The questions asked in this episode were some of the questions asked in the Boundary Boot Camp held July 2024.
Questions asked in this episode:
- I say YES to things I don’t want to do, and I don’t really have time for. I feel so guilty saying NO, that I usually just say YES. Is this a boundary issue? What’s going on here?
- I’m really nervous about boundaries. I’m having such a hard time feeling really connected in my family right now. Will these boundaries make me even more disconnected? Isn’t that the opposite of what I want?
- My daughter is 24 and lives on her own, but she can’t keep a job longer than a few months. She either gets fired or she quits, and then she doesn’t have money to pay for rent, her car, or even food. So, she asks my husband and me for money. I’m tired of this pattern. It seems like we are supporting her for being immature. This pattern has gone on for a couple of years now, and I don’t see it changing unless we do something. Do we not give her money? I don’t want her to starve or be homeless, but we can’t keep this going long-term.
- This isn’t technically a “family problem” but maybe you can help me. There’s a woman I go to church with who hates me. I have hardly ever even had a conversation with her, but right from the very beginning of us going to the same church, it was like she just decided to hate me. She tells other people how terrible I am. (I know because I’ve heard some of the things she’s said). I don’t know how to get her to stop hating me because I don’t even know what I did to make her hate me in the first place. I’m lost here. Do you have any advice how to handle this situation?
It’s not too late to get access to Boundary Boot Camp! Catch the replay and work through this class on your own time. Learn how to establish a Protective Boundary and a Containing Boundary so that you can begin repairing your family relationships.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT BOUNDARY BOOT CAMP
Do you have a question you want me to answer on the podcast? Get your question answered on the next Ask Me Anything episode coming soon!
Full Transcript
Tina Gosney 00:05
Are your family relationships feeling disconnected, maybe contentious? If you’re ready to begin repairing relationships and connect on a whole new level so that you can feel more peace and love in your family, then come with me. I’m going to show you how I’m Tina Gosney, a certified life and advanced relationship coach, and I’m so glad you’re here now. Let’s get started.
Tina Gosney 00:42
Hey, everyone. Welcome to the podcast today. This is Tina. I’m your family relationship coach. If you’re new, welcome, so glad to have you. If you’re a longtime listener, you are always welcome. So glad to have you.
Tina Gosney 00:56
Last month, I held a class called boundary boot camp. It was this really great three day class where I taught about the protective boundary and the containing boundary, and what we need to do to strengthen both of those and why they’re so important that we have both of them in place.
Tina Gosney 01:16
So in that three day boot camp, I had lots of questions coming in. Some people that couldn’t come to the class live. They came asked their questions through email, and I actually didn’t have time to answer all of those questions during the boot camp, so I answered them through email, individually to the people that submitted the questions, but I also asked some of them, Hey, can I share this question on the podcast. I think this is a really great question that a lot of people will be able to gain some knowledge and some insight from. And the people that said, Yes, this is this is their episode. This is the episode where you get to see what questions were asked and how I answered them.
Tina Gosney 01:58
You can still get access to boundary boot camp, even though the live class is over, because I recorded it and I put it into a replay that you can then purchase and download the workbook and do on your own time timetable. So this is almost three hours of really good content.
Tina Gosney 02:22
This is a really good content because it addresses our two basic human relationship needs, our relationship with ourselves, us wanting to have a good relationship and feel confident and authentic to our true selves, and our desire to be in connection with other people and to have those relationships strengthened as well, but we don’t know how to do both of those at the same time.
Tina Gosney 02:51
This is a great introduction into the boundary part of that work to help you get started. Now you can’t move into a healthy relationship until you recognize that we do have these two main boundaries, the protective boundary and the containing boundary. And I’m going to teach you all about those in the boundary boot camp. If this is something you’re interested in, there’s a link in the show notes go, click that it will take you to a page where you can access that class.
Tina Gosney 03:20
Okay, so let’s get into the email questions, and there are four of them today. These are and just a reminder, these are questions that came in for the boundary boot camp that I didn’t have time to answer in the class itself.
Tina Gosney 03:36
Here’s question one. “I say yes to things that I don’t want to do, and I really don’t have time for I feel so guilty saying no, that I usually just say yes. Is this a boundary issue? What’s going on here?”
Tina Gosney 03:49
And my answer is yes, this is definitely a boundary issue, but probably not in the way that you’re thinking that it is, because when you say yes, but you really want to say no, two basic things are happening.
Tina Gosney 04:03
First of all, you’re people pleasing, and when we people please, we’re trying to control the way that someone else feels about us. It becomes intolerable for us to think that someone else might feel badly or think badly about us because we didn’t fulfill what they wanted us to do. So we do what we think they want from us, because we think we can control the image that they have of us in their minds. It’s kind of crazy that we think that, but we do. We do think that even though we have no ability to control what someone thinks of us, even if we say yes, we still don’t have that control.
Tina Gosney 04:42
So when we people please, we’re trying to feel a certain way about ourselves. And from your question, it sounds like you’re trying to avoid feeling guilty. My guess is that you’re trading this feeling of guilt for the feeling of resentment, because that’s often how we feel when we are not taking care of ourselves, when we are saying yes to things that we want to say no to, we have a feeling of resentment.
Tina Gosney 05:12
The second thing that’s happening after people pleasing is that you’re not paying attention to that relationship that you have with yourself. You’re not paying attention to the feelings that you have about yourself and how you take care of yourself, because that relationship that you have with you is just as important, if not. I believe it’s actually more important than the relationship that you have with the other person. If you can’t trust yourself to take good care of you, then you’re probably not trusting yourself in many more areas of your life than you even realize, I would be really curious, where else in your life are you doing the same thing, sacrificing yourself and your relationship with yourself, and not really asking or even identifying your own needs.
Tina Gosney 06:05
You’re asking if this is a boundary issue. And I said, Yes, this is a boundary for yourself. What are you willing to let into your life while you are honoring yourself, your energy, your resources, your emotional and mental well being, giving of ourselves is one of the things that helps us. It actually helps us to be a well rounded person, a healthy person is connected with others and and does things for other people and gift service, but not if we’re sacrificing all of our needs in order to do it.
Tina Gosney 06:38
When you take good care of yourself first, you have more to give to others.
Tina Gosney 06:45
Have you ever been on a flight a plane where you know, as you’re taxiing down the runway, the flight attendant is giving you the safety instructions, and they always tell you, in case the cabin air pressure drops, there’s these masks that are going to fall down from the ceiling, and they show you how to put them on, how to use them. And one thing that they always say is, if you are traveling with someone else, if you have another person that needs your assistance to get their mask on, make sure you put yours on first.
Tina Gosney 07:20
Now, why do they say that? Let’s just imagine that you didn’t pour yours on first, and you were in such a mental state, such a hurry, and all of this anxiety and pressure to get that one on your child or your or your maybe an ailing parent that couldn’t do themselves, somebody that needed help, and you were so intent on getting theirs on first that you ran out of air. You were not able to breathe.
Tina Gosney 07:49
How long are you going to last to be a help to others when you’re not breathing yourself Not very long. It’s not going to take very long before you’re down, laying in the aisle, and there everybody else is trying to take care of you, you have become the problem when you take care of yourself first, you put your own oxygen mask on first. Then you have the resources.
Tina Gosney 08:15
You have, the energy you have, the well being. You have something to share with other people. If you just think like if you didn’t have air yourself, you can’t share air with another person.
Tina Gosney 08:28
If somebody else is thirsty and they ask you for a glass of water and you don’t have water for yourself, you can’t give them water. You have to have taken care of yourself and your needs first before you can truly help and service and give service to another person. So think of taking care of yourself first, and you’re going to have more to give to others. You’ll be more effective in the times that you do say yes.
Tina Gosney 08:54
Here’s question number two, “I’m really nervous about boundaries. I’m having such a hard time feeling connected in my family right now. Are these boundaries going to make me even more disconnected, and isn’t that the opposite of what I want?”
Tina Gosney 09:09
This is a great question, because I think so many of us think when we hear the word boundaries, we think like that’s holding people away from me. In fact, we kind of can even picture, you know, a big, tall fence, or a gate that has a lock on it, or maybe, like, holding your arm out and keeping somebody at arm’s length.
Tina Gosney 09:29
That’s not actually what this class is for. The boundaries class that I taught, it’s not actually what it’s for, because the strongest and healthiest relationships have the strongest boundaries. When we have been co dependent, we’ve been in mesh. We’ve been stepping on each other’s boundaries, and we let them step over into ours, and we step over into theirs. It feels terrible if we get into this place of we have to control each other, and we are trying to distract like the feelings that we want from somebody else. I need for you to think this way about me or do this so that I can feel good.
Tina Gosney 10:07
And we do this to each other, and it feels so controlling and manipulative without us even realizing it, because we’re so stuck in the same pattern. It’s like the air that we’re breathing. So when we realize that we’ve been doing that, and we need to put some boundaries into place, and we realize that we have to stop doing things the way that we used to do them, that can start to feel disconnected, because it does feel like, Hey, I am not connecting in the way that I’m used to, and this is causing me some anxiety. I’m fearful here that I’m going to lose the connection that I’ve had in the relationships in my family, and that is totally normal.
Tina Gosney 10:48
But I want you to think about when we are stepping over each other’s boundaries, when we’re trying to extract feelings and actions from somebody else so that we can feel the way we want to, when we manipulate and control. That is not a healthy way of relating.
Tina Gosney 11:05
But our brain gets really scared, gets really scared when we try to do something new. So here we are realizing that, hey, this isn’t working for me anymore. It’s not healthy. I need to tear this down. I got to tear this system down before I can build it back up stronger. Well, that tearing down is scary, that tearing down is scary to our brains, it says, Nope. That is going to make everything fall apart. That is exactly the opposite of what we want to do, because that is the the unknown on the other side of that is just way too big.
Tina Gosney 11:42
But if we are holding on to an old system, you’ll never really be able to let it fall down so that a new, healthier system, system can be built up in its place. It’s like we’re trying to hold on to one door and reach and open another door that we can’t we just don’t have the arm length to reach it and open it, but our brain tells us, I can’t let go of this old one. It’s too scary, it’s too, the unknown is just too much, and I’m not going to let you do it.
Tina Gosney 12:12
So our brain is always doing this to us, not even with boundary work, but with everything. Anytime we’re trying to do something new, our brain is like, No, I am not up for that. It means I’m going to die. It always thinks we’re going to die. It says that’s not safe. I have to hold on to this old way, because even though it doesn’t feel good, it’s the feeling good, it’s the not feeling good that I know over there, it could be a whole nother not feeling good that I don’t know, and that is scarier.
Tina Gosney 12:44
We need to thank our brain for keeping us safe. You say, Thank you, brain for keeping me safe. And I’m in charge. My wise adult is in charge, and I know that I can have an adult relationship that has strong boundaries, and I’m not going to die. Everything is going to be okay. I’m going to figure it out. Everything. I think it’s Marie Forleo that says this, everything is figureoutable. We want to tell ourselves, everything is figureoutable.
Tina Gosney 13:14
Okay, here we’ve got question number three. “My daughter is 24 and lives on her own, but she can’t keep a job longer than a few months, she either gets fired or she quits, and then she doesn’t have money to pay for rent her car or even food, so she comes to ask me and my husband for money. I’m really tired of this pattern. It seems like we are supporting her for being immature. This pattern has gone on for a couple of years now, and I don’t see it changing unless we do something. Do we give her money? Do we not give her money? I don’t want her to starve, to be homeless, but we can’t keep this going long term.”
Tina Gosney 13:47
Okay, a lot of your a lot of parents are in your position, trying to help their young adults, but feeling like they want them to be adults and not rely on them, but then also don’t want them to fall and suffer and have to go through difficult things. And there isn’t any one right answer here, so I’m just going to give you some things to think about. In fact, I’m going to give you specifically one thing to do that I think will help you to find your own answer.
Tina Gosney 14:20
One thing that our brain does is it gets stuck in thinking that, here’s this problem, there’s only one answer to it. So I’m sure to open your open your view, open your focus, your awareness, into a bigger picture.
Tina Gosney 14:37
Let’s back up a little bit even from this issue that you’re talking about, what do you want for her in her life? Are you helping her or hurting her by giving her money and bailing her out? If you think that you’re hurting her, is there another way that you could help her? We. Really stuck in seeing only one solution to a problem. We get really focused on that problem. We get tunnel vision, and we think there’s only one solution I have to give her money, and our brain blocks out any other ideas.
Tina Gosney 15:14
I’ve seen my dog do this, not that you’re a dog. No, I’ve seen my dog just reminded me, when you were asking this question, that we have a doggie door at our house. She can come and go at any time. She can go outside anytime she wants. She can come in anytime she wants. But there have been many times when I’m standing in another room with her where her doggy door is not and she will stand by the door that I have to open and whine and cry and paw at the door when all she had to do was walk maybe 10 feet into another room to go through the door herself. But she got, she gets tunnel vision. She’s a dog, right? Dogs easily get tunnel vision. She only sees the one way out to the to the yard at the at the moment, is for me to open that door for her. It’s like she forgets she has another alternative choice.
Tina Gosney 16:15
And we do the same thing, we will get stuck in thinking there’s a problem, there’s only one answer. So this is what I want you to do. I want you to try a brainstorming session. Give yourself at least I would say at least 20 minutes. Probably 30 minutes is better. But I want you to grab a pen and paper and write down at least 10 different things that you could do that are different than what you’ve done in the past. It doesn’t matter if the idea is crazy, if it’s something that you would never do. It doesn’t matter if it’s something you’re not even capable of doing. I just want you to open up your brain, to tell it and start to start looking for answers beyond what you think are the answers that you’ve had in the past.
Tina Gosney 17:03
You have so much wisdom inside of you. Everybody has wisdom inside of them. I want you to have an opportunity to give an opportunity for that wisdom to come out. Your daughter has wisdom inside of her too, and she might be thinking, there’s only one solution to this problem, and that’s to ask my parents for money. But as you do this exercise for yourself and see the benefits of it, you can also show her the benefits of it for her. So one thing that I know, because I know that each of us has so much wisdom inside of us that when something is already inside of you and you go looking for it, you are going to find it, no doubt.
Tina Gosney 17:53
Okay. Question number four, “This technically isn’t a family problem, but maybe you can help me. There’s a woman I go to church with who hates me. I have hardly ever even had a conversation with her, but right from the very beginning of us going to the same church, it was like she just decided to hate me. She tells other people how terrible I am, and I know this because I’ve heard people tell me what she said, and I don’t know how to get her to stop hating me, because I don’t even know what I did to make her hate me in the first place. I’m totally lost. Do you have any advice how to handle this situation?”
Tina Gosney 18:26
Yeah, I think that there are a lot of other people that can relate to this situation that you know it sounds like you’re feeling really judged and persecuted by this woman, not sure of what you did to bring that on yourself. And I think, I think just about everyone I know has had a time that they have felt like you in this in this situation.
Tina Gosney 18:46
So when we’re getting feedback like this from another person, and what this is, is you’re getting feedback from her, she doesn’t like you, it sounds like when we get feedback, we need to check with ourselves first. And although it sounds like you’ve already done this. I just want to go through this process for the benefit of other people who maybe haven’t done this process and have a similar situation.
Tina Gosney 19:09
We always want to check in with ourselves first, and to see, is there a reason for her to not like me? Did I do something that I’m not aware of. We want to check in with ourselves first, because we don’t want to be not owning up to something that is our responsibility to own up to. So you can ask yourself that question, Did I do something I’m not aware of? And you can do some contemplation. You can do some journaling, or and, or you could ask her this question.
Tina Gosney 19:45
You could ask her that question. If you think that she might be open to having a conversation with you. If you do this, I would advise you to give her a little bit of notice first, maybe send her a text like, Hey, do you have time for a phone call this week? I wanted to ask. Something just so she you’re not like calling her out of the blue. And you know, sometimes that can feel like you’re getting ambushed, that get just puts people on the defensive anyway. So maybe ask yourself, and then ask her, is there something that you’re not aware of? Then when we have looked inward first, and maybe ask the person, and we own any part of our own part in that situation.
Tina Gosney 20:24
It’s time to let the rest go. We don’t need to own things that are not ours. If you already did the inner work that I described, or you asked her, you know, if you’ve done something and gotten feedback from her, then you have owned your part in this situation, and make sure that you’re taking responsibility for that, and that’s that’s when you’re owning it, when you’re not saying, Well, you I did this because you did that. That’s not owning your part. That’s still blaming somebody else. So you own your part, you take responsibility for it, because you are always in control of what you do. Then it’s time to let her own the rest.
Tina Gosney 21:03
We are all going to act from our own wounds. It sounds like she’s a wounded person. If she just decided to hate you for no reason or for no reason that she has not decided to share with you. Because we are all acting from our own wounds. We do that we’re likely to wound other people in the process. Have you heard of the phrase, hurt people? Hurt people? Well, this is true. Hurt people will go turn around and hurt other people. It’s like we’re so hurt internally that we can’t we can’t hold all of that hurt inside of us, so we have to spill it out into the community. And it sounds like she maybe has decided to spill that hurt onto you. So if this is the case, you can’t solve this problem because, because it is not your problem, it’s hers. It’s her issue to deal with. And if this is the case, your job, then, is to strengthen your protecting boundary when she is around.
Tina Gosney 22:08
This is one thing that we talked about in the boundary boot camp, and this person that asked this question has access to the boundary boot camp, so she knows what I’m talking about. But this is an orange peel. Think of an orange peel. There’s an outside layer and an inside layer. The outside layer is our protective boundary. If we have holes in our orange peel, in the outside of our orange peel, it lets toxins from the outside air get into the orange and and contaminate the inside of the orange Well, that’s what we do when we don’t have a protective boundary around ourselves. We let too much of the outside world in, and we let it affect the way that we think about ourselves. So your job is to then strengthen your protective boundary and act from your wise adult instead of your reactive child. In this type of situation, it would be very easy to react from a reactive child and adaptive child. So your job is to keep that adult self and to strengthen that protective boundary.
Tina Gosney 23:19
Okay, if you have a question that you would like for me to answer on the podcast, there is a link I provided you, a link in the show notes, and you can submit a question. Super easy. Just take you right to a Google form. And if you are struggling with boundaries, if you’re struggling with your two biggest relationships, the one with yourself and with other people and trying to get those to work together at the same time, then you are just like the people who ask these questions.
Tina Gosney 23:47
And this is your invitation to sign up for the boundary boot camp class now on a recorded replay video form, and then you can access it, lifetime access on your own time schedule. Thanks for being here with me today, and I will see you next time you.
