Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #262| Why You're Afraid to Set Boundaries with Friends (and How Your Friendships Deepen When People Pleasing Stops)
Transcript
- 0:00Michelle Gauthier: When you listen today, you'll learn why you might be afraid to set boundaries with your friends and how your friendships deepen when you do.
- 0:12Michelle Gauthier: You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less.
- 0:20Michelle Gauthier: I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former Overwhelmed Working Woman and current life coach.
- 0:25Michelle Gauthier: On this show, we unpack the stress and pressure that today's Working Woman experiences.
- 0:30Michelle Gauthier: And in each episode, you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease, and relaxation to your life.
- 0:40Michelle Gauthier: Hi, friend.
- 0:40Michelle Gauthier: Welcome to this quick Thursday episode where we're talking about setting boundaries with friends.
- 0:46Michelle Gauthier: Most of the time, when I work with my clients on things like this, they're afraid they're gonna permanently damage or blow up a relationship when they set a boundary.
- 0:54Michelle Gauthier: But what I most often see is that the opposite is actually true.
- 0:58Michelle Gauthier: When you listen today, you'll learn how to define a boundary that actually matters to you, how to script and deliver the boundary without sounding offensive, and then how to follow through when the pattern tries to repeat itself.
- 1:09Michelle Gauthier: And then at the end, I will give you the end of the story of how my client discovered the catastrophe that she feared never actually happened.
- 1:17Michelle Gauthier: Okay, so when you're going to set a boundary, there are essentially three steps to it.
- 1:21Michelle Gauthier: The first one is defining a boundary.
- 1:23Michelle Gauthier: I had a client who lived in a smallish town and she had a group of friends and everybody knew each other.
- 1:30Michelle Gauthier: And every time they got together, one of the friends would gossip.
- 1:33Michelle Gauthier: Not nice gossiping, and would share it mostly with my client.
- 1:37Michelle Gauthier: So she was kind of the recipient.
- 1:39Michelle Gauthier: She wasn't talking about her, but she was the one who was hearing her talk about everybody else.
- 1:43Michelle Gauthier: And my client would sometimes try to change the subject or give it a small laugh, but it was just against what she believed in.
- 1:50Michelle Gauthier: And over time she felt really inauthentic and resentful when she was hanging around with this person.
- 1:54Michelle Gauthier: Here's what stopped her from saying anything.
- 1:56Michelle Gauthier: She was terrified that her friend would think she was judging her, like, oh, you're better than me, or you're too good for me.
- 2:02Michelle Gauthier: And so the fear was huge.
- 2:04Michelle Gauthier: But one day we spent some time just getting clear on what she really didn't want.
- 2:08Michelle Gauthier: And what she didn't want was to be the second party where someone was talking bad about someone.
- 2:13Michelle Gauthier: And so once she got clear on that, she defined what her boundary actually was.
- 2:17Michelle Gauthier: And her boundary was I don't participate in conversations where someone's just talking badly about someone else.
- 2:22Michelle Gauthier: So there's the boundary.
- 2:23Michelle Gauthier: Define what it is.
- 2:24Michelle Gauthier: Notice she hasn't said anything to anyone about this.
- 2:27Michelle Gauthier: She just took the time with me to get clear on what her boundary is.
- 2:30Michelle Gauthier: Then the next thing you do is you plan the communication.
- 2:33Michelle Gauthier: Sometimes you don't have to say anything.
- 2:35Michelle Gauthier: For example, if someone calls you all the time and you don't want to talk to them all the time, you can just not answer your phone all the time.
- 2:41Michelle Gauthier: And you don't necessarily have to communicate that.
- 2:43Michelle Gauthier: But in this case, she knew she was not going to be able to just wing it.
- 2:47Michelle Gauthier: So she wrote out a script for herself and practiced it.
- 2:50Michelle Gauthier: And she came up with, I just don't feel comfortable talking about other people.
- 2:54Michelle Gauthier: So let's talk about something else.
- 2:55Michelle Gauthier: She's talking about herself.
- 2:57Michelle Gauthier: The boundary always needs to be about you.
- 2:59Michelle Gauthier: Let's just talk about something else.
- 3:00Michelle Gauthier: No judgment, no nothing, not defensive or angry.
- 3:04Michelle Gauthier: And when she delivered that to her friend the next time she said something behind someone's back, her friend said, Oh, I don't either.
- 3:09Michelle Gauthier: I don't either.
- 3:10Michelle Gauthier: I don't want to be like that.
- 3:11Michelle Gauthier: And my client said, Cool, just wanted to let you know and change the subject.
- 3:15Michelle Gauthier: So that's step two in action.
- 3:17Michelle Gauthier: You plan what you're going to say, you stay calm, and you deliver it without the drama.
- 3:21Michelle Gauthier: People are usually really scared to do this because you feel like that person's going to get mad at you.
- 3:25Michelle Gauthier: In this case, she didn't get mad.
- 3:26Michelle Gauthier: And then the third step in setting a boundary is the follow through.
- 3:30Michelle Gauthier: So deciding what you want for a boundary, communicating that boundary, those are two big steps.
- 3:35Michelle Gauthier: But if you don't do the follow-through where you actually walk away from a conversation where someone's talking badly about someone else when that's your boundary, then you're really not holding to the boundary.
- 3:45Michelle Gauthier: So my client was able to hold her boundary.
- 3:48Michelle Gauthier: If the friend would start to talk about somebody else, she could either just walk away if they were in a big group or she could redirect the conversation.
- 3:55Michelle Gauthier: She could remind her, like, oh, I don't want to have these kind of conversations, remember?
- 3:59Michelle Gauthier: And what my client ended up experiencing is that she actually liked being with her friend more because she knew this issue wouldn't come up.
- 4:06Michelle Gauthier: There were a couple of times it came up, and then eventually she just got to know, okay, if I want to hang around with her, I can't be like that.
- 4:11Michelle Gauthier: So she felt better about herself for sticking with her own values and she enjoyed being with her friend more.
- 4:17Michelle Gauthier: The catastrophe that she was so worried about, it just never materialized.
- 4:21Michelle Gauthier: So I think it's a good takeaway to remember that boundaries actually don't destroy relationships.
- 4:27Michelle Gauthier: Sometimes they need to just stop a relationship and they can do that too.
- 4:30Michelle Gauthier: But a lot of times they protect them because the feared consequence is almost never as bad as you worry that it will be.
- 4:37Michelle Gauthier: And what I find is that clear communication always creates better relationships, even if it's a little bumpy at the beginning as you're working out the boundaries.
- 4:45Michelle Gauthier: If you feel like people pleasing or setting boundaries is one of the main things causing your overwhelm, you can find out for sure by taking my free overwhelm quiz.
- 4:54Michelle Gauthier: If you go to my homepage, MichelleGauthier.com, you will see overwhelm quiz and you'll find out if people pleasing is what's causing your overwhelm.
- 5:02Michelle Gauthier: And you'll be able to grab a workbook to help you work through how to set a good boundary.
- 5:07Michelle Gauthier: Or maybe yours is being caused by time management or negative self-talk.
- 5:11Michelle Gauthier: It will tell you what the main cause of your overwhelm is and give you some options for next steps to take.
- 5:17Michelle Gauthier: Okay, friends, that's it for this quick Thursday.
- 5:20Michelle Gauthier: But just remember setting a boundary can do great things for a relationship.
- 5:25Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
- 5:32Michelle Gauthier: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at MichelleGauthier.com.
- 5:38Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.