Why You Overthink After Setting a Boundary

Hey, welcome back to Dear Dr. Tracy. I want to talk to the person who finally did the hard thing. You had the hard conversation, you set the boundary, you sent the text, you spoke up in that meeting, you finally said what had gone unsaid for months or maybe years. And then after, you couldn't stop thinking about it. You replayed every sentence in your head. You imagined all the ways the other person might respond. Maybe you even rewrote the conversation in your head 100 different ways. You started wondering if maybe you should send one more text, just to explain yourself just a little bit better. Recently, I found myself in that exact place. Now, I'm not going to share the details because they belong to other people, but I will tell you this. I had to say something that had gone unsaid for a very long time. I said it thoughtfully, respectfully. I said it in a way that aligned with my values. And after I hit send, I couldn't stop spiraling and thinking in my head. And that wasn't because I regretted it. It was because my body hadn't caught up. To my decision. And that realization changed something for me. So today I want to teach you what I think is happening in those moments. And when I tell you how common this is, believe me when I say this, because after I had this moment, a few days later, my friend sent me a text and it was the exact same thing. Her body couldn't stop spiraling after saying the hard thing. And I want to give you one practice that has been incredibly helpful for me. Okay, let's first start by identifying the obvious. And the obvious is that we think courage should feel like relief. You were finally brave. You finally said the hard thing. And here's what we need to see. You finally said the hard thing, so why does it feel like there is absolutely no relief in that? And I think what's important for us to understand is that after we do hard things, right, doing the hard thing is more of the work in the front of our brain. Our body, the back of our brain, and our nervous system, our body keeps going. Our body keeps going in that state. So I want you to think about the states that show up in our nervous system, and that's dysregulation. That's the fight or flight. That's the shutdown and freeze. But so our brain then wants to do what brains are really good at doing. They like to come up with rebuttals. They like to have more conversations and plan it out, even when the other person isn't there. And how many of you can relate to that experience of being in the shower and replaying that conversation and telling yourself, if I just said this, or maybe I should said that I should have said it this way. And how many of you have actually gone back, have actually picked up your phone again, whether it's with your partner or a friend, and you've added more, all of those justifications and overexplaining? So why do we do this? We do this because this is actually our brain's job. Our brain is there to tell us all of these stories. Now, just recently on the podcast, Greg and I talked about the stories that we get stuck in that contribute to relationship distress, and we talked about how we build this relationship to these stories and not a relationship actually within ourselves or even to the other person. If you haven't listened to that one, click pause here, go back and listen to that one, then come back because you'll understand what I'm saying about stories. But I think it's really important for us to recognize that these stories we tell ourselves are part of the mechanisms that help to keep us safe. Those stories are familiar, they're known, we have so many of them, but they also keep us stuck. I think there's this other process that happens for us where we believe that when we do something that we have thought about for so long, we attach it right side side to relief instead of viewing them as two separate processes. Being courageous, doing a hard thing, doesn't mean that you are going to feel at peace and at ease, not immediately. And that's important. Now, I think there's this other element here too, and you know I always talk about what matters to us and our values and coming from a place of doing what is important to us for living a meaningful life. And oftentimes, after we do a hard thing, guilt shows up right inside of us. And I think what happens for people, and I think of it almost as our two hands, our two hands come together and our guilt shows up saying, you did something bad. Hmm. Shouldn't have said that. I don't know. How's it going to land? You live in the head of the other person. And then it attaches side by side to our values and what's important. And they almost become one. They become one in the sense that when we say, I did something bad, I don't feel relief. I feel guilt. I must have not said the right thing. And so then it attaches to what matters to us. And I think instead what we need to do is we actually need to pull them apart. We need to be able to see that on one hand— so I'm pulling my hands apart right here— on one hand is this feeling. It's sticky, it's hard, it's guilt. There's no relief in it. And that is in itself separate. But then when you look at the other hand and you open it up and you see, oh wait, hang on, I did this because I acted from a place of my values. And that was the situation that I was in. I was very much acting from what matters to me. And although that relief didn't come instantly afterwards, I had to see that they were two separate experiences and a Of course, what we know in our experience as humans, the both/and isn't just saying something like, oh, it's okay to be happy and sad. You can hold both grief and happiness at the same time. That's not the only key piece in here, but instead the piece that I think we struggle with the most is actually what's in between holding those two things, and that is the tension. Oh, we do not like that tension and discomfort as humans that exists in between those two things. So I think what we need to recognize as we walk through doing these hard things is that we need to let go of the belief that there is going to be immediate relief. You are not going to have immediate relief after you do the courageous hard thing. Okay. And now the question is, well, why is that? And why is that? It's because your body hasn't caught up. One of the analogies or examples that I was thinking about when I was thinking of sharing this with you is if you're a driver, if you have ever had that near car miss and you're driving along the highway and a car swerves into your lane, you brake, the car swerves out, nothing happens. The front of your brain knows that nothing happens. Okay. But I think we can all relate to the experience of what happens in our bodies next. That is that the blood literally leaves your body. It's like this tingling. Your fingers are tingling. Maybe you're shaking. That's your body. Your body hasn't caught up yet. Your brain already knows you're still going 100 down the highway, 100 kilometers an hour. You're still going 100 down the highway. Your body knows that you didn't get into it. Your brain. Knows, the front of your brain knows you did not get into a car accident. You are still driving, but your body, your body hasn't fully resolved that. And that's a really interesting piece because then what I think a lot of us do when we're uncomfortable with things is we try to find something to be able to then get rid of that discomfort in our body. That's often where avoidance comes in. That's where avoidance over justification, over explaining ourselves, that's often where that comes in because we are feeling this discomfort in our body and we don't allow ourselves to fully move through the feeling that has come through us. Okay. So So here's the piece. We need time to let our bodies settle. You have spent so much time in your brain organizing yourself over that one goal. You perfected the words. You didn't want to upset them. You were trying all the things. And I think the piece that people miss is that we're saying something that comes from our values, but it doesn't necessarily mean that your body's not going to feel it at the same time. And something that I'm seeing so much for people right now is that we really are struggling as a culture to be able to sit in discomfort in the feeling of unease, of maybe even feeling like there's no peace in what is happening right now. We do not like that. We have all of these things in our life right now to help us make things feel simple and easier and more comfortable. And yet when it comes to living our truth, living aligned with our values, it is about doing the hard thing. So why don't you have that immediate relief after? It wasn't because you didn't do a hard thing. It wasn't because it wasn't courageous, and it's certainly not because it wasn't aligned with values, it's because your body hasn't caught up yet. And I think something that I had to remind myself after this situation is that you don't have to keep explaining. You don't have to keep over-justifying. You've already done the thing. So I wanna make sure I've made this point clear because when our bodies are uncomfortable, we then find ways to cope with that discomfort. And for many of us, that is through over-explaining, over-justifying, sending more words, giving more examples and spiraling. And I see this when it comes to couples who are navigating mother-in-law struggles. So I'm going to plug my book here. If you haven't, check out my book, You, Your Husband, and His Mother. I had someone recently leave a comment saying that the book has significantly helped them now that they've had a child. They're going through the book and they finally feel like they have the words and what they can say to their family. And that, that is just everything because I think the thing that we do is we slip into this mode of wanting to ensure the other person gets us, that they get our intent, that they don't misunderstand us. So we over-explain, we give up ourselves in some way by giving more examples when we're saying no, we don't put socks on babies because, you know, silly example. But every time we do that, we have to recognize that we give up our own sense of agency and power. As soon as you are focused on them taking accountability and responsibility and ownership, whether it's your boss, your mother-in-law, a friend, as soon as you focus on that, you are giving up your power. You are giving it all to them and focusing it on them instead of recognizing actually the power is in the choice that I already made. The control I have is already what I said, what needed to be said from my values. And so I think one of the biggest things we're facing right now is that we've lost the capacity. This is not a words issue. It's not a communication issue. It's a capacity issue. It's that we don't know how to tolerate the discomfort of being misunderstood, of maybe not having someone text you back, of someone saying something about you that is not your truth. Of maybe even tension laying between you two, rather than you actually being able to say, this is exactly what is supposed to happen after I do this hard thing. So here's what I did recently. And it's just one step in the many steps I did to help me move through this difficult moment. Okay. So this is the spiral practice. So this is just one, one thing that you can consider. So I want you to first notice. So if you happen to be clicking play and you've just said the hard thing, here's what I want you to do. I want you to ask yourself, What is my mind trying to make happen? I don't want you to answer the question with a feeling. I want you to answer it with a job. It's a very specific kind of answer. What is my mind trying to make happen? So oftentimes our mind is saying something like, I need them to understand. I need them to see my perspective. I need them to see that I'm not a bad person. I need them to see my positive intentions and that I'm trying to— gosh, I can just relate to that so much. And then I want you to ask yourself, has that job already been completed? Have you set the boundary? Have you said the thing? And oftentimes the answer is yes, because you already did it. You thought about it, you knew what you wanted to say, and you said the thing. Let that land for you. The message has already been sent. And that right there is you continuing to send the message to your body that you already did what you needed to do. You already sent the message. You already did what needed to happen that was aligned with what was important to you. And the reason why I think this is so important is because our brains are gonna stay and hang out and keep us feeling uncomfortable in a way because it It is actually trying to find the safe thing. It's trying to find, how can I feel comfortable in this? Think about that. How can I feel comfortable in this? I want them to understand. In order to get them to understand, I'm gonna give more words. This false sense of familiarity, of comfort, it backfires. And instead, when you notice yourself spiraling in all of those stories, I should just say more. I should, maybe if I just explain it this way, that just keeps you stuck. And instead recognizing the message has already been sent. And I want that to be an anchor for you. I want that to be something that you can hold onto and you you can keep repeating. And if you need to, maybe you put a hand on your heart, maybe you give yourself a tight squeeze, maybe you rock back and forth. Any movement can be really good. And keep repeating to yourself, the message has already been sent. And here's something that I think is so important within this, is that what you're doing is you are actually building capacity. You are building capacity to be able to do the hard thing, to stay in the discomfort, not to avoid. And this is where growth happens. And it happens on so many different levels because this isn't just about you saying the hard thing, it's also about you being able to tolerate that someone might not completely understand you, that you could be misunderstood and misinterpreted, that there's uncertainty within this, that there's unrest and unease. This is you tolerating the fact that someone may never see you the way that you had hoped that they would. And that is you learning how to live after you've said the hard and meaningful thing. All right, here's what I want you to know. When you say the hard thing, that is you choosing from a place of what matters to you. And when you find yourself spiraling after wanting to send a text, wanting to share more details, wanting to overexplain yourself, I need you to pause. I need you to breathe, and I need you to remind yourself the message has already been sent. And that what we're doing here is we are building capacity for discomfort. And every time I choose to do the hard thing, I am another step closer to what is actually meaningful to me. And I think we need to remember that our work is not to convince another person. Our work is not to show and prove who it is that we are. And the real work is you learning to trust yourself. And sometimes that's the hardest part of all of this. All right. Thank you for clicking play today. Hey, if something landed today and you've been in a group chat with your besties about how you just said the hard thing and then you wanted to do more afterwards and you were spiraling and not trusting yourself, share this episode with them because I know so many of you have experienced this, who live in this discomfort, who have tried to be more comfortable by overexplaining ourselves, by not saying the thing, by watering down the thing. I would be so grateful for you to share this episode and hey, while you're there, click the 5 stars, leave me a review. I read every single one, and I will see you in the next episode. I have to remind you at the end of every episode that this is for educational purposes only and does not substitute for the care from a licensed mental health care provider. See you next time.