Psychiatry & Psychotherapy Podcast - Setting Boundaries in Relationships

Episode Date: August 11, 2018

What are boundaries? When we refer to boundaries, we are talking about emotional walls that are healthy. Boundaries are meant to keep us in relationship with the people that we love. Think of them as your property lines around your house. You know where your lines are, where your property ends and your neighbors begins. Therefore you know what you are supposed to take care of and what your neighbor is supposed to take care of. A boundary defines our self. Within ourselves, our "property" consists of our physical body, our desires, our intellect, and our ability to make decisions. It gives us a sense of defining what is "me" and what is "not me." We are not supposed to take on too much of other people's emotional experiences. When I was a newly practicing psychiatrist, I didn't know that, and I felt depressed after meeting with a depressed patient. It is possible to have an understanding of what is happening in someone's emotional world, but not take it on yourself. By listening to this episode, you can earn 0.75 Psychiatry CME Credits. Link to blog. Link to YouTube video. Connect With and Join Lindsay Puder's Instagram: LindsayPuder Join David on Instagram: dr.davidpuder Twitter: @DavidPuder Facebook: DrDavidPuder

Welcome back to the podcast. This is your host, Dr. David Puter. And I'm joined today with none other than my wife, Lindsay Puter. She is a former leadership coach for a company. She worked in an HR department and did leadership development and leadership coaching 360s. And currently she's a mother of two children and does some coaching on the side, leadership development and dating coaching. And I'll put her Instagram in the show notes, which is probably where she is most connected with people at, what is it? Lindsay Puder. Lindsay Puter. So, welcome to the podcast. It's fun to be on here with you. She's been very supportive of my endeavors to podcast, of which I am most grateful. Today we are going to be talking about boundaries. And this is going to be a very practical episode on how to establish boundaries that keep you in healthy relationships. And, to not overstep your sort of psychological boundaries, physical boundaries. So, Lindsay, how would you define boundaries? That is a great question.

And I want to throw the question back onto you and say, what is your preconception of boundaries? Because I think for some people, the term boundaries can have a very negative connotation. it can feel kind of cold and harsh like, ugh, I don't like your boundary. And I think in our marriage, we even had moments before in the past where we've had that with each other. Moments before? Ongoing moments. Ongoing moments.

But in reality, you know, boundaries are meant to keep us in relationship with the people that we love and with situations and circumstances in our lives. But what is a boundary? When I think of the best way to describe boundaries is thinking of actually your property lines around your house, you know very clearly where your property ends and your neighbor's property begins. Therefore, you know what you are supposed to take care of and what your neighbor is supposed to take care of. The other day, our next door neighbor, his sprinkler head was actually watering our lawn over and over again, which I thought, oh, that's like fantastic, that his water bill is paying for watering my grass.

But in reality, he was actually crossing over onto our property and our boundary line. Yeah, that would be a good example. Once he figured it out, he had a boundary of repairing the sprinklers so that it no longer watered our lawn. I think that would be his boundary there. Yeah, exactly. Although we would want him to continue to water our lawn. Exactly, yeah. Yeah.

So in essence, a boundary kind of defines our own property itself. And within ourselves, our property consists of our physical body, our emotions, our feelings, our thoughts, our desires, kind of a sense of defining what is me and what is not me, where I end and where someone else begins. I think this is, when you said emotions, that really jumped out at me because I, I see a lot of young psychiatrist, psychotherapists, and they often take on the weight of other people's emotions. So good. But I think you can empathize and you can be present with someone without taking on the weight of it, with having some boundaries over like feeling responsible for their lives or feeling like you have to fix them or you're responsible for them.

Yeah. I think empathy is a key connector in sort of understanding. understanding what's going on in somebody else's property line, but not having to take it on yourself. Right. Yeah. So why are boundaries important? I said it a little bit earlier, but I think boundaries are meant to keep you in relationship with somebody in a healthy way. I first got into this concept of boundaries in my own life because I was experiencing sort of like a low level of burnout or depression in my work. And I couldn't really figure out why. And I think I had a really hard time saying no, ever.

So I would just say, sure, I'll do that. Sure, I'll do that. But then I would go home at the end of the night, feeling this sense in my stomach of like, I don't want to do that. You know? Yeah. And I couldn't figure out kind of how to get,

get beyond that. And that's when I started to kind of delve into more and more what this idea of boundaries meant in my own life. Yeah. And I think as I've been thinking about this more and more lately, what I see is in the big five personality types, there's a trait called agreeableness. It's in the five-factor model. And people who are high in trait agreeableness really value relationships they tend to be, you know, people who will do things out of maintaining relationships, first and foremost. They are very concerned about other people, very trusting, generous. And, you know, women tend to be higher in trait agreeableness than men. And, you know, if you think about like a bell curve, there's always the people who are super high in a trait and more in the medium range of,

the opposite of agreeableness is disagreeableness. Men are actually higher in disagreeableness. And I see a lot of high trait agreeableness women come into my practice who have a history of really a hard time of having boundaries with people. And they have all of this anger inside of them that they don't know how to express. And so they end up turning that anger on themselves and kind of get angry at themselves or the anger turns into their body. And so they get body pains, headaches, all over body aches. And so I think this is like really, really important to think through how do I help people who are high trait agreeableness of which I think, I don't know, would you?

Yeah, that's me for sure. That's totally you. Yeah. Yeah. Do you see other people who are high-trait-agreableness have this issue? Oh, absolutely. And I will say that I think those with high-trade-aggratableness have really good hearts because I think we're high in empathy, we're high in feeling other people's emotions in the room,

really probably wanting to help genuinely other people in our lives. So I think our hearts are in a really good point. place. Yeah. Yeah. Interestingly, most people who are in jails have really high trait disagreeableness. So I don't know if this is necessarily for someone who is a disagreeable person. You know, someone who's lower in empathy, higher in hostility, more condescending, more distrusting.

Because those people naturally have boundaries and will tell you their boundaries very, very clearly. And they don't have a problem with that. It's not something that is unnatural for them. But I think when you really value relationships, you really want to please people and you have a really maybe a high rejection sensitivity and want to make everyone happy, I think that's when it's like, it kind of goes with it that it's harder to have boundaries. And so it's like one of those things that maybe uniquely that type of person needs to learn. or growing. Yeah.

I will say for our listeners, if you can think right now of who are the people that you have a harder time saying no to? For me, it was always the people, maybe my boss,

kind of people in authority above me. I found that those I was most comfortable and felt safe with, like my husband, for example, I could easily say no with because I didn't fear the loss of his love or approval. But it was sometimes those, you know, who I felt like I needed their approval that I had a hard time or saying no to. Yeah. Like I remember the program director that I had initially asked me to do this big sort of evaluation for the ACGME.

They were coming in and accrediting. and I remember going to therapy and talking about this. And it took me literally probably a month or two to get up just feeling absolutely horrible that I did not want to do this, not an ounce of me wanted to do this. I had no energy to do it. But it took me about two months to get her attention and to tell her that I didn't want to do it because I was so fearful of losing her respect and love and consideration. Is that kind of an example of what you think of?

Oh, totally. Yeah, exactly. So how do you coach someone to grow in this ability? It's like the key question, isn't it? And a really good question. I think there's several different things we could talk about. One thing that has helped me a lot and that I try to coach my clients in quite frequently is to become more aware of.

any body sensations that they're having when they're in conversation or thinking about setting boundaries or when things come up in their lives. Often for me, when I'm uncomfortable with a situation or need to kind of get some sense of control or feel more of myself, I start feeling kind of tightness in my chest. Or I start feeling anxious. inside. So I try to get my clients to tune into what am I feeling in my body in certain situations. Yeah. I wonder if you would call that an emotion, the tightness in your chest. Yeah. For sure.

What do you see? Frustration, anger. I think probably a combination of those at times. at times the tightness in my chest would probably want to say, I don't want to do it, you know, but I feel like I don't have a voice for it. Okay. So in those moments, you feel like you don't have a voice. Yeah. Yeah.

Do you feel like that's become, like, how have you got into the place where you feel that in your body? And you know that that's going on because a lot of people I see, they don't even know that that's what's going on. Yeah. Like it's like very sort of unconscious almost. Oh, totally. For a while, while I was developing the skill of setting boundaries, I actually had to have a interrupter in my brain where I would say, hey, can I get back to you on that one? Versus responding right away.

Okay. And the interrupter actually allowed me to pause and take a break from the situation or the conversation and really think through what am I feeling what's going on here and then enter back into what was going on. So just a period of time that you could sort of delay answering. So you wouldn't have to say yes right away. Exactly. Okay. Exactly. Because I think most people will respect you saying, can I get back to you? I think that sounds pretty appropriate. Yeah. One thing that's been helpful for me is to realize that people are looking for solutions to their problems and that I don't have to be the one that gives them the solution.

That's good. So I had one person that asked me to do this research project and I even signed like a non-disclosure and looked at all of their stuff. And I really like didn't believe like what they were doing would be effective and it wouldn't be like a good use of my time. and so I use this skill to like basically give them two names of doctors that might be interested in it that are curious about those things already you know and so it wasn't like saying no directly it was saying not me I don't know if that ever is yeah that's good something you think of that's really good so the first piece of advice is to kind of pay attention more to your body and then the second piece of advice that I would have is to

maybe have one or two really safe people in your life who, when you feel like you don't have kind of the strength to say no or to speak up, that you can go to this person and say, I need some encouragement here. I need some validation. I need maybe the right words. Can you help me? And that could be a therapist in your life. That could be just someone who you feel really safe with. And I keep using the word safe and I mean that you won't feel judgment. You won't feel like they're going to tell you what to do, but you feel an acceptance for your thoughts and opinions and even for your own boundary or your own limit in the situation.

That's really good. I think I'd like to hear more about how to identify who a safe person is. And I think a lot of people I meet don't have one safe person in their life. So how do you develop a safe relationship? Yeah. Can that be our next podcast? That's a really good question too. Okay. We'll table that one for future. But maybe like the best that I could put it right now is to ditto your idea that, yeah, those people don't give you advice. They give you empathy. They listen to you. And I think sometimes it takes some boundaries to build those relationships actually with me. So like I used, if I go on a walk with a friend, you know, I'll say, hey, on the way home, can I tell you something that's going on in my life? If I've listened to them the whole way on the journey out, you know, into the hill. So kind of to ask them to have this space to be able to, you know, share something.

And then, you know, most people are amendable to that. So they kind of are like, oh, yeah, yeah, what's going on in your life, you know? Because I think people who are high in trade agreeableness or people who are a therapist or psychiatrists and kind of minded in the way that are high empathy and highly relational, they're very good at listening, they have a harder time expressing their own needs and own desires. And so it takes a little bit of space to put it out there. And I will say you could have easily come home from that experience going for a hike with a buddy and been like, he never asked me questions.

He never gave me space to talk. But what I've seen in you is that you really own, hey, I have something to share. and I think that's also an aspect of boundaries is like owning your own desire and your own need for being known and moving towards that, which I think is really cool. Yeah, I think at the end of the day, boundaries give you the power back and you don't become a victim in your life as much. And you don't have to externalize blame onto other people and you can kind of, you know, realize that you're responsible. You know, like if you have a need, you can ask for it. You can request it. And, um, and that's a good thing. One thing that I do with people who have really poor boundaries and have no conception of how it's damaging them is I'll say, imagine that behavior continues. So like, let's say, you know,

you take care of a drunk relative. And so literally half your day is changing this drunk. relative's diapers and getting this drunk relative as beer and doing, you know, getting his food for him and because he's so drunk, he yells at you. And so, but you have no idea that that actually is like something that is causing you huge amounts of pain, physical pain and depression and anxiety, right? Or maybe you realize it, but you just have no idea to stop it or you know you don't feel the weight of needing to stop it. So this is a true story, but I'm changing some variables here. And so one of the questions I might ask is imagine this behavior were to continue for 10 years. What would the relationship look like? Do you think, Lindsay,

after 10 years with this person? I think I question whether there would be one after 10 years. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Or, you know, so boundaries can keep us in. relationship. That's something I learned from you, by the way. Really? You say that all the time. And it's because of that, right? Because if you don't have the boundary, then you'll go on in this relationship and you'll

despise and hate them. And that hatred will be very sort of passive aggressive at times and hidden and you won't like express it in a way that other people necessarily see it because you're highly agreeable. And so you know how to stuff it down. But that resentment will just. build and build until you really, either it comes out in a way that they don't, you know, want to be in a relationship or you just decide, you know what, I'm just going to run for the hills.

Yeah. There's an author that I enjoy Bray Brown, and she said something recently that really stuck in my head. She said, the most compassionate people are also the most boundaryed. Isn't that interesting? That is interesting. It's not something that I would necessarily initially think. Yeah.

Because, you know, when you think of compassionate people, you think of people who are boundaryless to some degree, you know? Yeah. They're serving the poor. They're serving the homeless. They're overseas. Yeah. You know, they're doing these great things out of compassion. But potentially those people who are able to maintain it, right?

The marathon of it, you know, not just for a season, but for their whole life. Maybe those people know how to really have balanced. in their interpersonal life, in their ability to rest. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But it's interesting, though, because when we say yes and try to be compassionate out of guilt, we're actually complying with a harsh conscience versus kind of saying yes from the inside out, you know, versus from this harsh conscience going on inside of us.

Okay. So the harsh sort of internal critic is like it's basically choosing to value the relationship over what your own needs and desires are. I don't know if that's a good way to paraphrase it in the way that I would think about it. Yeah. And I think people who say yes all the time, they have to put that anger somewhere. Yeah. And, you know, anger is a good thing. Yeah. And I think a lot of people who are high in trade agreeableness who have a hard time with this, the anger is still there.

I see it on their face. I see the down and together of their eyebrows, as I talk about in my microexpression lectures. Yeah. Like, it's still there. And it's right there, right when they didn't say no. Yeah. So when they said, yes, that's when, usually when I'm listening to people, that micro expression of anger pops up. Yeah.

And either they're completely unconscious of it. And so they may have a migraine or some sort of bodily pain when they talk about it. Or it's semi-conscious. And then the anger is sort of misdirected and they get depressed or down or hopeless. Yeah. Or stuck or they feel powerless. Yeah. So it's like, how do you help them get their power back? Yeah.

Yeah. And I think the end goal as well is to, when you're going back to the property line image of your neighbor, you want to let the good in and you want to keep the bad out. It's almost like you want a fence there where you can let the good in, but then the fence also keeps the bad out. Yeah. So the good would be love from people. the bad would be going back to the alcoholic example that you had a little while ago, like keeping the bad out in that person's life. No, I'm going to choose to not be around you right now while you're drinking. Yeah.

I'm going to leave the room. Yeah. Yeah. So we've talked about boundaries, me and this person, and it's really hard for them. Yeah. Because they fear that anger. They fear that it's almost as if like pacifying the other person has some advantage.

Yeah. Yeah, totally. So it's... I think it, I think maybe for them it might feel good temporarily, but it doesn't have like a lasting feel goodness inside their soul. Yeah. Yeah. I also think about this is kind of a deeper psychodynamic theme that I think is really important to draw it. It's called siding with the aggressor. Yeah. And so some of these people, because their high trade agreeableness, their high trade empathy,

early on in their childhood, they knew how to make people happy. And they were always thinking about how to decrease the volatility in their home or the anger in their home by appeasing or making happy the people in their home. Yeah. And so often these people are really good at making people happy. and it comes from this idea of siding with the aggressor. So even early on, someone was being abusive to them in some way. And instead of fighting back or running away, they sided with the aggressor. They joined them.

Yeah. They helped them. Yeah. They appeased them. They calmed them. Yeah. And it served. I like to think of it as an adaptive mechanism.

So I don't think of it as like, I think of it as like a superpower almost rather than like a weakness. Yeah. Because these people tend to. to be very skilled interpersonally when they get older. They can make angry people calm down. They can help people get along with each other. They're great peacemakers. They often become therapists or psychiatrists like myself.

And so this is a superpower. It was an adaptive feature. It had an adaptive role growing up. But as they grow into adulthood, they can learn how to choose when to use this superpower. power, when to help people and when to decide, no, I'm going to have a boundary here. That's good. That's really good.

Another thought that I had was as you begin to grow on your boundaries, there's going to be people around you who don't like them, friendships or family members who really don't like them. Oh, and they'll shame you, and they'll yell at you, and they'll push every. button that they can. Yeah. To stopping your change. Yeah. Yeah. So I think I say that almost so that when it happens, you're not surprised by it. Don't be surprised. And you almost come to expect that it will happen. And then after it happens, I think you could reach out to your support group or your safe people or your therapist and get the support you need to keep moving forward. But at the in the day, I think it's then going to surround yourself with the people who can embrace you for who you are. And you can embrace them for who they are. And I think that's the beauty of where real

growth and change happens in people's lives. That's good. So tell me a little bit about that group for you. Like, what was that like? How many years did you think it took to go from saying yes all the time to having boundaries. Yeah. Just so that people don't think this can happen overnight. Yeah. I think it was about 2006. I was working for a company that really supported this idea of growth and boundaries,

and they actually created groups within the company where you could have a place to talk through some of these issues and process within the context of other people. within the group. It almost became a support group to help you grow, which was fantastic. So I found a group of women, and to this day, 12 years later, even though each one of us has moved to a different state since that time, we still have a once-a-week phone call where we call in and we talk about whatever's going on and get support from each other and process whatever we need to, but literally we've been with each other for 12 years and I would say it took me a good five years

to really see incredible change in my life but it was a really slow process. So what are some of the characteristics of this group that make it an effective group? Just a couple of the things that jumped to your mind? I would say there was a lot of grace, which means there was a lot of, I am for you. Like, Lindsay Puter, I am for you.

And I just really felt that. I feel that to this day from everybody in that group where they want the best for me, which feels really good. Yeah. And coupled with that, though, is a sense of truth also that, that these people will shoot me straight and they will tell me hard truth, even if I don't want to hear it.

Mm-hmm. But they won't let me jump off a cliff at the end of the day, which is really great too. Yeah, that's really good. That's really good. How do you split up the time? So you have like an hour, an hour and a half? How do you split up the time?

Yeah, we had pretty much an hour. And if there was five of us that day, we would split the hour equally five ways. And then you would share whatever's going on and then have time where everybody in the group could give you some of that grace and some of that truth. And it's amazing because when you only have seven minutes to share, you kind of jump to it pretty quickly. Yeah. Get to the good stuff. So what were some of the early sort of boundaries that you needed to set in, let's say, your like work life?

And how did you go about setting those? I think part of developing boundaries is also growing in your own self-awareness. What are your giftednesses? So when I think of David Puder, what is he uniquely made to do? do and carry forth in this world and during his time on this earth. And I believe that David is unique and unlike anybody else on this earth. But if he is so governed by what other people want him to do or don't want him to do, he's going to end up down rabbit trails that may not be exactly who he has been made to be. So when I think of growing your boundaries,

is it's also a process of growing in yourself and knowing yourself and knowing how you've been created and what you're made to do. Yeah. Yeah, I like that. So I didn't really answer your question. I think what you were saying was that if you don't have boundaries, then you're going to be pulled into doing things that other people want you to do. Yeah. And you're going to miss, kind of like your own unique calling. So let me put that back on you. How were you missing your own unique calling? And how did you use boundaries to get back to your calling? Yeah. What's coming to mind right now is an example from just this week where David and I are involved in a local church and there's been a lot of needs in the kids ministry to serve and help out. Now, I can't say that.

working in the kids ministry is like my unique gifting. Now, I definitely give some of my time to that area of the church because I know there's a great, great need there. But if it were up to the leaders in the kids ministry, they probably would need more and more of Lindsay towards helping in the kids ministry. Now, if I said yes to that, I wouldn't have more capacity to help in some other areas of the church that they're needing help right now, which is more along the lines of developing leaders and setting strategy and working through team dynamics, which is sort of my unique giftings. So I think my knowing myself, I was able to say, this is what I can do and this is what I can't do. Yeah, that's really good. No, I affirm that you are, I think, uniquely

gifted to read what's going on in a room, like especially with meetings. And I think you pick up on like, like all those different sort of characteristics of what each person is wanting to say, what they're not saying, you know, what they're wanting to come through. And I think that's a really rare gift of like reading the whole room at once. Yeah. And being able to kind of pull out the best of the group and the team dynamics that are going on. Yeah. So I want to add to that I think when I set these boundaries and I pull back and move into more of like my gifting areas, it does create a newfound joy that I don't have when I say yes to the other things that I don't really want to do. So at the end of the day, I think boundaries also creates

and produces a joy within your life that I really never imagined possible. Yeah. Yeah. I think also it takes people out of doing things out of compulsion. And I would say like even in my field, I notice a lot of people become doctors and then psychiatrists. And it's like they're doing things out of compulsion, not necessarily out of like or not, I don't know, people are still passionate. Don't get me wrong. But there are certain times where I think what gets people burned out is where they feel forced to do. do something that they don't want to do. And part of it is a mindset that they're not choosing to do the things that they've chosen to do, you know, more sort of distantly, you know, like they chose to go to this residency. So they chose to do the long hours. They chose that job. So they chose all

the parts of it, the good and the bad. But I think also as you get further in your career, you have more choice. And you really can choose, you know, what your hours are going to look like and who you're going to work with and what types of patients you're going to see. And for the residents, it's working with them often to know how to have boundaries to basically create what they would want to create. And that gives them a lot of joy when they realize they can do that. That's really cool. Yeah.

So how is your parenting in use of boundaries? Yeah. Yeah. How does that change how you parent? Oh boy. It really does. Okay. Where do you see parents go wrong with boundaries with their children?

And I should add, where do I see myself go wrong at times? Because I don't think I do this perfectly at all. Yeah, me too. I think where I see it going wrong is when you set a boundary with a child, but then you give in to the boundary when the child is in distress or complaining, whining, or crying. And I think what I've had to grow in over time is to realize just because the child is crying or complaining doesn't mean they're in pain. I'm not hurting them or causing any sort of trauma by saying, no, you can't have that second piece of chocolate tonight. I'm actually

helping them by setting a boundary. Yeah, that's a really good point. And I'll, I think it's, it's our natural empathy to want to sort of hear their cry. And they have some psychological pain that's actually going on. But if you give in, even one out of eight times, it'll only increase the behavior. And so we talk about like, you know, okay, if we, and I think I learned this from you actually, never set a boundary that you aren't willing to follow through on. That was something I remember you saying.

Yeah. So with the kids, it's like, okay, if I'm going to say to them, if you do this, you are not getting ice cream tonight, and then they do it anyways, and then I give them ice cream, it basically reinforces that whatever I say doesn't matter. Yeah, that's good. That's really good. I think the key part is setting boundaries, but also in the process offering empathy and support to your child to help them live up to the boundaries.

Okay. So an example of this would be you can't go on this play date with your friend until your room is clean. And the child whines and cries and complains maybe because they don't know how to clean their room yet. My two-year-old doesn't quite know how to clean his room. So if I come into it and say, Luke, let me try to help you show you what it looks like to put your toys away and where they go. I'll help you this time. Next time, you might be able to do it yourself. But for this moment, this is grace towards him by trying to help him in putting away the toys so that he can go on his play date that day.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think there's another thing. that I like is like anything you do for kids that they can do for themselves is potentially you know in the end not going to be helpful for them you know so like recently I heard this story from a patient of a kid that was 10 years old who was still being pushed in a stroller because he didn't want to walk and his mom in wanting to comfort and listen to him uh pushed him in the stroller 10 year old or uh 10 you know this same kid didn't want to tie his sheet

shoes. And so the mother, you know, just buy shoes without shoelaces. Little things like that, you know, thousands of things like that. And all of a sudden you have a kid now who is going into junior high, going into high school, and he's just different. You know, he's not prepared. And the biggest thing that he's not prepared for is stress. He's not prepared with how to deal with stress, how to deal with not getting what he wants, how to deal with negative emotion. And so it really leaves in my mind like this idea that it's like okay for kids to experience stress. It's okay for kids to experience hard things. It's good for them. It really is good for them. Yeah. And they can come back to you after the stress and you can give them a sense of recovery from the

stress. So you can give them some empathy like, oh yeah, I see that. That was really hard. And you were there and you pushed through it. And that was really, really good. Yeah. or, you know, it's really hard to clean your room right now, I know, and, you know, we're going to do it here. You all hand you something and you put the thing away that I hand you one thing at a time, you know? So you, like, basically come to their level and help them, but still allow them to experience some of that stress. Just enough to cause an adaptation, right? Yeah, that's good. there's been quite a few days where my daughter hasn't wanted to go to,

hasn't desired to go to school. And everything in me just wants to keep her home and keep her away from the stress of whatever's being required of her at school. Now, if I had given in to that stressor, I would have been reinforcing in my daughter that it's a, okay to give in to your fears. And it's okay to, if I cry or complain, I'm going to get what I want at the end of the day. Versus kind of working through, this is stressful, but I can find a way through it. And I do try to equip her when she feels those things like, you know, tell me what's going on.

And then I try to coach her through what are some options that you have. Who could you play with today on the playground or what else could you do that would be enjoyable? So I don't leave her to fend for herself, but I coach her through the process of finding a solution. Yeah, I like that. So it's like you have boundaries that keep the child in a state of some stress and some fear, but you also equip them with the ability to get through it. You coach them through it a little bit. You put it to words.

You have our daughter come home and talk about it a little bit. talk about what was stressful. Yeah. And give her some physical exercise to work out some of that stress physically. How about boundaries in relationships? Okay. With like, let's start with... Dating?

Dating, sure. Oh, I love talking about dating. And marriage relationships as well. So where are some common boundary violations that occur in dating? and how have you coached your friends and the people you coach through it? Yeah, that's a really good question. I think there can be a lot of boundary violations in dating. Dating can be one of the hardest mind fields to just navigate through.

And whenever I'm coaching people in their dating lives, I always say, dating is hard work. It just is. So navigating boundaries and dating, I think there's definitely different subcategories to navigate. One is physical boundaries. You know, is this person that you're dating pushing you to go beyond where you want to go physically or not? And are you going to have the willpower to say, you know, I'm not comfortable with this right now? And I think it's so important that you're able to say those things in a relationship.

And I also think, depending on how the person responds, it's a huge indicator of if you want to continue dating them. Because if they respond to respect your boundary, I think it's a great sign of their character. If not, I also think that's a huge red flag that you probably don't want to date this person. Yeah. That's such a hot topic in our culture at this time. Consent, boundaries, verbal consent. actually being able to put that out there. And I've had some patients who, like, in their mind, it's like, no, you know,

but they can not get the words out. Yeah. And so it can be so hard to do that in that moment. What would you say to someone who maybe hasn't done that well in the past, but would like to start to do that? What would be some steps that could take? Yeah. I think one step is determining for your,

self now what it is that you want and don't want in terms of the physical area and a relationship and defining that now before you actually even enter into a relationship with someone else. Yeah. It's kind of getting that solidified. Yeah. I think it's super important. What would be the next step? I think another step to think about in dating and boundaries is thinking through the whole spiritual area with the other person. What is it that you're wanting or not wanting in their spiritual life? And what are you okay with? To find spiritual in that sort of context of what you're talking about.

Yeah, I think to spend a lifetime with someone, I think it's important to be compatible in the area of your spiritual beliefs. So if one person really wants to raise their family Jewish and another person wants to raise their family Muslim, I think that those are huge discrepancies that you're going to have to work through. So thinking through the boundaries of... Yeah, got it, got it.

So it's like worldview and where you're like deal breakers are. Yeah, yeah. I think that's a good one. I think especially I have some patients who are high trade agreeableness, And it's like, okay, what are your deal breakers? Can we write those down? Who are your friends who are going to hold you accountable for this? And it can be really, really important.

Like, let's say for someone, like, they're, you know, Muslim and they really want to raise their kids Muslim. Like, okay, that could be a deal breaker if their potential partner didn't want to do that. And then there's, like, degrees of, like, how true that is. Like, I have a patient who's Mormon, and she wanted to raise her kids more. Mormon. And the person she was dating was like, oh, sure, that's not a big deal. And when they got married, it changed, you know? And so it's like, how do you really assess where they truly are? And so for me, it was, okay, I want to date someone who is not just saying that they're into something, but they're actually, they have like behaviors before I started dating them that are consistent with that type of thing.

So for you, you were, you know, you were going after it and, you know, successful in your ventures and, you know, doing things even before like we started dating. So I knew that those things were consistent with who you really are. Yeah. Yeah. And the other area that I think of with assertiveness or agreeableness in dating is being willing to voice how you're feeling. in the relationship from a very early period. Because I think when you first meet someone, you just want to keep everything going along smoothlyly

and not be honest and open. But I think it's so important to be honest and open right from the start. So when David and I were dating, there's actually this funny story where we had gone on a few dates and there were some things about David that I wasn't really into. like he had some nervous quirks. Like when we would go out to dinner,

he would shake his leg up and down, like really nervously. And I just was like... Eat a ton of food. Oh my gosh. I think he ate like three loaves of bread in 10 minutes on one of our first dates. And I was like, what is going on here?

And honestly, in my mind, I was thinking this guy is kind of kooky. I think we're over. And I again went to my support group, my safe friends, and I said, this is what's been going on. I'm done. I'm, you know, I'm good. I gave it a shot. And they said, well, I think you really need to be honest with him how you're experiencing

him on these dates before you, you know, end it. And I said, okay, I'll meet him one more time for coffee. I'll share this experience that I'm having and then I'm done. That was what I was thinking in my head. So we met up for coffee. and I said, you know, David, like, you know, I'm experiencing you just really anxious and nervous when we're together. Like, your leg just keeps going up and down. And I remember he said something like, well, yeah, like, I'm really nervous when I'm with you.

And I really like you. Yeah, I had this, like, incredible energy, positive energy. towards you. And it was just, it just looked like a lot of anxiety, but it was just, you know, anyways, it's, that's, that's a good example. Yeah. But it's funny because he doesn't do any of those things, you know, now, married. Right. Eight years later. But I think if I hadn't been honest with you and kind of probed into like, this is my experience. Yeah, I'm not sure what it would happen. Yeah. And I think the common thing nowadays, is just stop talking.

Oh, yeah. Ghosting. Ghosting. Yeah. Like a lot of my guy friends who are dating, like they just like all of a sudden, the person doesn't respond. Yeah.

And it's like, really? Like that, that's new. Yeah. I don't remember that from like, yeah. 10, 15 years ago, you know? Yeah. So things have changed a little bit.

I think online dating culture maybe has kind of changed the culture of dating to some degree because there's so many people you can go on dates with. Yeah. And you don't have to have those real conversations. Yeah, totally.

Well, I think on that note, let's summarize, like, what are some takeaways that you would want someone to have if they needed to improve their boundaries? What are some of the takeaways you would give? Some of the takeaways I have if you're struggling, setting boundaries. one that I have like a ton of hope for you. And I also have a lot of hope that your life can look really differently when you start setting boundaries. You can have a lot more joy and less anxiousness, a lot more living from a place of truly

loving your life and the way your day-to-day goes. I do think it requires a bit of hard work. and a bit of kind of walking through those muddy waters where you just feel so uncomfortable saying what you're saying and it won't come out right and it's going to feel so awkward and it might piss people off. But I want you to know that you're going to grow in this process of learning to set boundaries. And I think the more and more you practice doing it, the more and more comfortable you start to feel doing it. And, And I think as a result, you start seeing amazing things in your life.

Yeah. And I think the second point that you had that resonates with me is finding a team of people who are safe, who can help you in this process. Yeah. And maybe you're all kind of rowing together in a way in this area. So I appreciate that part of the world. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks for coming on.

Oh, it's fun. I will put in the show notes, Lindsay's Instagram, and the link to the blog that goes with this. And if you have any questions, I'll have myself and Lindsay posts on our social media and you can interact with us and ask us questions and give us examples and see if we would have any thoughts for you. And have a great day.