Boundaries for Thanksgiving

November 24, 2022 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

*Free* video training.

Happy Thanksgiving to all who are celebrating! I know the holidays can be rough for some folks, so if you’re feeling the holiday feels, allow yourself to be with those feelings. It’s all part of being human.

To keep it short and sweet today, I’m happy to share this video I created for you about setting and maintaining healthy boundaries. I’ve been talking about boundaries for the past couple weeks and emails can only capture so much.

This video goes into what gets in the way of setting boundaries and how to become aware of those things, along with some helpful language to stay connected while setting boundaries. It’s about 17 minutes long. Feel free to watch at your convenience.

(My video tile is a little cut off on the screen, but it’s sufficient—what’s important is that you can hear my voice as you follow along!)

I’d love to know what you think afterwards, if you’d like to share. Just reply to this email or use the link to the anonymous form below in the “What’s on your mind?” section.And if you know others who might benefit from what I shared about boundaries in this video, please pass it along to them!

Your turn: After watching the video, what boundary setting practice(s) will you explore to incorporate into your life? What is something covered in the video that you’d like to learn more about? What is one thing around boundaries you’re committed to doing for yourself?

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Work with me: Want to see how self-care is transformative and can help create a more meaningful life in which you start committing to yourself and show up the way you want? I can show you how. I offer first-time seekers a complimentary 45-minute exploratory session. Sign up here.

What’s on your mind? It can be powerful to learn from each other and our common struggles when it comes to our practice of self-care–or just being a human being. If you have something you’re struggling with and would like some perspective, share it here. Your issue may be chosen and addressed in the next post–it’ll be totally anonymous.

Set boundaries, stay connected?

November 17, 2022 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Here’s how.

We’re continuing our discussion about boundaries this week to get ready for the upcoming holidays with family members! 😉

We set boundaries because we want to keep our relationships healthy. Because our relationships are important to us, we can state our requests and boundaries from a place of connection instead of disconnection. Stating a boundary from anger, annoyance, or frustration usually isn’t helpful to a relationship.

It’s our job to protect and be responsible for our boundaries. We can make requests, but ultimately we can’t force someone to do something. We can choose to leave or take action to protect our boundary. If we see that the other person frequently disregards our boundary requests, we may decide to create some distance with them and how we interact with them in our life, and let them know why.

Most people think boundaries are something that they’re not. When it comes down to it, much of what we think needs a boundary is due to our own lack of self-care.

To review, a boundary is required only when there has been a boundary violation.

A violation is when someone comes into our space (physical or emotional) without us being OK with it.
A boundary is stating what WE will do if that person continues their behavior.
It is NOT us telling that person how to behave.

Additionally, if we make a boundary request and don’t follow through on what we say we’ll do, we’ve only made an idle threat or consequence. This diminishes our own self-respect and the other person’s respect for us.

A boundary request sounds like this: “If you continue to _____, then I will ______.”

For example, “I don’t appreciate being berated, so don’t yell at me,” is NOT setting a boundary. It’s telling someone else what to do.

“I hear that this is important to you and I don’t appreciate being berated. So if you continue to yell, then I’m going to leave the room until we can talk without you yelling,” is setting a boundary while wanting to stay connected.

The person can continue to yell. The consequence that we follow through with is leaving the room if they do. We used a connection phrase to start by acknowledging the other person with “I hear that this is important to you.” Other connection phrases:

“I appreciate you and your perspective, however, if you continue to _____, then I will _____.”
“I value our relationship and time together, but if you keep _____, then I will ______.”
“I love you, and I’m not going to do that (thing that you asked me to) because it really doesn’t work for me. How else can I support you?”
“I hear that you feel disappointed with my decision. I’m here to help in a way that works for both of us.”

What other questions do you have about boundaries? Let me know here.

Your turn: What boundary requests would benefit you if you made them? Do you have a clear request and a clear consequence/action that you’ll take if the other person violates your boundary? How can you keep the relationship connected while setting a clear boundary?

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Ready to set boundaries?

November 10, 2022 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Feel uncomfortable.

We’ll be talking about boundaries for the next couple weeks, so we can get ready for the upcoming holidays with family members!

Sometimes people mix up setting boundaries with trying to control others. We do not create boundaries for other people. We create boundaries to take care of and protect ourselves.

Boundaries are not:

Ways to control or manipulate other people
Things you think other people should be doing (e.g. “I want my partner to clean the bathroom,” “I want my friend to call me back when I call her,” “I want my kid to clean her room.”)

We need to recognize when to use and talk about boundaries. This means having a clear sense of what and where our boundaries are. When we don’t have clear boundaries, people don’t know if they’re violating them or not.

When there is a clear boundary violation, such as someone speaking to us in a demeaning way or someone doing something in our home that’s not allowed, we have the boundary conversation.

The conversation includes making a clear request along with stating a clear consequence. The consequence is something that WE will do, an action or behavior that WE will take.

Here’s an example of a clear boundary: “If you smoke a cigarette in my house, I am going to ask you to leave my house. We don’t allow smoking here. This is what I will do if you smoke.”

It’s important to remember that the person we’re making the request of can continue to do whatever they would like to do. Human beings can smoke cigarettes if they want. It’s not a boundary violation until they come into our home or our car or our space.

Notice that when we make the request, “If you continue to do that, then I will…” the consequence is the behavior that WE will take. It’s not, “You need to stop smoking or else.” We’re making the request and then explaining what we will do as the consequence of not following that request.

OK, so why don’t we set boundaries? Because sometimes it’s difficult and uncomfortable to make these requests and establish consequences with the people in our lives.

Sometimes it’s so uncomfortable for us that we avoid making the requests. Or if we do make the requests, we don’t actually follow through on the consequences. Because that’s uncomfortable too–doing what we say we’ll do when someone violates a boundary means potentially risking our relationship with that person or facing their disapproval.

But then what happens when we don’t make these requests or when we don’t follow through on the consequences? People continue to violate our boundaries.

And we get upset and build up resentments. Usually we’re the only ones feeling this way, because the people who continue to violate our boundaries don’t think there are any consequences for doing so.

There’s a lot more to say about boundaries–more next week!

Your turn: Are you recognizing why you might not be setting boundaries that would benefit your life? What would you have to believe in order to make the requests and follow through on the consequences? How can you practice saying what you want to say instead of avoiding setting boundaries with people?

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Does your day “come at” you?

August 18, 2022 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Step into it instead.

Do you look at your phone and check work email the minute you wake up?

This used to be my morning routine: the alarm on my phone would go off. I’d turn it off and since my phone was in my hand, I would immediately check my work emails. I wanted to see what my day might look like.

It seems like a productive thing to do, right? To “prepare for your day.”

I want to offer that when you do this, your day might appear to “come at” you.

All the requests from other people and all the time you need to spend on emailing others for info, looking for info, and creating responses once you have the info. Along with the other meetings and projects you had planned to do that day–or last minute meetings and projects that have popped up overnight.

It might be overwhelming. Starting your day immediately feeling overwhelmed likely doesn’t contribute to productivity in a way that serves you.

What would happen if you didn’t look at your phone and check emails the minute you wake up?

I’ve talked to clients who said they feel anxious just thinking about not checking email first thing.

What if instead, you have an alarm that’s separate from your phone? And what if you took five minutes after waking up to start your day in a way that you want?

This could look like intentional breathing, a short meditation, or some gentle movement and stretches for your body. For five minutes.

It could look like lying in bed and recalling a dream you had or just savoring those five minutes for yourself in whatever way you want.

It could look like writing down your thoughts or drinking a glass of water to rehydrate your body and feeling it flow through your system. Five minutes for yourself.

It could look any way you want it to look. This creates space for you to step into your day the way you want to. Instead of having your day come at you.

Your turn: How would your days change if you stepped into them the way you want to? What would happen if you start by exploring with five minutes to yourself at the start of your day, without your phone? And what if you could stretch that to 10 minutes? What about 20 or 30 minutes?

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Your boundaries with yourself

March 23, 2022March 24, 2022 ~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Commit to build trust.

We’ve been talking about boundaries with other people for the past few weeks. Let’s talk about boundaries with ourselves.

What this looks like is keeping commitments to ourselves or keeping our word to ourselves.

If we are the keepers of our own boundaries with others and we take the actions to maintain those boundaries, we can do the same with ourselves.

We may want to set a boundary for ourselves around the following:

Boundary between work and home (for those who work from home)

Boundary for when we look at or check our phones

Boundary for how much time we spend on social media

Boundary around time spent watching shows (Netflix, Hulu, Prime, HBO Max, etc.)

Boundary around how much sugar we eat

Boundary around how much caffeine or alcohol we drink

Boundary around how much inactive time we have – which means adding more active time

Boundary for when we choose to go to sleep every night

We can make plans for all these boundaries. What creates boundary violations with ourselves is when we don’t stick to the plan.

We worked two more hours than we planned to.

We have one more drink than we planned to.

We scrolled on social media for 45 minutes longer than we planned to.

We ate two cookies instead of one.

We went to bed at midnight instead of 10:30pm.

We didn’t exercise like we planned to.

Many of us are very good at keeping commitments to others, especially if we don’t want to disappoint them or let them down. What happens when we don’t keep our commitments to others? They may feel let down and disappointed. We may feel guilty or disappointed in ourselves.

What happens when we don’t keep our commitments to ourselves? We are the ones who feel BOTH things–let down by ourselves AND guilty or disappointed in ourselves. We get a double whammy.

When we don’t follow through with our commitments to ourselves, we erode our trust with ourselves. This makes us less likely to even make plans for ourselves to commit to because we might think, “What’s the point? I probably won’t do it anyway.”

To build trust with ourselves, we can practice keeping commitments to ourselves with compassion. We make the plan (the boundary) and we take the actions to maintain the plan (keeping the boundary). If we miss the mark once, we don’t just give up. We give ourselves grace and practice taking action again.

It feels good to keep a commitment. The more we do it, the more trust we build with ourselves. And that can have positive effects on everything we do.

Your turn: What plans (boundaries) do you want to put into place for yourself? Are you willing to be committed to being the keeper of your plans (boundaries)? How would your life be different if you kept your commitment to maintaining your boundaries with yourself?

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Work with me: Want to create a more meaningful life in which you start committing to yourself and get to show up the way you want? I can show you how. I offer first-time seekers a complimentary 60-minute exploratory session. Sign up here.