#15: When Boundaries are Successful . . . or Not (Step 5 of the 5-Step Boundary Solution)

Welcome to Beyond Bitchy, mastering the art of boundaries with Vicki Tidwell Palmer. Do you think of personal and relationship boundaries as harsh, rigid or bitchy, or do you feel clueless about how boundaries work? Whether you think boundaries are bitchy or baffling, we will give you a fresh vision of personal limits as a source of freedom and liberation. Every week Vicki shares expert information about how you can master the art of boundaries so you can get the space you need and the connection you crave. Hi, this is Vicki Tidwell Palmer and welcome to episode number 15 of the Beyond Bitchy podcast. This week is the fifth of a five-part series where we are taking a deeper dive into the five-step boundary solution process for identifying, creating and maintaining healthy, personal and relationship boundaries. If you'd like your own copy of the five-step boundary solution, Clarifier, a fillable PDF that will walk you through the five-step boundary solution process, you can download a copy on the show notes page for this episode or on the homepage of beyondbitchy.com. If you're joining the podcast for the first time today, I want to welcome you. And I also highly recommend you returned episode number 10 where I started with the deep dive into step one. And speaking of steps one through four, let's do a quick overview of each of these four prior steps just to refresh your memory and to set you up for step five that we'll talk about in more depth today. So step one is where you essentially identify what is the problem, what's not working, what is the issue that you believe you need to set a boundary for, you think you want to set a boundary for and you're not quite sure and you want to walk through the process to figure that out. This is a simple yet not easy process of identifying your reality and you do that with three questions. You find out what did you experience, what did you hear, see, taste, touch, smell, experience, what could you record with the video camera? And then after that, you identify what do you think about all of that, what do you perceive about what happened, what did you make up? And I really like the phrase made up because it, first of all, keeps us in curiosity about whether or not what we made up is actually true. I mean, it's true for us, but it's probably not necessarily true with a capital T. So it keeps us in curiosity. It also keeps us in humility because what we think or perceive about a certain event or situation is often not exactly the same as what another person perceives. And it also may be a complete figment of our imagination, meaning that it has no basis at all in reality. But this step actually helps you start to figure that out and it's a very useful process. And then lastly in step one, you're going to identify what emotions you feel. And again, like I talked about in episode number 10, you've got to start noticing that your emotions are almost always a direct result of what you make up or what you think about what happened and rarely about what happened. And if you are feeling suspicious, doubtful or you outright disagree with what I just said, I want you to go back to episode number 10 and listen because I spell it out there and I just cannot emphasize enough why it is so important for everyone to know how to identify their reality, whether or not you work through these five steps or not. Most of us don't know how to identify our reality. And we go about living our daily life based on what we made up about stuff and we have very little curiosity or frankly humility about any of that. Okay, so then we move on to step two and step two is about identifying your needs, the needs that aren't being met in this situation that you identified in step one. And then also envisioning what is the outcome that you want? What's your vision for the future? And so you know too often on this particular step, people envision kind of what they think they can get or they kind of sell themselves short. And so too often we imagine outcomes that we think are possible rather than what we truly want. And I encourage you to dream big on this one. That doesn't mean that you're going to always get what you want, but the point is that it's better to aim high and come up a bit short than it is to aim low and get even less than what you want it. And step three of the five step boundary solution is that you've got to identify where does your power lie. So the name of step three is identify your power center. Do you have the power to create the outcome that you want on your own? Do you need help? Do you need to make a request of another person or are you powerless? So there's four options here. And knowing where your power lies or where it doesn't is going to help you not only feel more confident about taking action in situations where you have the power. But it also helps you avoid wasting time trying to or maybe believing that you have power over people or situations that frankly you just don't. And then in step four, which we covered in episode number 13. So in step four, depending on what you found out in step three about where your power lies, you are going to take action or in cases where you realize you're powerless to create the outcome you want. You accept that there's nothing you can do and you release and let go of the issue. I want to point out too that even when you're powerless, there's still action to take because letting go and releasing things that we don't have any power over that takes effort. And it definitely is an action. So step four is taking action. And then that brings us here to step five, which is all about evaluating your results, the results of your boundary work and making course corrections if that's necessary. So the name of step five is evaluate your results and make course corrections when needed. So let's start with the case where your boundary work was successful. And first of all, congratulations, good job. It's always helpful to take a moment to acknowledge that whatever action you took, whatever boundary you set, whether it was something that you could do on your own or asking for help or making a request, you just acknowledge and celebrate that it worked. And I do want to add here that meaning saying that it worked doesn't mean that it was perfect or that it was 100% successful. So some examples of that would be, let's say that you created a boundary for yourself, which is you were going to put a limit on your spending or you were going to go to bed by 10.30 every night or something like that. And you did it most of the time or maybe you were 80% successful, but you weren't 100% successful. I would say that it's still worked, we're not aiming for perfection here or let's say that you made a request of your spouse to do something like, maybe it was something even simple. Like you said, I'd like for you to come home at 6.30, rather than at 7 every night. And your spouse agreed to that and let's say they wanted two nights. He or she didn't do that. I wouldn't say that it didn't work. I would just say that it worked, but it was imperfect. And it's important to really be mindful of that because often, especially when we make a request of another person, we want it to be perfect. However, we don't often expect that from ourselves or we may give ourselves more grace around imperfections than we give other people. So what if your boundary work didn't go as you planned or as you maybe had agreed or another person had agreed with you? And these are cases where people often say that a boundary or agreement with another person didn't work. They'll say, well, we had this agreement but they broke it or I told this person this, but they didn't do it and therefore it didn't work or boundaries don't work. But often, it's not that the boundary didn't work. It's just that there are more steps to take. So even in the worst possible case where there's a boundary violation, there is almost always more work that you can do. There are more steps to take. There are more options. There are more choices. And let's also look at it this way. At a bare minimum, when another person breaks an agreement with you that the two of you have established together, you have useful information about that person and how they show up in relationships and that really helps you in the future in terms of how you show show up with him whether or not you make future agreements. with them or your expectations around what they're really capable of in terms of showing up. So in the case that a boundary didn't work, I recommend, and this is part of step five, that you start with asking yourself these three questions. And the first question is, a simple, did you follow through? Did you follow through on what you committed to in step four? And if not, there are two options here, you either recommit, or maybe you need to reevaluate. So what I mean by this is following through could have mean several things. Follow through could mean that you had the power to create the results you wanted, but you didn't do it. Or you needed to ask for help of some kind, and you didn't do that, or you were going to make a request of another person and you didn't make the request. So these are fairly simple to resolve because you can just recommit, or like let's say you committed to do something, but it just fell off your radar. You need to set something or create some kind of a reminder or some kind of accountability to make sure that it happens. So sometimes it can be as simple as you just need to recommit. There's also the possibility that you might need to reevaluate. This is more the case when, let's say you have repeatedly told yourself you were going to take a certain action, or you were going to ask for help, or you were going to make a request, but you continue to not do that. In cases like that, I really recommend that you reevaluate what the issue is. What is holding you back? What is stopping you from taking the action that you have power over to take? And there may be a reason for that. These are often situations where it's better to process this with another person so that you can really figure out why, because it's not going to do you much good to continue to say you're going to do something, but you don't follow through. And it may be that you're not ready to follow through. It may be that that's not exactly the right action for you to take at this time. There could be many reasons, but often again, it's helpful to reevaluate maybe even how committed you are to whatever the action was. The second question you need to ask yourself is, if you made a request of another person, was the agreement clear? And what I mean by that is, let's go to the example above where I gave the example of, you asked your spouse to come home at 6.30 rather than 7. Well, let's say that the original agreement that you made, you asked your spouse to come home earlier. You said, "You know, would you be willing to come home earlier every day in your spouse?" I said, "Oh, sure. I'll do that." But they only came home by a couple of minutes earlier. And what you had in mind was that you would come home 30 minutes earlier instead of one or two minutes. That's a great example of a vague agreement. It's not a great agreement because there's no way for either one of you to tell whether or not there was follow-through. So in this case where the agreement isn't clear, you return to step four, which again is taking action, and you simply revise your request. So in this case, the request would be revised to, "I would like you to come home every night at 6.30 by 6.30 is that something that you'd be willing to do." So you simply revise your request and you make it again. The last question is to find out was the agreement broken or was there a boundary violation? And this is often the most challenging part of step five. And if there was a broken agreement or there was a boundary violation, the first thing that I recommend that you do is to rate the issue on a scale of one to ten, ten being the most stressing, the most disturbing, or that it's a very high level agreement. And if the number that you choose, that the number in terms of how serious this is to you is higher than a seven, then this is not something that you should just let go because you're doing yourself a disservice. If it's something that's extremely important to you and yet you don't follow through and do what you can do to potentially get your need met, and I want to add here that the purpose and one of the benefits of rating your level of upset or how serious this issue is to you is to keep you from making a couple of mistakes. And I want to talk a little bit about what those are. If you made a very simple low-level request of your spouse like, would you be willing to take the garbage out every Tuesday morning before the garbage pickup people get there? That's a pretty simple low-level request. And let's say your spouse said yes that he or she would do that, but they break the agreement. If I were rating that, I'd say, well, that's probably like a one or a two. And so knowing that a proportional response to that would not be to ask for a divorce, for example. There's a mismatch there. So my response to that broken agreement would need to be more like a one or two. And so it could simply be, hey, I just want to mention, I noticed this morning that you didn't take the trash out to the street and we had an agreement about that. So I just want to mention it and make sure that we're still on the same page and you're still willing to do that. Or just remind the person, it's not that big a deal. However, if the broken agreement is around something very serious, like let's say it has to do with infidelity or something profoundly serious in the relationship or your spouse spend all your life savings or all the money that you add in your money market account or something like that, your rating of that could be an eight depending on. Or if it's infidelity, I've heard numbers that go way beyond 10 for sure. On that, a proportional response wouldn't be saying something like, oh, wow, I'm so disappointed you did that. I mean, that's essentially just an expression of your emotions. So you would need to have a much higher level response. And you know, that's a whole other issue. And I don't want to go into what your possible responses would be. But the point is, and what I want you to kind of get from this is it's really helpful to rate how distressing, how important, how serious this broken agreement is and to make sure that your response to it is proportional. Okay. So in cases of broken agreements, there are several options. And this is all spelled out in step five. So if you have the five step boundary solution clarifier, you can see all of these options there. And it will help you walk through this process because step five truly is the most complex of all of these steps. And it's the one that really causes people to get stuck or sometimes just give up, which is unfortunate, because as I said, there's almost always more that you could do. So in cases of broken agreements or boundary violations, you've got several options. The first one is you return to step four, which is taking action. And you simply repeat your request or you ask for a repair or an immense. So the first part here is, and this is really what I describe when I talked about the whole garbage example, I just repeated the request. And you can do that. And actually you can do the repeating the request and you can repair a request or repair. So what I mean by a repair is let's say that I want to use another example because the one about the garbage is not a great one for this. Let's say that you ask your partner to pick up something from the grocery store on the way back from being out somewhere. And they get back to your house and they totally forgot. They completely blanked on it. They didn't get it. A simple repair in that situation would be that they just turn around and they walk out and they go get whatever it was that they agreed to get. Or if they're not thinking clearly, or if it's something very important to you and like you needed it to make the next meal that you were going to make, you could say, hey, since you forgot that would you be willing to just go back out now to the store and get that. That's a very simple example of a repair. And repairs can range from something very simple like what I just described to something that's very significant. So for example, some of you know that I've for a long time worked with couples who are impacted by serial infidelity or sex addiction. And in these cases, often a spouse will spend money on, for example, a fair partners or spending money at strip clubs or on sex workers. And sometimes the amounts of money go into the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars. And I've worked with couples where a repair or an amends for this is literally a financial restitution. So an account set up in the spouse's name is sometimes established and money is put in that account that is legally separate from the couple's money. And they make a financial restitution or a repair based on the financial damage. And of course, obviously the emotional damage that the unfaithful spouses, actions or behaviors had on the partner. So as you can tell, I mean, this is a very high level repair or amends, but I want you to just have an idea of what that looks like. I also think it's very helpful to ask your partner or the other person, if you're the person who violated a boundary, it's often very helpful to ask them what kind of repair they would like. And it also makes it simpler and easier for you because sometimes if we're the person who violated a boundary, we may think that we know what a repair would be but the other person may have something totally different in mind. And it just makes it easier and the other thing, it makes the repair something that's very meaningful for the other person. So again, if you're the person who broke an agreement or you violated a boundary, I highly encourage you to say, what would repair this for you? What can I do essentially to make this up to you? So the second option when there is a broken agreement or a boundary violation is that you return to step four, which again is taking action. And you take the necessary action to create the result that you want without the participation of the other person. Now, keep in mind that what we're talking about here is broken agreements. So this means that you had an agreement with the other person. They broke it, but you have the power to take an action that will create the result that you want. So this may sound confusing. So I want to give you an example to illustrate what I'm talking about here. Let's say that you are having issues with your partner or spouse around money. And you have asked your spouse to be accountable in some way or let's say that you had an agreement where your spouse would only spend up to $200 without talking to you first. And the two of you agreeing that this was an appropriator or okay expense to make. And let's say that you're especially if this is a repeated boundary violation, this is something that's happened over and over again and it continues to be a problem. That one of the things that you could do is you could, for example, if they are using a credit card to do this, you might cancel the credit card that they're using to do this. Or sometimes in situations similar to this that have to do with financial matters where you have repeated boundary violations, the spouse who is having the issue with the other one will separate their money. So they just take, you know, they start putting all of their income or whatever assets they have into a separate account. And they essentially protect themselves from possible financial vulnerability by separating their money. So that's an example where when the agreement you had with the other person is broken or continues to be broken, you take an action that you have the power over that will protect you from future boundary violations or mistakes or whatever is going on with the other person. And I really want to say here, I want to make a distinction between a few concepts here. And the three concepts are self-care consequences and punishment. Because this is an area, this example that I just gave about money is an example where people become very confused about whether or not this is self-care, whether or not this is a consequence or if it's punishment. So let's start with punishment because it's one of the easier ones to identify. Let's say that you were that person who decided that you were going to separate your money because you have essentially lost trust and faith in your partner to spend appropriately or manage money appropriately and you need to protect yourself. And so you take this action which is within your right to take and your spouse says to you, "Well, you're just punishing me by doing this." So is that true? Well, no, it's not true. This is a situation where a person is confusing punishment with self-care because provided that you set up this separate account for the sole purpose of protecting yourself and not as like taking revenge or retaliation or I'm going to show this person who's boss or those kind of frankly kind of teenager responses to things. This is a very adult decision of self-care. You are not punishing the other person. You are simply taking care of yourself. And it is a consequence. So the three concepts I mentioned self-care consequence and punishment. This is a consequence of the person's actions but it truly is a natural consequence because if a person is irresponsible around money and natural consequence to that for you as the person who's vulnerable to that is you do things to protect yourself. And these are concepts that are very often confused when it comes to a person taking action to create the result that they want, especially after a broken agreement or a boundary violation. And any time that you are doing self-care to protect yourself from another person's boundarylessness or a boundary violation, it is not a punishment of that person. And frankly, sometimes the other person will say that not out of confusion but out of an attempt to get you to change your mind or even to manipulate you or telling you that you're trying to control them or have power over them in some way. But in the example that I gave, clearly that's not the case. So it's just important as you're thinking about this that you don't believe that your own self-care is a punishment of another person. Here's another danger here as well. And that is that sometimes I've seen people take action because they could. So let's stay with this example of the money. They will say something like, well, I didn't want to separate my money. I really would prefer our money be together. But I had to do this. I didn't have a choice. And that's not really true. So sometimes people will actually become a victim of their own choices by saying that the other person didn't give them a choice and they had to do this. But again, we need to ask the question of, is this really true? Did I have to separate my money? Did I have to open a new bank account? And the truth is, no, I did not. I chose to do it. I chose to do it to protect myself. I chose to do it to preserve my own financial assets, but I did not have to do it. So this is another thinking error and really a mindset problem where if you believe that you had to do something that you really chose to do for your own self-care, you are going to be miserable. And as I said, you are actually making yourself a victim by thinking that way. This is a really difficult concept to grasp. And as I talk about it, you know, I can vividly remember times working with people in my office where they are completely convinced that they are a victim of the other person because they had to do whatever they did. And sometimes it takes a while to realize that when you choose to take a certain action and you are free to make that choice, there's no way that you can be a victim. All right. And then another option when you're talking about broken agreements and boundary violations is that you just have to return to step one. So what that means is that essentially you realize that you have a new issue or a new problem. This is especially true with repeated boundary violations and broken agreements. You know, sometimes sadly we are in a relationship with someone who does not have the capacity to truly analyze whether or not they're willing to do what we ask them to do. And they may be continually say, yes, when they really mean no, or frankly, they lack integrity. And so they constantly are violating boundaries. And when you find yourself in a situation like that, you have to return to step one and identify the new problem that you have. And in that case, the new problem is this person has repeatedly made this agreement with me and they have repeatedly violated that boundary. And so what do I think about that and what emotions do I have? And then you move on to steps two, three, and four. So you're essentially reworking the five step boundary solution process on the new issue or the problem. And here it's very important to note that you can't just repeat what you've been doing. So I believe it was Einstein that said that, you know, the definition of insanity is when you continue to do the same thing over and over and over, expecting different results. And so when you're dealing with repeated boundary violations and broken agreements, you've got to do what I call increasing your level of self-care. So like using the money example that we were talking about before, if you just continue to repeat your request for the person to talk to you when they spend more than $200 for example, that's not going to work. So increasing your level of self-care, the separating your bank accounts is an example of increasing your level of self-care. There can probably be lower levels to that. Like, I think I gave the example of the credit card. or sometimes people will do things like they'll go on a cash basis. And every week they'll go and get money out of the ATM. So there's other options, but essentially my point here is about understanding that increasing your level of self-care means that you don't continue to do the same things that you were doing before. And you increase the likelihood that you're going to get the need met or get the result that you want. And then finally, sometimes you do find yourself in a situation where there's really nothing else to do. You've done everything you can do in terms of taking action on your behalf. You've gotten help or you've made requests and that has not been successful. And you're in this place where you need to just accept that you're powerless. And again, when you find yourself here, you will need to learn how to release the problem to your higher power to let go. And there are certain things that you can do or ways that you can support yourself when that's the case. And again, I want to come back to this idea of believing or having the potential of believing that you're a victim. And you've really got to analyze here that if you decide to do nothing, if you decide or you realize that you really are totally powerless, you also cannot take on the mindset that you're a victim. This is going to be really dangerous to you. And I'm not saying that there are not situations where you might have been victimized, but it's going to be very dangerous to you in your mental health. If you decide that you're powerless or you essentially accept powerless, maybe even when you're not powerless, like maybe there's still something that you could do, but you choose not to do it. And then you believe you're a victim. That just does not work. And in general, I encourage you always to be mindful of places in your life where you believe that you're a victim or you're a martyr in some way. One of my favorite thoughts about couples therapy comes from Gay Hendrix who wrote the book The Big Leap. And he says sort of humorously, but I think that there's a lot of truth in this. He said that most couples therapy is really about who's going to be the biggest victim. And this is often how couples argue, it's often how couples go about getting their needs met is by basically saying, well, I know I did this, but you did that. And so therefore I'm a bigger victim than you. And there's so many things wrong with this. I mean, number one, it's not relational, but the problem and really the long-term problem is that when we have the habit of seeing ourselves as a victim or we sort of take on this victim mindset, we can become extremely bitter. And it's an unhealthy place to live. I think it's unhealthy not only for our emotional and mental well-being, but I think it's also very unhealthy for us physically. And frankly, it makes us not that wonderful to be around. I mean, who wants to be around a person who is really committed to this very to bitterness or to believing that their unhappiness is somebody else's fault? That's probably a whole episode in and of itself. So, but the last option is that you really just accept that you're powerless and you do your best to release it and let it go. So today we have covered the fifth and the final step of the five step boundary solution process for identifying and creating and maintaining personal and relationship boundaries. And as you can probably tell, step five is very complex. And that's why I highly encourage you to get a copy of the five step boundary solution clarifier because it walks you through this process and it also outlines sort of the subtasks of each one of these steps. And if you haven't yet started a clarifier, you can hop over to beyondbitchy.com to get a free five step boundary solution clarifier. And again, it's a downloadable and fillable PDF that you can use for any boundary issue that you're currently working on for yourself or in your relationships with other people. And until next week, I invite you to embrace the power you have to create the boundaries that you want to create so that you can get the space you need and the connection you crave. See you next time. (gentle music) Thanks for listening to BeyondBitchy Podcast. Head over to beyondbitchy.com for show notes, the BeyondBitchy blog and other resources to help you master the art of boundaries. Till next time, remember, boundaries aren't bitchy. (gentle music)