Lewis HowesYour Personal 24/7 Greatness Coach

Setting Boundaries With Family...

16 Nov 2023 · 1 min

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In this personal monologue, the speaker reflects on a recurring pattern within their family where health-related trauma and anxiety have fostered a hypervigilant approach to staying in contact. When a family member is out of touch for an unpredictable period, the default assumption is that something terrible has happened, prompting frequent check‑ins and a cycle of anxiety. The speaker describes how they used to make regular weekly calls to reassure themselves and others, but eventually recognized that these calls were more about placating their own anxiety than genuine need for connection. This realization led to a desire to set healthier boundaries, reducing the pressure to report their well‑being every few days while still maintaining meaningful family contact.

Chapters

A running theme in my family was when there was distance, and especially contact, because there was so much health trauma that happened, health concerns and worry and anxiety, the immediate belief or worry would be when someone was out of contact for an unpredictable amount of time, it must be because something terrible happened to them. Interesting. Are they in the hospital? Are they sick? Is something wrong? There was a history of fear. History of fear. Which would create this, Hyper vigilant monitoring of contact. When I didn't call, for instance, on the regular, you know, weekly phone call, it was, you know, is everything okay? Just tell me everything's okay. And I would call at a very particular time frame up until this period of time where I was like, well, wait a minute, you're only doing that, right, to placate this kind of anxiety cycle. You don't actually want to be calling in those moments. Yes, I want to contact with my family, but I didn't need to have regular contact every three days and tell them that I was alive.