Latest / Healthy Boundaries for Moms| Christian Life Coach / EP 10: Do You Wish You Felt More Peaceful and in Control? Here's Why You're not Holding Your Boundaries (and How to Fix It)

Transcript

EP 10: Do You Wish You Felt More Peaceful and in Control? Here's Why You're not Holding Your Boundaries (and How to Fix It) · Healthy Boundaries for Moms| Christian Life Coach

• 0:00
  Welcome to Freedom Spark. If you're new here, I'm really glad you found this space. And
• 0:08
  if you've been listening for a while, welcome back. This podcast is for the woman who knows
• 0:14
  she's capable of more, but feel stuck in hesitation, overthinking, or negotiating with herself.
• 0:22
  Here we talk about discipline, faith, personal responsibility, and the kind of growth that
• 0:28
  actually reshapes your life. My goal is simple, to help you build clarity, strengthen your
• 0:34
  conviction, and take aligned action, even when it's uncomfortable. And here's what
• 0:40
  I can promise you. If you don't just listen, but apply what we talk about, you will become
• 0:46
  more decisive, more disciplined, and more spiritually grounded. And you will also become
• 0:53
  more aligned with the woman you're meant to be. You won't always feel comfortable
• 0:58
  here, but you will grow. Let's get into today's episode.
• 1:04
  Hey guys, so let's kick off this podcast with a question. Do you ever wish your life
• 1:11
  just felt more peaceful, like more in control, less crazy, like less overwhelming? And you've
• 1:20
  tried. My goodness, you've tried. You've set boundaries. You've said no, but right.
• 1:26
  Nothing really changes. It's still crazy. So I actually talked about this on Instagram
• 1:32
  and TikTok the other day, and I talked about how you don't really have a boundary problem.
• 1:38
  You have a holding problem. So what do I mean by that? I mean, you say the boundary, you
• 1:44
  tell people what it is that you will and won't do, but yet you renege, you throw out your
• 1:49
  boundaries. The minute someone feels uncomfortable, the minute someone pushes back, you totally
• 1:55
  cave and you throw it out. And I asked the question like, why, why are we doing that?
• 2:02
  Because I really think there are some deeper issues going on and I want to unpack them
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  in this episode because I think these are all things that we deal with on a daily basis.
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  And if you've ever tried to start to have boundaries, you have felt this pushback and
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  it's normal. Like that's normal process of setting a boundary. Nothing's gone wrong,
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  but this is not how it's supposed to be. We aren't supposed to just stay right here. We
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  need to figure out how do we change this? So this is what this podcast is going to be
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  about. And I want to actually dive in on my own background with this because I first
• 2:48
  heard about boundaries, I would say back in 2008. Um, I was introduced to boundaries at
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  a time in my life when my marriage was out of control and we needed help and we sought
• 3:02
  counseling. And this was the first time I had ever heard of boundaries. And I was introduced
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  to the boundaries book by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend. And it was very revolutionary
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  to me because I didn't even know we were supposed to have boundaries. But growing up, I really
• 3:23
  was in a state of chaos all the time and boundaries were never something I grew up with. Um, you
• 3:32
  just kind of survived and you did whatever you needed to, to survive. And if that meant
• 3:37
  I had to contort myself in 500 different ways, well, that's what I was going to do. I was
• 3:43
  essentially like a chameleon. So I got really good y'all at reading what it was people were
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  expecting of me and then trying to match that to whatever it is that they needed. And I
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  developed codependency and people pleasing. And I really, unfortunately honed the skill
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  in the art of pleasing people, but that's the opposite of what it is that God really
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  wants us to do. He doesn't want us to just be people pleasers. So I want to kind of unpack
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  this a little bit, um, because I think that this is going to be something that's going
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  to be very helpful for you when you go to set a boundary. Okay. Why is it not working?
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  Okay, well, let's fix that. So here's why you're not holding them. Um, you say no. Okay.
• 4:39
  You decide something needs to change and then you explain it, right? Or maybe you soften
• 4:46
  it or you go back on it entirely. And now you're kind of like right back to where you
• 4:51
  started, right? And every time you do that, you don't just lose the boundary, you lose
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  trust in yourself. And that's why your life still feels out of control. So what's going
• 5:04
  on here? I would call it a signal problem. That's what's actually happening. You set
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  a boundary and then you feel something, right? What's that feeling that you're feeling? It's
• 5:16
  like discomfort. It's guilt. We're seeing their reaction and your brain is reading that
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  like it's a signal. Something went wrong, right? So let's break it down. Discomfort.
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  Yes. It feels awkward. You think this isn't right. And guilt. It feels heavy. Like I did
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  something wrong. And their reaction tells you that like, I need to fix this. So what
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  do you do? Well, you give in, you explain, you take it back and you don't break your
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  boundaries because you don't know what to say. You break them because you misread the
• 5:50
  signal after you say it. So here's the shift we need to make. You stop treating discomfort
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  like a stop sign. Let me repeat that. You stop treating discomfort like a stop sign
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  and you start recognizing it as part of the process. Folks, nothing has gone wrong. This
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  is what holding a boundary feels like. So we need a little reframing here. Discomfort
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  doesn't mean I'm doing something wrong. It actually means I'm doing something new and
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  guilt isn't I'm abandoning myself. That's not what that means. You're actually there
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  for yourself. You are showing up for yourself and their reaction. Well, they're just adjusting
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  to a new version of me and that's okay. They can have that reaction. The piece you want
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  is on the other side of the discomfort that you've been avoiding. So you're not expecting
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  that reaction, right? That's the other problem. You're not expecting the pushback. You set
• 7:01
  a boundary and you hope, okay, they should be fine with that, right? You hope it goes
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  smoothly and that they'll understand that it won't feel uncomfortable this time. But
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  that's not usually what happens, is it? People get uncomfortable. They push back. They question
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  it. Not because your boundary is wrong, because it's just different. And you're expecting
• 7:24
  a positive reaction to a change that's affecting them. And it could be impacting them in a
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  negative way. So we shouldn't be expecting this positive reaction and people to be so
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  overjoyed that we have this boundary now. So when it doesn't happen, you panic, right?
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  And you go, oh, I need to undo this boundary now. So here's what I want to talk about the
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  faith piece of this. This is the faith plus truth. And this is where I want to ground
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  this in something deeper, because there is something deeper for us. In Matthew 5, 37,
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  it says, let your yes be yes, and your no be no. Not your yes, and then your explanation,
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  and not your no, and then your guilt. Just a yes or a no. And I think we complicate it
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  because we're trying to manage, right? How it lands for other people. And a big part
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  of that is fear. In Proverbs 29, 25, it says, the fear of man lays a snare. It traps you.
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  Because now your decisions aren't based on what's right. They're based on how other people
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  will feel about it. And when you fear people, you lose yourself. And I think we have to
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  ask ourselves, whose approval am I actually living for? In Galatians 1, 10, it talks about
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  this. If we're trying to please people, we can't fully serve God. And that's the tension
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  a lot of us are living in, right? We are trying to be Christian women who are serving God,
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  but we are ultimately trying to serve people when we keep going back on our boundaries.
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  You can't follow God's direction for your life while constantly adjusting to people's
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  reactions. So what I call this is idolization. Have we heard of this before? Idolizing people.
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  Yes, people can be an idol. So you need to be able to tell yourself that I don't need
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  to fix this. So you might start feeling responsible, but if you tell yourself, I don't need to
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  fix this, then you don't feel like it's on you to try to figure it out. You don't actually
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  need a better response to them. You just need a stronger response to yourself. So what I
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  mean by that is you need to believe what it is that you are trying to communicate. You
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  need to believe what you're trying to say. So here's step three. What will I say? So
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  you can tell them I'm not able to make it this time, and you're probably going to get
• 10:08
  some pushback on that. And that's okay. You can come back and say, I know it's not ideal,
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  but I just can't make it work. And the more you explain, the more you're opening the door
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  to negotiation. That's why less is more of what you're going to say. So in step four,
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  what will I do? You're going to pause. Don't add any more and don't backtrack. Just let
• 10:32
  it sit. Your job isn't to make it feel better. Your job is to just not undo what you just
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  did. So if you've been wishing for your life to be more peaceful and more in control, this
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  isn't just about better boundaries. It's about alignment. It's about letting your yes be
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  yes and your no be no. And trusting that you don't have to manage everyone else's responses.
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  Because the peace you're looking for is not coming from keeping everybody happy because
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  we're not making them all happy anyway, are we? It comes from staying aligned with what
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  you know to be right. So I look forward to seeing you guys in the next episode. I know
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  your time is valuable and I am so honored you have chosen to spend it with me. If this
• 11:28
  episode resonated with you, make sure you hit the follow button and share it with someone
• 11:33
  who could also use it as well. I look forward to seeing you in the next episode.