Boundary Setting for Women: Break Free from Codependency with Terri Cole

All right, Terri Cole, welcome to the show.

Well, thanks for having me, JJ Virgin. I'm super pumped.

I have a feeling we might be like going into a bunch of my stuff during this show.

Happy to.

Well, we are going to be talking about codependency, probably some, some on boundaries, kind of all over the place, which I imagine a lot of people listening are going to go, oh. And I think what I— where we should start is just even to define what codependency actually is.

Sure. Codependency, according to Terry Cole, is when you are overly invested in the feeling states, the outcomes, the situations, the circumstances, the careers, the finances of the people in your life, to the detriment of your own internal peace, to the detriment of your emotional wellbeing, your financial wellbeing, So that is my definition of codependency. I created a coined phrase, high-functioning codependency, because what was happening in my therapy practice is that I would bring this up to my clients, say, oh, hey, what I'm noticing, this is a codependent pattern. And these highly capable women who are my clients would be like, no fucking way, lady. No. They would immediately reject the idea of being codependent. And I realized two things. I realized, one, my clients didn't know what codependency was. And number two is that they were being unduly influenced by Melody Beattie, Codependent No More, rest in peace, as she just passed away recently. You know, the seminal text. But when you think about what is it that we think about, we think about I have to be enabling an alcoholic to be a codependent.

No, seriously, that's what I think it is. So I was like going, oh, I'm not that.

Of course, which is exactly what they were saying. And why are you saying I'm that? And you can see from a therapeutic point of view, my problem is how can I help my clients if they don't see themselves in the problem that actually is their problem? And the irony with high-functioning codependency is that the more capable you are, the less codependency It looks like codependency, but it's still codependency. So we're still suffering, we're still imbalanced, we're still underappreciated, we're still exhausted, we're still getting burnt out. So this was why I, and I also felt like codependency needed to be modernized for our lives now. You do not have to be involved with an addict to be codependent. That's not accurate. So high-functioning codependency, there's almost more of like, we are so highly capable, we're doing all the things for all the people and nobody is checking in. JJ, nobody's like, I hope JJ is okay. 'Cause they know you're okay. 'Cause you're the rock. Nobody's checking in. Do you hope Terry's okay? No, she's definitely okay. She's fine. Which is, was all the women in my practice and a lot of the women drawn to my work. So I knew We needed something because here's the thing, the suffering was still in place.

Makes sense? Is this a classic— do women suffer more from this than men?

Yes. I mean, they just do. Listen, some men— I married a high-functioning codependent cuz I don't think if I didn't find someone who was even more capable than I was, I don't think I ever would've gotten married. So I'm not saying that there's not a lot of men, and I've heard from thousands of men across the world that they feel identified with this, that they share it with their guy friends. So, but if we look at traditionally, why is this the case? We have to look at gender roles. We have to look at the way we were raised. We have to look at women in particular were indoctrinated into the cult of nice early on in life. And it was like the more self-sacrificing, the better. So when women, women would come into my practice and sort of these high-functioning women they were getting it all done, but they were getting it all done at the expense of themselves. And they didn't understand, like, why don't I know how to set boundaries? And almost feeling bad about themselves. And I'm like, dude, we were, all of us were raised and praised to be self-abandoning codependents. This was socially sanctioned behavior. You hear someone talk about, oh my God, Betty's amazing. You would love her. She would give anybody the shirt off her back. You're like, bitch, keep your shirt on. Like, why are you just stripping for all the people? How about some discernment about who we're giving our clothing to? But also, why is that? Why is that celebrated? Why is that held up as like, this is what good women do? So I don't think that that's what good women do. And I felt like we needed to see ourselves in what was going on because there's this whole entire generation of women coming into my therapy practice, into my mastermind, into my courses who are fucking exhausted, burnt out. And even though they're getting it all done, they're like pissed, right? We're not enjoying what we're creating. We are tired. We're burnt out. So do you wanna talk about some of the traits? How can people identify themselves in these behaviors? You wanna share a story? Tell me, what do you wanna do?

Oh my gosh. I want it all. Yes, yes, and yes. I mean, as I was listening to you describe describe it to begin with. I thought, but it sounds like part, some of that would be good, but too much of that is bad. And it's like, where do you find that happy medium? So yeah, I mean, how would someone be able to identify that they have this as an issue versus that maybe they have some of these traits and they're good and they haven't gone over the edge?

Yes. Oh, such a good question. And I have a perfect answer and you could, we could do it right now. People can take a resentment Inventory. So this will be a GPS that guides you to where you might be over-functioning or you might need a boundary or you might need to set a limit. So, cuz sometimes people will on the interwebs will say, "Terri, maybe I'm just nice. Ever think of that?" You know? And I'm like, here's the thing about niceness and thoughtfulness and healthy caring is that if you can't not do it, it is a compulsion like any other compulsion. So, so many people, it is a knee-jerk reaction. I cannot stand your suffering, so I have auto-advice to give to you. I feel responsible for fixing your problems because your problems cause me so much anxiety. It causes me less anxiety to fix your problems. Right? So the clarity about, back to your initial question, how can we tell caring or codependent? And I will venture to add another category, caring, codependent, or controlling. Because at its basis, at its foundation, any kind of codependency, garden variety or high-functioning, is an overt or covert bid or desire or attempt to control other people's outcomes. I don't, anytime you're thinking in your mind, anybody listening, I don't want them to think, or I don't want them to feel bad. I don't want them to feel. Anytime you are thinking those, I don't want them to think, I don't want them to feel, I want you to back your hiney up to your own side of the street because how someone else, what they think and what they feel is not your side of the street. And yet we feel this over-responsibility. For other people's experiences, what they think and what they feel. So when you do a resentment inventory, so you can get a situation in mind, be like, ooh, I am kind of resentful towards my sister, let's just say. Okay. So then you write down what is the situation? I'm resentful towards my sister because she borrowed $1,000 from me 4 years ago. She never paid it back. She continues to go on vacation and never makes a mention of it. So What is my part, right? The next column is what is my part? What is my 50% of this dysfunctional situation that is causing me resentment? Well, I haven't mentioned it, so that's part of my part, right? I could mention it even though I wanna tell myself she should, it's on her, she's the one who borrowed the money, blah, blah, blah. No, actually your 50% is asserting the agreement that you made, which was that she would borrow money, but she would also pay it back. And then you can decide what is an action that you wanna take? Do you have that conversation with her? Do you write a note to her? Every situation we're feeling resentful about, the good news, why we say, what is my 50% or what is my part? Is because we're not, we are, it is 50% us. Even if the 50% us is that we're just not leaving a crappy relationship, right? That's still 50%. So I'm not into the blame game. I'm into understanding where we can get empowered. Where, where is it that we can do something? So that's one thing that people can do to identify where you might be over-functioning or over-giving, or a boundary might be needed, or maybe you need to put a limit in place. I want you to think about also, where are you automatically doing these things? So let's talk a little bit about the traits. Of high-functioning codependency. The first one we've already talked about is feeling responsible for fixing other people's problems, right? And if you're wondering, hmm, do I do that? I don't know. Lemme think. Well, here's a scenario. Your best friend calls you with a crisis. How quickly does that crisis become your crisis? How quickly do you put down what you're doing? How quickly are you Googling? How quickly are you going into your phone Rolodex and finding the best oncologist at Sloan, finding the person who can do to do the thing, finding the lawyer that you used for that thing that you needed? How quickly are you actually in action around this person's problem with the sole intention to fix the problem? Because here's the thing with high-functioning codependence, we're high-functioning, that, that's the HF, right? High-functioning. That's the HFC. So we're good at solving problems and we really want to, but there's a cost. To doing that to our relationships. There's a cost to doing that to ourselves, to what were you doing before the phone rang? Who even knows? 'Cause you have now abandoned whatever that was. So one of the other qualities is just overgiving, right? A lot of times we are giving, we're doing things for people that they can and should be doing for themselves, but we're also doing things that people are not even fucking asking us to do, but we just feel like it should be done. Needs to be done. They should have it. We like it that way. It's the way to do it. Always being ready to jump into damage control mode. And again, when you get into recovery from being a high-functioning codependent, you don't lose these skills, right? You're high-functioning, whether you're high-functioning with disordered boundaries or whether you're high-functioning with healthy boundaries. With the healthy boundaries, you just have more bandwidth. You're just enjoying your life more. You're just allowing more. You're just surrendering more, right? So life is, you're more present. In life. Because one of the things with being a high-functioning codependent is that we're always sort of onto the next. We're always next thing, next person, next problem, next issue, next whatever it is. Um, other traits that you may have if you're a high-functioning codependent, you might feel exhausted or resentful or a little bitter because even though we will lovingly and freely give our advice, Then we can be like kind of mad when people don't take our advice, but they wanna talk to us the next week about the same crap we talked about last week where we gave them the answer if they would just do the thing we told them to do. Um, so we have the auto-advice giving, but we also have, um, auto-accommodating. So this is also a little bit different than old school codependency where with high-functioning codependence, we can become sort of codependently attached to the world around us, not just the people in our lives. So auto-accommodating is you're out and about in the wild and you see something. It could be as simple as you are on the 12 or under line and you have 6 things and the person behind you has 1 and you just naturally wave them ahead of you. Like, I'm accommodating. You only have 1, you should go in front of me, even though we're both on the right line. It wouldn't kill them to wait for you to have your 6 items done. Or I'm gonna, I see people on a plane and they wanna sit together. And so I insert myself to say, hey, I'm happy to move. Now again, the interwebs will say, but Terri, isn't that just being nice and thoughtful and considerate? If you took the time to think about it and you made a mindful, conscious decision to do that, sure. But most high-functioning codependents don't. We're on autopilot of fixing, of giving, of doing, of seeing, trying to get ahead of any problems that we see out in the wild, which then will bring us to anticipatory planning. If you have people in your life, sometimes we have difficult people. We are making in our minds, we have everything figured out so that there's not gonna be a problem. So I used to have these, I used to have a Christmas, like a Christmas Eve thing at my house and I had these two uncles who didn't get along. And for years, instead of making these two grownups act like fucking grownups, I would be like, my one sister, hey, you're on Uncle Jimmy duty. My other sister, you're on Uncle Bobby duty. I would make sure I had the booze that they liked and make sure they didn't sit near each other at the table. Like, I was like a friggin puppet master instead of just being like, if you mother effers cannot figure it out, then you're not invited. Yeah. Like, grow up, people. You're in your 60s. Like, hello. But that wasn't unique to Terry Cole. So anticipatory planning is something that because we—

This is also normalized though. I'm listening to this going, this is just like you watch online and if someone doesn't give up their seat, they're like an asshole. They're attacked. And I keep thinking about that. I go, if someone asked me to give up my seat and I very specifically selected the seat and I selected the seat because of my knee replacement, I like to accept. I'm not giving up my seat. Like, no, I'm not going to sit over there. I chose this seat. And, and I would be like attacked too. So I'm just wondering, like, I'm hearing all this stuff going, this is also celebrated. It is. It's celebrated. And the second question there is what— I'm assuming that you don't wake up one day and start behaving this way, right? Just guessing, I don't know. And what's interesting when I think about how I was raised is I, I'm trying to think of like where my mom might have been codependent, where she wasn't, and what her boundaries were like. So I'm, I'm wondering, is this stuff that we saw and we learned? Is this stuff like, where does, where does this behavior come from that we then just think is normal?

Yeah, well, it's a combination. So great questions, and you're right, You're right. And each situation is sort of specific, but a lot of times if you had a high-functioning mother or a people-pleasing mother, because what we're really looking at in a lot of this, the thing I care about in all of this is where is the self-abandonment at? Where are we in a way last on our own list, even though we're suc— many of us are very successful, but where are we, if you're an HFC, You're almost always willing to take one for the team, right? We just wanna be like, someone else needs something more, like, you know, or we'll take care of the things that really matter to us. But when it's in relationship, because being a high-functioning codependent is a relational disorder, it is us in relationship with other people. So even though we may still take good care of ourselves in some ways, right? Still hitting the gym or still eating well. It's where are you self-abandoning and over-functioning, over-giving when it comes to your relationships? A lot of times we saw it, you might be from a long line of people pleasers, right? Was this, we have this downloaded HFC blueprint, I call it, which is a relational blueprint, which is what we saw. It's a combination of where were you raised, country, culture, family, socioeconomic, your your order, birth order. I mean, all of these things come together, but so much of this is unconscious. So we learned it from the community. We learned it from our grandparents and our parents and what we believe, right? Quote unquote, we meaning the family, the generational family that you came from. And these are unconscious things. Like it's an unconscious paradigm. And so, so much what I do, what I do in this book too much is I basically am walking you into the basement of your mind and I'm helping you. I've got a little lamp on my head, like, don't worry, you're not alone. But we're opening up boxes and we're just looking at stuff to go, is this the way it is for me? Or is this just the way that it was for my parents and their parents? And perhaps I want a relational pattern that is different. So I grew up with a particular relational pattern and I wanted something different, but it took me years of therapy to create something different, to not look at men as, you know, people to manage, male, a bit of a male-bashing system that I came from, thinking that men were— never tell the truth. No. Women were really the neck that wagged the head, but we let men think that they were running the show. It was like this whole thing that I was like, you wonder why I don't wanna get married. I'm like, that sounds terrible. My parents did not have a fantastic marriage. So, and it wasn't horrible. It wasn't like awful either. But I was like, that doesn't, none of that looks very appealing to me. But it I didn't end up getting married or being found by my husband or finding him until long, you know, I absolutely had to go through this process of understanding my relational pattern, what was inherited and what did I want to change. And so that's basically what I'm walking you through in the book is yes, all of these behaviors, but also having a deeper understanding that you are however you are, JJ, for a reason. I am however I am. Like, we make sense. Right? These are adaptive behaviors that helped us in childhood, and then a lot of them become maladaptive in adulthood. And you can't do it forever because what I've seen in my therapy practice is women coming in in their 6th, 7th decade of life, just burnt out, just living life light, meaning you're only half there because you're living half of it in your head. You're so busy. Moving chess pieces and trying to make sure everything is okay for everyone. It shows up in health, autoimmune disorders, TMJ, MS. Like there's so many physical ailments, but also the lack of joy because it's like, you know, I remember I had a client come in and she was like, you know, I've done all the things, Tara. Like I've literally done all the things, raised the kids. I'm still in good shape. My husband and I have money where we travel. I do SoulCycle 3 times a week. I'm on all these boards. I get to, you know, donate my time. And she was literally like, hello, is this all there is? Like, literally, is this it? You know? And she's like, why do I feel so empty? And I was like, because you built your entire life checking boxes that somebody else constructed, saying yes when you wanna say no to be nice, managing the crap out of all the people in your life, but not relating to them in an honest way. So really it's like an existential crisis of real deep loneliness because If we're saying yes when we wanna say no, we're always taking one for the team. People don't know you, which is why boundaries are so important, which is why not being codependent is so important because you're so worth knowing, you know?

Oh my gosh, there's so much to this because I think even just looking at this, you'd go, well, what actually is healthy?

Mm-hmm.

Right? I mean, I'm listening to all this going, I know how I was raised was not modeling healthy behavior. It is absolutely no question to ask. Everyone was doing the best they could. Sure. In a really whacked situation. Yep. And so, and you look at most people, I think you put two people together, things are weird. You know, it's like you're always gonna have these things. So how do you even know what modeling a healthy situation would be like? What does it even look like?

Part of, You know, the way that I teach it is the same way that you do therapy, which is that you always go in before you can go out. So part of it is understanding. And if we're looking at boundaries and codependency as sort of like boundaries, and then we lead into codependency because they're two, you know, I wrote two full books about 'em because they're such dense and rich topics of healing and transformation. But if you look at boundaries, you know, according to me, You knowing your boundaries, this is like, I want you to think of it as your own personal rules of engagement, which is just letting other people know what's okay with you and what's not okay with you.

How does someone even know what's okay with them and not okay with them?

Well, I break it down into four, four different things that we can look at, which is your preferences, your desires, your limits, and your deal breakers. And The reason I did that is because not all boundaries are created equal, right? Your preference is not as important as a deal breaker. What are the things that are important to you, JJ? Let's say you may have a preference for something, and if your husband is like, okay, but I have a different preference. That's, you can maybe negotiate a preference. That's okay. This is how we're in long-term relationships. But if you had, let's say I had a client who was married to someone who was in recovery and then they relapsed during the pandemic. And this was a deal breaker for her. Now she didn't leave right away. She just was like, listen, you have 3 months basically to get back into treatment. Like, this is a deal breaker. I cannot be with you when you're active. We need to know what those things are. So I think in the beginning, it's just looking at, in the beginning of Boundary Boss, my first book, I had this massive list that I had readers do called the okay and not okay list. And I listed every single nuance of every area of your life. Like, what is happening? And the real question, you know, JJ, maybe the easiest way for listeners to be able to start this process is making a list of what are you tolerating? Mm-hmm. Because this, right, becomes again, another GPS to look at in big and small ways, We are self-abandoning. And the question is, where? How can we stop? And why? Because people, once you start understanding that your preferences, your desires, your limits, and your deal breakers, once you start really understanding what those are, it's so much easier to create boundaries, to make a boundary request to someone. I'd like to make a simple request that if you're gonna be more than 10 minutes late for dinner, you text me. Right? That's a simple boundary request, right? You're asking them to do something different than what they're doing. And so much of the time, women in particular, we've, again, there's been this Kool-Aid of being like the cool girl, having no needs. You know me, no fuss, no muss, whatever you guys wanna do is great. Like, not, can't be real, isn't real. And sometimes I don't care what we do. But here's the thing, I want, you know, I walk you through the process of really looking at, do you really not care? Or are you just so conflict avoidant that even making a friggin request for dinner is like too much in case someone else doesn't wanna eat what you wanna eat? And just trying to stay out of the line of fire, depending on how you were raised and what kind of a family system and whether you experienced abuse or not. But even if you didn't, experience any kind of abuse, you can still have super disordered boundaries and not know who you are, as you're saying. So I love the idea of doing a list of what are you tolerating.

I love that too. Well, even if you were raised in a, I don't even know, like I actually don't know anyone who's raised, was raised in a completely normal household.

I don't think. No, me either.

Probably exist. And you know, back in the day when I was starting out as a personal trainer, I was in all of these very, very celebrity and wealthy households and the crazy stuff I saw, I'm like, oh my God. Gosh, like, I went, okay, you know, they have that magazine Celebrities Are Just Like Us. I'm like, oh, you have no idea.

Like, you're like, like us and worse.

Let's talk boundaries. It's crazy. Um, but even if you were somehow raised, you were the one unicorn raised in the normal thing, you still look at women in general. We are raised to, you know, just say, oh, whatever you get is okay. Oh no, I don't really care what I, where I go for my birthday. I remember hearing this. Do you, did you ever look at the work of Alison Armstrong.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And she literally says, women will say this. The husband is sitting here. All he wants to do is please you. And you say, where do you want to go for dinner? And you go, I don't care. 'Cause you just wanna please him back, but you really do care, but you're not gonna say it.

Right. So, and you're withholding. The thing is you're withholding valuable information. Like when we say we don't care when we do, what we're doing is we're giving corrupted data about who we are to the people who are trying to love us the most. But we just wanna be like, again, like you said, pleasing. It's not pleasing. And then you end up like one of those women who come into my office in their 70s and they go, nobody knows me and my life has no meaning. And you're like, makes sense. That tracks given the amount of self-sacrificing that you've done that you thought was gonna pay off differently. But when, you know, it turns out that What people really want is to know you. Turns out that the thing that you have to bring to the party is your unique lens and your unique gifts and skills and talents. Like, that's what we want from you. It's not to just blend in or it's not to not make waves. It's, you know, you hear all of this stuff about humility and don't brag, and it's just all of it is to keep women small. And so much of this has to do with the patriarchy. This is a patriarchal system that we were raised in and we're still dealing with it to this day. So it's so important that we get clear about our boundaries, our wants, our needs, our desires, our limits. It's so important that we see that we take care of ourselves. In the end of the end, I would say the takeaway definitely from the second book is how you feel What you want and what you think has to be important to you, but it has to be more important than what anyone else wants, thinks, or feels. And for most women, they feel like that is not right. That is being selfish. And it's not true. We, we, it must be that, that what you think personally to you, what you want, what you think, how you feel is the most important thing. Now, Can we, do we choose to compromise when we're in long-term relationships? Of course. Will you compromise if you have children, like, and you need to do whatever you gotta, listen, all of us who are mothers, you all make sacrifices that you said you were on board for and we do it. But that doesn't mean that you don't value what you want, think, and feel. And I think so many of us were taught to discard what we want, think, and feel. Take one for the team, be self-sacrificing. That is what a good woman is. But the truth is that's what, that literally that's a one-way ticket to bitter land and becoming a martyr. And when you think about the whole, this whole martyr thing, women as martyrs, no woman who would be considered a martyr in her 60s or 70s, when she was 25 or 35, she wasn't like, oh my God, I can't wait to grow up and become a martyr. It's gotta be amazing. It happens slowly over time. The more you self-abandon, the more you overgive, the more you feel owed by other people because of all the self-sacrificing. So it's not a great thing for other people either if we don't ever figure out our codependency and our boundary stuff.

Oh, this is so big. I, you know, as you were describing this, I was thinking my mom passed a year and a half ago, and at her funeral I decided, I told my husband, I go, I I don't have anything to say. I don't know her. I don't know what to do here. And I thought, what I'm going to do is, um, I'm going to invite all of her friends because they saw a side of her I— she never shared. She was a complete martyr at home. I have an adopted brother with special needs. She spent her entire life taking care of him. And then taking care of my dad before that. And I just was like, I couldn't tell you what she loved, what was important to her. Nothing. I, not a thing. Knew nothing. And so you're describing this. I'm like, oh my gosh. It's just, and yet, you know, people described her because of all of her selflessness and all, and you're just like, ah, it's so heartbreaking.

Yeah. Because it's like giving it all away. And not keeping the best parts for ourselves. But when you get into recovery, let's have a little hopeful.

I tried to pull her out. I really did. I was like, you know, tried to bring her on vacations, right? But she wouldn't leave my brother to do any of it.

So, yep. Which is so hard because you could so clearly see, right, that she deserved it and that you could provide it for her and you wanted to. And it's sad when that gets rejected. You know? And the commitment to the martyrdom is just so hardcore. But what people are doing, just by even us even having this conversation, if we're helping people raise their awareness around these behaviors that are self-sabotaging, around their boundaries, right? When we move into, first of all, having more compassion for ourselves, like we are this way for a lot of good reasons. As I said before, we were raised to believe this is right. So we really started at a deficit. Nobody taught you this in school. You didn't learn it in the Girl Scouts or any of that crap. I mean, even in the Girl Scouts, they're like, me last, basically was like their motto, kind of. I mean, I never was a Girl Scout, but it was totally my friends.

There were self-service badges for, for supporting others. That's what you got the badges for. I only did Brownies, but that's what it was for.

Well, I mean, that's just so—

service projects. It wasn't like I learned how to do something better myself.

No, nope, nope. All the indoctrination though. Right? So if you're feeling, you see yourself in what JJ and I are talking about, just forget the self, just no mea culpa. Oh, don't feel bad about it.

Right? I think it's the guilt. Like I think that we are given so much guilt for, I see it just in my side of it for anyone doing any self-care. I'm like, oh my gosh, you know, put yourself at the top of your to-do list.

Come on. Exactly. And that you have a right. It's one of my Boundary Boss Bill of Rights. Where you have the right to, you know, self-care without feeling selfish. Because exactly what you said is, it's so true. But part of it is understanding. And I don't think I knew this in my own life until I had this very, this disruptive experience in therapy. One of my sisters was in a terrible situation. She was living in the woods with, she was an alcoholic. She was living with someone doing drugs. He was abusive. She had no running water. She had no electricity. It was winter in upstate New York. So anyway, you know, for an HFC, that's like a complete 5-alarm fire endlessly where my whole life was like, how am I getting her outta there? Because this is just terrible. And after crying about it with my therapist and trying to figure it out and throwing money at it and trying to hire a lawyer, just doing all the things, my therapist just said to my face, Terri, what makes you think you know what Jenna needs to learn in this life and how she needs to learn it? And I was like, uh, well, I think we could agree she doesn't need to do it without running water. You know, like I was like all defensive. And she said, I can't agree to that though, Tara, cuz the truth is I don't know, but do you know what's happening for you? And I was like, no. And she basically said, listen, you've worked hard to create a harmonious life and your sister's dumpster fire is messing with your peace and you really want it to be fixed so that you can go back to feeling peace. And I was like, she is not lying. That is a fact. That is actually true. But I didn't realize I had a choice is the point of the story. I didn't know. And she's also like, all the things that you've done, these interventions with your sister have probably elongated her time in that no running water hell, right? Because it's like putting a bandaid on a gaping wound. So I was like, well then what do you do? And this is the first time anyone ever told me what boundaries were. And she said, you need boundaries with your sister. You don't need to talk to her about this guy. And so I had a conversation, said to my sister, I love you and I can't talk about this anymore. So if and when you wanna get outta there, I will always be your person, but in the meantime, you're like, I can't do it for you, basically. And less than 9 months later, she called me and was like, are you still my person? And I said yes. Then I went and picked her up. And now instead of her being saved once again by her baby sister, she got to be the hero of her own story. Went back to school, got sober, but she did that. And I got to cheer her on and I got to, my husband, I helped her appropriately, but like not sweeping in with like the tape on and making it all about me. Because when we do this, all of this auto-advice giving, what we're really doing is we're centering the other person's problem on us as the solution. Which was so painful for me to like, be like, wait, I thought I was Mother Teresa. What are you talking about? Like, so A, I don't have to do this. Oh my God, thank God. And B, like I had to really look at, it was more about control, or at least as much about control as it was about love. And so I think that for me, looking, having that experience and realizing I had a choice and that I thought I didn't have a choice. I was like, if I'm a good sister, I need to just do this until I get her outta there. You know? And what I learned is that that actually wasn't accurate and that I was stomping on her autonomy cuz I didn't like how she was doing it. And that is a lesson that changed my life. And actually, became, you know, really was a pivot into boundaries for myself and then codependency and all of that was really from that one massive experience to realize I did not have to save her. It was not on me to do that. And that I couldn't, cuz she was like, I'm not saying you shouldn't save your sister. I'm literally saying you can't. It's impossible. She's a sovereign human being and you need to let her do her thing.

I think of a statement, you know, Mary Morrissey, She is a real close friend and my mentor, and she literally has this statement of, "What is mine to do?" And as you're saying that, I'm like, "Oh yes, remember it." Because I love the, what is my 50%? What's my side of the line? Am I crossing over my side of the line? And I quite often will check myself and I go, "What is mine to do? Is that mine to do? Or is that like, for me, my ego stepping in trying to do this?" conduct this. And I think that is, when you look at all this, one of the bigger challenges, especially just in terms of boundaries, is so many of these things society would say, oh, that's really nice of you. And I'm trying to go, okay, is this mine to do? And maybe it's just that question of what's my 50%? Is this mine to do? And really looking at these things, or am I— because I don't think we anywhere in our consciousness are we thinking, I just want to control the situation and I want to be the good, you know, look like the bigger person. But ultimately that's what's happening, right?

Yes. Yes. And the thing is, we can't sugarcoat the amount of control that we're exerting over other people because of our discomfort. Gabor Maté talks about it from the point of view of like, I cannot tolerate, you know, I will make suggestions and fix you and do what I need to do because I cannot tolerate your pain. Your pain is too distressing to my nervous system, so therefore I must get into action basically around that pain. And so my work, I mean, when you think about what is the biggest flex when it comes to love, it's not solving people's problems for sure, cuz you can't even. It's being in the foxhole during the dark night of the soul with someone and being able to hang with their pain, being with them. I'm, I'm compassionately witnessing you. I love you. I'm here. I don't know what you should do, but I'm not going anywhere. How can I, what about just asking, how can I best support you right now, babe? Just that question instead of making, you know, for me, I always made assumptions that they would want what I would want, right? That the way that I would think to do it is the way to do it. And what we're cutting off, the intimacy that we don't get to experience in our relationships when we don't ask expansive questions. So the opposite of auto-advice giving is asking expansive questions. Whether it's a 6-year-old, a 16-year-old, or a 60-year-old coming to you for advice, let's say, you start with saying, "Okay, so tell me what do you think you should do?" That's first stop on every bus. If a 6-year-old, even if the 6-year-old has a bad idea of what to do, but at least you now are in that kid's head. So Bobby comes home, he had a fight with Billy at school. You go, okay. Instead of being like, we don't fight in this family. No, you go, okay, tell me what happened. You let the kid tell you, and then you put it back to them. This is our job as parents. Teach them, right? Conflict resolution, you know, deductive reasoning, all this stuff. And you say, what do you think you should do? And he says, I think I should go in tomorrow and beat Bobby up. You could be like, okay, well let's play that out. What would actually happen? Why do you think that's a good idea? Like, we're not gonna let the 6-year-old do that. But when we cut off, when we are so quick to go into the directive aspect or the advice-giving aspect, we're cutting off this ability to know the people in our lives. The more expansive your questions, the more information comes your way, the deeper your relationships.

Oof, that's good. I heard someone say the quality of your questions determines the quality of your life.

Absolutely. Oh my God. That, I've not heard that, but damn, that is so true, JJ Virgin. The quality of your questions. But you have to be able to listen. And I think that this has been like a lost art to a degree, that when you're an HFC, when you're a high-functioning codependent and people come to you for answers, you feel very obligated to give answers and you'll watch your relationships blossom and flourish and change. When you create space, like massive space. My husband's telling me a story. I'm not waiting to talk. I'm asking him, what else can you say? Then what happened? Then who said what? Then what'd you do? Then what'd you think? Like, I'm asking questions to be like, you have the whole fucking floor, the entire floor. I'm not looking to usurp. I'm not trying to jump through a hole to be like, now back to me and my story. Because He's interesting to me, but I also want him to, I actually really wanna know the whole story, not just a little bit of the story. And I think the better listeners we become, the more addicted to this type of expansive conversation you get. It's so much more satisfying and you don't, the conversation's not on you. And I think a lot of times we feel the pressure of like, I have to keep this conversation going. Like I cannot have a pregnant pause. Ah, But sometimes that pause is pregnant with the possibility of a deeper connection, you know? Mm.

So good. So someone listening right now, obviously one thing is to really do the, what are you tolerating? I've done that exercise before. It was much more around business. Mm-hmm. Um, and clearly like, that's just one little area. It's just a fantastic question. Um, someone wanting to jump in right now, I know you have a toolkit. I do. Where would they start? Me through everything. And we're gonna put everything at jjvirgin.com/terri, and that is T-E-R-R-I. So walk someone through a process because I don't know how you would listen to this and not go, okay, yeah, please.

Yes, exactly. Well, if you want the whole walkthrough, go get the book. Go, go get either one of the books, but Too Much is the one about high-functioning perfectionists.

You have audiobooks on those too?

Yes, I do.

Yay. Okay, good.

On both. And I have a workbook for Boundary Boss as well. But the gift, because I know it's a lot and I know that, you know, people are you're like sifting through all this info is there's a video that I did on how to simplify and do less because we have this tendency to do more. There's also a PDF that goes with that. And then I'm giving you two meditations that go with it, uh, you know, voiced by me, obviously guided meditations, one about self-love because so much of the time we're sort of missing that. And for me, self-love in the way that I teach it in the book and the way that I talk about it, it's more like I like self-consideration rather than, you know, self-love seems very amorphous to me. You're sort of like, what does that even friggin' mean? Like get a manicure and like what? So I like self-consideration and I wanna give you right now these two questions to ask yourselves before you agree to anything else in this year is: one, do I have the bandwidth to do this without becoming resentful? Number two, Do I even friggin' want to do it? Because so much of the time, if someone else wants us to do something, we take the question for ourselves, if we wanna do it at all, isn't even on the table. 'Cause we're like, oh, but Bob does want me to do it, so I should do it. I really want you to ask those two questions before you commit to anything. Do I have the bandwidth to do this without becoming resentful? And do I even wanna do it? Oh, and the other thing in the toolkit is the power of no meditation.

Love this. Bandwidth. Do I want to?

Indeed. Mm-hmm. Because those are two things that really matter. Yes. That is self-consideration.

Wow. All right. So much gold, so much good stuff in here.

So much.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And again, I'll put everything at jjvirgin.com/terri, T-E-R-R-I. I, and I'm going to go download the audiobooks right after this. So I appreciate you.

Thank you so much, Ratman. I appreciate you.