Kate Anthony: [00:00:00] Hey everyone. Today we are talking about boundaries, and I know this is a word you’ve heard approximately seven million times in your life and certainly as you’ve gone through this process, right? You need better boundaries. Set a boundary. Hold your boundaries. Protect your peace. Boundary language is everywhere, all over the internet, all over the social medias.

But despite how often we use the word, I’m not sure most people have ever actually been taught what a boundary is. I know I certainly wasn’t, right? For a long time, I thought boundaries were something that you kind of announced to another person. You told them what they were no longer allowed to do to you, and then they understood how serious you were, and then they stopped doing it, which sounds awesome if that’s how it actually worked.

But that is not how boundaries work. A lot of what we call boundaries are actually requests, [00:01:00] expectations, preferences, warnings, threats, attempts to control someone else, or desperate pleas. Desperate, desperate pleas for them to finally understand how much they’re hurting us. There’s nothing wrong with having requests or preferences or expectations, and there’s nothing wrong with telling someone that their behavior is hurting you and asking them to change it, but that’s just not a boundary necessarily.

And if it was that easy, then we wouldn’t have to set boundaries, right? If it was as easy as saying to someone, “Hey, what you’re doing is really bothering me,” and they went, “Oh, shit, I’m sorry” And m- many people do, right? And those are people that you actually don’t need to set boundaries with. If it was that easy, we wouldn’t have to learn how to do this.

It wouldn’t be so hard. But generally speaking, the people that we need to set boundaries with are not responsive to our requests or desperate pleas. So one of the frameworks that has been [00:02:00] most useful to me, and I feel like has really, really helped me in my development of understanding of what boundaries are, comes from, uh, Pia Mellody’s book, Facing Codependence.

I have talked about this book numerous times, and I hope you understand by now that it is like, w- I think, one of the best books on codependency. If you haven’t read it, please do so. Um, but in the book- Melody describes boundaries as a system that both protects us and contains us. And that second part is really important because a boundary protects me from being violated by you, but it also keeps me from violating you.

It helps me understand where I end and you begin. You may not feel like you are violating someone else’s boundaries, right? So you may be like, “Well, I’m not doing that.” Just hang [00:03:00] tight and listen for a bit. Your thoughts are yours. Your feelings are yours. Your body is yours. Your choices are yours. Your responsibility, all of your responsibilities are yours, and mine belong to me, which sounds really simple.

Duh. But when you have spent years in relationships where those lines have been so blurred and ignored and punished or completely erased, when you have been in a codependent, controlling, emotionally abusive, or high-conflict relationship, it may feel as though everything happening inside the other person is somehow your responsibility.

If he’s angry, you need to calm him down. If he’s disappointed, you have failed. If he’s withdrawn, you need to figure out what you did. If he’s unhappy in the marriage, you need to become more attractive, more sexual, more accommodating, less [00:04:00] demanding, more emotional, more understanding, more grateful, somehow easier to love.

Meanwhile, your own internal experience becomes communal property. Your feelings are subject to debate. Your memories are corrected. Your perceptions are challenged. Your needs are treated as accusations. Your no is treated as the opening bid in a go- n- in a negotiation. And then after enough time in that dynamic, it becomes really difficult to know what belongs to you and what doesn’t.

And that is where boundary work begins, not with the perfect sentence, not with getting someone else to agree. It begins with learning to recognize yourself as a separate person. It’s about differentiation. In the book, Pia Mellody talks about two main broad kinds of boundaries: external boundaries and internal [00:05:00] boundaries.

External boundaries relate to your physical person and your physical space, so they include who is permitted to touch you, how they’re permitted to touch you, how close somebody might stand to you, whether someone can enter your home, use your belongings, access your phone, open your mail, come into your bedroom, or participate in your sexual life Notice how I said your sexual life, because that is yours.

So external boundaries include your right to say, “Don’t touch me.” They include your right to close and lock a door. They include your right to decline sex, even affection or a hug, a kiss, any physical closeness. Even if you’ve previously said yes, even if you’re married And even if the other person is unhappy about it.

But external boundaries don’t only protect you from other people, they also contain your behavior. So that’s the [00:06:00] my boundaries versus your b- right? They protect me and also contain me. So they also contain your behavior. Your external boundary reminds you that you don’t get to touch someone without consent, that you don’t get to block a doorway during an argument.

You don’t get to grab someone’s phone, search their bag, read their private messages, or use physical intimidation because you’re upset. So that’s sort of the, the, the general world of external boundaries. Protect me and contain me. Then there are internal boundaries, and internal boundaries help, and this is where it gets harder and more complicated.

Internal boundaries help separate your thoughts, feelings, attitudes, beliefs, and behavior from someone else’s. An internal boundary allows me to hear that you are angry [00:07:00] without automatically believing that I’ve done something wrong. It allows me to hold that your anger is yours. It allows me to hear that your…

hear your opinion of me without, like, absorbing it as fact. It allows me to care that you’re disappointed without immediately abandoning myself to make the disappointment go away. It means that I can notice your anxiety without taking it into my own body and treating it as an emergency that I am required to solve.

Internal boundaries contain me, too. So the f- that was protecting yourself. So now we’re also gonna talk about containing me. My internal boundaries will tell me that because I’m hurt, I don’t get to punish you. Just because I’m afraid, I don’t get to monitor you. Just because I disagree with you, I don’t get to belittle you.

Just because I feel abandoned, I don’t get to demand that you [00:08:00] surrender every other relationship in your life to prove that I matter, right? My abandonment is mine. My feelings of abandonment are mine. A boundary isn’t simply a way to keep other people from hurting us. It’s also part of the responsibility that we take for how we move through the world and not hurting other people.

So one of the biggest misconceptions about boundaries is that a boundary is a rule that you create for another adult. You can’t speak to me that way. You can’t keep coming home late. You aren’t allowed to drink. You have to answer my texts. You need to stop criticizing me. Now, granted, right, some of these might express, like, really reasonable desires, but unless you’re describing what you will do Then you haven’t actually created a boundary.

You’ve told another person what you want them to do. So a boundary isn’t you’re not allowed to yell at me. A boundary is if you begin yelling at me, I’m going to end the [00:09:00] conversation and leave the room. So a boundary isn’t you need to stop sending hostile texts. It might be I will respond only to messages that concern the children and require a response.

I will not engage with insults, accusations, or commentary about our marriage. So a boundary isn’t you can’t drink around the children. A boundary would be if you are impaired when I arrive for the exchange, I will not leave the children with you and I’ll follow the process outlined by my attorney or the court order.

The other person is still completely free to make their own choices, and that’s the part that’s really hard because we don’t really actually want a boundary. We want something that’ll make the other person stop doing the thing that they’re doing that’s really bothering us. We don’t wanna have to be responsible for holding the boundary.

We wanna tell them what we want them to do and have them do it so that we don’t actually have to do something about it. We just want them to stop. We’re looking for that perfect phrase that will make them be respectful. You want, like, this perfect sentence that’s [00:10:00] gonna make them be like, “Oh my God, you’re absolutely right.

I totally understand. I’ll never do it again,” which would be great, but that’s not a person you need to set boundaries with. Boundaries don’t give us control over another person. They clarify what we will participate in, what we will permit access to, and what we will do when a limit is crossed. I hear women say to me all the time, “I tried setting a boundary, but he ignored it,” or, “I tried setting a boundary and he laughed in my face,” or whatever, and usually what they mean is that they told him to stop doing something and he kept doing it, which is important information It probably tells you that he doesn’t care about your comfort or your safety, your autonomy, or your needs.

But his refusal to cooperate doesn’t necessarily mean the boundary failed. Your boundary wasn’t about his agreement. Your boundary was in your response. So if you say, “I am not willing to discuss this while you’re yelling. I’m gonna leave the room, and we can try again when things are calm,” [00:11:00] he’s gonna keep yelling, and he will probably follow you.

He’ll avoid you– uh, accuse you of avoiding the conversation. He’s gonna say that you’re too sensitive. He may claim you’re stonewalling. He’s gonna tell everyone that you refuse to communicate. Your boundary isn’t proven by whether he likes it. It’s proven by whether you follow through as safely as you can.

Can you stop responding? Can you move to a safer space? Can you end the call? Can you shift communication into writing? Can you bring in outside support? Can you recognize that his reaction belongs to him, even when he insists that you cause it? Obviously, I need to say something very clearly here, right? If setting or enforcing a boundary can put you in any physical danger, your first priority is not delivering the perfect boundary statement.

It is safety planning because in an abusive relationship, a partner will probably escalate when he senses that he’s losing [00:12:00] access or control. So you don’t owe anyone a dramatic announcement that you’re taking your power back. You just do it. You make quiet and strategic decisions. You get professional guidance.

You protect yourself without explaining your entire plan to the person that you need protection from. Okay, now that I’ve said that, moving on. So another misconception is that boundaries are punishments. Uh, a consequence and a punishment are not the same thing. Punishment is designed to make the other person suffer so that they’ll change their behavior.

A boundary consequence is the action that I take to protect myself or manage my participation. This is the problem, right? Is that we don’t actually wanna be responsible for our boundaries. Like I said, we want the other person to change their behavior. But if I have intact internal boundaries, both about myself and you, then I am not trying to change you or your behavior.

I actually am only responsible for my [00:13:00] own. A punishment makes the other person suffer. That is a violation of their boundaries and of mine. Trying to punish someone is a, it, for their behavior violates their internal boundary of, of who they are, what they s- like the inter– we’ve got internal and external boundaries, and then we have protection from the outside and containment from the inside.

A boundary consequence is the pr- is what I do to protect myself. It is a, an intact internal boundary. I’m not speaking to you for three days, so you’ll understand what you did to me is punitive. I’m ending this conversation because it has become verbu- verbally abusive is protective. I’m gonna flirt with someone else, so you know how it feels, that’s punitive.

I will not remain in a relationship where there’s ongoing infidelity is a boundary Which you then have to follow through on. Your [00:14:00] boundaries mean nothing, they mean zero if you don’t follow through on them. Uh, you didn’t answer my call, so I’m canceling your time with the children is punitive, and is using ch- the children as leverage, and is probably illegal.

But I’m gonna follow the parenting plan and keep our communication limited to necessary information about the children, is a boundary. Let me just tell you, right, this is harder. It’s much harder. And the difference isn’t always visible or understandable from the outside. Sometimes it comes down to intention, proportionality, right?

W- is this, like, actually… Does this action, is it a right-sized reaction or action? Is the action genuinely connected to your safety, your capacity, or your participation? A boundary is not revenge. It isn’t a lesson you’re forcing another person to learn. It is information about y- what you will do in response to reality.

Because [00:15:00] the reality is, if they keep violating your internal or external boundaries, the reality is they don’t care. They don’t see you as other. A boundary is a dis- is a distinguishing line. The boundary between Canada and the US distinguishes one country from another. A boundary distinguishes you from me, and when the reality is they don’t see you as other, they don’t care that you are other, they don’t care that you have h- that your feelings are hurt, because they don’t see you as a you.

So what will you do in response to that? Yelling and screaming, “I’m, I am different. I am not the same as you. You can’t treat me like that because I’m me.” Like, it just doesn’t … They don’t … What? Right? The reality is they don’t care. They see you as property, as an extension of themselves. Most narcissists, that is how [00:16:00] they view the people they’re in a relationship with, as res- as extensions and reflections of themselves.

So a lot of women also believe that if they can explain the boundary well enough, the other person will eventually understand and accept it. You set a limit, and then he challenges it, and then you explain it. And then, then you, like, you know, explain it better and different, right? He … Then he’s like re- misrepresents your explanation, and then you’re like, “No, no, no, no, no, let me clarify.”

And then he tells you your reasoning doesn’t make sense, so you just provide more background and more information. And then he says you’re being unfair, and then you try to demonstrate how fair you’ve actually been. And then he con- confu- uh, accuses you of being controlling, and then you explain the difference between a boundary and control.

And then three hours later, you’re still arguing about whether you are allowed to have the limit that you had in the first place. So this is where internal boundaries become really essential because you are allowed to know what is true [00:17:00] for you without persuading another person that it’s valid. You listen to someone’s disagreement without entering a courtroom inside of your own relationship, right?

You can say, “I understand that you disagree I’ve made my decision and I’m not discussing it further. I have answered that question. My answer is still no. You don’t need a closing argument. As I said before, like healthy people, boundaried people might be curious about your boundary, right? They might have feelings about it.

They might need some clarification. Sometimes a conversation is appropriate, but a person who benefits from your lack of boundaries will use endless discussions to wear you down, and they’re not usually seeking understanding. They’re not like, they’re not asking clarifying questions. They’re looking for access.

Every additional explanation becomes another opening for them to argue with your right to protect yourself. For many women, [00:18:00] unfortunately, the hardest part of setting a boundary isn’t really knowing what to say, it’s surviving the guilt afterwards. Because you’ve been taught in this relationship that loving someone means being endlessly available, so being a good wife means offering other- another chance, multiple chances.

Being a good mother means absorbing everyone else’s distress. Being kind means making sure that no one is ever uncomfortable because of your choices. A boundary will sometimes, and often, make another person feel uncomfortable. They might be disappointed that you’re no longer available whenever they call.

They might be angry that you won’t loan them money again. They might feel rejected when you don’t want physical affection. They probably don’t wanna communicate through a parenting app. You know, they might be offended that they can’t come into your home after a separation. But another adult’s discomfort doesn’t automatically mean that you’ve harmed them, right?

We call this separating feelings from [00:19:00] facts. Someone can feel rejected without you having done something cruel because their rejection is theirs. Someone can feel controlled because they’re no longer able to control you. They’re accusing you of stonewalling because they can’t control you. Is that their feeling, or is that a fact?

Are you stonewalling, or are you setting a boundary? What is the fact? Someone can feel abandoned because you’ve stopped abandoning yourself. Their feeling might be real, but their interpretation of the feeling isn’t necessarily the truth, and you are not required to remove every difficult feeling another person experiences

There’s also, like, this misconception that strong boundaries mean becoming, like, cold or rigid, unavailable, or emotionally shut [00:20:00] down, like an automaton. But a wall and a boundary are not the same thing. Let’s use the example about the boundaries between countries, right? Like, a wall is not the same thing as a boundary.

Obviously, people can cross boundaries. A wall doesn’t distinguish between safe and unsafe people. It just keeps everyone out. A healthy boundary allows for discernment. It lets you decide who receives access, how much access they receive, and under what circumstances. Your relationship with your best friend might have very open emotional boundaries because she has demonstrated that she can be trusted with vulnerable information.

Your relationship with your high-conflict ex may require very restricted access because he has repeatedly used personal information against you. Your kid may be able to enter your bedroom, uh, once they knock, but your former spouse can no [00:21:00] longer enter your home at all. A close family member might know details about your divorce, and a casual acquaintance might be– might receive information like, “We’re going through a transition, and I’m not ready to discuss it.”

Boundaries are… I talk about this in my book, right? Who to tell what and, and when and how, and that’s one of the things I talk about. So boundaries aren’t about treating everyone identically, which would be a wall. A wall is everybody’s faced with the same wall. A boundary is, you know what? Some people have keys to the door.

So they’re about making conscious decisions instead of granting access automatically, and when you don’t have any boundaries, everybody’s automatically granted access. Boundaries are ours. We get to decide. We get to discern, and they can change. Someone might earn greater access through consistent, respectful behavior.

Someone else might lose access because they repeatedly violate your trust. That’s discernment based on patterns. So if you’re struggling with boundaries, there is probably [00:22:00] a reason, right? You’re probably– Maybe you grew up in a family where privacy wasn’t respected. Hi, that’s me, right? I was raised in a– My…

Oh my God. My mother used to, like, come up behind me and jiggle my butt and be like, “Oh, somebody needs to do her butt exercises.” And I’d say, “Please don’t touch me.” And she said, “I made it.”

So you might have grown up in a family where privacy wasn’t respected. What a violation of my external boundaries. So, you know, maybe your door couldn’t be closed in your house. Maybe somebody read your journal, or, you know, your body was constantly commented on and criticized like mine. Maybe your feelings were mocked or dismissed.

Another favorite story, I think I’ve… I’m sure I’ve told this before, is my mother, um, once t- I said, “You know, I’m cold. I need to go and get a sweater.” And she looked at me and she said, “It’s not cold.” I looked at her and I said, “I, a [00:23:00] person separate from you, feel in my own body that I am cold, and I am going to go get a sweater.”

But that’s how I was raised. You might have had to hug relatives whether you wanted to or not. By the way, like most of us did. You know, you were, you might have been told what you thought and who you were, whether or not you were cold, or maybe you were expected to manage a parent’s moods. You learned that love meant having no separation, and maybe asserting yourself led to anger, withdrawal, ridicule, punishment.

So now, as an adult, your nervous system may interpret another person’s displeasure as danger. You might know intellectually that you’re allowed to say no, but your body responds as though saying no could cost you the relationship, your security, or your belonging, and that that might be the worst and scariest thing in the world.

If saying no In a healthy way, setting a healthy boundary that matters to you when your [00:24:00] internal and external boundaries are intact, and if doing so costs you the relationship, then I would assert that the relationship is worth losing, and that’s on them, right? If their response to your boundary is, “Then I’m out of here,” okay.

You can’t control that, and I know how terrifying that feels. So this is why boundary work isn’t really like communication training, because you can memorize every boundary script in the world and still collapse the moment someone responds with anger. The deeper work is learning to tolerate the fact that someone may misunderstand you.

They might dislike your decision. They might tell a false story about you or a story that is false to you but feels true for them. And right in the face of all of that, you can remain connected to yourself anyway. That is the deeper work, learning to tolerate that someone might have a [00:25:00] response that’s theirs and that you are okay.

You can remain connected to yourself. Okay, so much easier said than done, right? So how do you actually do this? So I want you to start by noticing where you’re experiencing resentment, dread, anxiety, exhaustion, or a sense of violation. Resentment is usually a really important clue because maybe you resent that everyone assumes you’ll handle every school form, doctor’s appointment, holiday plan, emotional crisis, whatever.

Maybe you dread seeing a certain name appear on your phone. Maybe you feel sick every time your ex enters your home during an exchange. Maybe you’re exhausted by conversations that continue until you finally surrender. So I don’t want you to immediately judge yourself for those feelings. Just get curious about them.

Like, what’s happening? What feels intrusive or [00:26:00] unsafe or overwhelming or unsustainable? What are you currently participating in that you no longer want to participate in? And then I want you to identify what belongs to you. So your time belongs to you. Your attention belongs to you. Your body belongs to you.

Your home belongs to you. Your emotional labor belongs to you. Your beliefs, perceptions, memories, all of this belongs to you. Your no belongs to you. And then decide what action is actually within your control, right? This is where boundaries begin, right? I need him to stop criticizing me is not within your control.

I will end conversations that become insulting is. I need my ex to be reasonable is not something you can control. But I will keep communication brief, informative, friendly, and firm, [00:27:00] and limited to the children is absolutely within your control. I need my mother to stop asking questions about the divorce.

Not really within your control. When she asks for details that you don’t wanna share, you can tell her, “I’m not discussing it,” and change the subject. And if she keeps pressing, I’ll end the call. And then you communicate the boundary if communication is necessary and safe. You don’t need to begin with a six-paragraph explanation.

You can just say, “Hey, I’m not available to discuss this by phone. Send any necessary information by email,” or, “I’m not comfortable with you entering my home anymore. The kids are gonna meet you at the door.” And then when he says, “Why?” and blah, blah, blah. “Because I am not comfortable with you entering my home.”

“Why not? What have I done to make you feel uncomfortable?” “I don’t feel comfortable with you entering my home. The children will meet you at the door.” Rinse and repeat. You can say, “I will not discuss adult details of the divorce with the children. I’m not willing to be insulted. I’m [00:28:00] ending this conversation right now.”

You can say, “I’m not gonna make a decision today. I’m gonna respond after I’ve had time to think it over.” And then this is where the hard part is, and this is the part that most people skip. You gotta follow through Without follow through, a boundary becomes just another request that the other person has learned that you will not enforce.

And by the way, the first time you start enforcing boundaries, it’s gonna be harder in the beginning because they are 100% sure that you’re never gonna do it again. I mean, that you’re not gonna follow through, ’cause you never have. Why would you now? A great example of this is your kids and, and a tantrum.

Your kid wants a cookie. They’ve had enough cookies or it’s before dinner, whatever, the answer is no. They know that every single time they start crying and screaming, you relent, you give in. When you say no, they’re gonna cry, and they… And the longer you say no, the longer you say no, [00:29:00] the more intense the screaming becomes because they know that as long as they keep screaming, you’re, you’re…

At, at some point you’re gonna give in, right? So they’ll just amp it up until you give in. Until the first time when you don’t give in, and then they realize, “Oh, she means it.” And maybe the next time they try it again, the tantruming, the screaming, eventually you say, “No, you may not have a cookie before bedtime,” they go, “Oh.

Okay.” But, like, the first few times it gets more intense, and that’s why, without follow through, the boundary’s just another request that they have learned that you are not gonna enforce, right? It’s practice. You’re not gonna do it perfectly. You’re gonna freeze. You’re gonna overexplain. You might say yes and then regret it.

You might recognize the violation like three hours later instead of in that moment. You might be a slower processor [00:30:00] for things like this. I absolutely was. But you can still say, “Hey, you know what? I agreed to that too quickly, and after thinking it over, I am not able to do that.” You can say, “You know what?

I really wasn’t comfortable with how that conversation went. Going forward, I’m gonna communicate about this in writing.” You know, you can say, “You know what? I’ve thought it over and I’ve reconsidered, and my answer is actually no I said yes too quickly. You’re taking responsibility. I said yes too quickly.

I have reconsidered. I have changed my mind. My answer is no. It’s all about you. It’s not about them. It’s about you. Sometimes, I cannot tell you how, how true this is , the boundaries that change your life the most profoundly are the ones that you never announce, maybe nobody ever knows about. It’s an internal boundary that might sound like this: I will not use his mood as evidence of my worth.

I will not [00:31:00] keep searching for the perfect explanation that will make him validate my experience. I will not treat every accusation as a question that I am required to answer. I am not gonna volunteer personal information to someone who has repeatedly weaponized it. I will not ask emotionally unsafe people to confirm my reality.

Pia Mellody describes, she defines reality as your feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. Your feelings about yourself are yours. Your reality is yours. Nobody gets to… Right? And that is an internal boundary. I get to define my reality by my own thoughts, my own feelings, and my own behaviors. And as long as I am operating in line with my own values and what I know to be safe for myself, [00:32:00] nobody can fucking touch that.

Similarly, I can’t touch someone else’s reality, their feelings, their thoughts, their behaviors. Even if they’re fucking crazy, they’re entitled to them. So these aren’t necessarily declarations that you need to make to another person, but they are commitments that you make to yourself. And in many high-conflict relationships, this is where the real shift begins.

The other person is gonna continue doing exactly what they’ve always done. They’re gonna continue accusing, blaming, provoking, demanding, rewriting history, blah, blah, blah, but you stop opening the door every time they knock. You stop handing them your reality and asking them to return it intact. You stop treating their opinion as the final authority on who you are.

And importantly, divorce doesn’t automatically create these boundaries. A legal separation is gonna end the marriage, but the emotional system of the marriage can [00:33:00] continue for years and years and years and years, until you set these boundaries. Co-parenting doesn’t necessarily require unrestricted access to you.

All of this, these internal bound- the internal work of boundaries Needs to be done, otherwise the emotional enmeshment, uh, and codependency that you had in the marriage is just gonna keep going. This is especially important in, with cases of post-separation abuse, because communication about the kids, for example, can become an excuse to maintain surveillance, intimidation, control.

A strong post-divorce boundary might mean using one written channel, one co-parenting app. It might mean checking messages at designated times instead of reacting the moment they arrive. That’s an internal boundary. That is a boundary f- that you set for yourself where you say, “I am not checking the [00:34:00] co-parenting app until 7:00 tonight, or, you know, 8:00 when the kids are in bed and I have had a moment to myself.”

All of this is gonna feel unnatural to begin with, right? It’s gonna feel scary. Your nervous system is gonna get activated. Chaos can become familiar. Hypervigilance can be really familiar. Creating distance might feel more dangerous before it feels peaceful, because as I said, people escalate. And they may not escalate in a dangerous way, but they’re gon- it’s like your kid’s tantrum.

It’s gonna get louder, and that doesn’t mean that w- the boundary that you’re setting is wrong. It means that your nervous system is learning something new. It means that their nervous system is learning something new. Just remember that sometimes boundaries are really small. You don’t answer the phone.

You wait before responding. You say, “Let me think about it.” S- The size of the action might differ. They might be, it might be [00:35:00] bigger. It might be smaller. But the underlying message is the same, right? I am a separate person. My body, thoughts, feelings, time, my needs, my choices, and my reality belong to me. I am responsible for how I treat other people.

I am not responsible for managing every reaction they have to me. So this is, I think, what people mean when they’re like, you know, other people can’t make you feel a certain way. When somebody treats you terribly, you feel hurt. That is normal. When someone treats you terribly and you make that mean, you interpret that to mean that you are terrible, that you have done something terribly wrong even when you know you haven’t I think that’s what people mean when they say that other people can’t make you feel a certain thing.

Yes, of course people hurt us. They make us sad. We feel sad, right? But we are responsible for those feelings. That’s the heart of [00:36:00] this. I am sep- I am my own separate being with my own separate reality. You are your own separate being with your own separate reality. Whether I agree with it or not, and whether you agree with mine or not, that’s the heart of it.

It’s not about becoming less loving. It’s about creating a structure in which love might… doesn’t require self-erasure, and it’s not about controlling somebody else. It’s about reclaiming responsibility for yourself. It’s not about making sure that no one ever hurts you again. God, wouldn’t that be great?

It’s about trusting that when something hurts, violates, or overwhelms you, you are allowed to notice it, and you’re allowed to respond. Perhaps the most important boundary you will ever establish is the one inside of yourself that says, “I will no longer abandon myself in order to keep someone else comfortable.”

So I think that is a good place to stop this. I just wanna remind [00:37:00] you that boundaries are both internal and external, and they both protect and contain me. They protect me from you, and they p- contain me from you. They pr- uh, ultimately protect you from me internally, how I think, how I feel, my reality, and externally, like my physical space, my personhood, my body.

I hope that clarifies some things for you in this boundary conversation because it’s a really, really hard and confusing one. And again, Pia Mellody’s book, Facing Codependence, the best book I’ve ever read on it, and I highly recommend it. All right. That’s all for today. Bye.