Latest / Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce / 107. Are you Making These 3 Codependent Mistakes in Post-Divorce Boundary Setting?

Transcript

107. Are you Making These 3 Codependent Mistakes in Post-Divorce Boundary Setting? · Dear Divorce Diary: A Fresh Approach To Healing Grief & Building A Life Of Confidence After Divorce

• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Hi love, today marks the start of our series on boundaries.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Ooh, juicy, juicy stuff.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: So there's so much information out there about boundaries, so many amazing books, which we'll talk about some of them.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: There are some really common Struggles that we see people run into about boundaries understanding what they are, how to do them.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: I think for a lot of women there is a lot of confusion, especially women who were raised in a church of some sort, right in a faith practice.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of confusion about how to be a good, for instance, christian, and still be well-boundary.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: We're gonna dig into all this juicy stuff and make sure that that you have a powerful path to being able to set healthy boundaries and and do it with greater ease.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: In today's episode specifically, we are gonna unpack the three things that people do that absolutely makes their boundaries completely ineffective, right?
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: So a lot of times when people are setting boundaries, their approach is Completely ineffective for the outcome that they want, and that is what we're gonna talk about in today's episode.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: So tune in to see if you are making these three mistakes.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Hi love, welcome to dear divorce diary, the podcast helping divorcee's go beyond talk therapy to process your grief, find the healing you crave and build back your confidence.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, don Wiggins, a therapist, coach, integrative healer and divorcee.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: Join me for a fresh approach to healing grief and building your confidence after divorce.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: In this episode, we're gonna talk about these three most common mistakes that people make and the one skill the most important skill you often need when setting boundaries.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: The first one is confusion about when you need a boundary for yourself versus someone else.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: The other mistake is to do with your faith in other people versus in the creator of all things, and the third one is the role of natural consequences in boundary setting, and so let's listen to the end of the episode to see how you're doing in these three areas.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: Let's start with a story.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: Alright, so I'm going to take you back to, like I don't know, early 2000s, and I am engaged to be married and I started setting boundaries in that relationship because it was such a disaster already, and so some of the boundaries that I set most of them were to do with drinking and the subsequent choices you know that an inebriated person would make, and so I would set boundaries like if you get blackout drunk and drive that car, I'm not going to marry you those types of things right and long story short, I didn't follow through with what I was stating or expressing, right, I was setting all kinds of boundaries about.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: You know, you can only have so many drinks or you have to call me, you know, pass a certain time or make sure that you're home safe.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: You know, like all these things right, that were really me micromanaging his life.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: They were me trying to control his choices.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: They were me trying to preserve a relationship without having done the work to actually create a stable relationship.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: And, in fact, these were not boundaries, they were threats, and that is one of the things that people get wrong most often when it comes to setting boundaries is that so many of the boundaries that we need to set are actually to do with self and our willingness to execute.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: So, for instance, if I had said, if you drive that car in a blackout, I'm not going to get married, the the right call, there would have been something like we would need to postpone this wedding and get to the bottom of this particular issue and how we can create a sustainable, safe, secure relationship to then, you know, move forward in marriage.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: Right, the actual boundary there would have been I need to have a relationship where I feel safe, that you're going to feel safe, that you're going to be safe and that we're going to be well and that there's not going to be active addiction going on here.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: Right, that would have been a healthy boundary and then everybody would have had the choice, whether or not they came to the table therapeutically.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: But so often we try to bypass doing our own personal development work and dealing with our own anxieties and our own fear of abandonment and our own fear of loss or being alone especially if you're an anxious attache our own childhood wounds, our own insecurities and, you know, fears of inadequacy and of not being liked or not being loved or not being chosen.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: And we use boundaries as a way to bypass all of that personal development work because truly the place where we need to set the most boundaries in our life tends to be with ourselves, right Like around how we treat ourselves and whether or not we're treating ourselves and others with love.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: So often our strategies in life are around anxiety and control, and I know you feel what I just said, right Like so often we perceive so much more anxiety and attempts to control in our lives.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Brené Brown certainly has illustrated that for us over the decades of her research and her work, that we want to control and predict and control and predict, and when we can't do that, we just feel so much anxiety.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: And so our commitment really needs to be on our own personal development and healing those wounds that are causing us to need to control, that are causing us to try to make threats in order to get people to act a particular way so that we don't have to deal with these things.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: But that's not sustainable and it doesn't actually solve the problem.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: It just delays it for a very short period of time.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: So the very first mistake that people make is attempting to set boundaries with other people, which are really just threats, rather than setting boundaries with themselves around, cultivating love and wellness inside of themselves and also cultivating a sense of understanding and knowing oneself deeply.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: So I don't know that I could have said to you at the time that I was so insecure or I couldn't have let the relationship go because it felt like literally a lifeline to me, like I don't know if I could have articulated all of this to you, or that I was so desperate to be in the relationship that it couldn't fathom letting it go.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: And so, from a lack of self-awareness, from a lack of emotional maturity and I certainly wasn't emotionally mature at the time, right, I was a very wounded child in an adult woman's body.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: And so, from that place of emotional immaturity, we don't have the level of integrated self-awareness to really know what our needs are in order to get those needs met.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: And so then we end up reaching for getting our needs met with all of these very sideways methods, right?
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: And so the commitment really needs to be to learn ourselves well, to know ourselves well and to really take ownership, for when I have a need, I can get it met either through my own self-care or through other safe places, or through my higher power, right?
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: And rather than trying to get all of my needs met from one particular person, which just isn't sustainable.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: And so the second mistake.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: This ties right into the second mistake people make, right, they often try to set boundaries without having a strong faith practice.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: Well, what does faith have to do with boundaries, dawn?
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: Oh, so much.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: So, as humans, we have a tendency to calibrate our well-being to other humans, right?
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: If you're happy with me, if you're pleased with me, if you like me, if you validate and approve of me, then I am okay, and if you don't, yikes, right.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: If you're mad at me, I am not okay.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: If my boss is mad at me, I am not okay.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: If my kids are mad at me, my heart is shattered.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: And so when we calibrate our well-being to other people's opinions of us rather than the source of all creation's opinion of us, then we are on a roller coaster of identity, right?
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: There's not a stable sense of self, there's not a stable way of viewing ourselves through love and belonging.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: And so when our opinion of ourselves can be so drastically changed based on the feedback we get from a project, you know like, oh, I failed this task.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: Or oh, this podcast episode bombed.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: Or oh, that session went poorly.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: Or oh, my boss is disappointing me, right?
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: If we fail at a task, we feel like failures.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: If we fail in a relationship, we feel like failures.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: If we, you know, something goes wrong with regard to parenting, we feel like failures.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: There's so often that we feel like failures, love, and that's not a stable self-concept, that's not an understanding, a truly integrated understanding that we were created as a part of this natural world that is so intricately designed by a divine creator that everything truly works together for good and has a higher purpose and a very intricate design that is deeply, deeply purposeful, and that we are seen through the eyes of love and belonging.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: And so when we see ourselves any different than that, when we are not able to acknowledge our humanity, the messiness of humanity, that all of nature goes through seasons, that all of nature has things that they experience that aren't necessarily cute, that all of nature can experience, you know, disease or down times or whatever you might call it that that is a perfectly human, natural experience.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: When we judge it as anything other than that, we are not able to execute boundaries effectively, because if I speak a boundary, if I speak my preference, if I tell you what my need is and you're not okay with that, I am going to become anxious, insecure or angry, and that's again not stable self-concept.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: So there has to be this larger faith concept that I'm going to state what works for me and what doesn't work for me, what I need, what I don't need, how I function optimally, what parameters help me stay close to you in a relationship, right, so that if I set this boundary and it upsets you, that that's okay, that I can still look to who I am in my creator's eyes rather than who I am in your eyes, and that carries me through the execution of the boundary.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: Now, love, that is a process, right, because there is no such thing as perfect faith.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: There's a faith practice, and if we're not practicing faith on a regular basis, then this is going to be a struggle and I promise you, my ability to set boundaries today is wildly different than it was, you know, 10 years ago or 20 years ago.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: And so today, some of the places that I set boundaries most consistently is probably, historically, with my husband, my current husband, definitely with my child and definitely with my parents to do with my child, right, that was probably the place where I started to learn boundaries best was when I gave birth to my daughter.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: It was much easier for me to set boundaries on her behalf than it was for me to set boundaries on my behalf, because I was invested in protecting her versus, you know, afraid of being rejected or making people mad at me.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: So that was like a great training ground for me to practice setting boundaries and slowly, over time, I was able to see like, oh well, if I loved myself as well as I love her, and I allowed myself to feel worthy of the same respectful treatment, then I would speak up for myself more often, right?
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: And so I definitely set boundaries in places with my daughter around her behavior, around her being respectful, and I do that a lot and consistently.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: And this takes me to a third thing that I want to tell you other places I set boundaries, but I want to take you to the third mistake people make, and it segues perfectly off the daughter thing, right?
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: So because I set so many boundaries with my daughter, for instance, as extreme as I think it was her fourth or fifth Halloween there was enough disrespectful behavior that I chose to cancel Halloween.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: So I didn't take her trick or treating.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: She didn't get to dress up or do that thing, right, and that was a massive consequence and A lot of people thought that I was overreacting in there.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: But I will tell you it is paved the way in later years For her to know that when I mean business, I mean business.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: So one of the things that often goes wrong with boundaries is that we, as Humans, we like to rescue people from natural consequences.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Right, and and I just want you to get your juices flowing here, think about natural consequences, right, like oops, I spent too much money Because I really wanted that thing and now I need somebody to bail me out because I can't cover this bill.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: Oops, I was speeding and I got a ticket.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: That may or may not have actually happened in the last month and now I have to pay a fine, but I want you to provide me with a way to get out of the points.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: I want to.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: I want, I want to hire a lawyer to get me out of the consequences.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: Right, let's see other natural consequences.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: Well, like you know, a lot of times with addiction, right, we cover for the addicts.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: Lord knows I have.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: Right, we cover up.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: Oh no, the those liver enzymes are just off because you know we've been eating some type of way or haven't been drinking enough water, or no, he's just really tired from work.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: That's why he's still asleep.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: You know, we do a lot of covering people rather than covering for people, rather than letting him experience natural consequences.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: With kids, we often do that to do with keeping them from getting in trouble with certain people or their grades.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: Right, We'll want to intervene around homework or this or that because we don't want their grades to suffer, when actually Natural consequences is how we all learn and in fact ooh, I'm gonna say something really spicy right now love.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: But this divorce is just like mine was a natural consequence of not having done certain footwork before we got married, and so now, post-divorce, I had to commit to cleaning up all those consequences and how I let them Happen in my own life and didn't take responsibility for them before I am now having to Pay the toll later, right?
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: So natural consequences are a beautiful part of Boundary setting, because if I set a boundary and I say, well, if you Disrespect me one more time, then you're going to lose your play date for this weekend, and then the disrespect happens, and then I don't want to take the play date away because, for whatever reason, the play date serves me, whether that's because I get a few hours alone or Because I just want you to be happy all the time.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Interrupting that natural consequence actually Creates a problem with people respecting my boundaries over time, because I have demonstrated to you that you do not have to respect my boundary, and so allowing natural consequences to unfold is a massive part of boundary setting.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: It's what we would call in the victim triangle, the rescuer part of the triangle.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: Anytime we rescue people from natural consequences.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: We are interrupting a healthy, boundary, well-boundary relationship.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: All right, let's tie some of these things together.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: Right, let's talk about some of the places where I have consistently set boundaries in my more present-day life with my present husband.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: I have set a lot of boundaries around Work and his job, and I have set a lot of boundaries around personal development, work and communication skills and emotional availability, and so examples of where I stopped rescuing him in those places is when I would say hard things to him and I would say you know, this is how this thing just unfolded, this is where you did not respect my boundary of being emotionally available or being in good communication or Investing in your own personal development.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: He would become very, very wounded.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: God bless him, right.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: He would feel so hurt and maybe sometimes he would get defensive and maybe sometimes a little spicy, and One of the ways that I did not rescue him from those consequences is I would say I love you so much.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: I've said everything there is to say about this.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: We are no longer having productive conversation.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: I am now exiting this conversation, which was very distressing for him, right, because if it's not resolved and that doesn't mean I was exiting it with anger or resentment.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: I certainly was probably jacked up a little bit, right like a little nervous system activated, but one of the key aspects, one of the key skills that you need in order to be a healthy boundary setter, is boatloads of patience, love, lots and lots of patience, because so often the real work involved in rising to a boundary, or even in being able to set a boundary, is there's a lot of Emotional maturity that has to come as a result of that and there's no quick path to emotional maturity.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: Emotional maturity and integration is a process, and Processes involve trial and error, right, because as humans, we learn from doing and oftentimes, when we do, we make mistakes, and that's just a natural part of a learning process.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: So it took years of me consistently setting boundaries with my husband to say this thing you're right doing, doing right here love is an insecurity on your behalf, and those insecurities are dramatically affecting our Relationship security and you know, whatever else, let's say our financial security or, yeah, our relationship security, or my ability to Feel very attracted to you in this moment, and so saying those hard things causes someone else to feel painful emotion, right, and one of the ways that we most often disrespect our own boundaries.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: Therefore, teaching people they can disrespect our boundaries is by rescuing them from those painful feelings.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: And so we take on too much guilt, or we take on too much blame, or when other people use what they think is a boundary, but it's really them trying to manipulate or blame or guilt us into taking action.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: And then anytime someone manipulates us into taking action by using guilt and we do that action, that is disrespecting our own boundary and that is rescuing them from their feelings and that is conveying to them that actually my boundaries don't matter.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: And so I want you to notice, just as a loose recap here right, a boundary is the ability to know oneself well and say, hey, this is what I need, this is what I don't need to function optimally in this world and especially to protect our relationship.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: What would be a good example of that in present day time?
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: Let's say, sometimes, when producer Joy and I, when we do family dinner right, like sometimes, well, a lot of times I've had to set boundaries around food right Because we've had a lot of food allergies in this family and I'm a really clean eater, again because of chronic illness and that kind of thing.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: So a lot of times I've had to say, actually, I need us to eat at our house, or I need us to make food, or I need us to get food from a particular place and I can't just go to the restaurant that you want to go to, because that doesn't work for the health and well being of our family, right?
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: That's a.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: That's just a really kind of clean, clear, clear boundary.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: That self caring, it's a knowledge of what is going to help me function optimally and it's just expressing that need to her right?
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: Or actually, I'm really burnt out this week.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: Can we do dinner on Saturday instead of Friday?
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: These me sounds small, right, but their expressions of knowing myself well and knowing how much gas I have in the tank or don't, and being able to honor what I need versus what I don't, right, these are really kind of.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: They may sound like little examples to you, love, but I find that most people don't have a good finger on the pulse of where they are and what they need and their ability to get their own needs met by just asking for it and so.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: So a boundary is just being able to know yourself well, express yourself well.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: That's where a lot of people get lost.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: Right To know when you actually need a boundary with yourself around self care versus to set a boundary with someone else in an attempt to shortcut actually doing personal development work.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: And there's also a strong need for a faith practice in boundary setting because otherwise you're going to be calibrating to other humans the moment you set a boundary.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: You're going to become insecure and you're going to worry about rejection more than you're going to worry about God's view of you.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: And there's a strong need for you to let natural consequences play out and take the long view and practice patience.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: In the meantime, and while you're practicing patience, phone a friend, do faith practices, do EFT tapping, do some bilateral stimulation, use a tool to manage the feelings that come up for you in the meantime when you have a difficult time setting a boundary and don't get discouraged.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: And that sounds like such a shit thing to say Don don't get discouraged.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: Let me rephrase it's not that I don't want you to get discouraged, but I don't want you to stay discouraged because there's so many things that have been promised to us when we live in the light, when we clean up our vibration, when we intentionally manifest.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: We were not intended to suffer and we were not intended to.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: We were not intended to have crappy relationships, right, we were intended to have sacred relationships that are divine and wonderful and that are rewarding and that come from a place of love and not from a place of fear.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: And so, because that's how we were designed to function optimally love, I believe that that's what's intended for you, but you got to be willing to take those steps to get there.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: And so, when you feel discouraged, sure, honor that, acknowledge it, but then refocus on what's true.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: And what's true can be found in a lot of spiritual texts and a lot of spiritual programs.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: Right, like, whether you know, for me, I grew up in the church, I was raised in the church and I could quote a lot of the Bible inside and out, but then I found greater faith, you know, post-divorce, in the 12 steps of Al-Anon and Alcoholics Anonymous, and I found that there was a great faith practice in that program.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: And then in yoga, I found a great positivity and a great spiritual practice in yoga and then later in life, it's been the law of attraction and I found a great faith practice.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: That, again, it's the more that I focus on my own personal development and cleaning up my vibration and staying with my eyes focused on what has been promised to me spiritually in the bigger picture of life.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: That has allowed me to be patient and believe in people and their ability to rise to so many boundaries that I have set.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: But I recognize it is not an overnight process and it requires boatloads of grace, both with myself and with other people, because, love, we are messy and this shit ain't easy, and so it's better when we come from a place of I can, you can, we can, let's do it together, let's be on the same team.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: Let's anticipate that you absolutely are going to rise to the occasion when I treat you with love and respect and I am consistently setting a boundary from these places that I've talked about that are grounded in truth let's dig into today are getting unstuck segment.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: So today's segment is a little bit different because it comes directly from a contact that I had with somebody who needed to set boundaries this week, which is super exciting example, right.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: So I want to share the example because it's super juicy.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: It's just a slightly different format, right, because I already asked and answered rather than me noodling through it right here.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: But okay, our lovely friend Celine, she was separated four months, right?
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: They were in the process of moving through divorce proceedings.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: But divorce not final right Split up for four months and Celine finds out that her husband is dating someone new and she was PS suspicious about this at the time of separation, right.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: So there has been a gift from finding out that he was dating someone new.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: There's a clarity about there's no fixing this right Because this wasn't necessarily a divorce that Celine wanted.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: I know that there's a segment of our listeners who they did not want this divorce right, and that's a common lived experience.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: And so Celine has gotten clarity Like, well, if he's moved on that level of disrespect, that level of avoidant attachment style, like I am done, and quite frankly, now I'm angry, now I'm not sad, now I'm angry, great, we're moving forward in the process because anger actually has more to it right, it's got more energy.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: We can actually heal faster from a place of anger than we can from a place of grief or despair.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: So, celine, I love the anger.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: But now she's reevaluating some of their points of contact with her ex right, some of the ways they've been communicating via text or running into each other coming and going from the house while he helps dogs sit or this or that right and she had plans to go out of town in a couple of months and he was going to dog sit while she was away.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: Let's say they had a time sharing plan with the dogs, right.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: But now she's gotten really clear that she doesn't want him in the house anymore at all, right, unless there's a specific reason.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: If there's something he needs to get, she can leave it outside for him.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: She no longer wants him in her space.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: So I strongly encouraged her to set a handful of boundaries this last week and I want you to know that I'm planning a little seed and we'll talk about this more in future boundaries episodes.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: But there are many different types of boundaries you can set.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: There are time boundaries.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: Is this, is this request that's being made of my time good for me, yes or no?
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: There are space boundaries.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: Is having you in my space, either physical space or my home space, which is an extension of me, or my car space, which is an extension of me, good for me?
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: Meeting my goals, yes or no?
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: Is my commitment?
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: Is?
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: Is the request you're making of me financially helping me forward my goals, yes or no?
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: So we can have time boundaries, space boundaries, financial boundaries, communication boundaries so many types of boundaries, right?
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: So I encouraged her to set a boundary around time sharing with the dogs, and so when she did, it was hard right for her to say very kindly that this is I can no longer have you in the house or taking care of the dogs.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: Please understand where I'm coming from here.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: I have to move on.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: I have to let go.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: I can no longer do this limbo communication thing, right?
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: And it will not surprise you to hear that Celine's ex did not take this well and started to ladle on the guilt, blame judgment and victim thinking.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: And this is where I want to point out to you that boundaries are brilliant clarification tools, just like when I said to my ex if you drink in a blackout tonight, I'm not going to marry you, and then they did the thing anyways.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: That is a beautiful clarification, but we have to be willing to deal with the clarification that comes from it, right, and then not rescue, right, cause that's what I did back then I covered, I, I got in the middle of natural consequences, and that is not what Celine did here.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: Right, celine stuck with her boundaries.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: So far, so good.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: But that's going to take some resolve, and it is easier to have resolved from a place of anger than it is from a place of sadness or despair.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: So if at first your boundaries are set via anger, that is a great way point in the destination to boundaries.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: It is not a great destination, but it will be a part of the process along the way and so I want to validate that for you as a temporary strategy.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: If you're able to come up with some boundaries out of anger, good for you.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: Then go on to use some other tools with your therapist in EMDR, using other tools to be able to execute those boundaries with more finesse and more acceptance, more patience, more grace, right, more.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: I don't give a kind of like approach to it, right, but that comes down the road where it's like I'm just so clear who I am in God's eyes and I'm so clear who I am that I no longer need to appease your negative emotional stuff.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: All right, that's what we got for you today.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: I love you so much.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: Happy boundary setting Peace.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: Dear Divorce Diary is a podcast by MyCoachDawn.