21 Oct 2020 · 32 min
Dr. Aziz breaks down four stages of boundary-setting, from having none to setting them skillfully. He shows the difference between blunt and subtle approaches using real examples like family pressure about marriage and workplace interruptions, then offers practical moves: steer toward what you want, use "I noticed" language, and practice assertiveness.
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Welcome to Shrink for the shy guy. This is the show for you. If you are sick and tired of being held back by fear, self doubt, social anxiety, shyness, anything that's stopping you from you being you. I'm going to share the most powerful tools and resources that I've been discovering over the last 15 years on my journey to eradicate social anxiety and instill confidence first in myself and then in every single person that I meet on my journey. You're going to learn these tools and how to apply them in your life now so that you can become the most free, powerful, bold, authentic version of you. Hey, welcome to today's episode of the show. Today we're going to talk about boundaries. Oh, yes. Everyone's favorite subject. So I'm excited to share some really powerful insights with you that will help you navigate all interactions with other humans, all relationships, because boundaries are an essential part of relationships. And, you know, most people have never even studied them or know much about them or if they have, it's often a little bit clunky and not as effective as it could be. So not only are you going to learn about boundaries today, but also how to do them a lot more skillfully, which I think is really the next level of being able to create harmonious, effective relationships, whether it's for work or in your personal life or in your love life. So if you are benefiting from this show and you found it useful, I would love if you'd be willing to go to itunes and give this show not only just a review like the stars, probably five, yes, you decide, but then actually write a few sentences about what you're learning, what you're benefiting from, what value it's bringing into your life. Because one, I love hearing about the impact that this show has on people and that keeps me fueled because here I am talking to nobody in a room, but I'm not. I'm talking to you. And when I hear back from you and I can read that information and feel the impact and I'm inspired to keep doing this. Been doing this show for, oh, I don't know, six years now. What I know I'm still going, still kicking, so I would love to connect with you in that way. And it supports the show so more people can find it because there's a lot of people out there who are suffering in silence, suffering alone. They feel disconnected, separate, less than. Don't want anyone to know about their social anxiety or self doubt. And we're here to connect with each other and help and support speaking of that, in addition to going to itunes to give it a review. Also, if you're not a part of my Facebook group called Confidence Warriors, I'd love to invite you to join there. That's a cool way to stay connected. It's free. You have to get approved, though. But you just go there to go to Facebook and do a search for Confidence warriors, and then we could join in. And there's a great community there, and people are sharing and posting, and just a fantastic way to know that you're not alone. Okay, so let's talk about boundaries. And this came up just recently in a mastermind call where someone was talking about setting a boundary with family members. I was like, ooh, this is gonna be fun. So let me give a quick overview of generally how people go about setting boundaries and what some of the pitfalls are so you can see what you're doing. And then we'll talk about some of the tips to make it more skillful. And I'm gonna get real specific here, so you can leave with some exact strategies so it's not gonna be totally theoretical. Sound good? Okay. So I'd say the first stage that a lot of people are at is no boundaries. Very unclear. Don't know what we want. You know, how much should I talk to this person? Well, however much they want to talk to me, someone gives you a call, and you're like, I gotta give them a call back. Oh, someone texted me. Okay, I gotta text them back right away so they're not upset with me. Okay, what does that person need? Okay, what does that. And we're sort of operating reactively to whatever the demands of other people are. That's life without boundaries. Does that sound familiar? Oof. I know. I lived there a long time, and it's very unpleasant, and I can fall back there when I'm stressed. We'll often default to that. If you're a history of being a nice person, when you get really stressed, you might go back to being extra nice and feel this obligation, this urgency to get back to people, or they're gonna be upset, or they're gonna be mad at you. You're gonna be failing. You'll be a bad person. You're gonna get abandoned. So that's life without boundaries, and it sucks. Then what happens? And if you're in that space, you absolutely have to read my book. Well, first of all, keep listening to these podcasts that will help you. But also listen to my book or download it, read it, whatever it's called. Not nice. And I Don't even remember the subtitle, so I can't tell you it, but just look up not nice by Dr. Aziz. And that's going to be about really how to discover who you are and what you want and how to start living life on your terms and being able to say no and ask for what you want and stop being such a nice, pleasing, afraid of conflict person. So super valuable. And then what happens is people read that book or you know, there's another book by Townsend. I think his name is about boundaries, you know, or just people hear about the concept of boundaries or something happens where they get an idea of like, wait a minute, wait a minute, I can say something. I can say what I want, I can say what I don't want. I have a right to communicate these things. And that's all very good and healthy. And then they go about setting boundaries and oh, I will say actually that there's a stage when you're in the boundary list stage, you actually do still set boundaries. That's very important to highlight. You do it by flight. You will leave relationships, you will cut people out of your life, right? It's like someone does something you don't like, you just leave. You never go back, you avoid them, you end the relationship. That is how you set boundaries, because it's like a survival mechanism. It's the only level of boundary you can set because it has to be done unconsciously. So just wanted to highlight that as part of the first pattern. And I know that because I lived that a lot myself for many years. But then once you discover boundaries and you can set them, then people start to do it a little bit more consciously and they say no to something, or they say, hey, this isn't working for me, or I don't want to talk about this thing, or I need this thing. And it's fantastic. It is valuable. It is life changing. It's going to improve your life in all kinds of ways. There is a challenge in this stage, though, and there's a couple I want to highlight. One is there can be a bit of entitled energy in this stage. It's kind of like this is the unspoken story that the person is the attitude, the mindset. It's like, listen, I took your shit for 12 years, okay? You just told me what to do and I did it. And now it's my time and now I'm gonna say what I want and you're gonna listen, right? As if the previous 12 years of you not having boundaries was the other person's fault. Right. That was you not being able to speak up for yourself. It's not about them, it's about you. Right. So. But, you know, that's often the case with humans is we want to blame someone, whether it's directly or indirectly. So sometimes there's a bit of an entitled energy to it. And the way that comes across is we're a little harsher in our tone or in our language. Another thing is that people often still don't feel like they have permission to set a boundary, and so they do it. They feel. They still feel guilty or afraid. And when I say setting a boundary in case you're like, what exactly does that mean? A boundary defines where someone can or can't go. Right? So you're hiking along in the woods, and then you look over to your left and there's a barbed wire fence says, you know, property of cattle rancher Bob. And you're like, okay, there's a boundary. I can walk on this side, but I can't, you know, unless I want to climb that barbed wire fence and potentially bear the wrath of shotgun wielding farmer Bob. So I'm not going to go that way. There's a boundary there. Right? And that is what we do in relationships. Very obvious example. Most people have a boundary in their romantic relationship that says, you're not going to sleep with someone else. Now, different relationship styles. Someone can have a polyamorous relationship, in which case they don't have that boundary, but they have other boundaries. Then instead of having one simple, clear boundary, it says, don't sleep with someone else. They have like 17, you know, weird twisting barbed wire fences. Like, oh, yeah, we can listen. Are they the primary or the secondary? Okay, and do you guys like, you know, can you. What level? We can have a date. Can you kiss? Can you hold hands? You can hold hands, but you can't kiss. Okay, you can kiss, but you can't, you know, no pants on. Okay. When you're. You can make out, but, you know, whatever. So there's. Then you get to. You get to sort that out yourself. And if you want to. If you want to play that way in that kind of relationship. So. But those are the boundaries, right? And in a more kind of, I'd say common relationship pattern, it's just like, hey, you know, we're. We're monogamous. So the boundary is you don't sleep with somebody else or even really do much anything sexual with somebody else. Right. That's kind of the. A common pattern in romantic relationships. You know, another boundary might be you know, you're in a work meeting, a work environment, and there's a boundary against someone, I don't know, yelling at somebody else in your workplace. It's just. It's unheard of. You don't really see it, right? So when someone does that, it'll be like, whoa, dude, what's the person doing? So those are some examples of some boundaries. If you do not have boundaries and you don't assert any boundaries, then people can treat you however they want. So someone could yell at you, someone could cheat on you, someone could do whatever, and you're just like, well, okay, right. So we want to have boundaries. And you do want to. That sense of entitlement isn't a problem. When someone traverses over a boundary, you're going to feel upset. That's the emotional information and data coming your way, right? So let someone does do something that betrays your trust or treats you poorly or whatever crosses some boundary. You do want an internal response of like, hey, hey, hey, hey, what the fuck? Fuck. Like anger, disgust, upset, hurt. These are good, like, negative emotions. And positive emotions is the worst title we can put on things. The emotion is data. It could feel bad, but that doesn't mean it's bad to have that experience. It's actually much worse to have someone mistreat you and not have a emotional reaction to it. That is the classic result. Typically, if someone has an ongoing history of abuse, whether it's physical or verbal or sexual, those people, as they grow into adulthood, they don't have an alarm bell that goes off when they're around somebody who's doing something fucked up. And that's the problem. And so we want an internal reaction. Classic example, and I've seen this a lot work with clients, is when someone's in a romantic relationship and the partner is abusive to them, whether it's physically intimidating or verbally, constantly berating them, character attacking them, flipping things on them, gaslighting them, blaming them for things. And I just hear a little bit about it. I'm like, woof, that's pretty fucked up. And they're like, yeah, but, you know, I just. Maybe they're right. And I don't know what I'm saying. I'm pretty. I did do that thing they said I did. So therefore they should berate me for three hours straight. I'm thinking, no, no. If you were in like, a more healthy relationship, like, no matter what someone does, it doesn't warrant that kind of behavior. So you want a reaction, and then you do want to feel Entitled to, hey, I can stand up for myself, I can set a boundary, I can speak up for myself. So there's nothing wrong with all that. And then you want to start doing it and you're going to go through this phase that's kind of messy and clunky. That's a little bit, boom, laying down the hammer. No, we're not going to talk about that subject at the dinner table. No, I'm not going to go spend time with your brother in law. He's a jerk. Whatever. It's way better than not having the boundaries. So you need to go through that stage. If you're trying to jump over the, let's call it stage one would be no boundaries. Stage two would be asserting boundaries. And then stage three would be asserting boundaries skillfully. You can't jump over stage two where you assert the boundaries. I want to go from not doing them all to being extremely skillful at it. That's like saying, I see this all the time. We want to bypass the work. I want to go from not being able to sell anything to being like a master influencer salesperson. But I don't want to do all the clunky, awkward, get rejected and drop the ball and not do it. Well, that stage. No thank you. We want to avoid the messy stage. And that's part of the problem. You got to go into the mess. Embrace the mess. Yes, because life is messy, isn't it? Relationships are messy, especially interpersonal communication. It's the messiest thing. So how do we get more skillful with it? But I'm going to share some tips with you in just a minute. But I really want to. More important than you leaving this episode with some strategies on how to be more skillful is a sense of determination that you're going to start asserting boundaries more in your life. And it's okay if they're clunky, it's okay if they're. You'll work it out, you'll find your way through it. Sound good? Okay, now let's talk about how to do it. You know, some tips on how to do it more skillfully. And you know, doing it more skillfully is not a problem. It can actually be better because if you're a little bit more skillful, then you get more positive responses or you feel a little bit better as you do it. That's gonna lead you to want to do it more. Right? Like, I don't know, let's say it's a dating example. Knowing how to connect with someone or ask them out More skillfully is useful because you still are gonna get rejected along the way. But it's feels better than kind of going in messily and getting rejected a bunch. I mean, that's good for you in some way builds your rejection tolerance. But doing something more skillfully is always helpful. So how do we do that? Well, if you watch someone who's very skillful with boundaries, you don't even necessarily notice that they're setting a boundary and neither does the other person. Right? It's more subtle, it's more skillful. So here's a few examples. Let's say this came up recently in one of my mastermind programs. Let's say a family member has an agenda for you. This was a client where his parents have an agenda for him. They want him to get married. He's of an Indian descent and his parents are Indian parents. And if you either are Indian and have Indian parents or Pakistani parents or know anyone, then it's, you know, not all, but common to have like a. All right, so here's the timeline. You're three years behind on the timeline. The timeline is, you know, get this secure this job, get married, have children. And there's a whole progression in the parent's mind and the person's not doing it. They're like, let's lay on the propaganda campaign. So you know, he talks to his parents and they're almost always bringing up his marriage status, which he's not married, he's single and you know, he should be married. And so we're bringing this up and he's kind of like, you know, yeah, this doesn't work for me and I need to, I need to tell them that I don't want to talk about this with them. And so I asked him, have you said that to them before? And he's like, yeah. I was like, did it work? He's like, no. And I was like, I can see that. Right, because the parents have in their mind like, alright, my job as a parent is to make sure that my son gets married by X date. Now whether you agree with this or you don't agree with it, you think it's right, you think it's wrong, it doesn't matter. That's the parents worldview, right? So you can judge it as wrong and bad, but that's not gonna stop it from happening. So they're on a mission. And so when the son says, hey, I don't want to talk about this, that's just an objection to overcome, that's like, oh yeah, great, okay. Anyway, here we go. Let's keep talking about it, right? Or. Oh, okay, let's ease off for today. We'll get him on Thursday, on the next phone call, right? So he needs something more skilled. So this is in general, anytime you're talking to somebody and they're talking about something you don't want to talk about, you could say, like, I don't want to talk about that anymore. Okay? That's one level. That is a boundary. Right? But notice how it's got this edge to it. It's kind of a little bit jarring. That's just a sign of a little bit more messiness. Now, maybe that does come up because they've crossed over a boundary that you set multiple times. So, you know, you can show a little bit of frustration. That's fine. I think another pitfall people have when they're setting boundaries is they don't want to show any emotion. So they'll be like, I'd prefer if we didn't talk about this now, okay? And the person just keeps going and they're like, I just would rather if we. You know, instead of being like, hey, hey, hold on a second, hold on a second. I'm tired of this conversation. Okay? We've already had this. So it's like you can show a little bit of frustration, but before you get to that point, there's some more subtle things you can do. So one would be, this is a really simple one. If someone's bringing up a topic that you don't want to talk about, you know, you could try a few different things. One is, you know, I feel like I love to talk about something else. Could we put a pause on this topic and then talk about something else for a while? Right? You could say, I mean, there's so much nuance here that I almost. It's very case by case, but let me give it just a handful of examples and you can see what applies for you. First of all, you might not even need to say that. Let's just say it's someone that you're gonna interact with briefly at work here and there, and they are telling you about something you don't wanna hear about. You could just do this approach. You could say, yeah, that sounds good. Hey, I wanna ask you about something. And then you switch the topic. That is a boundary. Subtle, isn't it? The person doesn't even know you did it. So then I put the. The report in the session they're going on about. You say, oh, that's great. Thanks for doing that. Hey, I wanted to ask you about something and then you shift it to something totally different. So that's very easy if it's a, you know, not a major reoccurring relationship, ongoing issue. But let's say it's the next level where it's like a family member and they want to like, you know, another person in the group. Their family member is like, really, it's about politics and they have to assert their opinion again and again and again and again and make sure that this mother, you want to make sure her son is aligned with her and he started telling her, I would love to take a break from this topic and talk about something else, but just notice how it's still clear. But hey, I'd love to take a break from this topic for a bit and talk about something else. Can you just feel how that's very different? It just feels very different emotionally, energetically than saying, hey, listen, I'm done talking about that. Okay? Don't bring that up with me again. Right? It's one is gonna lead to more pushback. Can you feel that? Just imagine me saying that to you. Listen, I don't wanna hear about that anymore, okay? Versus I'd love to take a little break from that topic and talk about something else. How does that sound? You can just feel there's a difference between those two, can't you? So what are you doing? Well, you're saying, I'd like to take a little break from that as opposed to we're never gonna talk about that again because I don't know, let's say the person thought it was really, really important. You know, this client's mom thinks whatever her political viewpoint is really, really important. You know, let's say take some cause you really believe in what's something that seems really important to you, Whether it's a certain political stance or things that are meaningful for me might be like use of public lands and how those are being divvied up in a lot of ways. And whether the public land is used for nature, human access, animal and ecosystems versus industry that might really heavily pollute it and then move on. I'm obviously, I have an agenda. I want to preserve that land for me and for use for my family and people I love and all humans, as well as the ecosystems and the animals that are in there. I value that more than maybe oil extraction that might happen in that place. So let's say that was really meaningful for me and I really wanted to communicate that to people. If I started to communicate that to a Friend. And he's like, listen, never talk to me about that again. I might later on come back and be like, listen, I know you don't want me to talk about this, but this is really important. But if you just said, hey, listen, I want to take a break from that topic for just a few minutes or for a little bit, and let's talk about something else. Now, here's another key tip about boundary skillfulness is steer towards what you want versus what you don't want. That's just true in life in general. You want to focus on a result. I do this all the time with clients. They're setting a goal. Like, what's your goal? I want to not feel anxious in this situation. Okay, all right. That's a pretty good start. What do you want to feel instead? Not anxious. Great. And if you weren't anxious, what you'd feel? Well, if I wasn't anxious, I guess I'd feel more confident and I'd stop feeling this anxiety. I got to stop feeling anxious. And they just keep steering back and back and back to what they don't want. So, great. Start with what you don't want and say, what do I want? It's so much more effective in life for your own life, for guiding yourself, for your goals, for interactions, for boundaries. Hey, I'd love to take a break from that topic. You know, I'd love to talk about something else. You know, what I'm really curious about is this. And then bring in, what do you care? What do you want to steer the conversation towards? What do you want to talk about instead? And so when you're thinking about setting that boundary, say, like, what is it that I really want here? So same thing. Let's say that you're in a work situation and someone is interrupting in meetings or is saying things that are, like, snarky or something like that. Like, this is a common example. What do you do with that? Well, one thing is to pull them aside and say, listen. One thing is to do in front of everybody, listen, Ted, you've been spitting that bile all month. That's an interesting tactic. You could try it. It's a power play. That's a power move, right? That's like, listen, I'm dominant in this situation. It's kind of a little bit of a chest beaten there, right? You could pull them aside and say, listen, Ted, I've noticed that you seem to make a lot of comments when I'm sharing in the meetings, and they seem somewhat aggressive, sometimes condescending. And I'd appreciate if you don't do that anymore. Okay, well, you say, hey, listen, I set a boundary, pat myself on the back. That was great work. Yeah, and it was. It was better than saying nothing. However, how effective is it going to be? I don't know. I would give it not that much because there's something going on. Why is Ted doing that? So here's what we need to do. We need to lean in. We need to explore. We need to find out and say, what is it? First of all, before you go talk to Ted, what do you want? What do you want? Do you want Ted not to talk at all in the meetings? Do you want him to change the tone of how he's communicating? And if so, how? Stop being so negative? Is again, saying what you don't want. It's not very effective. It doesn't guide someone towards what they want or towards what you want. It doesn't give them a clear option of what to do instead. Is there value in what he's saying, though? Is he bringing some constructive ideas or feedback or at least highlighting something that's important? So what is it? Just for the case of example here, let's say you would prefer that he spoke up. He didn't interrupt you. So waiting. So what is it again, I don't want you to interrupt me. Means what? What do you want? What I want is for him to wait till I'm done talking and then he has a turn. So we speak in turns. That's what I want. And I also want him to highlight the criticisms in a form of what's going to be constructive. So instead of saying what's not going to work, maybe highlighting what he thinks is not going to work and sharing what he think could work better instead. Right. These are just. I'm kind of pulling these examples out of a mixture of things that I've helped clients with. So then when you approach Ted, you pull him aside and you say, listen, Ted, and you do the Darth Vader grip on his throat. You say, if you say one more thing in those meetings, Ted, are you looking at me, Ted? And then you take it to the next level, where you get two of your friends to take Ted up to the 17th floor of the building and put him over the railing, holding him by the ankles and say, not interrupting so much now, are you? No. Okay. Anyway, what you're going to do is you can approach him in between things and say, hey, Ted, there's something I wanted to talk about with you. Is now a good time? Ted says, yes, Great. I noticed in the meetings that there's a pattern that I've seen over the last month or so where when I'm communicating, I'll notice that you'll jump in sometimes and have ideas that you want to share. And I noticed that the tone of those ideas, I perceive them as critical or sometimes naysaying. And what I wanted to do is talk with you about that for a few minutes to see if we can come to a solution that's going to work where I can feel more able to communicate my ideas clearly in the meetings. And you can still feel like you can speak up. That's what I'm going for in this conversation. So there's a lot. I could break this down for a long time, but what I'm doing there is I'm connecting with him and I'm setting the stage of what I want, what I'm steering towards, my languaging. I'm not phrasing things and blaming terminology about he sucks and he's bad and he's doing these things. So there's a lot of subtle stuff in there. And you can just rewind and re listen to that a few times to get a sense of how you might communicate in little ways you could upgrade your communication. And let's say he's open to that, then you can say, great. So I noticed that sometimes in the meeting. And here's the thing, even if it does feel like it's always, it probably isn't. Always always and never almost isn't. I guess something could happen always. The sun always rises, you know. But in terms of human interactions and patterns of communication, it's probably not going to be an always. That's our mind, you know, making it extreme. So if you use language like, you always interrupt me, Ted, you know, always is going to trigger defensiveness. Always and never equal defensiveness. And they're probably not even true. That's why they're triggering defensiveness. So I would say something like, I noticed, and that's your magic phrase. Or I noticed. I noticed that sometimes during the meetings when I'm talking, you'll jump in. And my preference would be for you to not do that, not interrupt, and instead remember I'm saying, where do I want? And instead to let me finish so that we can communicate more. And then you can still speak, but wait till I'm done so we can speak in turns. Is that something that you. Does that seem like that would work for you, or is that something you notice? Like maybe he doesn't notice that he's interrupting me. He doesn't think he is, like, find out so you can find common ground. Does he see it that way? Is he willing to shift that? Right. So you see, we're getting into that one and then the next one is going to be about when he does speak up, how does he speak up and say note. And then again you can steer it. I notice it's more like this. And here's what I would prefer. So you getting fired up? You getting fired up? To go skillfully set some boundaries. Where. Where might you just what are you learning from this episode? This was a very specific, you know, a lot of detailed examples. What are you seeing for your own life? Where might you apply this? Okay, great. Now what I want you to do is let's find a place to really apply this with your action step. Time for action. Action, action. So part one of your action step. Find a place that you want to assert a more subtle boundary or a more skillful boundary or any place that you need a boundary. It doesn't matter if it's subtle or skillful. Just start with where do I need to. And these examples I'm giving you are showing you that it can be very subtle little things. So if you're saying, I don't know, I don't think anywhere. I think it's all perfect. That is probably a conflict avoidant. Nice person answer. The truth is there's always something that you could assert. And again, this isn't about, I'm going to get what I want and I'm going to say the right thing to control the other person. That's not how it works. But you can relate. You can communicate, you can try to problem solve. You want to think about assertiveness as collaborative problem solving as opposed to, I'm asserting the boundary and you're going to follow it. Okay, that's that entitled perspective. That's not going to work. But hey, we want to collaborate to solve this problem. So what's a little tweak? What's a little upgrade that you could have in a work relationship, in your love life, in a romantic relationship with a friendship with family members. You've got that in your mind. Now I'd like you to think about the exact scenario, think about what is it that I want, and then practice a role play. That's the action step. Practice a role play. You could do it on paper, back and forth. That's moderately effective. Way more effective to enroll a friend. This is the kind of stuff that I do in my Mastermind program. All the time where we actually real time do the role plays. Because the truth is, you know, the likelihood of you going out and rolling a friend to do this is just typically. I'm not saying this is for you. It's typically low. People hear that and they're like, yeah, totally, that sounds a good idea. In theory, hell no, I'm not going to do that. So I would really encourage you and invite you to do that. And of course, if you're interested in putting yourself in an environment where this stuff doesn't just become theoretical, becomes practical, and not just once in a while, but weekly so you really transform over the course of 12 months, then definitely find out more about my Mastermind program. You can do that by going to draziz.com,-r-a z I z.com and clicking on the coaching tab of that page. And then just you can apply to learn more about coaching and find out about all that stuff. So what I really want for you to do is to leave this episode with assertiveness in mind, with action in mind, and to go apply what you learned. Fantastic. Because when you do that, that's when your life's going to transform. Until we speak again. May you have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Aziz. If you know anyone who can benefit from what you've just heard, please let them know and send them a link to shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com.
