Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - How to Set Boundaries & Protect Your Hormones - With Terri Cole

Episode Date: January 23, 2023

For full show notes, resources mentioned, and transcripts, go to: www.drmindypelz.com/ep157/. To enroll in Dr. Mindy's Fasting membership, go to: resetacademy.drmindypelz.com. This episode is about setting better boundaries, protecting your energy, and ditching your codependent tendencies.  Terri Cole is a licensed psychotherapist, global relationship and empowerment expert, and the author of Boundary Boss-The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen and (Finally) Live Free. She has a gift for making complex psychological concepts accessible and actionable so that clients and students achieve sustainable change.  Please see our medical disclaimer.

So your boundaries are comprised of your preferences, your desires, your limits, and your deal breakers like your non-negotiables. Hey, Dr. Mindy here. And welcome to season four of the Resetter podcast. Have I got a lineup for you this season? Lots of deep thinkers, a lot of brilliant minds, all with one focus to move the needle forward on your mental and physical health. So please know that this podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again. And I want you believing in your body. I want you believing in your mind. I want you believing in your spirit. If you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you. Enjoy. On this episode of The Resetter podcast, I bring you Terry Cole. So Terry is a psychotherapist and her specialty, which I love, is

boundaries. She has a beautiful book out called Boundary Boss. And the reason I wanted to bring her to you all is that I think it's really easy when we approach health to think that all of our efforts should focus on food, fasting, supplements, exercise. all the things that we can do physically for our bodies. But I feel like what I see clinically, what I see in my following is that if there are traumas in your life, if there are emotional stressors that are not going away, if there are people in your life that are weighing you down, that that's as damaging to your health as a candy bar.

And so why I wanted to bring Terry was she has a great. technique and tools for helping you, A, set better boundaries, which I think we all can do, you know, is be more clear with people. I actually have a good friend who always tells me to be clear is to be kind. And you will hear this in Terry's discussion today. She talks a lot about how exactly you can be clear with your loved ones around your boundaries. We also talked about a really cool concept that I had never really heard before, which was cognitive fatigue. And in her book, she describes cognitive fatigue is actually not, it doesn't appear to be a fatigue. It's more like when your brain is wound up. So let me give you an example. At the end of

the day, when you've been working all day, if you can't relax your brain and body, you need wine, you need alcohol of some kind, you need THC something to numb yourself out and calm the brain down, there's a good chance you have cognitive fatigue. And she explains why. So she has really cool insight to everyday problems that so many of us are coming up against and really cool tools that we can easily use. Like you can walk away from this podcast and you're going to have some tools that you can put into action right away that will not only give you peace, of mind, let's just start there, but will also give you long-term health. And believe it or not, I know those of you that are fasters or very much into keto or maybe you're fasting like a girl,

when you are able to get some of these emotional traumas, when you are able to calm anxiety down, lift depression, you will be shocked at how easy it is to get into ketosis, how easy it is to become a fat burner. all the results you're wanting with your body start to show up when you get your mind in a more peaceful place and Terry is going to help you do that so really excited to bring her to you all terry cole enjoy um in preparing for this uh podcast you have some really interesting like phrases around setting boundaries up and i was like i went to your youtube channel and i was looking at some of the videos you've done over there. And I was like, there was one phrase that like stuck out

at me. And that, and this is where I want to start. And it's cognitive fatigue. And you just, you literally described like me to a T. And you described a lot of the women that I work with. And what was so surprising to me about your definition of cognitive fatigue is that it's, it's not like the, it's like you're wound up at the end of the day. It's not really, it's a different type of fatigue. Is that the way I interpret it right? You did. And that's why it's so exhausting and annoying because even though you are fatigued,

it makes it difficult to sleep because you're wired from all of the never-ending activity and not basically taking breaks after doing something. It's like all of this trying to multitask, all of these. never-ending, ongoing to-do list that we have, many of us as mothers, partners, entrepreneurs, business owners, CEOs, whatever it is that you do in your life, nobody does just one thing. Nobody is like, it's just my career. That's it, right?

We have the ongoing list, especially, you know, we were just through the holidays and how, you know, all of the cognitive fatigue, I see it closely related to emotional labor. To emotional what? Say that again. Emotional labor. Okay. Explain that phrase. Sure.

This is basically the invisible and unpaid, mostly unpaid labor that we do to keep the ship of our lives, our families, our homes, our businesses running. So other people underestimate what it takes to keep a house running, to have food in the house, to make sure the toilet paper does not replace or purchase. itself, right? Keeping things the way they need to be for us, for it to keep going. If you have kids, you know, parent-teacher stuff, what do you got to do the end of the year, get a present for the, all of those things, take bandwidth. And I think a lot of that actually contributes to cognitive fatigue because it's like we can never, even when we're quote-unquote resting,

We're thinking about all the crap that we're forgetting because we are, right? The list that never ends that you're checking crap off of, but it never really actually gets to the end of that list. So these are really important concepts for us as human beings, especially as women, that for us to understand, and really at the base of all of what we're talking about right now, are disordered boundaries. Yeah.

And so one of my thoughts is that I can only say as a 53-year-old woman that I've noticed as my hormones have gone down, it becomes even more apparent the cognitive fatigue. And where I used to be able to put in a 12-hour day, it's like I can do about half of that. And I, you know, I've thought that, I've looked at that as a hormonal depletion. I should fix it. But what I hear you saying is that you should. embrace it and learn a different pattern of work. And if that's what you're saying, how do we do that? Like, I don't even know how to do that. Well, part of it is getting really clear about who's doing what in the house and how equitable or inequitable that is. So how I got turned on to emotional labor, people talk about, you know, in our worlds, people talk about it quite a bit.

But I didn't really understand the concept until I read a Marie Claire article about a woman who, is an engineer and her husband is also an engineer and she tells the story of she's her husband is home she's at work her husband was working from home that day and he gets in touch with her and says can you let the dog walker know i don't need her to come today that we don't need her and it just she just hit a tipping point where she was like why don't you even have the phone number for the dog walker like right why am i literally the i'm at work you're at home and it's you who doesn't doesn't need her because you're there. Anyway, so she had a tipping point and she went home.

And when he was at work the next day, she took a whiteboard. And she literally wrote out every single solitary freaking thing that she does in the house for all of them. So she wasn't listing the work stuff. It was the, this is what I do to keep the boat of our lives afloat. And she was like, I'm going to have a conversation with my partner. and because the partner was also very sort of clinically minded, they were both engineers and very data-driven. You know, first he was a little bit like, wait, what are you saying? Are you criticizing, whatever? And then she was like, you get to choose. Half of these things are now yours.

And it was undeniable, him sort of looking at the list. And that shifted because what ends up happening if we don't create a more equitable situation for us in our homes? And listen, not all of us have the luxury. Not everyone is partnered. But if you have kids who are more adult age or late teens or even midteens, right, kids can help and should help. You should not, you're not a servant for anyone. And also it doesn't do kids any good if we don't teach them how to do things in life. Like make a grill or cheese sandwich or do their own laundry, which by 10, I feel like certainly they can be doing their own laundry.

Like, it's not that hard. And giving responsibility, it, A, makes you much less resentful. This whole idea of being a superwoman, and we should do it all. And we can really, you know, we can sort of bring this back to the 70s when late 60s, early 70s, when women could become something other than a nurse, a secretary or a teacher, right? Suddenly, you could do something else. Oh, but it wasn't like any of the, at home, the domestic. work wasn't suddenly shifted to the partners in most cases. There was an expectation that we would go out, work full time, bring in at least half the money, if not more, and continue to do all the

child wearing crap and all of the getting the end of the year teacher gift and figuring out what are the nine-year-olds doing for their sleepover and what are the fun games we're playing and the dentist and the doctor and all the things. And so this is a moment. If you're identifying with this, if you're feeling like, wow, I definitely have cognitive fatigue or I'm doing way more of the emotional labor in my life, this is your opportunity to just pause. Why don't you do what the author of that Marie-Clair article did and really write down? Because we have a tendency ourselves to minimize what we're doing. At the end of the day, you could be like, what did I even do today? But then if you really thought about what you did, maybe you made food for the rest of the

week for the family. Maybe you went food shopping. Maybe you cleaned the house. Maybe you did three loads of laundry. None of that is free. Like, that's bandwidth sucking stuff. So this is your opportunity to go, okay, what am I doing? And what do I not want to do? And a really important question is, what am I doing for other people because I'm codependent that they should and can actually be doing for themselves? And it would be better for all the people if they were doing it for themselves. Because I find that a lot with my therapy clients that they're so used to doing it all that they're on autopilot, but they're exhausted, depleted, getting autoimmune disorders and bitter. Yeah. And where my brain goes with all of that is, and we become, especially as women, we often become the martyr. It's like,

if I divvy up the task list, then I don't, I can't walk. I can't walk. around and say, oh, I'm doing so much. And we don't even realize that we actually get self-worth. We get, you know, we get a positive feedback from that. Is that true? So you have to really, like, if you're going to divvy it up, you're going to have to also make sure that now you let go of the story that you're telling yourself about how you're the only one working. Yep. And that it is actually true. And it wouldn't seem on the surface, right? It doesn't consciously make sense to be like, I don't want to be a martyr.

What are you even talking about, right? Like people, we don't want to cop to that because it's ego dystonic, right? It's not aligned with the way that we want to see ourselves. And you don't think that any, all of the mothers and grandmothers that we know who are like full-blown martyrs who full-on say, after everything I've done for you, and I'm the only one who does anything. When they were 25 or 30, you don't think that they were like, I can't wait to grow old become a martyr, like, of course not.

They don't say that? You don't think they said that? That wasn't a goal for anyone. But here's the thing. If there's no intervention, if you don't create better internal boundaries, because that's what we're talking about, boundaries with our self, our internal boundaries, how well we emotionally self-regulate, how well we follow through for ourselves on the things that we say we're going to do for ourselves, whether that's, we're going to do for ourselves, whether

that's working out, whether that's working less, whether that's divvying up the emotional labor and all the, you know, the hidden things that are happening in the home, if we don't do them, that is having a disordered boundary with yourself. Because consciously, when you really think about it, there's a part of you that knows that's the healthy thing to do. But the less healthy part is like, but then I have to give up my martyr status. And nobody's going to admit that consciously because we don't want to, but there is a little bit of an attachment, as you said. Yeah. And then how do we, you know, it's interesting because with boundaries,

I have been given a lot of opportunities recently to set some boundaries with my loved ones. And I, you know, every time I go, like, I'll give you an example. I've got, for whatever reason, over the holidays, a bunch of people that want to stay. Family, friends, want to stay in my house. and I've got a book launch. My book launches on December 27th. So you know what that's and people listening to this. It'll be after the launch.

But all these people, it's almost like I said, it's told myself, okay, you're going to just take care of yourself and do what you need to do to launch this book into the world. So that's going to mean saying no and setting boundaries with people. And man, I feel like every situation is emerging to set boundaries. And so it's almost like the minute you make that declaration, you get the opportunity. And then the people around me, it's really, they're not enjoying the boundaries I'm setting. You know, it is so great, though, Mindy, it's like, they don't have to. Right. Here's the thing.

And we don't do it. We're not doing it. boundaries are not things that we set to punish others. They're not levers of control. They're actually our own. The way that I describe boundaries, how I write about it. And boundary boss is that I want you to think about your boundaries as your own personal rules of engagement. It allows other people to know what's okay with you and what's not okay with you. So your boundaries are comprised of your preferences, your desires, your limits, and your deal breakers, like your non-negotiables. So it's not enough to just know them. You also must have the capability of

communicating them clearly, concisely, transparently when you so choose. And I think that that is the part that screws a lot of people up is they may know it, but they don't have the words. They don't know how to just say no as you're saying. That's probably the biggest question that I get from people online. Like, why is it so hard for me to say no? Yeah. Why is it? You're like, perfect time to answer that question. Yeah, answer that. That's a really, that's like the million dollar question for sure. Well, let's think about what I write about is we each have a downloaded boundary blueprint, which is this paradigm in our unconscious mind that's comprised of our lived experiences, the home we grew up in, country, culture, you know, your line up in the family system, your role in the family. system, all those things come together, make up what we think. It means to be a good person, to be a good, if you're raised as a woman, to be a good woman, to be a good partner, to be a good mother, to be a good friend. So there's all of these things influencing us in this unconscious way.

So it's important that we bring this unconscious information up into the main part of the house, as I call it, your conscious mind, so that we can choose. Like, oh, my mother. or my maternal impactor, because it could have been a foster mom or an auntie or whoever raised you, was a people pleaser. Then I learned that pleasing others was a way of being nice, is a way of being kind. So we start to understand, like, oh, I relate to boundaries this way for a whole bunch of really good reasons. And now I get a choice to decide how I want to relate to boundaries. because if you look at the end of the story with a lot of our maternal impactors,

they do end up as martyrs as guilt machines, as people who are like, you know, any means to sort of get what they want to a degree. Like, you know, there's emotional blackmail going on. There's all of these things because being direct and telling the truth was considered, at least the way that I was raised, was considered kind of gauche, right? Right. It's like rude to be direct, which is so ridiculous because, of course, it's not. And actually, having healthy boundaries and sharing them, your preferences, your limits, your deal breakers with the people that you love is actually the most intimacy building thing that you can do.

It's the kindest thing that you can do. It's the most loving thing that you can do because when you think about it, saying yes, when you really want to say no, under the umbrella of like being nice, like, think about it. Is that really nice? Right. It's not. No. We have a statement that we've been saying in my friend group about to be, to be clear is to be kind.

And I really, when I get up against a wall of like how I'm going to have to let somebody down by setting a boundary, I just remind myself of that. that here's what's interesting as I step into setting boundaries more. I'm also getting rubbing up against the martyrs that are like, oh, no worries. I just won't come now. You know, like my sister, my sister wanted to come out for the holidays. She comes out for the holidays every year. And I set a boundary of you can't stay in my house. You can stay in mom and dad's house, but for what I need, you can't stay in my house.

And so she, the next thing that I got was, well, we're not going to come then. And so how do you handle that? Then I'm like, oh, my God, we, you know, we started to, I'm now letting her down. No, she's trying to emotionally blackmail you to get what she wants. So that's not nice either. My feeling is she's a grown woman and that's okay. And you can honestly say, well, that's disappointing because we'll miss you. but I respect your right to choose what you want to do.

That's good. And just leave it. Don't let it work. That is someone using their quote unquote preference. It's not a preference. She's punishing you. She's mad. Yeah.

And you know what? She can be honest and say, well, I mean, if she could, she probably would, but she can learn to be honest to say that's disappointing. But you know what also she could do is respect the fact that you have a friggin' book deadline, which is a crap ton of work. incredibly stressful because I know I put out my first book a year ago that I mean I had an away message on my email for months I was like I literally don't care I cannot do one other thing but this or I will fail at this and I cannot fail so I mean literally the the entire time I wrote my book

because I wrote it in a short period of time even though I'd been prepping to write it my entire career but my husband did everything when I say everything. I literally made everything from making every meal to doing all the laundry to taking care of because we have chickens and geese, taking care of all of it. I was holding on by a thread. I thought it was going to lose my mind because there was so much fear of being in the unknown and not doing this. So my thought is, where is your sister's consideration for you? And that needs to be a priority for you, your own consideration for you. And then I make other people consider me because of the way that I relate to myself. This is a stressful time, even though it's exciting,

but I don't have the bandwidth to have any visitors because I have to finish the book. So I would love your support in me finishing the book the way that I need to. I would love it if you would still come and stay with mom and dad and not take it personally, that this is what I need. I would love it if you could support me. How about that for a change of pace? Yeah. Yeah. And what I hear in that is you're putting yourself first. And that is for a lot of women, that is a very unusual thing. You know, as women, we often are taking care of everybody around us. And, you know, if you look at us hormonally, that doesn't actually work very well for us in our hormones. Like when we like kill ourselves to make the family, you know, healthy and happy and we're working

and we're doing all the things and then we're a martyr doesn't make us very healthy. So what I hear is it's you're flipping it. You're putting yourself first. You're deciding where the boundaries are that you need to set. And then you're speaking it without any attachment to how they react. Exactly, because here's the thing. I tell the story in the book about, I had this, my father was emotionally unavailable as a human being. I was his fourth daughter. I was positive. He really wished he had a son. So I spent a lot of my life proving that I would be more successful than any stupid boy he could have ever had. Like, you know, there was a lot of this unconscious sort of unhealthy drive in my ambition. And I, you know, I always love my father, but it was like, he was so hard to talk to, whatever. So he, he retired young when he was. He retired young, when he was. He was. He retired young, to Florida. And I said to my therapist, I'm not, when I was, quit my job as a talent agent, went to NYU to become a psychotherapist. Like, you know, nobody understood what I was doing. It was like, like,

the height of my career representing supermodels and celebrities. My father's like, uh, wait, you're going to get like $100,000 in debt to become a social worker. Sounds great. Like, nobody got what I was doing, but I had outgrown that industry. Anyway, I said to my therapist, hey, I'm going down to see my father for my annual visit, but I've decided I'm not going to invite him to my NYU graduation. And she said, why not? And I said, because he hates New York City and he won't go. Like, I know he's not going to come. So why even ask him? And she was like, Ter, that's actually, let me ask you something. Do you want to ask him? Or do you want him to come? And I said, yes, I do because I'm really proud. You know, this was hard. And I did really well. And like,

I'm really proud of this accomplishment. And she said, so don't, you see that your healing is in the asking. You've always been so afraid of your father. It's not about him coming. Like I thought the whole thing, only ask him if he's going to say yes. And she was like, no, that isn't. So she gives me homework that says, before you leave that visit, you have to invite him to your graduation. I was like, oh my God. So it was so stressed the entire time I was there. I was like, and finally, we're getting in the car, going to the airport. I still haven't asked him. He's driving me to the airport to go home. And I just had to do it.

I'm literally dripping sweat for my armpits. And I was like, hey, Dad? He was like, yeah. I was like, I got an extra ticket to graduation, if you can make it. And he was like, oh, I really can't. Like, he just couldn't deal with New York. He worked in there for years. It was very stressful to him.

And I was like, all right, okay. And then he was like, oh, here comes the guilt. He said, which was a really weird thing to say, because I never guilt of that guy in my life. And I was like, and I said, you know, dad, it's not. about guilting. Mom will be there. Kathy will have had a baby five days before my sister.

And she's like, and she's coming with a five-day-old. Like, other people will be there. But here's the thing. You're my only father. And you matter to me. You're important to me. And he was like, okay, and I said, but I can fully accept and respect that it's too much for you.

I really can, dad. I'm not mad. I really do get it. I just wanted you to know that, like, nobody can replace you, dad. Like, you're, you're my only father. And he was like, okay, now, that switch now, when we were saying goodbye, we hugged, like, longer than normal because he was always such an awkward person. He would, like, hug you and give you like a weird tap on the back, you know?

So he hugged really long. And then for, like, the next six months, he started just sending me like a card being like, happy spring, love dad. I was like, what is going on? Like, something shifted in that conversation. And then my father died. of a massive corner, and that was the last time I ever saw him. Wow.

And I was so grateful that I had the courage to let him know how I felt. And my healing was in the asking, not in him saying yes to coming, because it's still transformed our relationship. Yeah. Wow. That's powerful. Tell me what codependency is. How do we define it and how do you know you're in a codependent relationship?

This is exactly what I'm writing my second book about right now. That's awesome. So codependency, my definition is that you're overly invested in the feeling states, the situations, the outcomes, the circumstances of the people in your life to the detriment of your own interning peace or your own financial or physical or emotional well-being. So for clarity, we're all mothers, lovers, and. aunties, friends, of course, we're invested in the happiness of our people, right? That we love them. We want them to be happy, obviously. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about being overly invested, meaning the moment your best friend calls you within a crisis, that crisis is your crisis, right? You are now Googling. You are now making phone calls. You are

now canceling plans to, you know, you're underlining stuff in a book. You're literally taking it on as your own. In order to be able to figure out, like, am I or am I not? It's really about checking your urgency around other people's situations. When I had a full on private therapy practice, I noticed that if I would say to my therapy clients, oh, hey, what you're describing is a codependent dynamic, they would immediately be like, no, lady, wrong. I'm not dependent on squat. Everyone's dependent on me.

I'm making all the dough. I'm the rock in my family. What are you talking about? And I realized, like, oh, my clients don't know what codependency is. So I actually coined a new phrase, which is what the book is about, which is called high functioning codependency. I love it. And as soon as I did it, because that was my style of codependency. Yeah. And that was the same with my clients, you know? So what that is is that you're doing all the things for all the people, but you're so highly capable. You just freaking make it look easy. So people are like, she's got it.

You know, I don't worry about many. She's always fine. She's fine. She's got it. Yeah, she'll do it. She's fine. Interesting. So how do you know, like, you know, as, well, as a doctor, you know,

know, there is a deep desire often to really see your patients like thrive. You know, there definitely is like, I want to see you, see you be the best version of yourself possible. And so sometimes I've noticed in 25 years of practice that there is self-worth that comes from being the hero of the day. I don't know another way to say that. or pointing somebody in a direction where all of a sudden they light up or they see something different or they come to a new level of health.

And it's like you could say that's codependent, but you could also say, but it gives me value, it gives me worth. How do you know the difference? Well, let's make a distinction because what you're talking about, because I'm very much the same way, of course, I've had a private practice for 25 years. Yeah. We are natural-born helpers. Yeah.

There's a part of us that we're just, and there are zillions of people out there, and I'm sure many in your audience are the same. So we have to make the distinction between helping and unhealthy helping. Right. Right. Like there's a difference. And the first thing I always say to people when they're like, I don't know if I'm go to bed or not, I always say, let's do a resentment inventory.

because if you're feeling resentment for folks, I can tell you that you're most likely relating, something is happening that's creating that resentment either. A boundary is being crossed or you're not verbalizing a boundary or in need of yours is going unmet. So part of it is looking at your resentment, but also looking at how do you feel when, here's the thing with being a go-dependent, like auto-advice giver, let's just say. Yeah, I saw. I love that auto accommodation.

That was another one. I was like, that's a really good phrase. That will all be in the book. Auto accommodate. Anyway, let me finish this and then do that because that is actually. And some of these things literally, mainly only coming to me in my, you know,

this is like my 40s, do you know what I mean? It's not like even though I had the insight into being a high function and codependent in my late 20s, early 30s, some of these, you know, these are persistent.

behavioral patterns that we're in recovery from these things, the same way you would be any other addiction. You know what I mean? So back to you said, how do you know if you're in your codependently relating to others? How do you feel when your friend comes? You give her amazing advice. You tell her the book to read, the place to go. You hook her up with the person.

And she doesn't do those things. But she also wants to now complain about the same crap. that she was complaining about the last time he spoke to her and the time before that. Right? Yeah. How does that feel? How does that feel? Does that feel good?

Yeah. So what do you do? You know, it's, you just set your boundary and stop giving advice. Stop giving advice, yeah. Because here's the thing. This is what we're doing. When we are auto advice giving, if that's our first step, someone comes to us and they're in pain and we're like, I know what you should do.

We are literally. inserting ourselves as the solution to their problem. We are centering that person's thing on us rather than, I mean, that's kind of presumptuous when you think about it. Like, we literally think we know. And trust me, I'm a recovering high functioning codependent. And I still think I know half the time, but at least I have control over myself. So I'm not giving the unasked for advice or criticism. And even if it's asked for, instead of giving your answer, the first stop should always be. Well, let's just start with what you think.

What do you think you should do? When you ask them, you flip it on them. Yes. When they go, I'm in this situation. I'm in so much pain. You say, what do you think you should do? I don't know. You tell me.

Yeah. Well, I don't know, actually. But I have faith that you're going to figure it out. Like it's literally de-centering our sense. because here's the truth. You actually don't know, even if you think you do. Now, I'm not saying as a medical doctor or as a psychotherapist, yeah, do I know that somebody shooting heroin is bad? Yeah, I do. I feel like we can both agree as mental, as, you know, health professionals. Right. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about our personal lives.

And even in our professional lives, right? You chose a profession and so did I. it's, you know, the highest form of like the psychological defense mechanisms is sublimation. So we take our desire to control the world and we go into and to help everyone and to feel responsible for everyone. We go into professions where it's appropriate for us to guide others. And that's a very high functioning defense. Rather than controlling the crap out of everything, we actually went into profession. So we're allowed to do it.

And we can get that satisfaction, helping someone get healthier or helping someone get out of an abusive relationship or whatever the thing is. But we have to be really mindful and be discerning when it comes to our lives. Part of what happened for me and how I became aware of this in my late 20s, early 30s, is that I had a sister who was in a bad situation, a bad living with someone who was a drug addict. She was an active alcoholic. The person was abusive. It was all the thing. And, you know, I was taking, and I'm fully like the enabling codependent that I was. And I was talking to my therapist. I was crying.

And I was like, what am I going to do? Like, I've tried everything. And even if she leaves, she goes back. It's so painful. And she was like, Terry, let me ask you something. What makes you think, you know, what lessons your sister needs to learn in this life? Yeah. And I was like, okay.

Can we agree that she doesn't need to learn it in an abusive relationship? She's like, no, I don't know how she needs to learn. Like, I'm not God. I have no idea. Do you know what's actually going on? And I was like, clearly not. So fill me in. And she said, you've worked for years to create internal peace and a pretty harmonious life.

And her life, being kind of a dumpster fire, is really messing with your piece. And you would really like to have it in a neat box and a nice bow tied on it so that you can get back to your life. It's, it's, you can't put it down. It's always on your mind. So you, it's really about, you want your sister to get it together. So your discomfort can be, we'll stop. Yes, yes.

And that leads me to the question I have about empaths. You know, where does an empath fit into this? Because if you're an empath and you feel there's pain, you know, is that a bad thing? I mean, there is some compassion. and understanding another human's problems. So where does empathy fit into this conversation? Well, I would say a lot of people who identify as high-functioning codependence also identify as empaths.

And a lot of them highly sensitive people. I'm an HSP, I'm an empath, I'm a recovering high-functioning codependent. So where does it fit in? It means that you've got to do your work because being an empath is amazing. It makes me uniquely skilled to do what I do and you as well probably. And if you don't know how to protect your energy, zip up your energy, clear your energy, if you don't do the things you need to do, especially if you're a highly sensitive person. So highly sensitive people are more sensitive to light, sound, scratchy clothing, too much stimuli, too many people hate loud places.

like that's my whole life, is just organizing around the fact that I live in the dark, my poor husband, you know, like he literally has like a miners lamp he wears because our house is so dark. But, you know, I do the things I need to do to protect myself. And what I find is that many empaths don't know what those things are. And that's really important for you to be able to separate your feelings from other people's feelings. You can feel those feelings like, wow, this person is in pain and as you get healthier with your own internal boundaries, say, and that's not my side of the street. Right. We have to get so clear about what is my responsibility and what is not my responsibility. And it's not even

about like, oh, my sister needs to do it on her own. I'm going to quote unquote let her, right? again, still sort of playing God. It's that it is not my right. People have the right to be sovereign. People have the right to be self-determined. And you literally don't know what journey they need to be on. Keep in mind when you are trying to control, because again, codependency at its core is disordered boundaries

and a covert or an overt bid to control the outcomes of other people. You don't want your sister to feel bad. Right. That's codependently, being codependently attached. She made a choice. She's a grown woman. Right. That's okay.

And you can be honest and say, hey, it makes me sad that you won't be here. We'll miss you. Right. And all the things I said before, perhaps if you actually really want to invite her to support you, you could. But it's like the part of you that felt guilty and felt immediately like, oh, that I do something wrong is, are my focus? is going to now think I did something wrong. Is someone else going to think I did something wrong? She's going to tell them. She's not coming because I did something wrong or whatever. How we spin out. That's not your side of the street. Your side of the street is this is what I need

to do to finish this book on time. And that's what I'm committed to doing. And I'm going to be better at inviting people to support me and getting that done and them having some compassion for me. Because when we're a high functioning codependence, we have a tendency to, be super focused on other people, right? What other people are doing? How they feel. We want to manage. We don't want them to feel certain ways. But how they feel is not your side of the street. How you feel is your side of the street. And that needs to matter to you in a way more than how other people feel. Because if it doesn't, you do end up a martyr. Yeah. What do you think when we started this conversation, You said something along hormones, which is one of my favorite topics.

And when I listen to all the challenges that we have when we don't set boundaries and we're codependent and we have the cognitive fatigue, there's actually, hormonally, it can destroy us. So, you know, one thing that I want to point out is that it's so important for women, especially as women go through the menopausal years, to keep that. that cortisol lower. And when we are like constantly in that do, do, do, and we are constantly attached to other people's emotions, you are stuck in fighter flight.

And that fighter flight, then ultimately will, you know, damage your hormones. So I want to give people like a reason, you know, when you, we've heard these terms, codependency, we've heard boundaries, we've heard empathy a lot. but talk a little bit about the health benefits of doing this because I watch a lot of people like try to put their health back together and they miss this one piece. I think it's a great point about how damaging disordered boundaries are for our health that I've seen over 25 years, the autoimmune disorders, the TMJ, the migraines, the all the things because it's like we're last on our own list.

When you're going through menopause, that's when you really need to prioritize yourself. Because think about how society has looked at menopause. They just don't care. The reason why we don't know anything about it and nobody talks about it is because it doesn't happen to men. And that's a fact. Like that's a fact.

That's a patriarchal system that does not give a crap about women's experience. So we must give a crap and learn together and share our experiences and the things that have helped us, but also give yourself a break. You don't have the bandwidth at 55 that you had at 25, and don't expect yourself to. You don't want to have cognitive fatigue.

Take a break. Don't work 12 hours a day, as you were saying. You can't sleep, and you need to sleep in on the weekend. Ask your partner to do the things that you would normally get up and do. Get support. Ask and allow. which is so hard for high functioning codependence in particular. We never want to ask, and it's really hard to allow.

A, because we think everyone's going to do it wrong. That's one thing. But B, we just don't. Amen to that. Right? Because, p.S. they will. But it's okay, fine. My mother told me years ago, she was like, I was complaining about a boyfriend

who didn't know how to, I don't know, brown garlic or vacuum. I think those are the two things. I was like, he always burns the garlic. What the hell is wrong with him? She was like, Terry. first of all, your father never touched a vacuum or browned anything at his entire life. So start there. B, if you need everything to be done your way, you'll end up like me doing it all alone. So let him vacuum, however the heavy vacuums, and just be grateful that you have a partner at that time,

my then boyfriend, who wants to be a part of the solution and doesn't just expect you to do it. Yeah. You know, I've walked the path of breast cancer primarily with a, a lot of patients. And, you know, there is that moment where unwinding that need to be the superwoman becomes very, very important. And one thing that I know about going through the menopause years is that you don't have the estrogen to protect your brain like you used to. So you're going to have a reaction that's a little stronger to stress.

Like I saw, I wrote about, actually in my new book, Fast Like a Girl, I wrote a, I put in there a study about how when a trauma hits us when estrogen is low, that it actually imprints the brain more. And this study was done on cycling women, but now let's look at the menopausal women. And I will tell you that, you know, I call it the, well, it's coined by Dr. Libby Weaver. she wrote a book called the rushing woman syndrome. And when I read that book, I was like, oh my gosh, just because I'm a woman and I can do all these things doesn't mean I'm supposed to do all these things. So if you are a rushing woman and you are going through menopause, how do you start, where's the door in?

How do you start to unwind all these concepts that we're talking about? Well, I think you have to start with where you're most resentful because that will give the most relief the fastest. Yes. So do a resentment inventory. And also look at your codependency. I'll give you guys, I have this a beautiful gift for your audience. You can put the thing in the show notes, but it's going to be about codependency and boundaries

for more clarity. So people can watch this. It's like a 12-minute video and I've got a downloadable exercise that you can do to sort of go, where am I right now? Because that could be helpful. and they can find it at Boundaryboss.me forward slash resetter. Beautiful. Thank you for remembering that.

I got it. That was good. Yeah. So Terry's got a giveaway for you all. And how long do you, how often should you do this inventory? Do you do it once a month? Yes, because here's the thing. We don't want to let resentment accumulate.

But the more you start handling your life and your relationships, you're going to see. So let's use the example that you gave with your sister, just for an example, that if you had that conversation with her, or the next time something happens like that, you're changing your relationship dance with your sister. You're changing the boundary dance by doing something different. And you might be shocked. In the beginning, of course there's going to be resistance. Of course she's going to act the way that she did.

This is normal. We feel threatened. This person is changing. What do you mean? Like, oh, my God, you're hurting my feelings or whatever. But the new normal, it really happens pretty quickly. And having real conversations is such an important part of that. So if people do their resentment inventory and look and go, okay, which I believe is in the gift that I'm giving you,

we know where to start to put our energy. Like, oh, I'm feeling a lot of resentment towards my coworker because they're always asking me to do more work. than them or asking me to pick up the slack, let's say. Instead of, when you become more of a boundary boss, instead of resenting your co-worker, you just friggin't say no. Right. You just say, hey, I actually don't have the bandwidth to do this. So I'm going to ask that you keep yours and I'll keep mine or whatever.

And it feels like you can't do that in the beginning. But I promise you you can. And in the book, I have one chapter that is only scripts, literally an entire. chapter of scripts for every scenario you could possibly find yourself in from mother-in-laws to like leaving a religious cult. I'm not kidding. If you bump into them in the in the shop right and they're like we're all praying for you, right? What do you say? Oh, thank you. We could all use more of those. Thank you so much. Oh my gosh. When does this book come out? It's out. Oh, it's the boundary boss. This is boundary boss, right. Okay. The high functioning codependency,

there'll be scripts in there too, but they'll be. different scripts. But in Boundary Boss, which people can get at Boundaryboss, Boundarybossbook.com, and there's a whole bunch of bonuses that are still there. Another thing, though, Mindy, that I think could be really helpful for people who are just starting this journey is I have a totally free quiz. It's just at BoundaryQuiz.com, which gives you seven archetypes. So you answer 13 questions. It's super quick. And you can see, like, are you a peacekeeper? Are you an ice queen? Like, because disordered boundaries aren't only too malleable. They're also too rigid.

Like someone's saying, I'm not coming now. Right. That isn't, that is an example of a more rigid boundary that someone who's more, and I'm not saying this about her because I have no idea, but someone who's more likely if they're upset to ghost someone or to just cut someone out of their life rather than have a hard conversation. Where does the, when you look at something like autoimmunity, And the body attacking itself.

What I'm starting to see in autoimmune cases is that there has to be an emotional unwinding. Because if you go and look at Bruce Lipton's work, the thoughts are on the outside of those cells. So if you have negative thoughts, the immune system can be attacking it. Are there certain conditions that we feel like working on your traumas, setting up your boundaries are more helpful than others? specifically autoimmune disorders, but with almost everything that my clients would come in with, when we started actually going into the basement, right, the unconscious mind and really starting to look at the things that needed to be looked at and starting to heal those things and write letters and journal and do a whole bunch, just witnessing the child within who had those experiences.

their symptoms would inevitably start to get better. So I feel like there's no way to separate your mental wellness from your physical wellness. It's just a holistic approach is the only approach that makes any sense because we've seen it for all decades we've been doing what we're doing, that there is a connection. And even with things getting kicked up, when someone is upset, their IBS is more active. They can kick up these experiences from, and even people who have fibromyalgia or something like that, a lot of times we bring that back to some kind of a traumatic experience that kicked it off in their body, at least in my experience with clients.

Yeah. I would say, you know, when I call it doing all the things, when you've like done all the things, change the diet, like, you know, worked on what they need from a nutrition detox level and things are not improving it. It's like, okay, now we got to go after the emotional trauma that's in there. And this is a large reason why I wanted to bring you on is because I feel like this doesn't get enough. This doesn't get highlighted enough. We look at our stressors as being mental health problems. But I look at these dysfunctional patterns we've set up.

I look at them as physical health problems. If you had to give it a percentage, like, you know, when you're not saying, setting boundaries, when you're codependent, when you do the auto accommodation, how is that going to affect you mentally? Is it like 50% it'll affect you mentally and 50% in your body? Do we have any indication of how that distributes out? I really don't because so much of it is personalized to that person's physiology. Yeah. Right?

You know, some people are more susceptible to, you know, a respiratory thing. And some people are more susceptible to having gut upset when they're upset. Some people get migraines. So much of it has to do with their own constitution. But what we do know for sure is that stress has physiological negative consequences. And when we are not creating healthy boundaries, when we are auto accommodating out in the world, meaning we see a problem and it's not even our freaking problem. And we're jumping in to fix that problem for whomever.

It is. That's bandwidth. That's a constriction because you feel constricted because you see that there's going to be a conflict. You don't want there to be a conflict. All of that is cortisol and adrenaline and all of those hormones are being released into your body. And then if you can save it off because you fix the situation, ah, there's a release, but your body still went through the process. We need to understand why. It's someone else's situation is so stressful to you. And all of that is basically what the high functioning codependency book is going to be about. And really, Boundary Boss as well is about going back to the scene of the crime. Sorry, parents, but we will have to go back to the scene of the crime because that's where so much of it began, you know.

Yeah, yeah. Well, this is fascinating. And a large part of why I wanted to bring you on is we talk a lot about insulin resistance on this show. We talk about detox, autoimmunity, and what I'm seeing in my community is really the importance of the mental peace. And I think we can say, oh, well, you should go sit in therapy, which I'm a huge fan of therapy. And I think that's good. But it's changing these patterns that ultimately will give you amazing health. So this. And we'll stop re-injuring, right? We'll stop re-injuring by changing the patterns. Re-injuring. I love that. It's like a wound that you keep going after.

Yeah. I love that. So, okay, last question. So this is season four of our podcast. And every year I have a different theme. And this year we're doing self-love. So I have two questions for you. Do you have a practice around self-love that you do like on a daily basis? And what are three characteristics that you embody that you're a badass at? Like you are really good with these three things. With the self-love things, you mean? Yeah, with self. Because one of the things that we have noticed in our community is that we just don't highlight the things we're really good at. And it's what's been interesting.

You'll love this, Terry, is what's been really interesting is when I ask this question, the men are like, oh, I'm good at this, this, this, this, and this. And the women are like, you know, they struggle to find the answer. And I think it's important that we highlight our strengths and magnify them. Yes. And learn how to take a compliment. Right. Someone says that was amazing.

Don't tell them the 2% that went wrong that why it was. wasn't amazing. How about just saying thank you so much? I work so hard. It really means so much to me to be acknowledged by you. Thank you. There's a gracious way of accepting a compliment. Anyway, three things I'm great at. I'm super intuitive. I know things about people that they don't tell me. I don't even want to know, but I do. So I'm very intuitive. I'm incredibly compassionate. And I'm super duper kind and loyal. Awesome. I love that. Well, Terry, this was amazing. And where can people find you? would highly recommend, I'm a fan of reading books, so I highly recommend you go get Boundary

Boss, but where do people find you? My website, Terry Cole.com, which is T-E-R-R-I-C-O-L-E dot com, and you can get the book at Boundarybossbook.com. You can take the quiz at BoundaryQuiz.com. I also hang out mostly on Instagram, but I also have a free Facebook group just for people who identify as women with about 35,000 people in it where we're kind of talk about all the things in a safe and sacred space. So if anyone wants to do that, just go to Facebook. It's a real love revolution with Terry Cole. Thank you so much for joining me in today's

episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.