00:00 

Hey there, welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 381, "Psychological Boundaries." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just go into the life of our dream...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale, and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:21 

Well, hello again, and welcome to the podcast. So glad to have you. As always, I'm just glad to have been able to prepare some content for you. Really honored that you would choose to spend time here with me, learning and growing and understanding these things that I have been learning for the last, oh gosh, 10 years since my divorce and figuring out and implementing in my new marriage with Sione have just changed everything for me. And I'm so glad that I get to share with you my journey and my path and the things that I'm learning in the hopes that they will help you to progress in your own relationship and create the kind of relationship that you want to have as well. 

01:03 

Before we jump in, Talk with Tanya, if you're listening to this on the day it comes out, is tomorrow, October 14th. It is at 2 o'clock Eastern, 12 o'clock Mountain. You just need to go to my website, tanyahalel.com, go to the group coaching tab, and there is an option there for you to sign up for the Talk with Tanya. You'll get a link and you can just show up. It's just an open webinar where you can come and we talk about whatever anybody wants to talk about. We sometimes do some one-on-one coaching. We sometimes talk about concepts that people have questions about. Just kind of whatever. You can ask me questions about my divorce, about my single years, my dating years, my new marriage. It's all fair game. I'm just pretty open book about all that stuff. So would love to have you show up and come and join us for that. 

01:53 

And then the other thing is, I know I've been mentioning this on all my podcasts lately, but if you want to learn a little bit more about these topics, go down to the show notes. I will always have several more podcasts down there for you to listen to about the same topic. I started doing that about six months ago. So great stuff there. And it's a great way to expand your knowledge base on the topic that we are discussing. 

02:19 

So that being said, let me put on my glasses so I can see my notes and let's jump in to today. We are talking about psychological boundaries today. So on and off over the years that I've done this podcast, we've spent time talking about boundaries and about communicating clearly with others about what's okay and not okay with us and engaging consequences when necessary. So in this context, we've mostly talked about how other people treat us and how they speak to us. And these would include things like physical and sexual boundaries. Like, so let's just make sure that we're a little bit clear on what all of that means. 

02:57 

So boundaries include things like other people being in our personal space, our physical space, looking at our phones without permission, or maybe going through our bedroom drawers, or being in our personal space, things like that. We get to have boundaries, concepts around what is okay and what is not okay in relation to our physical world. So we might also have boundaries, say, around our sexuality. We get to decide what we want it to mean to be with another person sexually, what behaviors and acts we are comfortable with, what we like and what we don't like. And when a person is manipulative or tries to make us feel obligated or duty bound to perform sexually in any way with them, we get to set sexual boundaries and not engage in that. That is not okay behavior for other people to try and manipulate us. And we get to say, "no, that's not okay." 

03:51 

So we might also have boundaries around emotional engagement with others. So this is the place where we get to decide what is okay and not okay about how people communicate with us. Are they being passive aggressive or manipulative in trying to get us to emotionally engage or to show up in certain ways? Do they gaslight us or give us the silent treatment? We get to be clear on what is okay and not okay in this arena as well. 

04:16 

So the area I want to talk with you about today is psychological boundaries. And I don't think I've ever talked about this on the podcast, although I've have talked about it in coaching with my clients before. This is a concept that Terrence Real clarified for me a few years ago. And I think it's a very important one to understand because our psychological boundaries make it easier for us to be clear on all of the other boundaries that we're going to want to set. 

04:42 

So psychological boundaries are what we call "internal boundaries," meaning they are the boundaries inside of us that we set that have nothing to do really with letting other people know what is okay or not okay. So these boundaries we put in place in our minds with what we let into our mind and what we let out of our mind. And they're a very important part of having a strong sense of self. 

05:11 

So boundaries are very important for us as humans because they help us to accomplish two very important goals. They protect us from things that could be harmful and they also allow us to connect with other human beings. They keep that heart open so we're not building that resentment. So being both protected and connected is super valuable to us. And we need to feel safe emotionally, physically, and psychologically. And we also need to feel connected to other humans and to ourselves. So those two things, protected and connected, can feel as though they're on opposite ends of the spectrum. But healthy boundaries land us in an important middle space where we can feel both protected and connected at the same time. 

06:03 

So when we talk about psychological boundaries, we are talking about what happens in our heads. Specifically, what ideas do we let in and what ideas do we let out? So we talk about these two ideas as the protective part, what am I letting in, and the containing part, what am I letting out? 

06:24 

So let's talk first about the protective part. This protects us from the world, from what's coming in, from what other people will tell us. For example, people can be cruel sometimes. Maybe someone in your life tells you that you're stupid or worthless. And a healthy, protective psychological boundary makes a decision about whether to internalize that point of view and whether to let it infiltrate our thought and our belief system. If we find that people say things that hurt us, it is a sign that we don't have good psychological boundaries because we're not able to say, "oh, that's not true." It means that we've internalized the thing that the person has said and that's why it hurts. Without these boundaries, we are not protected from the stories that people make up about us. 

07:16 

The containing part of psychological boundaries protects the world from us so that we don't flood the world with things that are hurtful to others, like our anxiety, our controlling tendencies, our sharp cutting humor, or maybe our passive aggressive tendencies. When we feel the urge to say something cruel to someone else, and come on, we're humans, we all do sometimes, the containing part chooses to honor our boundary that says, "we don't say hurtful things to others." So imagine the psychological boundary as being like a force field that surrounds your body. People for various reasons will say all sorts of things, both true and untrue. And we get to decide whether to let it through our force field or not. 

08:04 

So do I let their comment about me being selfish bounce off my force field and drop to the ground? Or do I let it through and bring it into my mind and internalize it? We really get to choose which of these things we do. So many of us have never considered that just because somebody says something hurtful to us doesn't mean that it's true, and it also does not mean that we have to believe it. A psychological boundary means that I don't have to believe things that I don't want to. 

08:39 

So our psychological boundary also needs to be porous, though. For example, if someone told me about something hurtful that I had done to them and then called me a selfish jerk for being so cruel, I can absolutely make space to look at what they said that I had done that was hurtful. I can own it. I can take responsibility for it. And I can say, "ooh, you're right. That was not very kind." And I can work to clean that piece up without also believing or letting in that I'm a cruel, selfish jerk. I can let that part bounce off the force field and drop to the ground while I take in the part that I said something hurtful. I can let that part in, clean it up, and put out something better back into the world. 

09:29 

So might I have done something unkind? Of course I could have, right? Human and all of that. Or at least it was interpreted that way. And I'll tell you that I don't ever seek to put things in people's circumstance lines that could be seen as cruel. And I'm sure that you don't either. But being a flawed human, it will be inevitable at times. So for me, I absolutely want to look at the accusation. I want to apologize where appropriate and work to clean it up. I want to let that piece in. But just because I may have acted in a hurtful way, does that immediately signify that I'm a cruel, selfish jerk? No, and I don't have to let that part in. I can let that part bounce off of the force field and die. I can recognize that I'm a human who will make mistakes, and as much as I try to be considerate of others' feelings and behave in kind ways toward others, there will for sure be times that I get triggered or that I miss information or that I misunderstand something or that I misspeak. 

10:33 

So let's create a space of grace for us to be human. This is the psychological boundary where we decide what ideas to let into our brains and what ideas we don't let into our brains. A strong sense of self is what allows us to be clear about what to let in and what to keep out. People will tell us all sorts of things about ourselves, and we get to make some very conscious decisions about what to let in and believe and what not to. Some of these will be super tricky because they may be coming from people that we have known for many years and that we trust at certain levels. Some of these people we've known our whole lives from people that we do love and trust. And we may not even get that they're telling us harmful things because they've been telling us the same thing or engaging in the same behavior for so many years that we don't even recognize it. 

11:31 

For example, maybe your mother has a way of coming to your house and cleaning up after you and your kids, doing some deep cleaning for you, and the underlying message is that you're not capable of keeping up with it all yourself. It may not be said out right, but the message has always been pretty clear to you. You, first of all, get to wrangle that thought out of all the complicated emotions and thoughts that can be in your head and in your heart. You get to create awareness around it, and then you get to decide whether that's a thought that you want to let in or whether it's a thought that you don't want to let in. 

12:08 

Sometimes we see these thoughts clearly and sometimes we don't. Complicated, angsty feelings can be like an alert buzzer that lets us know that something is off and that we need to take a look at it. So let me share with you an example from Sione and me, and this is with Sione's permission, of course, of how psychological boundaries engage and how they then move us into setting more clear and healthier boundaries with other people. So before we got married, I was a school teacher and I worked this business on the side. And then when we got married three and a half years ago, I moved from Utah out here to Indiana where I moved into the home where Sione had lived for 16 years with his children and his previous wife. And he already had two cars, so I didn't bring my car from Utah. And I had a home in Utah that we kept that we now Airbnb. But because he had everything already set up here financially, the house, the cars, the utilities, all the stuff, I kept taking care of the Utah house and he continued with all of the financial payments and bills for things here in Indy. It just makes sense. There's no reason for me to go get my name put on all the utilities and start taking over bills that he already had set up in Auto Bill Pay, right? 

13:28 

So what it has done is it's created a space where I'm not really familiar with all of the ins and the outs of finances here because I haven't needed to be. Now, it's felt strange, and we've had a lot of conversations about finances and all that kind of stuff. So it's not like I'm just floating above all of this and I'm unaware. But it's felt strange because I did the finances in my previous 24-year marriage and for the six and a half years that I was single. And I was in a good place financially, especially considering that I was on a teacher's salary. So we've talked, Sione and I, about finances. We've gone over them. And I know what happens to our money and where it goes and what we're saving. And I know all the things. I just don't have a lot of responsibility for paying Indiana bills. 

14:16 

But one day last spring, something about the finances came up. And though Sione would never say I wasn't capable, there was an underlying message in something that he said to me that I didn't know how to take care of finances. And it was just a small passing comment. In fact, at this point, I don't even remember specifically the comment. And he was actually very unaware that what he had said had come across that way. And until that moment, I think that I had never noticed that kind of a comment as well. And I don't know that it had previously existed, although I kind of get a sense that it had. Because I  had felt some nudgings and some discomfort around our finances before and about Sione's thoughts about me and the finances, but I couldn't really put my finger on it until that moment. 

15:04 

And then it became clear to me what the discomfort was about. I felt that I was being told that I wasn't good with finances. So he was having to step up and carry the burden, so to speak. And so this was the moment where when I kind of had that aha moment of what was happening, where I got to engage my force field psychological boundaries and decide what to let in and what not to let in. The truth that I wanted to let in was to acknowledge that I have taken a back seat with finances since I moved out here to Indiana. But it is also not true that I'm not good with finances. 

15:49 

So I let in the first thought and chose not to let in the second. So that was the psychological boundary, right? Letting that in. But then I needed to use that psychological boundary to set a more clear boundary with Sione because I decided that I don't want a back burner issue. That's something that we work really hard not to do is to have back burner issues going on. And so as soon as I had my little aha, I went to find him and chat with him about it. And this then is when I go from the internal psychological boundaries, all within my own head, to external boundaries, which means I put them in place with somebody else. I let somebody else know what is okay or what is not okay. 

16:34 

So considering this happened several months ago, I'm going to say that the specifics of our discussion elude me at this point. But basically, I remember letting Sione know that, you know, for the last 24 years of my previous marriage and all those single years, I've done all the finances and I've done a pretty good job with retirement plans and with a home and that and that I've met my financial responsibilities over the years. When we got married, I had zero debt. I had a retirement account going with a lot of money in it, considering I was a teacher. And so I kind of reminded him of all these things. And so then I said, "you know, when you make statements that I'm not good with finances, that's just not true. I just haven't needed to step into the responsibility here." And from what I recall, of course, we all know how our memories are, right? I believe I approached it from a place of sharing information with him and just saying, listen, here are kind of the facts, stating that I knew that he would never attack me on this situation in this with this topic on purpose. 

17:46 

Because I always work to assume best intent of Sione because I know that he would never hurt me on purpose. And I know that he would never think mean or destructive things about me ever. Right. But I did let him know that this was a little bit hurtful and it's not okay for you to believe and to treat me like I don't know anything about finances. So notice that I had to set the psychological boundary first, choosing not to believe the thought that was being floated to me that I didn't know how to do finances. And then I got to set an external boundary by letting him know that talking to me or even thinking about me in that way was not okay. 

18:30 

So these are the kinds of conversations that I never could have had in my previous marriage for lots of reasons. But I'm so grateful that I can have them with Sione. And being the man that he is, Sione took some time. He heard what I had to say. He accepted responsibility for his comments based on his thoughts that I wasn't capable. And he acknowledged that what I was saying was true. And in preparing for this and asking him if I could share this experience, he also said that me telling him it wasn't okay to think about me as being financially incapable was, and here's his quote from our text message, "super sharp and extremely useful." And that's one thing that I love about him is I can be direct. I can share with him how things are impacting me. And he doesn't get defensive. He always makes a space for me to share what I'm feeling, what I'm seeing. 

19:36 

So in this case, I got to set a boundary and say, listen, it is not okay for you to talk to me like I'm, I don't know that I use the word stupid, around finances. And I know that he would never use that word toward me, but that's kind of, I think, how I was interpreting that. It could have been really easy for me not to have psychological boundaries around finances. I don't pay most of the bills and I don't make most of the money here. And still, so I could have easily believed that I'm not very good at money, but I'm not stupid about money. In fact, I'm responsible and I'm often resourceful. 

20:17 

So this is just an example of how I get to choose what to let in and what to believe. Just as when I approached Sione with this concern, he got to decide for him what to let in and what to believe. He had his own psychological boundaries. He got to choose what to believe about what I was saying. Now, I was not saying he was a horrible person and I wasn't attacking him or his character. And if I had, though, he could have also separated out what was true with what was not true in what I was saying. 

20:54 

So this ability to set external boundaries with another person all starts with us being able to set internal psychological boundaries within ourselves. What thoughts and ideas do we let in and which do we not let in? Now, if people are telling us things and it hurts, that's an indication that we don't have psychological boundaries. If we believe everything people are telling us, if we fret and if we fertilize and get all angsty, then it would be good to take a look at what we're letting in that may not be true. What is pushing us over that edge? 

21:32 

So notice as well that good psychological boundaries are easier when we have a strong sense of self. We have to have a strong enough self-concept that we can look at ourselves objectively around others' comments, sometimes difficult comments and accusations, and choose to believe what we want to about ourselves, regardless of what others may say. Now, not in a narcissistic, "I'm greater than everybody else" way, but in a way where we can really look at it objectively, which means we have to believe first and foremost that we are good people, that even though we make mistakes and even though sometimes what we do hurts others, that we have a good heart and that we are doing our best, albeit very imperfectly. We have to be able to see that we have flawed moments, but that we are not flawed. That sometimes our behavior is hurtful, but that we are not hurtful. This is all part of having a strong sense of self. 

22:38 

And it's also important to remember that strangers can make up crap about us all day long, and it's easy to let it land. You know, when I accidentally cut somebody off and person drives past me and rolls down their windows and yells, "you're an idiot." I can take that for what it is, right? I made a mistake. I accidentally cut somebody off. That doesn't mean I'm an idiot. I can kind of blow that stuff off a lot easier. But when people close to us have a hurtful narrative around us, when their story may not even be close to the truth, that's when a strong sense of self comes in handy. 

23:16 

Because guess what? People close to us will have erroneous ideas about who we are sometimes as well. They will create their own stories about what our behavior means. And their comments and criticism land differently than a stranger's because it's so much more personal. This person knows me. So their opinion generally will carry a lot more weight. And it's really important to have good, clear psychological boundaries because none of us are going to be exempt from having people we love share difficult things with us occasionally. 

23:52 

These boundaries, psychological boundaries, they protect us. And remember, they also connect us because I get to say what is true about what they're saying. When we don't have good psychological boundaries, we will struggle to self-regulate. We will be vulnerable to whatever the stimulus is, things like other stinging comments and or their behavior. When we are boundaryless, we struggle to control ourselves because we can't feel good about us if they don't feel good about us. And we have to get them to feel better about us in order for us to feel better about us. This is all part of us having this good, strong sense of self. 

24:38 

So that's all the protective part of internal or psychological boundaries, keeping things out that are hurtful and destructive, things that will shut us down, things that will weaken us or compromise us from the inside. 

24:55 

So remember we talked about the other part of psychological boundaries that we call the containing part. And this includes what we choose to let out of us. So containing means we're keeping certain things inside. What are the comments that we choose to make or not make? The body language, the facial expressions. This is our boundary part where we choose not to put things in other people's lanes that we really don't want to be there because they don't align with the type of person that we really want to be. Now again, we're humans, so we will never be perfect at this, but we can absolutely get better at it. This requires awareness around what our unconscious negative tendencies are to not contain. 

25:48 

So how do we generally attack other people? Do we get passive-aggressive? Do we become controlling? Do we jab and poke others to get a rise out of them? Learning to be aware of our own psychological boundary crossings is a vital part of growing our emotional maturity. Also, be aware that moving into emotionally disengaging behavior, like giving the silent treatment, shutting down, is also a detrimental aspect of not having healthy psychological boundaries. Containing psychological boundaries are not just about what we don't let out, but also about what we don't keep in. 

26:34 

One aspect of unhealthy psychological boundaries can be referred to as being walled off. When we are walled off, we don't let things in. We will be thick-skinned. We're impervious to what other people say or do. We're operating behind a wall. We are protected but not connected. We don't listen. We're shut down. We are not receptive to the truth and neither do we look for the truth. It's like we're a fortress. Nothing can hurt us. We're avoidant. And in this space, we can't be connected to others. So when we're walled off, we will also struggle with being open and vulnerable. We protect ourselves by not letting things out. We don't share ourselves. We struggle to trust. 

27:20 

So think about the difference between a boundary and a wall. We've talked about a good, healthy, psychological boundary is a place that's permeable. Whereas a wall, nothing gets in, nothing gets out. Okay, so if we have this good psychological boundary, we let in what's beneficial and we keep out what's not. And the ability to trust ourselves to make this call comes from, again, our strong sense of self. It comes from believing ourselves to be good in our core, even though we are flawed with all sorts of human frailty. Again, think of your psychological boundary as a force field. If it's true, if it's going to cause irreparable damage, you don't have to, or I guess if it's not true, let me rephrase that. And if it's going to cause irreparable damage, you don't have to let it in. Even if someone that loves you told you this piece of information, we don't have to believe it. 

28:21 

Also, we want to be strong enough not to be afraid to self-confront, to look at what other people tell us about how we're showing up and to own our own bad behavior. And guess what? We all have bad behavior. Only by being able to see our bad behavior and clean it up are we going to be able to be more engaged in our relationships and in our life. 

28:46 

So psychological boundaries aren't so much about us communicating to others what is okay and what is not okay. It's more about us communicating to ourselves about what thoughts, ideas, or beliefs are okay to let in and not okay to let in. And also what thoughts, ideas, and beliefs are okay and not okay to let out. This takes a lot of personal awareness, a lot of conscious decisions about who we believe we are and about who we want to be and deliberately choosing those spaces. Deliberately choosing takes practice and practice and then even some more practice. So don't be discouraged if you struggle to show up the way that you really want to, sometimes over and over again. As with any skill, it has to be learned and we learn it through doing it multiple times imperfectly. 

29:42 

I love the concept of psychological boundaries, as we've also called them, internal boundaries, because it gives me an added layer of insight and the ability to show up strong and having my own back. I get to decide what to let in, and that always feels empowering. I don't have to believe whatever anybody else tells me about myself. I get to choose that. That's my psychological boundary. 

30:10 

Okay, so if you want to dig a little bit deeper into boundary work, I want you to check out the show notes on your podcast app and you can find several more podcasts about boundaries. I know the last three or four weeks, I've done a couple of other podcasts talking about different aspects of boundaries. And check those out as well that are going to help you understand more clearly the concepts that we talked about today. Boundaries are just important. They really set the foundation for our capacity to show up in the world that we want to, for our capacity to grow and develop. And this idea of psychological boundaries and managing our minds around the information that is trying to get in and out of our brains is a brilliant, brilliant concept. And I'm thankful for Terrence Real for introducing me to this idea of psychological boundaries. 

31:07 

Okay, that is going to do it for today's podcast. If you are interested in some one-on-one work with me, come on, my friends. It will be a life changer. Okay. The one-on-one work that I do with clients is just so powerful. And they make more progress in  the 12 weeks that we work together than most people just listening to the podcast will make in two years. Just because the one-on-one awareness around what's going on, me being able to help you see things that you are not seeing is so valuable. And here's the deal. You get to clean up the things in your life that are dysfunctional and destructive. You could spend the next 30 years living in the mess that you're currently in, if you're in one. Or we can spend three to six months working together, cleaning stuff up, helping you really implement tools and awareness that's going to help you live a better life. And you can have better relationships for the next 30 years. You don't have to struggle through 30 years of angst and frustration and disconnectedness. I can help you clean this stuff up and live more in peace with yourself. That's what I do. 

32:42 

Okay, that's going to do it for me, my friends. Go to tanyahale.com. Check out my calendar. You can go to the free consultation tab for that. And also in the next week or so, I'm going to have my next holiday classes coming up. And you are not going to want to miss these for sure. You're going to want to make sure that you are in there. If holidays are a struggle for you, if the people stress you out, if you get stressed out with all the things going on and don't know how to say no and don't know how to handle everybody being unhappy as they all are at sometimes, you are going to want to be in these classes. I have priced them much, much lower than anything that I've done for the last couple of years just because I want it to be way more accessible so that you can have the dream holidays where you can just show up loving people and that's it. You don't have to worry about all the other stuff. 

33:42 

One of my clients, one time that I was coaching over Christmas or over Thanksgiving, she talked about how she figured out how to show up that year at Thanksgiving with funeral potatoes, or maybe it was green bean casserole and a side bowl of peace. And she was like, these were the most amazing holidays I've ever had because she figured out how to just let people show up as them and not get all angsty about the ways that people are showing up and what's going on. So good stuff. You're going to want to check those out. Hope you have a really, really awesome week, my friends. And I will see you next time. Bye.