You're NOT Setting Boundaries — You're Trying to CONTROL Them

I have so many videos on this channel where I talk about boundaries because when it comes to loving someone with an addiction, it's a super important topic. So we need to have that conversation. The problem is, even though I have all these boundaries, I've got boundaries versus punishment. I've got boundary or ultimatum. We, I've laid it out so many ways, I can't even count them all. But I still don't feel like I've communicated with you guys very well. So today we're going to lay it out a little differently. Like, for example, in the past, you've probably heard me say boundaries are about you, not about them, which is true. But that one little sentence or framework I've noticed is getting a lot of people in trouble because they're just becoming better at Calling something a boundary by stating something about themselves, but when it is really control. People think they're setting boundaries when they're actually doing something else. It feels like a boundary. It sounds like a boundary. You can even convince yourself that it is a boundary, but it's not. So today we're going to break it all the way down. I'm going to give you a totally new way of thinking about it. That hopefully is going to make more sense than anything you've heard before. And we're going to be using a new feature that my software has. We're going to do some examples together, and I'm going to let you guys, like, pick your answers. It's actually called a poll, but we'll do that together. It'll be kind of fun. So this is an interactive one. I want you guys engaged. All right, now Here's what happens when people try to control with boundaries. They set these so-called boundaries that the other person immediately pushes back on, and then they're stuck either having to enforce something that requires the other person's cooperation or backing down and feeling like they're nothing but a failure. And then they wonder why it's not working. It's not working because what they built or said or set Wasn't a boundary. It's more like a management system, and management systems require constant maintenance. They keep you in the middle of everything. They keep you in the bad guy role. And ironically, they actually prevent the very thing that you're hoping for because they remove the natural consequences that are necessary for real recovery to happen. So let me give you a different way of thinking about this. Forget the word boundary for a second. Instead, I want you to ask yourself one question. What decisions do I need to make about my own life? Not their life, yours. Because most of the time, you don't even need to set a boundary at all. You just need to make a logical decision about what you will and won't participate in. And then own it. And the surprising part for a lot of people is that most of the time you don't even need to announce your boundaries. I feel like we're in a habit where we have to, we feel like we're giving someone fair notice in advance, but honestly, it usually just starts an argument and puts us in the bad guy role. A boundary isn't a speech, it's a decision. So let's, let me give you an example. Let's say a college kid fails his first semester because he's been smoking weed, like, constantly instead of going to class. And now the parents are naturally trying to figure out what to do. A lot of parents might say something like, my boundary is that you have to pass a drug test every week before I'm going to pay for the next semester. Sounds good on the surface, right? But when you really dig into it and you think about it harder, you realize that now you're monitoring drug tests. Now you're in a power struggle. Now you're in the bad guy role. And you're not even focused on the one thing that actually matters, which is whether or not your kid is succeeding in school. So the logical decision instead would be something like, I'm not comfortable paying for something that isn't working. You can go back to school if you want. That's your choice. If you end up needing to get loans, I'll help pay back the loans as long as you're passing. You see the difference? Because it's, it's, it's more logical, right? Like, I don't want to pay for failing grades. That, that's harder to argue with. And it puts you in the position To be able to back it up. Because the other thing to say is, okay, I'm going to pay for the next semester, but you got to pass or else you're paying me back. You never want to put yourself in a position to have to chase after it because it's just really hard to enforce that way. And again, you're putting yourself in the bill collector role, which is the bad guy role. Paying for clean drug tests is control. Let's face it. Now, these 2 examples, you can see that one focuses on outcome that actually matters, which is the grades, and the other puts you in charge of And the parent doesn't even need to make a big announcement. They don't even need the kid's agreement. They just made a decision about their own money and lived it. It's just not a lot of room for back and forth and arguing about it. It's just so, it's super easy to rationalize a control tactic by calling it a boundary. Very easy. And some of you guys have watched enough videos, you've gotten like really good at using Like therapy language and they sound really good, but when you break it down, it's the intention behind what you're doing. You know, you, and it's not a bad intention, right? You love the person, you're scared for them. Your brain is going to work overtime to convince you that what you're doing makes sense, which is why you have to be brutally honest with yourself. This is what I tell people in recovery. Recovery is all about like insight, self-reflection. When you're overcoming addiction, you have to become brutally honest with yourself about your intentions, right? Are you lying to yourself about the reason why you need to take that road home? Like, for example, are you rationalizing it? Or are you sort of secretly or subconsciously taking that road home because you have a sketchy intention? Well, this is like the family member version of that, right? This is like, Super honesty with yourself. Am I making a logical decision about my life, or am I trying to engineer a situation to get them to change? Like recently I had this, well, actually this one isn't recently. This was a couple years ago, but I had this mom tell me that her boundary was she would help her son financially, but he needed to provide like all the receipts for everywhere he went because she wanted to make sure that he wasn't Spending his money on drugs, right? I mean, it sounds good. It sounds logical, but this puts you in a monitoring system. It's more of a monitoring system than a boundary. She said, and then she eventually said, well, it's not really about the money. We have the money, right? And then when she said that, it's sort of like telling on yourself, right? Because now you're putting yourself in a position where I'm trying to control what he spends his money on is what's happening. And where this gets complicated is because you're trying to figure out, am I enabling or not? So sometimes it's just easier if you take that thing out of the question, just take the whole enabling thing out of the question, because when you get into that, you start finding yourself getting into the controlling because you're trying not to enable, which is like, well, I, I'm withdrawing my enabling behavior because I think it's going to cause them to X, Y, or Z. It's just too close and complicated. It gets people, it gets you in a mess. Like, for example, in this example about the receipts, the receipts are about the proof, the oversight. She wasn't really making a decision about her own life. She's building a management system. Now, it's easy to lie to yourself here because it's easy to tell yourself something like, Well, I need to feel good about XYZ, where he's spending his money, about him living in this house. And that's what I mean when I say people get good at making that about themselves, which is why I think that when I've said to you guys a thousand times, boundaries about you, not them, that maybe I've done a misservice for you there. Because it's not that that's not true, but it leaves, it's leaving way too much wiggle room and it's just making you guys like excellent Therapy talkers with fancy talk about all this stuff. A real financial decision might sound more like, I've decided I'm not going to give you cash anymore because every time I do, I end up feeling anxious and resentful about it. And that's not good for either of us. That's honest and that's owned. Totally different than, okay, I'm going to give you money, but I want to see all the receipts. And if you notice in that example, no one can really argue with how you feel. So stop. Another thing I want to tell you about money boundaries, this one's really important, is stop saying I can't when you really mean I won't, right? Like, for example, I can't afford to keep helping you. That, first of all, it may or may not be true. And the person is going to know it. And you're just setting yourself up for an argument because the moment you say you can't, you've handed them all the proof. They say, oh really? Well, what about that really fancy handbag that you just bought the other day? Or why are you wearing new sneakers or something like that? Now, because you said I can't, they're trying to call you out on that by managing how you spend your money. So always sort of steer clear of saying, I can't, when you really mean I won't. You can just say, I've decided I'm not doing that anymore. It closes the conversation. Or you can say, I've decided I'm only comfortable with X amount. Like, it doesn't even have to be I will or I won't. It can be, here's a limit where I'm comfortable for, because it's your decision and those decisions don't require the other person's approval. Now, before we get into our examples, I want to like talk to you about something that gets overlooked all the time. This is a Kim tactic. You guys know Kim, our family specialist Kim? She calls this a request. And I think this is super helpful in helping you to like pull apart the pieces of what's really going on between a boundary and a request, because it's completely okay to tell someone that you love, What would make you feel better? Like, for example, you can say, I'd feel better if you were going to meetings regularly, or it would mean a lot to me if you weren't hanging out with those using friends, or I feel more at ease if I knew you had a sponsor. That's a request. It's honest. It's totally allowed. The problem comes if you get into trying to enforce it. That's where we get into the control lane. So You don't need a boundary about everything, right? You can just have a request. Now they can do it or they cannot do it, but then what happens is that actually sets them up to have to be the good guy or the bad guy instead of setting you up to have to be the bad guy, right? They can decide whether they're willing to do that because it's helpful for you. I've had a lot of clients do a lot of things Because they know it's like what's best for their wife or what would help their family feel better about something. And they do it with not a lot of resentment because they do it when they're humble and they know that they've created a big mess, right? And so they know that if they do certain things, it's going to help their person just feel better. And that's okay for them to do that. But it's better for them to decide that on their own than for the family member to try to put some kind of leverage or control around it. Because if when you do that, it's not a request anymore, it's a control. The thing is, like, you can't want things for them, okay? You can ask for things, but trying to set a boundary around their behavior usually isn't a boundary. It's just a control tactic with like super good fancy vocabulary around it. All right. Now, I told you guys we're going to take some examples where I want you to participate. Ready? So here's an example. Is this boundary or control? Now let me put my poll up here. This is like a new feature I haven't used before. All right, it's up there. I did it. It wasn't even that hard. Okay. All right. Here you go. Here's the situation. A mom tells her young adult son, like 20, 22 or so, that just got out of treatment, you can come home, but your counselor says you need to do 90 meetings in 90 days. So I need you to agree to do 90 meetings in 90 days. Otherwise, I don't feel good about you coming home unless you're following your aftercare plan. Is that a boundary or is that control? If you're watching live, you can actually Put your answer in. You can you can answer this poll. So I'm going to give you guys just a second to get some to get some answers on the board. Now this shouldn't be hard. You you I'm not even giving you hard ones here. You guys should know this. I wish we had like like little music in the background, like on Jeopardy. Do do do do do while we wait for you guys to put some. All right, we're getting some answers coming in there. Here we go. All right, keep them coming. Don't worry, I can't see your name. You're not going to get called out for a right or wrong answer. You're cool, you can answer. All right, so some of you— we had— we've had at least, um, some of you, 20%, have voted boundary. And the rest of you have voted control. Okay, so let's talk about this. If it sounds reasonable, meetings are very good for recovery, sure. And in this situation, the mom is coming from a good place, right? Like she wants her son to succeed at recovery, but let's run it through the test, right? Is she making the decision about her own life or is she trying to govern his behavior? In this example, she's telling him what he has to do, which means it's not a boundary, it's a condition, and that's control. Okay? So even though it's for someone's own good, even though the treatment center might tell you it's a great idea, the treatment center will send you home and say, you need to make a home contract. And they'll have you make a whole freaking list of control rules. Okay? But I'm telling you, It's not, it's not going to be effective. It's not going to do what you want it to do. Most of the time it backs you into a corner instead of them into a corner. And it just doesn't work. And it leaves you in that same, like, power struggle-y kind of dynamic that's keeping you both anxious and depressed and sick and unhealthy and miserable. So a real decision sounds more like— You're welcome to come home, but I need this household to stay functional and peaceful, okay? And if it stops feeling that way, then we're going to have to reassess this decision. You see, it doesn't have this like hardcore black and white, if you do this, then I'll do that kind of thing in there. It just makes it simple, right? Like I need the house to stay functional and peaceful. Like that's reasonable, right? And it's not controlling the other person's behavior. It's not managing their recovery. It's just obvious. It makes sense. It's harder to argue with. You're not telling someone what to do. You're not telling her that what you'll do if things go sideways. And you don't need to monitor every single little thing. It keeps you out of the monitoring role. All right, here's our second poll example. You ready? Yes. Be brave. You can answer. Is this one a boundary Or a control. Let me put the new one up there for you. Ready? A woman is worried about her husband's friendship with a female coworker. This example I actually got off of Reddit. This was a Reddit story, okay? The husband worked with this woman, this really attractive woman who was crossing boundaries, right? She was calling him at home outside of like work hours all the time. You know, it was calling it friendship, but it was, it was definitely sketchily crossing the boundary, right? And it was making her uncomfortable. I think it would make most wives uncomfortable, to be honest. So in this situation, the wife tells the husband that her boundary is that he has to— oh, I forgot to say this part. This person goes to his gym too, right? And so she says that the boundary is that He can't talk to her about anything outside of work stuff. And it can't be outside of work hours and set all these rules about like texting and stuff. But a big one that she said, and the one that kind of got into question here was she said, if you're at the gym and this person's at the gym, then you just need to leave because I don't want you being at the gym alone with this woman. So one day he's at the gym. He's got 20 minutes left of his workout, and then the coworker walks in. So he just finishes his workout. He's like, I'm almost done. And then he leaves and he tells his wife about it, but the wife is furious. She says he didn't respect her boundary. All right, so here's your vote. Is this boundary or control? Put your, put your answer up there. Boundary. Is it showing? It's not showing it this time, is it? Oh, okay, hold on. It's adding your answers to the old one. Here we go. Sorry. It was messing up our other results. There we go, we got them on the right one. All right, we got a vote for boundary. What do you guys think? Anybody think that this one's control about the gym, or are we all agreeing that it's this boundary? I'm giving you this example because I like it because it's not specifically related to addiction, and that allows us to kind of get out of our current emotions a little bit and look at a situation sort of outside of that. Because when it comes to addiction, when we're all going through it, it's just so complicated and emotional, right? So this one purposely isn't about addiction because it's just a little easier to figure this out, but it still illustrates the same pattern, right? In this example, the gym example, she's not making a decision about her own life. She's giving him instructions about what he has to do every time a specific person appears or texts or calls. And it's not even that I disagree at all with this wife about not feeling comfortable with it, right? I don't think I'd feel comfortable with it either. It's just about how are you managing that? Uncomfortableness. It's not a boundary. It's a rule because it, it requires like ongoing compliance. A real decision here might be something like, I'm not comfortable in social situations where this person is present. So if, if the wife feels like she's going to be there, she could say, I'm not going to go to that. Or she can say a request. She can say, It would really help me feel better if X, Y, or Z. But when you try to put a punishment on it, when you have a rule on it, you've veered sort of what I call off of your side of the street onto their side of the street. Because that's what this is about. Is it your side of the street or their side of the street? That's a question I often ask myself to help me figure it out. All right. This poll is going to be a little different. I got one more example for you. But on this one, we're going to look at which one is better, option A or option B. Let's put it up here. All right, here we go. I'm going to give you the options. Ready? This one is about a father whose adult daughter is in early recovery. He wants to support her financially while she looks for work. Here's 2 options of boundaries. Option A, I'll help you financially, but you need to submit 5 job applications every day, and I'm going to want to see proof of that. Option A. I'm happy to help you for a few months while you get on your feet. After that, I'm not— I can't keep supporting you financially or paying the rent or whatever it was that was the financial agreement. So let's use this time well. Options. This is getting at the same thing, right? Is it better to go with saying it like option A, or is it better to go with saying it like option B? You guys put your, put your votes in there. All right, let's get some votes. I'm going to wait a second because there's like a delay here. Here we go. All right, we're getting some votes in here. Repeat it. Okay. So here's the question. Option A or option B. This is an example of a dad talking to a daughter who's in early recovery. He says to her, I'm happy to financially support you, pay the rent, whatever, help financially. But I need you to put in 5 job applications every day. That's option A. Option B would be something more like, I am fine with helping you for 3 months or 6 months, so you need to use that time well. Should you go with option A or option B? In this example, it's B, and here's why. Because option A puts him in the monitoring role, right? Now he's got to check behind her. Now he's got to make sure she does it. And then if she doesn't, then he's got to have this whole consequence thing. He's got to do it every day, right? Which just puts him in like a supervisor position. And now it puts the daughter reporting to him. And now there's something to lie about. It sets up the situation. If she doesn't do it, is she going to tell the truth? Probably not. They're going to argue about it. They're going to resent each other over it. So option B is just the most logical one here because it's about his own financial situation and his own limits. He has given her a timeframe. He's been honest. He is treating her like an adult and he's completely out of the middle of her daily choices. That's why it's such a better, healthier boundary. And it supports her recovery better, right? Because the thing of it is, is if you don't take anything away from today, I want you to take this away. Every time you try to control someone else's behavior, even when it's with the best of intentions, you're robbing them of something. You're robbing them of the natural consequences. And the natural consequences are actually what helps people To get clean and sober, right? If someone's recovery is based on these punishments and these things that you're doing or not doing, this is probably not recovery. At best, you're going to get compliance, right? You can't force recovery. Sometimes you can force compliance if you have enough leverage. But when you're When they're doing a compliant role, maybe it helps you feel better in the moment because you're asking them for these little evidences or some kind of behaviors that you see as good for recovery, or at least not bad for recovery. But again, if you're having to monitor it, if you're having to chase it down and impose all these punishments and stuff, it's a good indicator that you Gotten out of your lane. You're not on your side of the street. You're on their side of the street. Hopefully this helps clear it up because it's all about your intent. It's all about separating their recovery from your life. Not that you don't care, right? But it's about separating, trying to manage that from what's going on with you. Because I, the reason we have so many videos about this is because It's complicated. It's hard. I have to stop and think about it myself all the time. Like I have to really deeply think about it. Well, well, and a lot of times it's, I have to ask the person, what's the intention here to even figure out, you know, whether it's on one side of the street or the other. It's difficult even for me. And I see people getting this wrong so often and it blows up in their face. It sabotages everything. The other reason people get it wrong is because you hear all the time, When you're dealing with an addict or alcoholic, you need boundaries, and you do, but the boundaries don't make them change. Okay? The boundaries are really just about protecting you. Safety boundaries are always appropriate. Sanity boundaries are always appropriate, but you got to be careful with those because you can get into the, well, I won't feel comfortable if. X, Y, or Z isn't met. That's veering over to the lane. It sounds good, but you're getting out of bounds when you're getting like that. Okay. All right. Do we have any questions, comments, concerns? I know y'all are going to throw some like hard boundary questions at me and y'all going to make me really think here. Okay. While you guys are getting those up there, If you struggle with this, if you have trouble with boundaries or not boundaries, or you're constantly having to make decisions like this and you need some support, we have a really great family recovery membership that Kim and Campbell go on every single week and help talk to you like in real live time and answer your questions about this. You can submit questions beforehand. It just gives you a chance to have a sounding board to run some of this through. Because it is complicated. It's not a black and white issue. All right, here's our first question. Let me get where I can see the chat, just one second. All right, here we go. Question, how would you say we want to see a shift? Is this a boundary? I don't— I think it's, I like the way you're saying it because you're not putting a rule on it. Like this is pretty close to, I'd feel better if. We want to see a shift. As long as you're not putting a or else, when you put an or else on it, you're getting into control territory. And I know maybe it feels like it's not because you're not saying drug test, you're not saying meetings, you're saying shift, but it's putting you in a situation to monitor whether there's a shift or not. I think this one is, I would feel better if. And then fill in the blank, right? Or if certain behaviors happen that really truly negatively impact you, then you can say, if you come home and you're violent and aggressive, if you're screaming, if you're scaring the kids, if you're whatever, then I'm going to do this Y or Z, X, Y, or Z. That's more like a boundary. But the trying, wanting to see a shift can be a request. But it's not a boundary because again, that's about their recovery. That's sliding into their side street. It's not a total fail, but it's not a total win. All right, here's our next question. Our loved one seems stuck, is content to live with us and not find a job or take on responsibilities. I guess I can try that. I would feel better if, and you could If you could make a resume and start applying for jobs. I like it. Yes, that's correct. That will work. And Campbell is the master of this. Campbell is just really good at the parent boundary setting when it comes to like financially tapering off is what we call it. You know, like kind of gently getting them out of the nest a little bit. Campbell's really good at this. And the thing of it is, is you can't tell somebody like, you know, I'm sick of supporting you. You need to get out there and find a job because you can't control that. What you can control is, you know, we've been supporting you this long. Starting on this month or this day, we're going to start charging you X amount of rent to live here. Right. Because now you're not telling them that they need to get a job or apply for jobs. You're saying this is the real life situation and they can figure out how to meet or not meet that. So I think you can say this as a request. I'm not sure if the person will meet it or not. And this one may require a boundary, but the boundary is going to have to be a financial obligation. Too many parents try to get into controlling. The person's job hunt, how many jobs they're applying for, all this kind of stuff. And they keep saying, we're not going to keep financially supporting you. We're not going to keep doing this. And then they're just sort of making all these idle threats, which is just brewing power struggle and not helping anything. All right, here's a new one. How do you say without getting in the bad guy role that you don't see changes You don't see changes they would show recovery. That would show recovery. Okay, there I think what you're saying is, how do you say that you don't see the changes that would show recovery? I think you can say that, but you don't need a boundary around it, right? You don't need very many boundaries. The fewer boundaries you have, the better, because then you have to freaking back up your boundaries, and it becomes this whole thing that makes your life miserable, right? So I think you can say that to somebody, but you don't need a, you don't necessarily need a boundary around it, right? You can, if you say, if we don't see the changes that support recovery, we're going to X, Y, or Z, but you got to be really careful here because now you're getting into controlling their recovery. If you focus on where their addictive behavior really truly crosses over into your lane, You could set a boundary on that, but not about their recovery. All right, here's a new question. Why does my alcoholic husband stay stuck on being mad at me when he messes us way more than me? It's like he likes being mad at me. Yeah, I mean, there's probably truth. I'm not, I'm your, your username looks new to me, so I'm not sure how long you've been around, but those of you that have been around a while, you guys hear me say all the time, like addiction thrives on self-pity and resentment. It's like, it's literally like the currency that addiction needs to thrive. So there's always got to be a villain when there is an addiction and it's usually the closest person to you. So it's whoever lives with you usually is like your spouse or your parent or somebody like that. And that's, that's the villain role. And they can help keep you stuck in it. They can start arguments. They can do lots of things to help keep you stuck in that. We have tons of videos if you haven't seen them on this topic, but you're not crazy. That probably is happening to you. And yeah, there, there's a subconscious need to keep him in the victim role and you in the villain role. Should we offer our adult daughter a ride to her next court date for DUI or let her figure it out? She lives an hour away. Oh, super, super good question. If it's convenient for you and you want to do it, do it. If it's going to cause a ton of turmoil, upset your life, make you miss work and get in trouble or something crazy like that, Then don't do it, right? Don't feel like you have to do it or else this bad thing's going to happen to her because that's again trying to control their recovery, right? You need to ask a question about, is that doable for me? Is that convenient enough for me to do? And leave it just that basic and that simple, and then it's going to be easier to answer for you. All right. Bree says that we are out of time for today. You guys asked me some really good questions. I knew that you would. If you want ongoing help like this where you can actually like get on like live or not live, you're virtual, but you can get on live and ask questions like this and help think it through week by week. Check out the membership. It's super affordable and it's a good way to get your questions like this answered. And a lot of those questions that Kim and Campbell answer are boundaries questions. I'd say maybe like the majority of them. So you're not in this boundary boat alone. All right, thank you guys. For those of you showed up live and answered the polls and participated, I appreciate it. If you're watching the playback, we appreciate you too. We— you can also participate in the comments below. And if you want to join us live, we're live every Thursday at 1. We release new videos on Tuesdays, and I'll see you guys next week. Bye everybody. Bye.