to be. You can love and honor and learn from where you came from, but still want to build something else and something different. And this goes to what we've been talking about a lot in our group and on our lives about um two things can be true at the same time. Just because you want something better, more and different doesn't mean that you don't respect what you have now or where you've been, it doesn't mean you don't have gratitude for where you've been and where you are, but it does mean that you still want to move in it in a better and more healing and rebuilding direction. And there's nothing wrong with that. Both of those can be true at the same time. In fact, it's very healthy for you to have both of them and to feel like those are part of your life and acknowledge them and have a good relationship with them because you can appreciate your past and your family and friends and still have some standards and boundaries for where you're going in your life. It's not always easy to have those boundaries and standards, but it is important. You are taught sometimes that your voice is only valuable when it suits and not stirs. It's not your job to decorate your voice to make others comfortable. Again, this is something that I heard and was taught by my studies of Dr. Maya Angelou, and it is not um to discount that those things in your life were important, but people often only can teach you what they know, and a lot of times that's what they know is that you're in if you are stirring something and you're creating a um situation that's uncomfortable, then people often try to silence you, even though what you're saying is important and valid and needed, and it needs to be said, they are afraid, so they try to silence it. But it's not your job to make them comfortable, it's your job to speak your truth. Now, that doesn't mean you have to be cruel or mean, but you do need to be honest, you have to set a standard of self-importance and a boundary that lets other people know that you value yourself, your time, and your peace. Because if you do not value those things, others are not going to value them in you. You have to see the value in you, and that you are worthy, and that your time is precious, and that your peace is fiercely protected. Because if you don't do that, no one else will, and then it's gonna be harder for you to hold on to it because you're not creating that boundary and that standard that says, This is my priority, peace is my priority, I am worth it. I'm going to do what it takes to remain in my peace and in what is best for me. Because when you stay quiet, you dim your light. It don't protect you to stay quiet, it imprisons you because then it sits inside you and it grows and it festers and it creates things that come out in toxic ways later. So it is extremely important that you do not hold that down and keep silent when it is something that needs to be said and needs to be healed. If your voice isn't taking a risk by what's being said, it's a voice that will never be heard. You will always sit in that imprisonment, in that silence of not using your voice to speak your truth and to release yourself from the prison that you are putting yourself in by holding all of that inside and letting it build. That is just a standard that you're gonna have to set for yourself and know that a boundary that you're gonna have to set is that you're not gonna let other people's opinions hold you back from speaking your truth and doing what you know is best. You have to be able to be you, you have to find your voice and be your authentic self, and you're not gonna be able to do that unless you set that standard and boundary for yourself. I stayed silent about abuse and trauma for a long time, for too long. But I found my voice through healing, and I've told it and I've spoken about my grief and my loss, and I believe it took a lot more for me to find my voice after um my childhood sexual abuse and the trauma I went through in different things in my childhood with alcoholism and um my father leaving when I was very young because he uh had the disease of alcoholism that did end up um taking him of his life at 45 years old, or actually sorry, he was 47 years old, uh, very young. But um I think that because I was a child and I didn't have any tools yet, that I didn't know how to um speak up about things that were bothering me. I probably did not even have the words to say, and that's how I became very involved as a kid in reading books and reading poems and writing poems. I remember about eight years old, I got really into reading books, which was about the time that the abuse that I was going through was um at its uh worst beginnings, I guess you could say. But it was so good to get lost in a book and live in another world. And I love to read books about children close to my age, living in these families where abuse wasn't happening and funny things were happening, and um there was everybody was just love and laughter and things in these storybooks that I was reading. I read a lot of Tales of the Fourth Grade, nothing, and um, that whole book series was one of the first ones that I just fell in love with and read all the time because it was like an escape, and in so many ways, it helped build me into the lover of literature and poetry, and then the writer that I am today with my books and my poetry and my short stories that I write about my grandparents, and even the book that I am writing that um currently I am writing, that is a book about healing and rebuilding your life. Because if you don't tell your story, someone else is gonna tell your story one day and they're gonna tell it wrong because they don't know, only you know your real true authentic self and your real true authentic story. So if you're waiting for somebody else to tell your story, or if you don't even think they will, they will one day. People are probably talking about it now because they always talk, but um, I don't concern myself with what other people are saying. Well, that's a whole uh podcast that we'll probably talk about again another day, but um it's all about finding your voice and not protecting other people's um version of what they think that you should be or what they think your life should be because you are worth telling your own story and getting that story out and setting that standard for your life and then creating those boundaries of what you're going to accept to move forward in your life and live the life and lifestyle that you so desperately want to build for yourself. A key part of that is going to be finding your voice, telling your story, setting those boundaries, setting those standards, and that's the type of BS that we're talking about. So until next time, get your list out and set your boundaries and standards, and make the most of the BS. Join us next time for Excel. Have a good night.