Boundaries are a pillar of mental and emotional well-being. Get a good grasp of what they are so you can establish yours.
Episode Transcript
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Episode Transcript
Note: The podcast is not scripted and is transcribed using software. The transcript is nearly verbatim but may not be exact. It may include edits for ease of reading and/or minor grammatical errors.
Intro
Welcome to I Can, I Am, I Will. The podcast designed to encourage you and help you build your confidence and self-empowerment. Today we’re going to continue our conversation on boundaries, and we’re going to talk about different types of boundaries.
I’m going to give you examples of what different boundaries could look like to help you when you are trying to establish your boundaries. From there, tomorrow we’re going to go into the how to establish boundaries.
For those of you who are new here, my name is Lyndsey. And with this podcast we talk about topics that have helped me to build my confidence so then you can build yours and you can feel empowered.
Make sure to hit that like and subscribe button. You can find transcripts of episodes and you can also contact me at canamwill.com. I would love to hear from you and hear what you have to say!
Today I’m going to go into some examples of boundaries. I’m going to write an article with a list of examples if you want to see more that will be on the canamwill website next Wednesday.
Previously we talked about boundaries, I gave you examples of boundaries from different characters and Breaking Bad, and today I wanted to give you some more examples. While I was talking about the characters in Breaking Bad I gave you some examples of boundaries in my life, for example people taking their shoes off before they come in my house.
And also with my aunt and how she does not like to talk on the phone while someone is driving because it makes her nervous. Even if they have hands free, that’s her boundary.
Example of Boundaries
Today I wanted to give you more examples, because when we have examples of different things, then it will resonate with us. The more we will have a better idea of the concept we are trying to learn the better we will be set up for success. And I really want you to establish these boundaries!
I consider boundaries to be a pillar of mental and emotional well-being. When you establish boundaries, you are going to increase your ability to be assertive in every area of your life. You’re going to feel happy; you’re going to feel empowered, and you’re going to have stronger relationships with yourself and others—that is what I want for you.
So there are different types of boundaries that we can establish in different areas of our lives. We can have an overarching boundary, so anyone we interact with this is our boundary. I’ll give a silly one, we don’t want someone to slap’s in the face when they’re talking to us.
Like, that’s our overarching boundary. Like no matter who it is, the checkout person at the grocery store, our boss, our significant other, our friends, a stranger, we don’t want that. That’s our boundary. We do not accept that (a slap in the face).
And then you have boundaries that are in different relationships. So you would have different boundaries for your work relationships, your friends, your acquaintances, your lovers and also with yourself—a self-boundary.
Related article: Want to Feel Empowered? Own Your Identity
Self-Boundaries
A self-boundary that I established a few years ago that changed my life completely is that I reevaluated how much I was telling other people about my life. So a few years ago I would give way too much detail about everything—I was an open book.
I would tell everyone everything. If someone asked me a question, I would just divulge any information that I had. I did not realize how negatively impactful this was for my life until I started to not do it, and I found how much better I felt.
Because people do not need to know everything about your life. You do not need to tell everyone about your life. A simple example here would be if someone messaged me right now and they said, “hey do you wanna hang out tonight?”
Like five years ago I would have been like, “no like I can’t because I’m doing this….” And I would just give them the whole detail of everything that I was doing. Now is someone asked me, “hey do you wanna hang out tonight?” I would say, “sorry I can’t I have plans.”
And that’s it because they don’t need to know what I’m doing. Now if it’s a friend and we both like really wanted to try out a yoga class, and my friend contacted me and they’re like, “hey do you wanna hang out tonight?” And I’m like, “no I can’t I’m going to yoga class we both wanted to try.”
That would be different. We have a connection there. I’d let them know and tell them something like, “I’ll let you know how it goes so if you want to try next time then I’ll let you know the next time I’m going.”
The idea here is that you get to decide what you say and what you don’t. Previously I was telling everyone everything. And as I got further along in creating boundaries I actually established the boundary that I really don’t hang out with people when they asked me to hang out the same day.
I usually have plans, my plans could literally be me just hanging out chilling by myself. And my friends know this I’m like hey it’s kind of short notice give me a heads up in advance next time. That’s me establishing a boundary.
Boundaries Strengthen Self-Love
So with my self-boundary of not telling everyone everything about my life, it felt uncomfortable at first, but then it felt really good, because I felt that I was having a stronger relationship with myself. A lot of times I would disclose so much information about my personal life that I felt that I was almost like pleading with other people to get to know me.
Or I was giving them all this information as if they had control over me because I felt like I had to answer to them. But then when I stopped myself, and I kept things to myself, then it made me feel more empowered, and then I was able to accept establish stronger connections.
What I’m trying to get at here is that deciding what you do and don’t want to share with people doesn’t mean that you’re being coercive or manipulative. It means that you have your personal boundaries.
For instance at work, if my colleagues asked, “what are you doing this weekend?” Before I used to say everything I was doing. But then when I establish this boundary it’s like, you know what I don’t really want to tell people I work with what I’m doing because it’s really none of their business and I’m not really trying to hang out with them outside of work.
So they would ask me what are you doing this weekend, and I would say, “oh you know, just hanging out relaxing.” There you go. If I really wanted to connect with someone then I could give them more details, but I really just did not want to.
Related episode: Ep38: Boundaries Are Self Care
Boundaries in Romantic Relationships
Some other examples of boundaries, say in relationships, so if you start dating someone and they want your social media handle. If you’re comfortable with them having it, then you can give them your handle. If they want to share passwords or create a joint account, a boundary could be you saying, “no I don’t want to do that.”
Another one could be with something sexual. So if they want to do something, say they want to have a threesome, but you don’t want to. Your boundary would be that you don’t want to—that’s your boundary right there.
And when you feel more assertive, and you are comfortable establishing your boundaries then you will establish them, and then you won’t be doing something that you don’t want to that’s going to be negatively impactful.
Same thing with kissing and holding hands. Personally, I don’t appreciate excessive PDA. So it would be more of a like a hold your hand, and we can do kisses here and there, but I don’t like anything excessive. I don’t want someone grabbing all over me. That’s my personal boundary.
Boundaries with Friends and Relatives
With friends or just in general with relationships, you can ask people to not make comments about your life choices. Unless your friend is trying to help you, because you’re hurting yourself.
For me this was with a family member who kept trying to encourage me to get married and have children. She was doing this since I was 18 years old I mean sucks for her but ever since I was a kid I knew I didn’t really want kids. I didn’t feel that desire.
Whenever I would talk to her she would always bring up questions, “when you going to get married? When you going to have kids?” And I had a conversation with her one day and I said, “you know it really upsets me when you ask me about when I’m going to have kids because you’re asking me every single time I see you. I’m a first generation college student, I’m working full-time to put myself through college, that is my primary focus right now. I’m so proud of myself and everything that I’m doing. I am exhausted but excited, and that is what I want to talk about. I feel that that accomplishment is being pushed to the side because I’m being asked when I’m having children and that hurts.”
She said, “well Lyndsey I just want you to be happy.” And I said, “but I am happy what makes you think I’m not happy?” She said, “well nothing.” And I said, “OK, what make me really happy is if I didn’t have to get questions about what I’m having kids because in this point in my life I don’t want kids, I don’t foresee me wanting kids.” It’s been 14 years later and I still don’t foresee me wanting kids.
Boundaries and Leftover Food
Some other examples real quick before we head out, you can ask people to:
- not make comments about your weight
- not make comments about how much you eat (I’ve gotten that too)
- not invade your personal space (I’ve had people that like how to stand real close to you while you’re talking to them, you’re like, “hey buddy…”)
Oh and another one, leftover food in the refrigerator. So I live with an ex-boyfriend and I set up a boundary when I didn’t even realize I was doing it. But this was my boundary, I told him, “listen if there is leftover food in the refrigerator you can eat it unless I explicitly state that I want it.” And he’s like, “are you sure?”
I’m said, “yes, you can eat whatever you want.” Because I bring home leftover food for him sometimes but sometimes I bring over home leftover food I want to eat. And I remember the one time I came home—there’s this place called primos hoagies near my house—and I really like their hoagies.
I came home and I showed him the leftover, I said “do not eat this hoagie.” And he just said “OK I won’t eat your hoagie.” And then he didn’t because he respected my boundaries. But then there were other times I brought him food I didn’t say anything to him because I didn’t care if he ate it or not, and then I would see it was eaten and I didn’t care. Because that was my boundary.
With that we’re going to end with our “I” affirming statements. Tomorrow we’re going to have our last day on boundaries and we will talk about how to establish boundaries.
You can say them with me, you cannot, you can do what you would like because you are empowered.
Are you ready?
I can,
I am,
I will.
Have a great day.
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