Setting & Holding Boundaries: The Neuroscience of Saying NO

Why are boundaries SO hard? Because they force your brain to choose between listening to yourself and keeping others happy. You want to honor your own needs but if your nervous system thinks doing so will have negative social or relational consequences, it’ll always default to connection over self-trust and prioritize attachment over authenticity. 

This episode goes deep into what boundaries really are (so not what you think), why they’re not just essential but good, and the neuroscience behind why they are so inherently difficult to set and hold.

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:

• Boundaries aren’t threats, punishment, or control-seeking. They also have nothing to do with other people!
• Why the holidays are a perfect storm for boundary violations
• Why it’s essential to clarify your boundaries ahead of time and long before your nervous system gets stressed out by a violation
• Boundaries are how you rebuild self-trust, which is crucial for emotional health and physical wellbeing.
• And most importantly, that if boundaries feel terrifying, you’re doing it RIGHT! 

AS MENTIONED:

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HOMEWORK:

Your homework for this episode is to identify one boundary that you have (or want to have). Determine now what you will do if and when someone crosses that boundary. How can you avoid getting triggered, and instead calmly but firmly prove to yourself that you can trust yourself to honor your own needs and keep you safe? Email me or DM me on Instagram @solutionsforsimplicity to share your thoughts!

If this episode was helpful, remember you are always welcome to book a free 60 minute consult with me if you want to talk more about your personal situation. 

 COMING UP NEXT:

Join me back next episode to hear a kick-in-the-pants interview I did with my personal health and fitness coach. We go deep into why it's so hard for moms to prioritize their physical health

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Transcript

0:49

What do you do when someone asks you to do something you don't want to do, or starts talking bad about something that matters a lot to you, or is engaging in activities that make you feel uncomfortable? Every woman I know struggles with setting and maintaining boundaries. It is so hard to define what you want or don't want, communicate that to others, decide ahead of time how you will handle that line being crossed, and then follow through with your commitment if and when the line is crossed. There are so many reasons for this. Let's unpack it. Welcome to More Time for Mom, where overwhelmed moms get science-backed strategies to overcome the hidden sources of stress stealing your time and joy. I'm your host, Dr. Amber Curtis. Ready to make more time for you? Let's dive in. It's a couple days before Thanksgiving, and while I originally had another episode planned delving into how your early life experiences shape your present day triggers, I feel compelled to interrupt normal programming to talk about boundaries, because the holidays are renowned for bringing up so much drama. I of course hope your family isn't like this, but if family gatherings involve bickering about politics, or bringing up past issues, or others being judgmental of your life choices, A. you're not alone. And B, it might be time to rethink your boundaries. I want to share a training I just gave inside my Mom's Making Time Society because it will completely change the way you think of boundaries, why they're so important, who you are really hurting when you don't have them, and how to fix that. Members are telling me that this training has totally shifted their perspective on boundaries And especially for the women who have always struggled to stand their ground or say no to others, this training gives you tools to really address that head on and, more importantly, really understand what's happening for you at a neurological and nervous system level when it comes to boundaries. Quickly before we dive in, I want to gently put on your radar that I have a brand new program coming in January. that teaches you the six most essential life coaching skills every mom needs so both you and your family can flourish. Link in the show notes for more details. Pre-registration is open now. If you've ever considered life coaching, there is no better time to sign up and I think you will be astounded at how accessible this is. After 6 plus years of working with clients, I have seen the same issues come up over and over again and have cultivated a totally unique combination of tools to help my clients address them. I feel so called to now share these skills with you so that you can be the wife and mom you dream of and really show up in a whole new way for your family. These skills are crucial for every mom, but especially non-negotiable and life-changing if you are a high-achieving, perfectionist, type-A mom with high-functioning anxiety like me. Big welcome to this month's training on boundaries that stick, especially around the holidays. And whether you are here live or watching the recording, I really want to underscore that this is an essential skill that applies far beyond just the holiday season. And yet, as we are soon going to talk about, I think you will Want this skill in your back pocket, especially around the holidays? A lot of big important things to delve into today, but I also want to just start by inviting you to enter in the chat or comment if you're watching the replay. Do you personally have a hard time setting boundaries? Do you feel like it's difficult to stick up for yourself? Would you identify as a classic people pleaser or even a pushover? And regardless of how you would label yourself or how you might have been labeled by others, I want you to think about how it feels in your body when you are expressing an opinion that differs from other people. Is that, does that provoke an emotion that you can hold? Are you comfortable expressing difference from what others around you are doing or believing? Or do you inevitably feel, you tell me? All the emotions that could come up with how hard it is to set and hold a boundary. It's really not an easy thing. And it's also not something that anybody teaches us how to do. Very few, if any of us, have had this healthily modeled to us. You probably have had people in your life that you would think had boundaries by the way that they pushed you away or refused to do anything they didn't want to do. But I'm guessing that they didn't hold a boundary the way that I'm going to describe today. And then you've probably also been around people that clearly did not have boundaries themselves. And maybe you then took on the belief that's what a good person does, right? Cater to everybody else's needs, make sure everybody else is comfortable, and suppress whatever discomfort you are feeling just to go along with what keeps the peace. Boundaries are so tricky. They really are. And I just want to honor that and also, again, equip you with this information in a way that you've maybe never considered. I know I didn't until about the last year. And it's so powerful. Why are we talking about boundaries right now? When boundaries are needed, always. They really never go out of style. It's not that they are ever not needed. But I do want to offer that this current time of year tends to be the most stressful and the most provocative. Here are some very real-life scenarios you might encounter. Family traditions that no longer fit. work deadlines before the holidays, gift exchanges, parties, volunteering, and then a big one is always managing in-laws. Going into the holidays, Thanksgiving if you're here in the United States, and then Christmas and any other holidays you celebrate in there, it's a lot. You also throw in the end of the year, which typically has people focused on making sure they meet their big annual goals or objectives in their work or home environment by the end of the year. There's a lot of pressure to go. You have more invitations and opportunities for events than ever. And there just ultimately is so much more exposure to different people that you might not interact with as much at other times of the year. The holidays are great for bringing us together, but they're hard because they bring together a lot of people that maybe we don't necessarily agree with or we wouldn't otherwise choose to interact with on a regular basis. I always hope that you have amazing family, amazing friends, amazing acquaintances and people that you want to celebrate with. And maybe your family is different than mine, where you never have disruptions or you never have opposing viewpoints. Maybe you don't fight over politics or religion or all of those big controversial things. But if you're normal, okay, you do. And those differences, even when we don't want them to interfere with the true meaning of the season, right? It's very common to get different people in the same room and it's just like everybody's on edge. And one comment or one gesture or one even hint that someone is upset or disapproves of you or what you're doing or what you think, right? It can trigger a whole cascade of emotions and actions that just end up spiraling and leading to all kinds of conflict. Let me know in the chat if you've ever been in one of these situations. Again, even in an ideal scenario where everybody gets along, It's pretty fair to say that people are rarely at their best under pressure. And the end of the year and all the holiday gatherings inevitably have a lot of pressure surrounding them. Meaning, again, that people are probably not showing up to these events as their best, ideal, most emotionally regular, physically cared for self, right? Physically resourced self. They're showing up exhausted. They're showing up worried about all the things they still need to get done. They are showing up knowing that they've got to turn around and get to this other thing by a certain time or finish up all the things on their to-do list before the impending deadline. How many of us have stayed up wrapping presents or trying to make sure we get all the things together for teacher's gifts for our kids' school? Or the possibilities are endless. It's unique to your life situation and circumstances. But again, the overarching point is that we commonly brace for stress and are well acquainted with the toll that the holidays can take on our nervous system. Whether you've ever put it in those terms and consciously realized that's what's going on or not, I think it probably resonates with you. And all of that means that we are more prone to conflict, more prone to taking things personally, more prone to ignoring our needs and pushing past our limits to get things done, but also then suppressing the things that come up for us when we feel uncomfortable because we want to keep the peace and because we want to make sure that the holidays go well for everybody else. So that's really hard. It really is. But I'm going to give you tools today to hopefully approach the holidays and every time of year differently. All right. So who needs boundaries? Short answer? Everybody. Everybody. Kate, you as a grown person obviously need boundaries and all the more if you've never really felt comfortable setting them, which is many people. Many of us have not. Children definitely need boundaries. The role of parents and caregivers and teachers and coaches, all of the authority figures that children have in their life, set these rules and guidelines for children to follow Hopefully not to just be mean or cruel or impartial or to be partial, right? But actually to create an environment in which that new child can thrive. They can develop. They can learn right from wrong. They can feel safe. Okay, that's gonna be such a huge theme that we delve into momentarily. Boundaries are what keep you safe, what help you feel safe and secure so that you can do all the things you are meant to do in this life. If you are looking for more data-driven reasons why boundaries are important for you and for everyone, I just want to throw some statistics at you here. I always love delving into the research and figuring out what happens without the thing we are trying to have. So what happens if you don't have boundaries? It turns out that not having good boundaries between your work life and your home life, that classic elusive balance we're all striving for, but not having good balance, and in other words, having lack of boundaries for work-life balance, is associated with greater emotional exhaustion and decreased happiness, obviously a lot of increased stress, Research really shows that becomes a major factor in how people rate the quality of their marriages and that plays into propensity to get divorced or have marital issues. The American Psychological Association reports that setting clear boundaries has a positive effect on self-esteem and overall well-being. So again, we don't want to just delve into the negative. I want to offer you this positive alternative and this reframe for why boundaries are so good. The research is very clear that the people who are comfortable with the discomfort of setting boundaries. Okay, let me say that again because it's counterintuitive. The people who are comfortable with the discomfort that inevitably comes along with setting boundaries are the people who report higher levels of self-esteem, greater overall well-being, both physically and mentally, and then they really score highly on this concept of self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is the belief that you have agency. You are empowered. You can make what you want happen within reason. And that's such an important concept for life satisfaction, for achieving your goals, and then for using your gifts and talents to do things in the world. Setting and maintaining boundaries helps with executive functioning. There's a lot of talk in the neuroscience world these days about the the challenge so many people are having with executive functioning, whether that's because they are neurodivergent, maybe wrestle with ADHD. We know there are changes in the brain and it's harder to access your executive functioning skills when you are pregnant or postpartum or in perimenopause. There's a lot of research being done on this, but when women are able to set and maintain boundaries, they have improved executive functioning. fewer relational conflicts, healthier emotional regulation, which altogether then decreases chance of disease, inflammation, chronic stress, all the things that lead to illness, death, the horrible things we want to avoid, and then without boundaries, we risk burnout, anxiety, and emotional exhaustion. I know you know this, but just to underscore why we want to really open ourselves up to the need to set boundaries, even if we've not yet ever been comfortable doing so. So if it has been hard for you to set boundaries, if you do identify as that classic people pleaser or pushover, Please know you are not alone. And I want to also offer that there is absolutely nothing wrong with you. I'm going to talk in just a second about how this may have come to be, but how normal and expected it is that you would have a hard time setting boundaries. It makes total sense from a neuroscience perspective why it's hard to set boundaries. For now, Just know that 85% or more people report having trouble setting boundaries. It's so hard. Or even if we think we set them, it's then that much harder to put your money where your mouth is and maintain your boundaries the moment they get challenged. Because that's what inevitably happens, right? You think you set a boundary and then someone else pushes back and it's like the world is asking, but are you sure? Are you sure that's really your boundary? What are you going to do about it? It becomes this back and forth dance or threatening posture. I'm setting a boundary. Oh really? I'll do this. And then are you going to hold it and maintain it? It's so hard. It's so threatening to your brain. Let's back up and talk about what even are boundaries? Because I want to really offer that they are not what you have probably thought of up to this point. Boundaries are not discipline or punishments. They are also not a threat. It might be easier to think of this in terms of the parent-child relationship, but I think a lot of times parents draw the line and say, you need to turn off the TV now or you're going to your room. Or if you don't get an A on this test, then you're grounded. Or if you are late coming home past your curfew, then you lose the privilege of whatever else. Those are not boundaries. Those are forms of discipline. Punishment would be a negative consequence, a deprivation. Hopefully not a physical response, but unfortunately a lot of us grew up with that physical punishment that reinforced the wrong idea about boundaries. But again, it's really key to know that boundaries are not negative things that you are going to do to someone else if they cross your line, nor should they be negative things that happen to you if you don't hold your line. It's also so key to know that boundaries are never left up to other people to respect, let alone enforce. We actually, I really want to blow your mind with this idea. It's so different than how you've probably ever thought about boundaries before. A true boundary has nothing to do with anyone else. Nothing to do with anyone else. You do not expect that anyone is going to respect your boundary. Take that in. A boundary is not something you expect other people to respect or to follow or maintain for you. If anything, you should automatically expect that your boundary is going to provoke a response from other people. That they will feel themselves threatened or even just naturally and even well-intentionally want to cross your line. So boundaries are not discipline or punishments. They are not things that you expect other people to do. You don't put the power of setting or holding a boundary in anyone else's hands. So if not those things, what are they? What is a boundary? I bet you've never thought of it this way. A boundary is a loving limit set to protect your time, energy, values, and well-being, also known as the rules, limits, or guidelines you create to identify reasonable, safe, and permissible or allowable ways for others to behave toward you. And most importantly, most importantly, a boundary defines how you will respond when, not if, but when someone crosses your line. And we don't set these boundaries to try and get back at other people. It's not a quid pro quo, you hurt me so I'm going to retaliate this way and set this boundary kind of thing. Boundaries are for you. They're not for other people. They are entirely for your protection. And the reason they're so important is because you need to be able to trust yourself. You, like me, all of us, right? We have grown up in this world that has not proven trustworthy. So many of the people that we relied upon, especially when we were little, broke our trust for whatever reason, intentionally or not. But where the most harm gets done is when you repeatedly step on your own limits and ignore the signals and sensations your own body offers to you about what does or doesn't feel good. So we're going to get so much deeper into this. And I also acknowledge that hearing this new perspective could feel very threatening. all new ideas feel inevitably threatening because they are so counter to the beliefs we've previously held. I just want you to try on this idea. Open your mind to the possibility that a boundary is not ever something we expect other people to do, let alone respect. A boundary is entirely for your protection and it is entirely in your control. And the reason it's so important is so you learn to trust yourself and you show yourself that even though the world is unpredictable and untrustworthy, you can always rely on yourself to meet your own needs. Maybe we've never done that before, which makes it that much harder, but all the more important. A boundary is the internal line, internal line, where you end and someone else begin. It's like that fence in the background here. It protects your sense of self and helps you stay emotionally safe, especially if you grew up in an environment where your needs were ignored dismissed or punished. A boundary is your invitation. It's your opportunity to rediscover what you will and won't allow in your life. And you are allowed to determine that, to decide here and now or anytime the need arises, right? That this is my line. I don't feel good when this happens. And I am then going to do this. to take care of myself and try and ensure that discomfort doesn't happen again. That I know I can rely on myself and I will protect my own needs regardless of what anyone else is doing. Even if I haven't been able to trust or rely on anyone else before, even if others have not taken care of me, I, here and now and forever after, am choosing to take care of myself. I really want to know if that resonates with you and how it lands. And yet, you are human, even if the idea of setting boundaries sounds reasonable. Even if you can find points of agreement with the definition of a boundary that I've offered, you are human, which means your brain has a lot of competing parts that are vying for your attention all of the time. For the purpose of simplification, I'm just going to lump the brain into two different types. And we've talked about this in previous trainings. You surely heard it in other places. But you have your rational brain. It's the prefrontal cortex that is where all of your cognition happens, it's your intellectual ability, it's the part of you that can more or less objectively assess a situation and access your higher level thinking to figure out the best reasonable solution from an array of alternatives. You also have a survival brain, sometimes called the primal brain, the lizard brain, the toddler brain. It goes by all kinds of different names, but it is the more limbic part of your nervous system located in the deep core inside the very center of your skull and connects with your brainstem, which is part of your central nervous system that then sends all the nerve signals down to the rest of your body. and receives messages from the body back up to the brain. So your amygdala in particular is this very small but super important region of the brain whose job it is to constantly scan the environment for threats. And always, is this okay? Am I safe? Am I safe? That's the big question that your amygdala, the fear center, is always hypervigilantly concerned with. So much of this goes under the level of your conscious radar. Most of it is subconscious, automatic, and it's there for a reason. We want our brains to be able to keep us safe. We want our fear center to kick in the presence of a real threat so that we can access whatever we need to do inside ourselves to escape the threat and survive. However, those emotions or the fear provokes a whole bunch of emotions that end up cutting off, literally cutting off blood supply and oxygen to the frontal lobe, prefrontal cortex, part of your brain, meaning that when your brain perceives a threat, you literally cannot think rationally. And so, This is going to impact the extent to which you are able to set boundaries and hold boundaries. Let me also explain. But I want to, I guess, take a moment and point out that I picked this picture for a reason. Neuroscience is so amazing, but we have all of these different neurons throughout our body. They're not just in your brain, actually. The majority of neurons are actually in your gut. So fascinating. All of this cutting-edge research is just so amazing. But the neurons in our brain are the ones that are responsible for thinking and for pain and for, again, processing the information coming through our senses all of the time. And over time, the neurons that fire together wire together, if you've ever heard that term. And what this means is that the more you experience certain kinds of things, the more the brain develops and strengthens these neural connections between neurons that send signals to the rest of the brain and body of how you should respond to whatever perceived threat has provoked the response, the need for a response. So keep that in mind. We'll delve into it more in a second. But again, if setting boundaries is hard for you, I want to offer that of course it's hard. And it's hard for a very intuitive reason. We are social creatures. We come into this world with an innate need for love and connection and belonging. We are helpless as little babies. Our entire survival depends on the protection of our caregivers. And we then realize and have enforced to us all of our childhood that we need to stay compliant and follow the rules in order to remain part of the proverbial tribe. And so the messages and the signals that our caregivers send to us when we are children about what kinds of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are or are not acceptable to those people. wire our brains to believe that we need to do or be a certain way, do certain things or be a certain way in order to maintain our connection with them. And we will always, your brain will always privilege survival first and then social connection over anything else. We as children are so perceptive. It's not conscious, but we are so perceptive of how others respond to our feelings and actions as children that we innately learn that in order to be liked or loved or physically safe, let alone even just like emotionally bonded with and seen by our caregivers, only certain things are allowed. I want to tread gently here if any of this is triggering to you, but you may have grown up in a home where anger was a real factor and If you did anything that maybe made your caregiver unsettled or upset, they might have responded with anger, in which case you learned to be small and not express whatever you were feeling because you didn't want to provoke them. If you grew up with a parent that was really sad and emotional and emotionally unavailable to you because they were so consumed with their own struggles, then your little nervous system probably automatically thought that you needed to do whatever you could to make that person happy so that you could keep them there for you, right? You could try to reach them so that they would be there for you. Those are just two small examples. We all have our different versions, but the bottom line is that from a young age, you probably learned that you should not voice or express your own needs, let alone desires, because you needed to keep other people happy. And that if you had a strong need, if you were frustrated and you had a tantrum, you probably were met with timeout, physical punishment, harsh words, shaming, something that shut you down. Something that didn't comfort you in that moment, but actually made you even more afraid of the feeling you were having. The feeling that provoked the tantrum and bad behavior. So you were never probably allowed to feel your feelings, which then made you change how you acted and how you showed up around other people in order to keep them happy. And all of this is a very long-winded way of saying that your nervous system likely took on a need to please other people to the point that you stopped even recognizing the needs and emotions that you had within yourself. You just automatically started shutting them down. Or even if they surfaced, Your mind probably chose not to meet your own need in order to make somebody else happy and keep the peace or prevent the negative thing that would have happened to you if you expressed the need from happening. This is what we call complex traumatic stress. It's a big topic. I'll be delving into it so much more. It's what I work with my one-on-one clients in depth on. I have been getting certified as a neurosomatic practitioner to really guide women through this process because the brain is neuroplastic. It is so possible to rewire those neural connections and stop being triggered by the same things or responding in the same way. But it's very deep work. And it needs constant reinforcement because every time you want to set a boundary or recognize your own need, what's going to happen is you are going to feel threatened by the possibility of being cast out of the tribe. You having an opinion, you having a need, you having a boundary. is going to rub up against someone else's expectation. And your nervous system is so used to perceiving a threat of potential exclusion that you have trained your brain not to hold your boundary, not to listen to your need, in order to stay connected with the people you love or the people that you need, the people you're around. So boundaries are really hard and all of this again just means that even if you consciously want to set boundaries, even if everything I'm saying makes sense and you know this is something you want to work on, I just want you to be aware that you're going to have a very physical response in your body to setting and maintaining boundaries. And that's not a bad thing. It's not wrong at all. It is to be expected. And I want you to reinterpret that message from your body as a sign that this is important. As a sign that you are being invited to meet your own needs and express your own emotions for maybe the first time ever. And it's not easy. But how do we do that? Let me get into the how. I'm going to read a few things that kind of give you examples and help break this apart. But let me keep up this. Definition here so that you can ponder that while I'm reading all of this specifically the part about how boundaries are about you responding their action you take. regardless of what anybody else does. A boundary is a request you make of someone to change a certain behavior and a consequence of what you will do to self-protect if they violate the boundary again. It is something you create for yourself and it can achieve life-changing results. It's not a way of controlling other people. It's an emotional boundary, and it's like a property boundary, like the fence here, delineating where one person ends and another starts. It's a way of drawing a circle around ourselves and our behavior. It would seem that boundaries may separate us from others, but they really do quite the opposite. Healthy boundaries promote self-responsibility and empowerment. They lead to closer relationships with others, especially a closer relationship also with yourself. By contrast, weak boundaries promote emotionally immature behavior, which only distances us from others. Before setting a boundary, you must be clear to yourself about what your personal boundaries are. Most people have a clear line in their own home, which makes it easy to know when someone has crossed it. For instance, you live in your house. If someone knocks on your door, you have the option of answering the door or not. of inviting that person in or not. And this is all the more possible now with all of our smartphones and the Ring doorbell system or Google Home, all of these cameras that enable you to see who's outside without you even having to open the door and find out. Mind-blowing, right? But so often, people are not unclear of their own personal boundaries until someone crosses it. And then it's so confronting to have to tell the other person that's not okay. It feels so innately threatening to have to stand up for your boundary that you just cave and don't. So, for example, do you allow people to yell at you? If so, how does that make you feel? How does the situation play out? And if not, what do you do when this happens? This is an important boundary to consider. What would you do if someone raised their voice and got angry at you? How will you respond? when someone treats you in a way that you don't want to be treated. This is definitely where so many of my clients understandably struggle, and it's really hard when the relationship boundary needs to be set with someone in your own household, because it does. It feels so threatening and uncomfortable. But, for example, you might start to very calmly say. You might start to very calmly say. From here on out, you might start to very calmly say. From here on out, I won't stay in conversations where I'm being spoken to disrespectfully. Again, I know all of this is easier said than done. Additionally, boundaries need to be communicated when someone has violated them. We don't have to necessarily let people know ahead of time that this is the boundary that we have, but we absolutely need to let people know when our boundary has been crossed. And it's a classic fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. It's the idea that like, oh wow, the first time maybe they didn't know, maybe we didn't know that we weren't going to be okay with that thing. But then it's our responsibility to make it known that we are not okay with that. And if it happens again, here's what we are going to do. So then theoretically, it doesn't happen again. But if it does, we have to follow through with our response, the boundary response we have already set for what we'll do when that happens again. So we need to clearly communicate what we will do if the boundary is crossed. Here are some examples of things to think about. Many people confuse requests with boundary issues. For example, I might want my husband to take the trash out, right? But that's more of a request. If I were to say, you take the trash out or I'm, I'm trying to think of a threat that I could use, right? I'm not cooking dinner tonight, right? That's not a boundary. That is a threat. That is a punishment. That's retaliation because I didn't get what I wanted. That's being the child and the toddler that's throwing a tantrum when we didn't get our way. Versus, I will not let you speak to me that way. And if you do, I am going to remove myself from the conversation and go to another room. Do you hear how that's different? We're not expecting anyone else to change their behavior, but we are going to take control of the situation to give ourselves what we need to get what we want in that moment. That it's not okay for someone to treat us that way, but we're not expecting them to change. We're not putting the work on them not to yell at us. If they yell, it's fully in our control to leave. And if it's not, obviously we have way bigger problems going on and I want to be sensitive to that, okay? But again, this is where your nervous system is going to perceive the threat. In that example, where someone might be yelling at you, inside your body is screaming, I don't want to be talked to this way. I don't deserve this. I should not have to put up with this. But the toddler brain inside of you is going to maybe offer things like, I love them so much. I need them so much. I have to put up with this because maybe they're right or at a minimum I don't want to make them more mad because then they'll just yell at me or maybe lash out physically. This is the inner battle you're going to face. So in order to set and stick with boundaries, the real deep work is to first think about your level of tolerance. What are you comfortable with in terms of where and how you spend your time and your energy, the people you surround yourself with, the conversation topics you are or are not willing to discuss. I want you to, again, go back to the holiday season and think about who you are likely to encounter or what they might want to talk about or the points of difference that could become contentious. Or think about the events that you're likely to get invited to and the level of stress you might be under going into those encounters. I want you to start brainstorming a list of how you can listen to your own needs in those moments. So one boundary might be, I am going to leave one rest day in between every, I'm not going to overbook myself. My boundary is that I need time to decompress and recharge after an event. So that means if I have something scheduled on one day, I have to say no. I get to say no. It's important that I say no to something that comes up and is offered the very next day because that will just further drain me. That's going to ask more than I have to give. And yet it feels awfully uncomfortable to decline those invitations, right? This is why it's so hard to say no when we're asked to do things. We want to be part of it all and we hate thinking that other people will be disappointed, that we'll let them down. But then if you're ignoring your gut sense that, no, that's too much for me and I know myself, I know I need time to recharge my social battery and rest up and not have back to back things lined up to the point that I burn out. If you know that about yourself, then you need to practice. putting yourself first in this way, even if it makes other people uncomfortable. Then continue to think it through. When I say no to this invitation and my mother-in-law is upset that our family is not able to go to this dinner she wants to host on this day, how am I going to calmly and peacefully hold that boundary even though she's upset? without escalating the situation and making her more upset, but also allowing her to feel whatever she feels. She's allowed to be upset, but then I'm not negating my own need and I'm not caving on my own boundary by rolling over and doing what she wanted. I hope that makes sense. There's a lot to think of here, a lot of different things that go into this. I want to also just honor the fact that a lot of times we may have had physical boundary violations in our life. Someone may have touched you in a way that did not feel good or safe. And that is a whole other layer of really protecting your physical safety. I've talked mainly today about emotional boundaries and emotional safety. Recognizing your own needs, honoring them, building up that sense of self-trust that you have. The biggest thing I want you to take away from today is that boundaries are good. because they help you be your best self and they actually serve other people so that you are able to have the real, meaningful, vulnerable, equal connections. Mutually giving connection that you crave. Not lopsided or superficial connection. Not power struggles or anything like that. Like you're able to show up as your best self and give what you really have to give. And then you're taking care of yourself, even if no one else does. But then the physical boundary violation, that is also very challenging. I'm going to save more of that for maybe another time. Reach out if you're interested in learning more. This is big, deep stuff. And the holidays are going to bring up a lot of, hopefully, just little instances where you'll be invited to set a boundary and hold a boundary. Things like the invitation. But I just want you to be gentle with yourself and start to realize that there's a reason setting and holding boundaries is hard. It's because your brain privileges connection and survival. And because you are coming from a beautiful place of wanting other people to feel good. But we can't let other people's discomfort govern your actions. Specifically, you can't let other people's comfort matter more than meeting your own needs. And we want to gently retrain our own brain. to be able to hold that discomfort, other people's discomfort, in order to build self-trust with ourself. That we will take care of ourselves and not do the things that don't feel good to us. We will not let people treat us a certain way. We will not do the things that harm us. Whether it's being around certain people, talking about certain things, going to certain places, overdoing it. It's such an ongoing journey, but really important. And the way we get boundaries to stick is like everything else. It's practicing it. We're not going to be perfect ever. Okay? So we don't expect that. We just notice when we defined a boundary, we thought we had clearly communicated it to ourselves. We were given the opportunity to communicate it to others and then something went off the rails and maybe we didn't hold our boundary and follow through as we wanted. Okay? We don't make that wrong. We just realize, oh yeah, of course my brain got threatened and I defaulted to all the normal, subconscious, adaptive behavior I was programmed to do from a young age. I'm going to try again. And I bet you'll have plenty of opportunities to try again. Alright, your homework for this episode is to identify one boundary that you have or want to have, maybe especially something you have struggled with setting or maintaining in the past. Determine now what you will do if and when someone crosses that boundary. How can you avoid getting triggered and instead calmly but firmly take matters into your own hands to prove to yourself that you can trust yourself to honor your own needs and keep you safe. This isn't easy for sure, especially if you have spent your whole life feeling like it's not safe to voice your feelings, let alone dissent from others' opinions. But it is so important, and I am always here to help. Reach out to me by email or on Instagram at Solutions for Simplicity if this episode was helpful. Remember, you are always welcome to book a free 60-minute consult with me if you want to talk more about your personal situation. And then stay tuned for next episode, where I am sharing a kick-in-the-pants interview I did with my personal health and fitness coach. We go deep into why it's so hard for moms to prioritize their physical health and some really simple, powerful ways to change that for good. I will share more about my incredible health journey this year. I just can't ever thank my coach enough for guiding me through this. I can't wait for you to meet her, so join me back next Tuesday for that. And until then, remember nothing you do changes how wonderful and worthy you are. Have a great day. I know more than anyone how precious your time is, so the fact that you spent it listening to this podcast means the world. Make sure to subscribe, and if you got value out of this show, I would be so honored if you'd leave a review and share this episode with another busy mama who needs to hear it. We've got this.