Episode 59: Transcript

You are listening to episode 59 of the Path to Motherhood podcast.

Welcome to the Path to Motherhood podcast.

I'm your host and fertility life coach, Sarah Brandell.

Join us each week as we walk through navigating your trying to conceive journey.

My mission is to share the skills of managing your mind, processing emotions, and living a full life to create a more authentic path to motherhood.

Hello, hello, welcome back to this week of the Path to Motherhood podcast.

Thank you so much for being here.

I am pretty excited to talk about this topic.

It's an important one.

It's one that I think we all need better practice in.

And that is talking about boundaries.

So I'm going to dive into it because I think it's going to be a little bit of a longer topic.

and maybe I'll give you guys an update on things in my own life maybe next week.

But anyways, I think this is an important topic, especially as we go into the holiday season.

I think I shared that last week as I'm gonna do a couple episodes just talking about approaching the holiday season.

I know it can be a really triggering time, a really difficult time.

And some of that is just acknowledging, yes, it's gonna be difficult, it's not gonna all go well, I'm gonna cry, there's gonna be moments of pain and honestly just letting it be that way.

And that's hard to hear, but that's the truth.

But something that I think can, something that I think can be beneficial is boundaries.

And boundaries for a lot of us is a pretty hard topic.

And I think that stems from the fact that as women, we are typically trained to be people-pleasers, to make people happy, to do things to help others, and definitely not do anything that would make someone mad.

I see this show up for myself all the time, whether it's with employers, bosses, coworkers, family members, neighbors, doesn't matter.

I see myself doing things I don't really want to do, following through on things I don't really want to do in hopes of pleasing someone else.

What's really ironic about people pleasing is essentially what we are doing is we're saying, "Hey, I don't want to upset them, "so I'm going to do a little bit of upsetting of myself.

" So for example, the classic PTO mom that doesn't really want to be cooking the cookies and bringing them into school, but feels like she has to to be pleasing.

the school, the teacher, the other PTA moms, the whatever, right.

That is an example of people pleasing and we do that so often.

We carry through on conversations, we go to events, we show up to baby showers, we show up to holiday parties, we talk with family members we really don't wanna talk to, all in the name of people pleasing someone else and doing a little bit of less protection of our own emotions.

And so I'm here to say, that's kind of crap.

We were all trained to do that, and it's hard to break that habit 100%.

I'm not advocating for you're just gonna never be a people pleaser again.

I want you to recognize it.

I just want you to go through the next week or two and just notice when you are people pleasing and notice when there maybe could have been an opportunity for a boundary.

The first thing I wanna do here is I just wanna talk about like what is a boundary.

and why are they so important.

And I think we have maybe some misconstrued understanding of boundaries.

So that's important for us to talk about first, is that a boundary is not a punishment.

It is not a way to get back at someone.

It is protecting yourself.

So the place where I see that this happens, that's like easy to explain the concept I'm trying to get across here, is with actually with your partner, with your spouse.

So they went out, lay and stayed out later than you would like them to.

So they have to sleep on the couch.

Some people would say that that's a boundary.

I would argue that that's not really a boundary.

That's like a punishment for what they did.

And that, like you could do something similar and do it in a way that it is a boundary.

But a lot of times what I tell people is A boundary should be less about telling someone else what to do and more about telling them what you will do.

So for example, you could do the exact same situation, but it could be, hey, I've had a conversation with my spouse.

They have stayed out later than I would like them to a handful of times.

I've told them why this matters to me.

I told them why this is important to me, that they don't do that.

And I've let them know that from now on, if they're not home in a reasonable hour where they have like told me why they're not gonna be home late or they just haven't called me, I'm not gonna allow them to get into the bedroom.

I'm gonna lock the door.

So they can do whatever they want.

They can sleep somewhere else.

They can sleep on the couch.

They can sleep outside in their car.

It's not about telling them what they have to do.

It's simply about what I'm gonna do.

I'm gonna lock the door.

That's just an example.

And I don't know that anyone on this podcast would do that, but it's one that I think we all like have seen played out and movies and TV, et cetera.

So it's easy to understand.

And so it's not about punishing them.

It really is not.

It is about protecting yourself of saying, I'm not willing to go through on the normalness of you coming in and waking me up in the middle of the night and me being frustrated and you passing out and falling asleep and then me being up all night angry because you did something.

So instead, I'm gonna set a boundary.

If you're not gonna be home by a reasonable hour, I'm going to lock the door and I'm gonna get good rest.

" So that is about protecting yourself.

And I think that's the important thing to understand.

Another important thing to understand is that they don't have to like it.

I worked with a woman when I first started my coaching business, she actually was not going through infertility and I coached her on a lot of different topics.

But one of the things we worked on a lot was sitting boundaries with her mother.

And a lot of the reason she wasn't setting boundaries was because she didn't want to upset her mother.

Again, the people pleasing coming out.

And this is just your reminder that just because you set a boundary doesn't mean they're gonna like it.

Actually, more often than not, they're not gonna like it because you're changing the normal routine.

You're changing up what they're coming to expect and we don't like change.

So this isn't about being nice to them.

This isn't about protecting them.

This is 100% about you and protecting yourself.

And if people pleasing is about pleasing everyone around us and putting ourselves last, boundaries is about pleasing and protecting ourselves first, and then worrying about the others.

And what I love to do when I work with women on setting boundaries is notice that when we are putting ourselves first, when we're protecting our own emotional wellbeing, often that is also in the best interest of the other person.

They may not think that again, but often it is.

And I'll give some examples of that.

So before we dive into like types of boundaries that you might be setting, I do wanna just make a couple examples about mistakes that people make with boundaries and we may have touched on these already, but I just wanna make sure we kinda get these mistakes out of the way.

And the first one is not following through.

So I think about my dog.

If I have a boundary with my dog that they're not allowed to get on the couch.

And sometimes I set that boundary and I make them get off the couch and I make them go to their bed and I make them behave and I reward them when they're not on the couch, et cetera.

But sometimes I let it happen, not an effective boundary.

That's very confusing for the other person.

That doesn't make sense for the other person.

So when you're deciding on a boundary to set, you have to make sure that you're willing to follow through on it.

So for example, when I was working with this client about boundaries with her mother, you know, she threw out this example of if she doesn't like respect me and my boundaries when it comes to phone calls, I'm not gonna allow her to come to Christmas dinner.

And I said, okay, like that's fine if that's what you want it to be.

But first, if she were to call you on a daily basis and break your boundaries, Would you follow through on not allowing her to come to Christmas dinner.

And she was like, uh, probably not.

I probably would still let her come.

And I said, well, then that's not an effective boundary.

If they know you're not going to follow through on it.

If they get examples of you not following through on it, then it's a useless boundary.

So whatever you decide on, whatever you set, make sure you mean it.

Make sure you will follow through on it.

When I was going through some of my coaching training, the reason I talk about the spouse examples is that we did do some coaching training with women actually working through deciding if they were gonna keep their relationship going or actually leave their partners.

And I had a couple examples of some clients who were with partners who had had types of infidelity, different versions, that's not the important part here.

but a lot of them would throw out words like if you do it again, I'm leaving.

If you do it again, I'm gone.

If you do it again, we're over.

But when we sat down and talked about it and really worked through it, time after time again, they didn't leave.

The relationship wasn't over.

And so we had to talk about how it's not effective to tell someone a threat if you don't actually mean it, if it's not actually true.

So that's a really intense example.

I think it's one that we can all really understand, but this shows up in just normal day-to-day boundaries.

If you have a boundary with your employer that I will not accept phone calls on evenings and weekends, but they call you in the evening and you just go ahead and answer just in case, that's not a clear boundary.

So whatever you set your boundaries to be, you need to follow through on them.

Another common mistake I have listed here as I was outlining kind of what I wanted to talk about is one we kind of already touched on.

But again, it is this misconception that we think the person receiving the boundary is gonna just happily accept it.

And that's just not the case.

So what I find is that a lot of women especially because of our people pleasing tendencies tend to try to set a boundary.

But when they notice that the other person is not enjoying the boundary, is not happy about the boundary, is not okay with the boundary, they abort mission.

They're like, oh my God, I pissed them off, made them angry, they're very upset, I shouldn't have done this, this is totally my fault, I'm just not gonna do it anymore.

This is a really common mistake.

I actually think when you're setting a boundary, you should expect them to be upset.

You should expect them to have discomfort.

You should expect them to not follow through on what you're asking them to do, at least at first, because people don't like change.

So for example, if you have been called evenings and weekends for years in your job and you now have decided to say, Hey, I no longer will be accepting phone calls on evenings and weekends.

Don't expect them to magically just stop.

Don't expect them to be happy about it.

Expect them to say like, I called you last night and it was really important and I know you don't really want me to call but this one was just really important I had to and I really think you should have answered it.

That's to be expected, right.

That's going to happen.

People don't like boundaries being set on themselves.

And so if you go into expecting them to be happy about it and accept it, and it doesn't happen that way, that is going to make it really hard to follow through on your boundary.

So just expect they're gonna be upset, expect that there's gonna be growing pains, and let that be part of the process.

Let it be.

The third mistake I touched on already is using boundaries as punishments to punish someone else for something.

The way I see this is if we were talking about the work example of no more calling me on evenings and weekends, rather than just saying, "I'm not gonna answer the phone if you call me on evenings and weekends.

" That's a boundary.

That is you telling your employer, if you can call me on the evenings and weekends, I'm not telling you what to do, I'm just not gonna answer.

A punishment is saying, if you call me on evenings and weekends, then I'm not gonna show up to work the rest of the week.

you did something to frustrate me, so I'm gonna do something back to you.

It's not being done from a place of protecting your mental health.

It's actually being done from a place of trying to hurt someone else.

And so that's really not a great way to be setting your boundaries.

So I hope that gives you guys kind of some ideas about how to do a boundary, how to set a boundary, what not to do with a boundary.

And now what I wanna do is I wanna actually give some specifics of some examples of boundaries when it comes to infertility.

And I'm doing this episode now, if you're listening live, in preparation for the holidays, because I think it's a time where we need to set more boundaries.

But these concepts and these type of boundaries we're gonna talk about, they apply all year long.

Doesn't matter what's going on, they apply it.

And you'll see examples of that as we talk.

So the first type of boundary that I think about when it comes to navigating infertility is actually medical boundaries.

What are you willing to do and what are you not willing to do.

What tests and treatments and procedures are you willing to undergo and what are you not.

For me, for a while, this was saying, "Hey, I wanna trust my body.

I wanna believe in my body.

I'm willing to support it and use medications, et cetera.

But if we can limit invasive procedures, I would love to do that.

" Over time, I had to evolve that boundary.

The approach I was taking was not working and I was willing to extend my boundary to allow for a bit more invasive procedures.

And that's okay for boundaries to change over time.

Another example of a boundary that I absolutely have is a financial one.

If someone told me that to do another cycle of IVF was gonna cost $100,000, I would say thank you, but I can't do that.

So it's okay to have boundaries when it comes to this, again, following through on them.

And it's great when you have medical boundaries to share them with your team, share them with your providers, discuss them with your partner, be open about what your boundaries are because the two of you may have different boundaries and you have to come to a decision on where are you gonna settle in the middle here as you approach next steps.

Knowing especially medical boundaries, they can change and they can evolve over time, depending on what you know.

So it may be we've only been trying for six months and this is our boundary of how far we're willing to go.

Now we've been trying for six years and we're willing to go more invasive.

That's an example.

The next one that I find really important is social boundaries.

So these are setting boundaries with your family, with your friends, around how you want to interact in the world socially.

And again, this is about protecting yourself.

So for example, for some of us, this boundary turns into, I'm unwilling to discuss my fertility journey with X person.

They can bring it up, they can ask me questions, and I will just respond with, that's not something I'm willing to talk about right now.

So that is an example of a boundary with a friend, with a family member, about what you're willing to open up about.

And you can have different boundaries with different people, depending on your willingness to discuss with them.

Another example of a social boundary is your willingness to attend things.

Baby showers, birthday parties, holiday parties, going to the other family member's house because they have the kids when it would be more convenient for the holiday party to be at your house.

But that doesn't happen because you don't have the kids.

These are all examples of things where you can set a boundary.

You can say, okay, if that's what you're gonna decide, I'm not going to attend.

Or emotionally, I'm not able to attend a baby shower right now, a birthday party right now.

And it doesn't have to please them.

They can be bummed that you're not there.

It's not about them, it's about you, and protecting you.

And they don't have to fully understand it.

Often they don't understand it, and that's okay.

Another really important example of a boundary that I think all women should be setting, but especially going through infertility, is me time.

Your personal time boundaries.

Finding time for taking care of yourself, working with a support person, like a coach of journaling, of taking walks, of exercising, of relaxing on your own, engaging in things that make you feel like you again, and setting boundaries around protecting that time.

Such, such an important example of something that we all should be doing.

I set aside dedicated time every single week to focus on myself, how am I doing mentally, how am I taking care of myself emotionally, and really get support from the people around me, like my own coach.

And I really encourage you guys to find routines where you're doing the same.

It's easy for life to be busy for me going to appointments and doing this stuff here and housework and jobs and everything else and feel so busy that you don't have time for it.

But I'm telling you this is one that is so important for you to draw a line in the sand and say no, no ifs ands or buts, this amount of time every week I am going to dedicate to myself.

Whatever dedicate to yourself looks like for you is totally fine, but making that boundary to protect that time.

One similar to social boundaries is communication boundaries.

So perhaps this is going back to, I'll link it in the show notes, the episode about unsolicited advice in learning some phrases and some tools that when someone is coming to you with unsolicited advice to say thank you for that information, I'm not willing to discuss this with you and Drop it.

You don't have to continue those conversations.

You don't have to continue those relationships.

If you have a friend, a family member, a coworker, an acquaintance, a whoever who keeps coming at you with unsolicited advice and you've told them you don't want to hear it and they're not respecting that, you can draw a boundary.

You can cut off connection.

You can let them know I'm not willing to continue conversing about this.

I probably won't be reaching out as much 'cause I don't wanna talk about this.

If it's a coworker, I'm willing to discuss work things when we must and that's it.

And that's okay to set boundaries like this.

The last type of boundary that I kind of thought of when I was brainstorming what were some of the main ones to focus on was a work-life balance boundary.

It can be really hard to manage medical appointments, treatments, procedures, tests, all of that stuff, following through on food protocols, all of that, while also working and managing life and everything else.

And so I think it is important to consider what do I need to share with my employer, at least with my boss, and what boundaries can I set to keep these things separate and have them respect the time that I need.

And if I'm in a place where that's not happening, I really encourage you to think about, is it time to change to a different employer.

That's a hard thing, that's not an easy decision, that doesn't happen overnight.

I 100% understand that, but it will absolutely make your life easier to be working a job where they respect your time and your need for things that are not work related to happen.

And that is so important to be finding.

I've actually helped a handful of women really come to the decision that they needed to leave their current job and find a new one because they just were not being supported on the journey.

So that's the last one that I wanted to mention was creating some type of work, life balance boundary.

And I don't really like that phrase work, life balance.

That makes it sound like we're all going to do a perfect job and it's going to be 50, 50 work and 50, 50 life.

And that's just not the case.

There's going to be heavier times life, heavier times of work, and that is real life.

but we want to have clear boundaries of accepting when we need to step away from one for the other.

Same thing goes for work.

I had to put boundaries on myself for Sarah.

Yes, I'm stressed about this.

Yes, I'm worried about the outcome of this test.

Yes, I'm wondering what's going to happen on beta day, but I need to put that to the side and focus on the work that I need to get done.

And that can be easier said than done.

So again, if we're setting these boundaries to protect ourself and our mental health, our emotional health, that's how we wanna approach it when it comes to actually setting these boundaries.

Sometimes I find women wanna like, say that they have these boundaries, say if my aunt Sophie says anything to me again, I'm not gonna speak to her, but they don't tell them.

And that's an issue.

Like if you don't tell the person that a boundary is being set, how are they supposed to even attempt to follow through on it.

So I want you to be clearly communicating.

I want you to tell your employer, or, "Hey, I'm going through a medical condition.

I'm gonna have a handful of more tests and procedures and appointments.

I will ensure that I'm getting my job done to the best of my ability, but I expect for you to allow me to make it to those appointments.

" Hey, friend, I know you're pregnant and you have a baby shower coming up.

Currently, I am just emotionally not in a space where it would be safe for me to attend that.

I'm really, really sorry.

I would love to be able to support you through that.

I'm still so, so happy for you and your journey.

I just don't think that I can go there emotionally.

I understand if that is just not something that you can understand, since you've never been through this, but I just ask that you respect my decision.

So whatever the decision is, whatever the boundary is, I want you to clearly communicate it.

I want you to focus on why it's important for you, not anything to do with them.

So when I was helping that client set boundaries with her mom, it was not, "Hey mom, you're annoying.

I need to help you be better at being a mom.

It was, "Hey, mom, these phone calls "have been really difficult for me.

"I need to do this to protect my time when I'm at work.

"And because of that, I will not be answering the phone "unless there's an emergency while at work.

"It's about me, it's not about them.

" So use I statements to focus on why you're making the decision for you.

And again, be consistent, follow through.

Whatever you're telling them you're gonna do, follow through on that.

And if you need help, I love boundaries.

I really do.

I think they're so important in our life and I think we need to be better at setting them.

Get help, reach out to someone, ask them for support in creating boundaries, brainstorming on how to apply them, and brainstorming how to go through that process.

And it takes time, it takes practice.

It's not gonna be comfortable right away, especially if you love to people, please.

So I hope that that was helpful to give you guys some ideas of maybe some boundaries could be thinking about going into the holiday season.

For example, yes, I will be attending this.

No, I will not be attending that.

If so and so is there, I'm not willing to discuss this with them, etc.

And coming up with what are some boundaries that you need to set.

Again, pay attention to when your people pleasing and how uncomfortable that feels.

That's a moment where a boundary is likely useful.

And then work on creating what that boundary is going to look like, one that you can follow through on and communicate it clearly.

And if you're having trouble doing that, if you need help doing that, reach out.

Click the apply button in the show notes and I will help you through the entire process.

So I hope you guys have a great, great week.

Thank you for being here and I will talk to you all next week.

Hey there, Inspired Mama.

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I would love to get this into the ears of anyone who needs to hear it.

If you are ready to step this work up and not only learn these tools but to apply them To your unique story, head to the link in the show notes to apply for a free consult call.

I would be honored to help you.

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