HealthyGamerGG - Boundaries Don't Work - Here's Why

Episode Date: December 31, 2023

Today's discussion might challenge a common belief – the effectiveness of setting healthy boundaries. Contrary to popular advice, setting healthy boundaries can sometimes yield less effective results, especially in situations where power dynamics play a crucial role. In this video, we'll explore the complexities surrounding the efficacy of establishing healthy boundaries. We'll delve into why, despite its positive intent, setting boundaries might not always yield the desired outcome. It's crucial to understand that the effectiveness of boundaries can be impacted by various factors, especially power dynamics inherent within relationships or situations. Check out HG coaching: https://bit.ly/47dF7rF Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we're going to talk about why setting healthy boundaries is idiotic and oftentimes does not work. Now, I know this sounds kind of crazy because everyone out there is like, set healthy boundaries, man. Like you've got to learn how to set your boundaries. You got to keep your boundaries and like people like, you have to hold the line and then people will respect you. And I used to believe that too, right? As a psychiatrist, I've been taught how to set healthy boundaries with my patients. And then I would teach my patients how to set healthy boundaries with people in their life. And that worked some of the time. But some of the time, it really doesn't work. And I'd almost say that for the majority of people, like, that's not an effective strategy.

Because at the end of the day, setting healthy boundaries only works if you have power. If you can impose consequences on someone else for violating your boundary, then you can set a boundary. But there's a ton of people that I worked with that are like teenagers with abusive parents or siblings that have older siblings that are like stronger than them or financially dependent. on like other people or people in romantic relationships where there's like one partner who has all the power or in work situations where someone's like you know you can't set a healthy boundary with your boss when they can fire your ass or write you up right so this is like a basic problem that a lot of us professionals like medical professionals and psychiatrists and therapists we all like drink this coolade of setting healthy boundaries but there's a fundamental problem like i'm a model

minority man with a medical degree, which means that I can set boundaries on bitches like right and left, and it's going to work, because I have a lot of inherent power. But a lot of the people that I work with don't have power. So when they try to use the strategy that I use, it's kind of like, you know, if you're a nuclear power with the largest military in the world and you develop a foreign policy, you can't be some like tiny ass country that adopts the same foreign policy and it works. there is a completely different strategy if you are weak. And today we're going to talk about that. We're going to teach you all a little bit about narcissists because a lot of this boundary

violating crap comes from narcissists. We're going to teach you all how to manage your own emotions. And we're going to teach you all what to do, how to kind of get what you want and effectively do the same thing as setting healthy boundaries without setting healthy boundaries, right? We're going to teach you all almost like how to manipulate narcissists into leaving you alone and to help you kind of do what you want. Now let's start with this. The first thing that you got to do is be weak. And I know it sounds kind of weird because everyone's like, oh my God, you should be strong. So let's run through what actually happens when you try to be strong. So if there's a

power dynamic where your parents are like, you know, they've got all the power and you're like a teenager living at home and you're like, I'm a be strong and I'm a set boundaries. And if you try to be strong with a narcissist, if you've got some kind of conflict, let's say, with someone who's narcissistic and you're going to strongly represent your viewpoint, right? And you're like, hey, buddy, you are treating me in a bad way, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you're going to like, you're going to like, you know, you're going to, yeah. And then what do they do? They get pissed off, right?

So if they're a narcissist, what they're going to do is, like, if you tell them that they are doing something wrong, that is going to activate their narcissistic defense mechanisms. They're going to get pissed off at you and they're going to hit back hard. And the problem with people who are like narcissistic is they're really good at pushing your emotional buttons. Right. So, like, you're trying to be strong, but in terms. internally you're like, uh, don't attack me. Like, you've been the victim of bullying. Like, that's what happened with me. Like, I used to try to stand up to my bullies. And what would my

bullies do? They would love it when I stood up to them, right? Because they're going to put my ass who's one year younger and like smaller they are, they're going to put me in my place. And then furthermore, what I'm doing when I try to be strong and I get manipulated or physically like pushed into the corner or whatever is I'm actually giving this, this narcissist, this bully, an emotional reinforcement, right? Why are they narcissistic? Because their value as a human being depends on their superiority

to other human beings. So if you approach them with strength and you don't have the power to back it up, you are actually going to positively reinforce the negative behavior. You're going to criticize them. They're going to get pissed off. Their narcissism rises.

Their bullying tendencies rise and they're going to put you in their place. And when they put you in your place, they're going to feel really good. which in turn is going to reinforce what kind of behavior. They're going to want to wake up tomorrow and put you in their place. Now they've got one punching bag that can consistently help them feel better about themselves. They struggle with low self-esteem, but hey, I can go beat up on Alloak,

and if I beat up on Alloak, I'll feel better about myself. So the first thing, I know it sounds kind of weird. First thing you've got to do is stop being strong. I want you to think a little bit about, like, you know, games that you play, right? When do you want to really own someone 1V1 mid? When someone, like, talk smack to you, like, that's when you really want to put them their place. It doesn't have anything to do with narcissism. It's just like basic human ideas of like, okay, like I feel really good about myself when someone stands up to me and I get to crush them.

This is why if you look at like games, right, and who is it fun to play a game with? It's not fun to play chess against like a two-year-old monkey that doesn't understand the rules. There's no satisfaction in overcoming them. So one of the trickiest things that we fall into is that in an attempt to be strong, we actually engage that narcissistic defense mechanism. We'll criticize them. We'll put them in their place. We'll set a healthy boundary. And it kind of like causes the sleeping dragon to wake up.

And then they're going to emotionally manipulate us. We'll get to that in a second. And then they'll end up crushing you anyway, which is going to feel very, very good for them. So what we really want to do is be like the crappiest loot box in the universe. We want to be a loot box that every time they interact with us, they don't get anything, right? They don't get any sense of self-esteem.

They don't get any enjoyment. They don't get any of that crap. We want to take away their reward so they leave us alone. So how do we do that? We pretend to be weak while internally being strong. So I'll give you all an example. Let's say you've got family conflict with someone. And you're like, hey, mom or dad, like the way that you talk to me is like really cruel

and you're very abusive. And they're like, screw you. I'm not abusive. I'll tell you what's abusive when you did this and when you did this. And for years, I gave up my modeling career. and I gave up my acting career. I can't believe that you're so ungrateful for me for all the sacrifices. I put a roof over your head.

I do this. And like, that's what happens, right? You criticize them and you have woken the sleeping dragon. So if you try to set a healthy boundary with them, they're going to like blow things up. And unless you have the power to back up that boundary unless you're financially independent, unless you're in a loving relationship, unless you've got the rest of your life kind of sorted out. Then by all means, go set healthy boundaries with whoever the f*** you want. But if you don't have that stuff, it doesn't work.

And in fact, what it actually does is reinforces their narcissism. because here you are attacking them and they are putting you in their place. And if I rebuff an attack on me, then I can start to believe, oh, you see, this person was criticizing me, but it turns out they're wrong. And I'm not a bad person. I'm a good person. And this person is ungrateful. And nothing is like more addictive to someone who's a toxic asshole than feeling like any kind of criticism is actually wrong, right? They can prove you wrong, and then they can feel better about themselves.

So instead, what we're going to do is we're going to be weak. Now, what does this look like? You can still set a boundary with someone, but the reason that you're setting the boundary is not because they're doing anything wrong. It's because I am so weak. So, let's say that your parents are toxic. And so you're trying to set a limb with them. You're like, hey, stop being toxic to me.

Like, you know, it's damaging to me. Instead, what you can say is, hey, mom, dad, I understand that you all really care about me. I understand that you really love me. But when you talk to me in this way, like, it puts my head in a bad head space. And stupid little me, once I get in a bad headspace, You know how weak I am, so I'm just not going to be able to, I'm going to hang up the phone anytime you put me in a bad headspace. I apologize.

Not your fault. I'm so weak. Click. Hang up. And now something really weird happens with the narcissist. So when you set a boundary, but you don't blame them for it, like, they can't get traction on that, right? Because it's like, okay, well, like, we both know you're wrong.

So they kind of don't know what to do. They don't get that emotional reinforcement that they're really looking for. They don't get to like really feel too superior because you're, saying, yeah, you're like, you're superior, right? So I'm a screw up. Sorry about that. I'm hanging up now. And so you figure out whatever that boundary is, but you don't blame them for it, right? In fact, you actually blame yourself and you can say, hey, I'm really working on this. I apologize. You know, I hope I'll be able to do better in the future. And then it's almost like this weird, like, principle from like Tai Chi or I keto or jiu-jitsu where like, you know, you have to roll with

that resistance. You kind of want to be like water where like if they push at you hard, like you just want to, you know, you're not, you're not going to fight. And as long as you kind of don't fight, but you can still set that limit, but as long as you don't evoke the narcissistic defense mechanism, people will actually respect that limit. This is what I've seen as a psychiatrist, is like teaching my patients these principles actually helps them more because you're not triggering that whole complex that allows the narcissist to feel better about themselves. You're kind of saying, yeah, you're better. And over time, what's going to happen is if you hold the boundary, but you don't blame them for it, you'll start extinguishing the behavior. People don't buy

crappy loot boxes, right? People buy loot boxes that give them the stuff that they want. And so what you want to become is a crappy loot box where you're not going to give them the satisfaction of feeling superior. You're just going to own it yourself and then you're going to step away. Second thing that you've really got to learn how to do is separate your emotions from your actions. So if we're talking about toxic relationships, how do these people function? They function by engaging in manipulating behavior. Now, let's talk about how to resist manipulation. So what does it mean to have manipulating behavior. What are they actually manipulating? What does it mean to be manipulated? So literally what manipulation is, is I'm going to do or say something that is then going to lead to an emotional

reaction that automatically induces the behavior on your end. I'm not going to ask you for a favor. I'm not just going to straight up come up to you and say, hey, can you do this for me? I'm not going to ask for the favor or try to do be like, you know, I'm not just going to induce the behavior directly. The whole reason it's manipulative is I'm going to make you feel a certain way. And then that feeling is going to induce the behavior automatically. So it's like, let me put it this way. If I ask you for a favor, okay? And then you say yes.

And then like the favor is completed. We did what I asked you to do. And now I'm in your debt, right? You did me a solid. I'm in your debt. You're a good person. I'm in your debt. If I'm like a narcissistic asshole, I do not like that situation.

So instead what I'm going to do is I'm going to get you to do that thing, but I'm not going to be indebted to you. I'm going to trick you or manipulate you into doing it anyway, but it's not going to cost me anything. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to say, hey, like, oh, like I did all this stuff for you. What are you going to do? You're going to help me out too?

And then even if you say yes, and you are helping me out, since I've evoked your emotions, it doesn't feel like I'm in your debt at the end of that, right? Like, are you going to help me too? I'm going to guilt trip you into helping me. And if I guilt trip you into helping me, I'm not in your debt. And so this is the problem is if you do me a solid, but I don't owe you anything.

then what I can do is like, I don't have to pay that back. And in fact, I can get you to do it again. I can manipulate you again and I can manipulate you again and I can manipulate you again. But if I'm not actually racking up any debt, I can do that all day. And so this is what happens with emotional manipulation is that people will induce an emotion. And then that emotion will make the manipulated person automatically engage in a behavior. And instead of asking for a favor or any kind of fair exchange of like respect or services or whatever, I'm manipulating you into doing something.

So how do we resist that? We resist that by separating out emotions and actions. So this is really important. If you are vulnerable to manipulation, what that literally means is that your emotions will induce your actions. So some human beings go through life thinking that the way to solve emotional problems is through action. If my significant other is mad at me,

I need to buy them a gift. The way to resolve that emotion is by paying some price or inducing a behavior. And if I get them the gift, then the emotion goes away. I feel better about myself because, thank God they're not mad at me anymore. But think about that, right? What's happening? Now what you've done is you've reinforced this idea that the way that I'm going to fix my emotions is by engaging in some kind of behavior.

And so now something subtle has happened, right? So let's say I'm use the example of my wife. She's not like this. but, you know, if she makes me feel bad or makes me feel guilty, then I'm going to buy or something. And so now she's got a really interesting ATM card, right? She's got a really interesting debit card. All she has to do is get pissed at me to get me to buy her stuff. And like, that's like literally how it works.

What I've done is I positively reinforced with like $1,000 her making me feel like shit. And what do you think that's going to do in the relationship? She's like, well, fuck, I need a thousand grand. Let's make Aloak feel like shit today. She doesn't actually do that. She's awesome that way. And so I want you all to really realize that your ability to be manipulated is tied entirely to emotions and actions being tied in your mind. And we also know that from like research on trauma, for example, there is a survival mechanism in the brain called dissociation.

And what does dissociation do? It divorces our emotions from our actions and our feelings and like our thoughts and all kinds of stuff. So what we literally want to start doing is divorcing our emotions from our actions. Now, how do you do that? Let's start with something like guilt. Okay. So this is a very, very common emotion that we see in manipulative relationships. Guilt is the number one reason why it's like hard to set boundaries with people.

And when we're talking about this power dynamic, by the way, it doesn't necessarily have to be like financial dependence. It can be like an emotional power dynamic, okay? So there's something weird about guilt, which is that we tend to think that I feel guilty because I made a mistake. But that is factually incorrect. You do not feel guilty because you made a mistake. Since you feel guilty, you believe you made a mistake. The guilt comes first. I know it's kind of bizarre, but if you literally look at the brain, the fastest part of the brain to activate is our limbic system or our negative emotional circuitry. And once our negative emotional circuitry activates,

it then goes to our cerebral cortex where we have our higher order thinking and reasoning, and it manipulates that part of our brain into providing logical support for our emotions. Logic doesn't create an emotion. Emotion actually creates logic. So let me give you all an example of this. If I get pissed at someone, if I feel hurt and angry at someone, what kind of logic does my mind produce? Does my mind take a step back and be like, hmm, you know, even though I'm pissed at them, maybe I'm the one that's at fault, right?

I should really think about their perspective and like maybe I'm the one who's screwing up here. Of course not. When you get pissed at someone, or more importantly, when someone gets pissed at you, what happens to their rational thinking? It justifies whatever the emotion is, right? When I get angry at someone, they did this wrong, and they did this wrong, and if anyone tries to argue with me, I'm going to be like, screw you. You're wrong, right?

Because why are you wrong? Because I'm angry. On the flip side, if you've been on the receiving, on this, my heart goes. out to you. When someone's mad at you, they'll come up with a thousand reasons to prove their point. This is simply how all emotions work, right? We also see this in like the honeymoon period of marriage. We're in the honeymoon period of marriage. It's a positive emotion. We just got married. I'm so in love with this person. And when I'm so in love with this person, what do I do to all the red flags they keep waving around? Oh, that's red flag number one. Let me snap it in half and throw

it away. I'm feeling so good. I'm so in love. You're so great. Oh, my God. There's a red flag. Oh, I'm going to snap it, throw it in half. Here's another red flag. Snap it through it in half. Right? I'm going to ignore all these red flags because I'm so in love. And they wouldn't do that to me. Your rational mind gets fucking hijacked by your emotions. And this is what happens in emotional relationships or manipulated relationships is that when you try to set a boundary with someone, they're going to evoke guilt. And guilt is like the nuclear missile of like emotional manipulation. Because it makes it your fault, right? And what does the narcissist want to do? They want to absolve themselves of all guilt and they're going to make it your fault. And if your fault, when you try to set a

boundary, if you're doing something wrong and I can convince you that you're guilty, you're going to cave your own boundary, and then you're going to come like crawling on your hands and knees to me to make me like happy, right? That's like, just think about the psychological crap that goes on in your head when you try to tell someone that they are doing something hurtful and somehow they do this fucking jujitsu where it's your fault and you feel bad, right? And then you, like, you originally criticize them, but now you're like making it up to them. Like, what the hell is going on there?

It's because it comes down to guilt. They're going to make you feel guilty, right? So they'll say, and this is what will happen with narcissists, is they will figure out what buttons to push over time. And so they will figure out how to make you feel guilty, right? Because if you think about like a toxic parent, they will fling all kinds of insults. I know that you all don't think about this,

but, you know, if you're like 20 years old and you have a toxic parent, they've been flinging insults at you for 20 years. and why do they keep hammering on the same crap, right? They don't insult your hair and then insult your toenails and then insult your intelligence and then make you feel guilty because they made so many sacrifices. They don't randomly pick what they say to you. They say the same damn crap over and over and over again. Once they figure out, okay, here's how I flip the guilt switch.

They flip that switch. And once you feel guilty, then what does your mind do? Your mind then reverse engineers that this is your fault. It assumes that the mistake. is on you because you feel guilty, but emotion comes before logic. So if we look at something like psychotherapy, what do we do in psychotherapy? We literally sit down with people and we help them understand that if you are emotional, if you're guilty, if you're guilty, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's your fault.

We're going to decompress that emotion and we're going to look at the situation logically. And when we do that, we help people understand, oh, actually, I was at fault for this 25% of it, but 75% of it is not my fault. And once someone is able to realize that, then they're not like playing that game anymore because they're not accepting responsibility for 100% of crap when they didn't do anything wrong. So what y'all need to do? If you're in a toxic relationship, an manipulative relationship where you try to set boundaries, and it does not work, this person will use power over you, whether it's financial power,

you know, reporting power, you report to them, they're your boss, or they're using emotional power over you. There are certain things that you can do to change this dynamic. And it has to do with understanding this narcissistic relationship. It doesn't always have to be narcissistic. I'm not saying they have narcissistic personality disorder. But this is usually what happens in these kinds of relationships. Right? Your bully is looking for particular things.

They're actually looking for you to try to be strong. And then they want to crack you like an egg. That is what is the most satisfying. Right. So if you try to criticize them, oh man, you've woken the sleeping dragon. And they are going to come down on you hard. And since they know how to emotionally manipulate you, they're going to win every single time. So how do we manage that?

First thing that we do is be like water. Be weak. Say, hey, I'm going to set this limit, but I'm setting this limit because I'm weak. I'm sorry I can't handle this right now. Click. Then they're going to get really, really pissed. They're going to come back and you say, I can't believe you hang up on me. Do you know everything I've done for you?

And you're like, yeah, I'm so sorry. Oh, my God. I really am just like I didn't realize that it. It's so hard. I'm sorry. It's just so hard for me. Click. And they're like, oh my God. It's like, I can't believe you're going to yell at that you've come home and they start. You hung up on me twice. How dare you? You're like, yeah, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. And then you fucking walk out the door. And eventually they're going to stop, right? Because you're not actually like, you're not giving them the reward that they're looking for. And if you're not giving them the reward,

you will extinguish the behavior. Second thing you've got to work a lot on is understand that this whole business of guilt, emotions and actions. The whole point of manipulation is, they're not going to ask you for anything. They're going to induce emotions that makes you do it anyway. And so you're not doing them a favor. There's no space for gratitude. There's no space for recognition. There's no space for appreciation. It's always fixing problems. So what you really need to learn how to do is separate out emotions from actions, right? And that's a whole other thing. We've got videos on Alexa Thymia, which you should watch. You can check out Dr. Kay's guide. You can meditate, whatever. Just recognize the emotion within you and recognize that this emotion makes me conclude these things and then makes me want to engage in a particular behavior.

So all you really need to do is go through that process, right? And say like, okay, what does it feel like to not engage in the behavior? What would happen if I just ride this emotion out? And then your mind is going to tell you, no, no, no, you need to do it. You need to do it because it's your fault and blah, blah, blah, your fault. And hold on a second. The most important thing is if you feel like you need to do it. something. The one thing that I would recommend is that you do it with a clear head. So wait until

you are a completely clear head and then tell your mind, we can do this thing. No problem. We can absolutely do it. I'm just going to wait till I'm calm. Wait till tomorrow. Take a deep breath, wake up fresh in the morning, go for a walk, and then decide what you need to do. You will be amazed at how that changes your behavior. So just delay, delay giving into the emotion, okay? Now I know that today we talked about all kinds of random stuff. We're kind of all over the place. And that's because there's this fundamental idea of like boundary setting, which just doesn't work. And especially when you've got these narcissistic kind of personalities that are very emotionally manipulative or have power over you, setting healthy boundaries just doesn't work.

And so instead what we need to do is we need to be smart, right? We can't we can't outplay them on on straight like, you know, aggression. But we can absolutely like outplay them through like thievery and special ops and like this kind of stuff. And so that starts with really understanding yourself and understanding what am I reinforcing when I engage in this behavior. And if you stick with this stuff over time, this is literally what has helped me help patients who are in abusive relationships. Help teenagers who are with parents who are very, very emotionally manipulative. And like, I'm thinking about a person who was like really, really religious, right? So there's like just a lot of guilt dumped on this person.

And as long as you're like owning that guilt and you're letting it control, you're never going to escape. So good luck with this. And I really hope it works. So it's going to be hard to do, but I really want you all to give it a shot, and the better you get at it, the better your relationships are going to become. Hey, y'all, I want to take a moment to thank the sponsor of today's video, Nordpass. If you use the internet nowadays, you know that every single website or service or platform wants you to make a new account, and you have to generate passwords, and since everyone is asking you for this crap, it can be a real pain to keep track of your passwords. The other problem is that if you're like me, you may get a little bit lazy and you may start duplicating passwords, which is one of the worst things that you can do. NordPass allows you to generate very strong passwords and maintain them all in one place.

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