#41 Self Boundaries | Recovery Secrets Series

Welcome to the Overcoming PTSD Podcast. My name is Brad Schipke, and this is the limited series called Recovery Secrets Daily Coaching. Now, these were private sessions that I originally ran as a paid coaching program, but now for the first time ever, I'm making all 100+ sessions available for free for all of you podcast listeners. And this series is over 100 days of practical strategies that have helped thousands of trauma survivors fully heal. So make sure to subscribe because I'm dropping a new episode every single weekday until the archive is complete, and you definitely do not want to miss it. So without further ado, let's dive on in.

All right, we are live here. Welcome everyone to our Recovery Secrets Daily coaching call. It is great to be here with each and every one of you. I'll let Brad do a little intro on the topic we're going to talk about today, and we'll make sure everything's rocking and rolling here.

Great to be here. Great to see you guys. Today we have an awesome topic. I'm very excited to talk about it. And it's gonna be setting boundaries with yourself. So we've touched on boundaries a little bit in the past, and really the foundation of boundaries starts with you. So today we're gonna be talking about how to really set that foundation with yourself, set those boundaries with yourself, and all the different nuances with that. It's a topic Kalyn is extremely, extremely well-versed in, and I'm excited to even pick her brain on it a little bit more too, cuz it's just an interesting conversation to have.

All right, so it's good to be here. Like Brad said, this is a topic I'm extremely passionate about. It's a topic that— it's one of the foundational things. You know, you hear about boundaries a lot, and there are a handful of things that we talk about that you hear a lot about, but a lot of times people have one little piece missing when they're talking about boundaries, when they're talking about grounding exercises, when they're talking about self-love. There's typically— what we find is they're so close to being like, they're kind of on the right track, but that track is veering off. And it's little things. That make the difference. So we're making like a tweak in the way that we think about boundaries, the way that we talk about boundaries. And that's the tweak is to first start with setting boundaries with yourself because you can't expect someone else, or rather, and I, I don't, I typically don't like the word unreasonable, but it's unreasonable to expect somebody else to uphold a boundary that you set in that relationship if you don't hold your boundaries as sacred. If you don't respect yourself. You can't expect other people to then respect those boundaries. Okay? Makes sense? So you have to first set boundaries with yourself. Now, Brad mentioned a couple of different things here, and this is gonna be the foundation to a lot of different things. You know, we can think about this when we talk about addiction. We can think about this when we talk about relationships. We can think about this— another really, another word that would fit a lot of what we're talking about is like self-discipline. But it's all about you respecting yourself, you upholding your own boundaries, your own guidelines, your own rules by which you live your life, so that then you can go out there. Once you have those solid, then you can go out there and you can set boundaries like a pro. But it has to start with you first.

Yeah.

On self-boundaries, meaning like, what do you think are some boundaries that you might need to set with yourself Before you can go out and be kind of a pro and an expert at setting boundaries out in the world. What are some boundaries that you think that you need to set with yourself first and foremost? Now let me know if this makes sense to you. You set these boundaries first, you respect them first, then and only then can you expect other people to respect your boundaries. A lot of times what we do when we hear about boundaries, when we think about boundaries, is we want other people to respect us so we feel better.

Mm-hmm.

Okay, that's not quite the goal of a boundary. The goal of boundary is to not get hurt. The goal of a boundary is to make sure that we are healthy. Okay, so you can't expect, and we don't want to expect somebody else to respect our boundaries so that we feel better. We want to feel solid. We want to feel excellent. We want to feel whole. And that boundary is so that doesn't get damaged. That boundary is almost like icing on the cake. Okay, so we don't get hurt in a tough situation, but we need to come to the table whole first and foremost. Learn to say no. Self-respect, right? Here's some great examples of boundaries you need to set with yourself. Okay, one I love to think about, and actually let's go off on this a little bit, right? That self-respect is super important. If you don't respect yourself, and there's a lot of ways that this is gonna kind of manifest in your life here. If you don't respect yourself and then you're going out and you're trying to set boundaries. So that other people respect you, how well do you think that's gonna go? And then we get frustrated when people don't uphold those boundaries.

We don't treat ourselves with respect, and then we basically expect that of other people as well. It's like, if you can't even treat yourself with respect, or you can't even treat yourself with love, there's no way you're going to allow— not allow somebody else to not treat you or treat you with respect, you know? So it always starts with you.

And I think that's so important. And one of my favorite rules ever, I remember learning this in elementary school, And I'm gonna flip it on its head here today, is the golden rule. Treat yourself the way you want others to treat you. That's what I wanna focus on here. Because if you don't care about yourself, other people are not going to respect and care about your boundaries and care about you, right? It doesn't mean they don't love you, right? This is not an all or nothing. But when it comes down to those moments that matter, the tough moments, those boundaries are not gonna get upheld. That love is not gonna be there. That respect is not gonna be there because you don't have it for you. And to be honest with you, even if it is there, you're not going to be able to acknowledge and accept it because you don't love and accept and care about and respect yourself. So even if it is there in the other person, you're not going to see it. All right, so inverse golden rule, we're flipping the golden rule on its head there.

What's an example for you, Kay, where, you know, maybe you realize in your life that like you weren't setting boundaries or maybe giving excuses or like blaming other outside forces and That relationship, that activity, that action didn't change, or that bad habit, until you changed your internal thoughts about yourself. Do you have an example for yourself?

Yeah, I do.

Out of theory into like reality, just as an example.

Yeah, so this is going to touch on addictions, it's going to touch on relationships, routines, mindset. Like, this comes into the conversation a lot more than I think we realize. So a great example, like, for me in regards to like relationships, where Self-boundaries were the beginning of someone else respecting other boundaries that I was trying to set. There are a handful of relationships in my family where for years I was trying to basically set these boundaries of like, you need to respect me and you need to not speak to me this way and all these different things. And you need to be positive and you need to treat me with respect. And for years I was trying to set that boundary and Nothing changed. Honestly, it actually just caused more problems. Nothing changed until I started doing that for myself, until I started treating myself with respect, until I started being more positive to myself, and also until I started treating them with respect. I'm expecting someone to treat me with respect without treating them with respect. There's the— here's the golden rule again: treat others the way you want to be treated and treat yourself the way you want others to treat you. Like, they're— that's, that's what I want to focus on here. And so it wasn't until I started respecting myself. I started being more positive in my environment and in their environment. I started bringing some levity. I started respecting them that things started to change. And that comes down to self-boundaries because it's all within my power, right? And so instead of being upset that they weren't upholding the boundary, I said, you know what? Let me forget about that for a second. Let me focus on me. And what I need and what I can do in this situation, right? So I mean, there's an example. I know it's not super like straightforward or concrete, and no, a lot of times these things aren't. But another example that I love a little bit more—

Can I touch on that one really quick? Just because it's a great example, because it has all different dynamics to it. So you respected yourself, or you're going into the situation with, or this relationship, and you wanted things. You wanted them to respect you. You couldn't allow that, and you weren't respecting them, and it was just all around, you wanted things to change, but mostly the responsibility was on their shoulders to make you feel good. Then you switched the responsibility, you took responsibility, and you started respecting yourself, and by proxy, you started respecting them more. So when you did that, it diffused a lot of the tension, obviously within yourself. Like, you did the work, you felt better, and then you were able to bring your best self there, and you gave the respect that you gave yourself, and also you were able to set that boundary. Because you respected yourself. If the other person, which I assume they did in the beginning, in the beginning it wasn't like, oh, I'm, I'm respecting you, so you're gonna respect me. Yeah. So in the beginning you respected yourself enough to set that boundary.

Yeah.

Until, and then the other people learned that she doesn't accept this and she's being nice to me and respecting me, which wasn't something that happened in the past. Therefore, they changed their behavior.

Well, and that's the thing. So like now, once you—

But it all started with you, with that shift of responsibility. And I wanted to point that out because it was such a great example.

I appreciate you saying that. And I appreciate you bringing a few things to the conversation here. So once I started to do that, once I turned the responsibility on me and I said, okay, I'm asking for these things and I'm not giving these things to myself and I'm not giving these things as a whole. So once I turned the focus on me and I started to respect myself and love myself and be more positive with myself, then that carried over into this relationship, into these conversations. Setting that boundary was an act of self-love. It was easy. Because I was respecting myself. Now, I was looking for more respect. Once I gave it to myself first, then I was able to basically see what that felt like. If you don't know what it feels like to respect yourself, you're not gonna know when a boundary is breached until it's way, way late. So once I brought myself this self-respect, I was able to feel what that self-respect felt like. Then and only then could I go into the conversation and here's the boundary.

And true too, huh?

Right. And then once the boundary was kind of attempted to being breached, because I was so solid in me, because I knew the second that boat started to rock, it was very easy to say actually no. Now I didn't get upset over it because I don't need that. That's icing on the cake. I don't need that to steady my boat. What that's going to do is unsteady my boat, but my boat is steady without that. Now before I was going into this situation, I was trying to set these boundaries because my ship was all over the place. It was in a storm and I was Trying to set that boundary so that it would quell that storm. Okay, but that's the opposite of what we need to be doing. So once I was able to bring all of that to myself, setting that boundary got easy. When you set boundaries, they should feel solid. They should feel the way that they sound. That's a wall. Solid. Okay, you're not gonna knock down a wall. It's solid. All right?

Yeah.

So once somebody starts to try to disassemble that wall, try to kind of burst through that wall, you're gonna be like, wait a minute, no. And it's going to be very easy then to do whatever you need to do to not allow them through that wall.

Yeah.

Okay. And you're going to be able to do that with this peace, with this peace, P-E-A-C-E, with this certainty. And that's how your boundaries should feel— certain. You're certain of this. It's a calmness. Yeah, it's a peace.

Now I'm gonna give an analogy here that might be totally off, but let's just say you have this beautiful Flower garden that you go to make. So with no boundaries, it's like you just let people come in and trample all over the flowers, all over. You've done all this hard work to make this nice thing, and now you're not letting people do it. That sounded so much better in my mind. That was the visual that was going on in my head, but it didn't come out verbally the exact way that I imagined it.

That's okay.

But I think it's great, like in that story, you knew what respect looked like cuz you gave it to yourself.

Mm-hmm.

You know, cuz in, in a lot of situations, and maybe some of you guys here, like maybe you don't know what respect is, right? Like you've never been truly respected by people in your life. And it's time to learn what that respect is by giving it to yourself first. And then you understand what it is and what you deserve, because that's what you're giving yourself. And then you know that and you can bring that forward.

So these are the most important boundaries that you're gonna set in your entire life, and it starts with you, right? So you wanna think about— there are internal and external rules and guidelines. That's what it is. It's internal and external rules and guidelines, similar to how maybe you have a dog or you have a young kid. And there's rules and guidelines. I know for me, I had a handful of rules and guidelines growing up, and there were certain things we were and weren't allowed to do. And that helped us, uh, you know, in some cases be as healthy as we could be, in some cases learn how to be like an adult, right? I mean, you're just like not allowed to like draw all over the walls and stuff. For us, it was like we weren't allowed to have sweets. I forget what it was, but like before 3 PM, we weren't allowed to have sweets. And all of a sudden you have to set these things for yourself. And I know for me and for a lot of people, all of a sudden nobody is setting these boundaries for them. Now you have to learn how to set those boundaries for yourself. You have to learn how to grow and guide yourself basically throughout the rest of your life. So these are the most important boundaries that you're going to set. So again, they're internal and external rules and guidelines. I have these boundaries when it comes to the way that I speak, the way that I hold myself, the way that I eat, right? Here are some external things. The way that I think, the way that I think in specific situations, right? If so, if something goes wrong, the way that I think in that situation, the way that I think about certain things right now, this is all kind of internal. So internal and external rules and guidelines. So I want you to think about right now your life, and I want you to think about what are my internal rules and guidelines? What are my external rules and guidelines? I want you to start to think about that. Do you have any? Do you have any? And it's not, you're not, you don't have to crack down on yourself to the point where, you know, you're so restricted and you can't do anything. And it's not about not enjoying life. I enjoy my life so much more because of these things. Because I don't let myself have ice cream for breakfast, I feel better during the day. As now it doesn't happen much anymore, but every now and then, wouldn't it just be great to have a pint of ice cream for breakfast? But my external and internal, in that case, rules and guidelines say, actually, but we'll have it tonight. We'll have it tonight. After, you know, we finish our day, and that feels good. And I go to my workout and I show up there and I take care of myself. Now that makes me feel better every single day and better about my life as a whole. It's not restrictive to me. I'm not denying myself to the point where I'm miserable. I'm keeping the bumpers on the bowling lane up, okay? So that I make sure I stay on track with my goals.

Why do you put those bumpers up?

Why I put those bumpers up? I am the bumpers. I put the bumpers up so that, so I don't go off track because I respect myself, because I love myself.

Because those are the things that are best for you.

Because I want a certain outcome.

Yeah.

And we're all human at the end of the day.

I don't have bumpers.

You're gonna go into the gutter if you don't have bumpers. I'm just gonna be honest with you. We're all human beings. So you just have these bumpers. Now the bowling lane is pretty big. The bowling lane, if you see it, like you can still miss all the pins if you have the bumpers up. I don't know if y'all know that. You can still miss every single pin. So you have plenty of room to still be human. This isn't so restrictive. that the bumpers just hit it dead on every single time, right? So I want you to think about your internal guidelines, your external guidelines, how you live your life. That's the foundation to these self-boundaries.

Mm-hmm.

How are you living your life and why are you living your life this way? Once you start to set those, once you start to respect yourself enough to, whether you wanna use the word discipline or not, but discipline yourself and love yourself and care about yourself, And take care of yourself, then that's gonna radiate out into every other relationship, every other boundary that you try to set. Now, another example would be, I have had certain things that I'm not willing— basically, I, I've set this boundary with myself. I'm not willing to say in a fight. So if you're in any sort of relationship, typically you'll get to the point where you know someone well enough where you know what's gonna really push their button.

Mm-hmm.

Like, you know what's gonna tip them over the edge and make them lose it. or really cause damage. There are certain things that you can set boundaries with, and this is something that I did, that I had told myself— I set this boundary with myself— even if I'm so upset, I'm so mad, I'm so whatever, that it just feels like things are going off the rail, even in the worst case scenario, I will not say this thing. I will not bring this thing up. That was a self-boundary that I set with myself, and I was able to uphold that. Right. And once you're able to uphold that, First of all, you feel more confident. You feel more confident in your life in general. You're more in control because you can say, listen, even if I'm expressing things and I'm emotional and this isn't going perfectly, these handful of things or this one thing I will not bring to the table because I know how much damage it will do and that I'm not here to do damage. In these terrible situations, you can have those self-boundaries. And another one is addictions and behaviors. And this is really where it's a little bit more obvious in regards to boundaries typically. Then when we're talking about relationships, when we're talking about self-respect, it can be a little bit more straightforward. So you have to be the one to set up boundaries for your addiction. For those of you who have ever been in AA or NA or struggle with any sort of addiction or have sobriety from any sort of addiction, you know that the world's not gonna stop for you. You know that the world is not gonna stop drinking, not stop doing drugs. You know that even your friends and family, they're not gonna stop drinking. You know that the world's not gonna stop for you. Your friends, your family are not going to stop drinking. They're not gonna stop doing drugs. They're not gonna stop watching TV. The world is not going to respect the fact that you're an addict or that you're gaining sobriety from an addiction. Life is going to go on. You're going to be in front of inputs that tempt you, that trigger you, that whatever. You're going to find yourself in situations where you have the option to drink, to do drugs, to whatever it is. You have the option. It lies in your self-boundaries. To not do that thing. Nothing is going to save you. You wanna be able to have such strong boundaries with yourself that there could be alcohol in the fridge. Now, I'm not saying this, that you have to do this. I'm just saying that's how strong you want that boundary to be. That a TV could be on in front of you and you could shut it off if that's your thing. Or drugs could be on the table in front of you and you take them and you put them away or you throw them away. But that's the point. Now, especially in your first 90 days, there's nothing wrong with optimizing your environment. We talk about optimizing your environment and how powerful and how important that is.

Mm-hmm.

But the point I'm making here is you want and need your boundaries so strong that you could be in front of this thing, this input, whatever it is— video games, TV, pornography— it could be right there. Drugs, alcohol, right there. And guess what? No one's gonna know. No one's gonna know except for you. You could be alone, walk in your house, and for whatever reason, there's drugs on the counter. You could be— no one will know. But you will know. And that's why these self boundaries are first and most important. They're foundational because it comes down to the way that you see yourself and how you want your life to be. So for things that I've in the past been addicted to, I could be right in front of them. They could be in front of me. No one else in the entire world would know. No one would know. And I still turn it off or I still put it away or I still get rid of it. That's a strong self boundary.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And ultimately, like that right there, I don't know how many of you actually grasped how important that is, that strong boundary of like, even if it's there, like if you have a boundary, like it shouldn't matter basically. It's not even be strong enough. It's just like you have the boundary and you just don't, you don't pass it. Basically, I made a lot of excuses, but I used to put a lot of power into other things. So for example, I'm gonna remove the TV and now I won't ever watch TV again. And I thought that Optimizing my environment would change everything. And I put— basically put the responsibility of my bad habit, breaking my bad habit, on my environment, right? So basically I was using that as a crutch to not really set the boundary for myself. And I'm like, oh, if I just do these things on the outside, I don't actually have to ever resist anything and I'll just be easy peasy, which wasn't the case. So the question I want to pose to you guys is, are you using any sort of environment thing or external thing as an excuse or as a device to create that boundary for yourself. There's nothing wrong with optimizing your environment, not at all. We still do that. We still want to optimize our environment because it does have beneficial consequences. But it's when you put all of the responsibility on the environment and none on yourself. And that's so powerful to be like, doesn't matter. I can be put into the most triggering Addiction-wise or habit-wise, not like PTSD-wise, but even that, like I could be the most triggered emotionally, but I still have these boundaries in place. I could be put into the most addiction-triggering or tempting environment and not do it because I respect myself enough to not do it. And doing this thing is not best for me, but you have that boundary set for you. And that is so powerful. That's so transformational. So different out there. And it puts so much power into your hands. And it's unbelievable. And the other point that I thought you— I love that you said is no one's going to be watching you. No one. Like, that's the other thing. We want other people, other things to hold us accountable or to basically do the work for us. At the end of the day, it's like the real power comes from what are you going to do when you're alone, when nobody's watching? What are you doing? Are you letting these boundaries slide just because no one's going to see you do it? And that's why it always comes back to that self-respect.

Yeah.

What do I deserve? What do I truly want out of my life? And when you have that self-respect, that decision's easy. And it doesn't matter if you're around other people or if you're alone, you respect yourself on not to do this behavior or do this thing because simply it's not good for you, right? Whatever. If it's like binge-watching TV, if you respect yourself, you're not going to do that when you're alone because you respect yourself. And like, if it's something that you deem not good for you, you know, obviously like these are all choices that You have to make, and I'm not saying that's good or bad. I would say it's bad for most people, but you won't allow yourself to engage in that negative behavior because you respect yourself. So the foundation is that self-respect, is that self-love. And so how do you develop that sense of self-respect so that even if you're in a tempting environment, even if, or self-respect or boundaries, however you want to take it, even if you're in the most triggering environment, or even if you're alone, let's say you're alone in the most triggering environment. But you can still stay strong and still do what's best for you and hold that boundary, hold that line. Is it self-respect? Like, is that really the turning point? But how do you do that? How do you get to that point?

This is a really good question. I've thought about this a lot. Because one of the things that you had briefly talked about when you were talking there that I wanted to hone in on again, you know, you had said, even if you're in the most triggered environment, and then you said addiction-wise, and you said, well, actually PTSD-wise too. So a boundary is a boundary, a wall is a wall. And what we're talking about, these self-boundaries, this wall that you set for yourself. And so basically with that wall, there is no backdoor. There are no excuses with that wall. That's what a good boundary is. That's what a good boundary is.

No matter what happens, that's what you're saying.

Exactly. So no matter how triggered you get PTSD-wise, even if it's the worst day of your life, okay, even if it's so challenging and everything is falling around or falling down around you.

Even if that means separating from someone you love. So you have to have a boundary so strong so that you can even walk away. And I don't mean like always walk away. It's a conversation. There were certain moments with PTSD where I had to protect myself and basically focus on myself and walk away because it was so painful, because I respected myself. So even if you're with somebody you love, you know, right?

So, but it comes down to that self-boundary first. So in order to do that, you first need to respect yourself and need to love yourself, right? So even in the worst of situations, Even when the relationship is falling apart or the relationship is over or the job is over or whatever it is, or you've gotten so triggered that you're in this place, you're alone. No one's gonna know if you use. No one's gonna know what things you do in that place. Even then, you need to respect yourself. Even then, you need to not use, not watch pornography, not watch TV, not do drugs, not do alcohol, whatever your thing is. Even when you're most triggered, even when the future looks bleak and helpless, even then.

Mm-hmm.

And so you had asked me like, How do you respect yourself enough? How do you love yourself enough? And I thought a lot about this because there were a lot of moments on my journey where some of them literally were like the worst day of my life or felt like rock bottom moments. A lot of it is going to come down to everything that we're talking about here, like the work that we're talking about here. A lot of it's going to come down to the mindset. The mindset is the foundation for a reason. We talked a couple weeks ago, we talked about self-talk. That self-talk is so important. You're going to talk yourself into A state where you're using and you're doing negative things because you're triggered, or you're going to talk yourself out of it. And you are capable of talking yourself into it, and you are just as capable of talking yourself out of it. So when you're there at rock bottom and you have this self-boundary that you're not going to do X, Y, and Z, you are either going to talk yourself into doing X, Y, and Z, or you're going to uphold that self-boundary and say, you know what? I set this for myself. I'm gonna do something else instead. Okay? And now what's important here, and I think what can get tricky here, is you might not even have the best relationship with yourself at that moment. You might even say, I hate myself, so whatever. What I want you to do in those moments, what I want you to think about, what I want you to lay on is the self-talk. And I want you to think about, and I want you to say to yourself that this is a commitment that you made to yourself. This is a commitment that you're gonna uphold. One of the things I love about the AA literature is one day at a time. Although sometimes, and they talk about this in AA too, they'll say, you, you know, if you can't go one day at a time, go one hour at a time or go one minute at a time. That in those moments is such a helpful mindset, right? Because you're feeling hopeless. You're feeling like the future's bleak. I hate myself. There's no point in any of this. Why am I doing any of this? That's when those boundaries are gonna be tested to the nth degree.

Mm-hmm.

That's when they're gonna be most tested. Now, I hope you don't find yourself in this situation, but if you do find yourself in this situation, I want you to know you're still very capable of upholding those boundaries. When that situation inevitably ends, as all situations, good and bad, do, you are going to feel like you are a rock star, like you are on top of the world, because you were able to uphold those boundaries in that situation. And once you have a couple moments like that under your belt, nothing is going to break those boundaries. And we're talking about self-boundaries here. Once those are that strong and It's amazing to have that under your belt. You're going to be able to face anything in your life, and then you're going to really see that there are no excuses, and you don't need excuses on this journey. And there is no, you know, in the future, if this happens, I'm going to use or I'm going to do this thing, because you'll have tested those boundaries. There are no excuses for letting these boundaries crumble, even in the depths of the worst situations. I want you to go one day at a time. I want you to go one hour at a time, one minute at a time. Don't worry about the future in those moments. Whatever your self-boundaries are, just uphold them for that minute, for that hour, for that day. Go day by day. Now, sometimes it's gonna be multiple days or even sometimes multiple weeks before you kind of come out of this and things start to look better and get better, and it's gonna be easier to— it's not gonna be such a focus to uphold those self-boundaries. But again, I promise you, if you take that mindset, if you talk to yourself and talk yourself through it, You're going to feel amazing on the other end and you're going to even feel good doing it. Now, it's not going to be perfect. Like I said, the world's not going to stop for you, but you're going to have this pride that nobody can take away.

Yeah. So what I pull off from that is the biggest danger of breaking whatever boundary is your own thought process, right? Of you saying, why am I doing this in the first place? You feel hopeless, you feel that urge, you're triggered to do this thing, whatever it is. And then you start thinking like, why am I doing this in the first place? Oh, this is kind of pointless. And you start convincing yourself To actually break that boundary. And what you're saying is you need to take control of that thought process, that self-talk is the most important thing when maintaining that in those hard moments, right?

Right.

So you take control of the self-talk and saying things like, I deserve it, or that one day at a time, one moment at a time mindset to get through it. And when you get through it, you get that confidence.

Yes.

It makes it that much easier. It's like, Once you push through the first hard boundary or the boundary that is, you're being tested the most, it's easier. How do you set yourself up for that moment? You need a strong boundary in the first place to, before you're tested, you can't just like, you know, be like, I'm not gonna do this thing and then you're good, right?

Yeah.

Is it as easy as that or do you need to do some more kind of thinking or identifying the whys behind it or the pain? Like, I know something huge is like developing the pain behind it. If I, Don't take this action. What's the pain of not doing this? And what's the pain of doing this other thing? That's what I'm thinking about is like preparing yourself for that moment, for that hard moment. Do you feel like we covered that?

No, I don't. And I want to touch on that and I might ask you to ask me that question again. I want to go back one second to what you were saying about self-talk and basically in a different way, being prepared for the moment where that boundary is being tested. So I want to show you a little bit of like what that looks like, because there were moments On my journey and my recovery journey, my sobriety journey, where that self-talk was not— it, you know, you were saying you have to harness that. Like, you're going to talk yourself into using or into breaching that boundary, or you're going to talk yourself out of it. So you need to get control of that. There are moments, and there will be moments for you, there are moments for me, where that is and can be your only focus. It's not as easy as like sitting here right now monitoring your self-talk. It's going to take every ounce of energy that you have sometimes. And there are moments on my journey where I was in situations like this, where I would stand in front of the mirror, I would look myself in the eye, and I would talk to myself for 10, 15, 20, 25 minutes. And I would just speak to myself because that's how it helped me to focus on those thoughts. I would say them out loud and I say, hey, listen, like, everything's gonna be okay. All we have to do is not use right now. Like, we're just gonna focus on one minute at a time and we're gonna feel good about this. we're not going to feel good right in this moment, but in the future we're going to feel good about this. It's going to help us love ourselves, like all these different things. And I would sit there and I would talk to myself and repeat different affirmations, different mantras, whatever it is, like just like literally stand there, look at myself, talk to myself out loud over and over again. Sometimes I do that, like I said, for 15, 20 minutes, and then I would go back to living my life. And then 10 minutes later, I'd find myself back in the bathroom or back in my bedroom looking in, like hands on the mirror, I would hold myself there when things got really hard, when that boundary is really being tested. I would literally hold myself there and look at myself and say, hey, you can do this. All we're gonna do is not use. We're just gonna focus on doing something else. And then I'd like hop in the shower or whatever. Like there, there are plenty of other options to not use and then just go moment by moment, day by day.

And so your question also, so you're saying there's no quick hack to get to basically skip through all the part, the resistance?

No, unfortunately there's no quick hack. If there's a quick hack, I promise I'd give it to you. It's extremely challenging and that's what makes it so strong. And that's what really shows you how strong it is, right? You set that boundary, you have that wall, and in those moments, you know, you're fortifying that. You're really cementing that in. That foundation is being set. And once you get through those moments, nothing is going to be able to breach that wall. So your question was what?

Oh, so before you are in that hard moment, how did you prepare yourself for that moment where you were in front of the mirror saying, All that stuff for yourself to get yourself to not use or partake or cross that boundary? What were the things that set you up for success for that moment?

So there are a couple things that kind of come into play. Like we're talking about mindset is a huge thing that comes into play here. Another huge thing that comes into play is commitment, commitment and focus. Now I'm describing this as for some things it's gonna be that challenging. It's gonna be fairly simple to set the boundary, to uphold it with yourself. Course correct, to make adjustments. Really, that challenge is going to come with addictions and compulsions, different things like that. So not all things are going to be that challenging, but it's going to come down to your commitment and your focus. And so what set me up for success so I could find myself, instead of using, instead of doing something negative, standing in front of the mirror, holding myself there, and putting all the effort and energy I had in the world into not doing something negative, was commitment and was focus. Now, part of that commitment was seeing the damage and the pain That behavior, that action, or whatever it is does to you. So that's part of making that commitment. But the other commitment, you have to make a commitment to yourself at some point to say, hey, listen, I deserve this. And even if I feel like I don't deserve this, I know at some level that I deserve this. The people in my life deserve this. It could be your dog. Like, that was a huge thing for me. I was like, you know what? There are gonna be moments where I think I don't deserve this, where I think I should be treated poorly, where I think I should treat myself poorly. But I know that when I'm using or when I'm doing this behavior, I'm taking time away from Shiloh. I could be walking on the beach with him. I could be, you know, just hanging out with him. You know, he's only got so long here. We all do, right? I could be calling my friends. I could be checking up on them, seeing how their kids are doing. Like, there's all sorts of things I could be doing. And that drove the pain enough for me and helped me make that commitment to say, hey, listen, even if nobody knows I'm doing this thing, even if they don't see the impact, The impact is there. So I deserve this because the people in my life deserve this. Because there were moments where I wavered and I said, I don't know if I deserve this. I don't like myself. I hate myself. There were moments where I said that. So that commitment and that focus, and the focus is going to be an important thing depending on what this is, specifically if this is an addiction, you know, you want to see the ripple effect of your behavior. So there's just one tiny little moment from one tiny little thing. So looking at the ripple effect, looking at the damage it causes you, it causes your loved ones. Again, that's what the ripple effect is for, because it does. How possibly, if people aren't around me when I'm drinking, when I'm doing drugs, does it cause damage? How possibly, if people aren't around me, people don't see me using pornography or using video games or eating or spending. People aren't around me, they don't see me doing that. It can't possibly affect them. It possibly can. It absolutely does. So seeing that pain, seeing the ripple effect of your actions. Even if it— like, I want it to be for you, and there are moments where you're going to be able to see that it's for you, and ultimately it is for you. But seeing the damage it does for other people, and that is your responsibility to lessen that damage, can be a really big help in the beginning. And so it's going to come down to that focus. It has to be your ultimate focus to set these self-boundaries, whatever they are. If it's one at a time, it's one at a time. When we're talking about an addiction, we're talking about a like a compulsion of behavior, sometimes it's going to be one at a time and it's going to take all that energy and all that focus. And then you're going to set another one and then you're going to set another one. Okay? So you have to be focused on it. If I wasn't committed to it, if I didn't see the damage it was doing to everyone in my life, if I didn't take responsibility for that damage and say, you know what, I'm doing this for me, I'm also doing this for everyone else. And I do deserve this. And one of the things that I thought about, and at the beginning of this journey, I was able to kind of Do enough mindset work to think about this. I said, even if everything else falls apart, the only thing that I have at the end of the day is me. And if I don't feel good about the choices I'm making, if I feel ashamed about the choices I'm making, it doesn't matter if people see that. The only thing I have is me. Everything could fall apart. And I knew that. I knew my relationship could end. I knew, you know, I could lose my family. And I said, you know what? Even if all that happens, I'll have me. And that came into play when it came to these decisions too. Because when you lay down at night, the only thing that you're guaranteed is you and what's going on up here in your mind. And so with that guarantee, I want you to think about that. Not everything is going to fall away, but even if it did, to be honest with you, like it or not, you're stuck with you. You are stuck there with you. You might as well like that person, love that person, respect that person, be proud of that person. Because guess what? If it all falls away, Mm-hmm. And you've done your best to show up as your very best each and every day, and you love yourself, you're going to be okay. If you do that, it's not all going to fall away. If you start owning up to the things that you're not good at, and if you start respecting yourself, loving yourself, it's going to radiate out into every area of your life, and none of that is going to fall away. Does that answer your question?

I think we need a moment of silence for that. How many people feel that? I think that's a perfect place to end off. With that feeling, you know, like you're not guaranteed anything except for yourself. And no matter what happens, you deserve it. Judy says, I like the flower garden analogy because if you just throw seeds on the ground and you don't set boundaries for them, they'll sprout here and there and people will trample over them. But if you put boundaries around them and set them up, solid people will walk through and see them and be much less likely to cross over and trample them. And then you have the opportunity to allow those flowers to grow. If the flowers are being trampled right when they're sprouting up, you, they won't grow very big.

So Ella's sharing, Tony Robbins said to have a higher standard. I'm understanding this as a higher standard with myself, my internal boundaries, but of course perfection is the lowest standard I could place myself in, right? So, you know, like raising that standard for yourself is awesome. And I love the way that we kind of ended there with my little rant, right? Like it is all about you. Because only when it's all about you do you get to give to others. And there's all these silly sayings like, you can't pour from an empty cup. If you take care of you, that cup's gonna be overflowing and you can give and give. Like, I, I, I don't like that people use the word selfish in a bad way, in a bad context. When I was growing up, it was like, don't be selfish. What? No, I want my kids to be selfish. I do. I wanna be selfish. I wanna focus on myself because then and only then can we come together and we can make something super special. The more that you focus on you, and because you, and I love this and it says a lot, you are the only thing guaranteed at the end of the day. The only thing is you better love yourself and respect yourself and care about yourself. I mean, you're paired up with you like it or not. So you want those boundaries because they help you love yourself at such a deeper level, respect yourself at such a deeper level, hold yourself with so much confidence and go through hard times with a lot more grace, a lot more peace. If you have those self-boundaries and you're solid in yourself, you can walk through life in a whole different energy. We went a little extreme here in talking about these self-boundaries. Some of them are going to be a lot easier to set. You know, they're not all going to be moments where you're in the mirror holding yourself there and, you know, convincing yourself to just be in the moment and not do negative things, but they can get to that point. And all of them are really, really important. Isabella sharing, love all this. So much of my life is consumed by negativity and anger. I'm working on it daily, but this will be my main focus for now. It's going to be a tremendous help to make this a focus because so often we want other people to solve our problems in a lot of different ways. And it's a natural thing to want. I don't want to have my own problems. I want you to solve my problems. And so I'm going to set a boundary with you so that you don't hurt me and so that I don't have this problem. But at the end of the day, I'm still going to have this problem. Even if he upheld that boundary, I'd still have that problem, right? And so when it comes to boundaries, when it comes to everything in life, the more you turn the focus inward, the better everything is going to get. And that is something backwards. I definitely got the wrong message growing up. It can seem super backwards because we don't want to be selfish. You know, we don't want to— I don't know, mean to people, narcissistic even.

And that's the fear.

That's the fear that if you Take time for yourself. If you get selfish, and I want you to get selfish—

And you feel guilty.

That you're narcissistic and you don't care about other people. Though I care about other people, like, I have a bleeding heart, like, through and through. And the way that I love people and the way that I now understand that I can show that love is through being selfish. I'm an empath. I'm extremely empathetic. I love everyone. I love everything. And the way that I show that love, the way that I can best express that, is by first being selfish. First being selfish. And then once you're all full up, then you can be selfless because you've already taken care of yourself. And that's the most important thing.

And it's something I think we should come back to again, you know, talking about like building that foundation of self-respect and self-love because that's where it all comes from.

There's so much more to this topic. And I just wanted to have people wrap their head around this self-boundary thing because so often we're thinking about boundaries for other people, setting boundaries in relationships. I'll even have friends reach out and ask about boundaries and think about boundaries. And that this is always the thing I come back to. If you don't have boundaries with yourself, you're not gonna be able to set those boundaries in relationships. You have to start with you. Isabella sharing, I'm gonna keep walking away from kids when they scream and yell, come back when calm, and sit and talk when they are ready. That's a great tactic, to be honest with you. And there's something to be said for a little time, a little space to let everything kind of settle. Let everyone get not so hotheaded, kids included. Not so hotheaded and come back at a later date. Not everything needs to be solved right this minute. Now, that doesn't mean you have to wait days or weeks to solve it, but not everything has to be solved right this second. Not everything needs weeks, but it's okay to take a little space, even a couple hours, and then come back and talk when you're level-headed. So that's awesome, Isabella. That's awesome. And taking yourself out, setting that boundary, saying, hey, I'm not gonna even let myself get involved to the point where I feel like I could lose it or I feel like I could get upset. Like, you know what? This can wait till later. That's awesome. Nancy sharing, walking through with grace and peace and strength and dignity. Worthy goals here indeed. Indeed, Nancy. Absolutely. Please be sharing, love yourself healthfully and love others and show up with elevated energy and an extra bucket for others who need help. I mean, I mean, that's really what it is. Like, you fill yourself up, you love yourself, you're whole, then you can give at an unbelievable level when you take care of yourself. Judy Sharing, I like the change and the thought of being selfish. I want you to be selfish. I really do. Be selfish. Take care of yourself. You wanna know the definition of selfish?

Yes.

Holding one's own self-interest as the standard for decision-making. Now, I wanna point out it doesn't say terrible person. I wanna point out it doesn't say the worst human being on the planet. All that it says is holding one's self-interest as the standard for decision-making. You're making decisions based on what's best for you. There's nothing wrong with that, because then and only then can you take care of the other people in your life. Guess what? You're being selfish by getting sober from your addiction. You're being selfish by healing your PTSD. You're putting your own self-interest first so that everyone else in your life Can be more whole. You can give to everyone else in your life. You get sober, everyone else in your life gets brought up, even if they don't realize it. They'll feel it. I promise you that. You heal, everyone else in your life gets elevated, even if they don't understand it or notice it. Your relationships are going to change. By maybe definition, a relationship is a system, an equation. This plus this equals something. If you change a part of that equation, The outcome is going to change naturally, even if you only change one part. If I change me, but he doesn't change him, still the equation has changed. And so the outcome is gonna change. Everything in your life will change dramatically.

Yeah. The definition too is interesting cuz it says using your own self-interest as a, basically as a basis for decision-making. And that can be viewed in different ways. Generally, what's for your own best self-interest is not basically being mean and pushing people away or doing things that, like, first thing that comes to my mind is like being greedy and stepping on people to get to your goal. That's not in your best self-interest. Like, you're not going to be a very happy person. Not many people are going to like you. You're going to be alone. You're going to probably be depressed. And once you reach that goal, you're probably going to end up feeling empty and unfulfilled. So it's not in your best interest to not help people. It's not in your best interest to treat people poorly. It's not in your best interest to, I already said, but like be mean to other people. 'Cause we all, like, who here wants to give back to people? Who like loves giving back to people and like that makes you feel good. That's what's best for you. And when you really think about it, it's like most people want to help people. Most people want to do good things. They want to leave the world better than they found it. So, and that's something for you. That's something you want to do.

I love it. It's a super sweet topic and I think Too, our generation and probably generations before us have this skewed view of being selfish and maybe don't even understand the definition.

I think it's like, there's nothing wrong with wanting to help people. And like, that can be the message that it can be seen if we say be selfish. That could be seen as like, oh, just be mean to people, don't care about them. But that's not really what's best for you either. You're not gonna be happy. Like if you're truly selfish and you care about yourself in the way that we're saying it, there's obviously a lot of negative connotations to it. It's not in your best self-interest to be mean to people. Who wants a bunch of other people to not like you, to hate you? It's not like— who wants their family to not like them? You know, like nobody. Like, it doesn't make any sense. So like, if you truly think about what's best for you, it's usually aligned with what's best for other people too.

All right. So I think that that wraps up what we have here today. I lost my train of thought. There was one more thing I wanted to say. I forget. But we have an awesome lineup planned and this was a great session. So amazing, amazing job with everything that we talked about here today. Look forward to seeing y'all for a fun capital F U N session. Oh, here's what I wanted to say about our fun session. This is not exclusive to relationships, right? So this is something you can bring to yourself as well. You can bring this to your own journey. You can bring this, you can solo bring this basically. You can bring this to other people even if they don't know you're on the journey or if they're not on the journey. All sorts of stuff like that. So a lot to look forward to. Like I said, we have an awesome lineup. We're going to talk a little bit more about About what we talked about here today. We're gonna go a little deeper on self-respect and building that foundation of self-respect. So amazing, amazing job. Thank you for your patience. I love you. I believe in you at the very highest level. I will see you all very, very soon. Awesome job, guys.

Hey everybody, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you want to learn more about how you can coach with me directly, there's a link in the description you can check out. There's absolutely no pressure. The main thing is I wanted you to get value from this episode here, but I hope you have a fantastic day and I'll see you in the next one.