Self Care for the Holidays: Setting Boundaries | ep87
This Week’s Mindset Monday reads:
The only person responsible for honoring your boundaries is yourself.
Ah, the holiday season. It’s the most wonderful time of the year! And also the most stressful, most anxiety inducing, and most overwhelming. Not what you were expecting, right? It can be a really triggering season for many of us whether you spend it with family and friends or you spend it by yourself. So this holiday season, I’m doing a special 3-episode series on the podcast to help you be at home within yourself and thrive for the holidays. In this first episode, we’re exploring how to set healthy boundaries during the holidays.
Now, to be honest with you, this week’s Mindset Monday even irks me. Listen, I did not enjoy writing that line. BUT! It’s true.
The person who most often betrays our own boundaries is our own selves.
This is the conversation that we really need to be having when it comes to boundaries. We so often know what is best for us, and yet we find ourselves negotiating our boundaries.
We end up:
crossing our own limits
breaking our own promises
making endless compromises
We end up hurting ourselves over and over again. And the only person to blame is ourselves. The victim and aggressor are one and the same.
I once heard boundaries defined as
“the way we show others how to love us and how we show love towards ourselves.”
A boundary isn’t just about going to bed earlier, putting your phone away in the morning, or saying “No” that social event.
Love, it is so much deeper. A boundary is an act of love, care, and respect. You see, when our boundaries are honored, we feel safe, seen, and validated by the other person.
So, what happens when someone keeps violating our boundaries? We start to lose our sense of trust in them. Because why would we trust someone who constantly keeps ignoring what we need?
So, the result of all this negotiating, compromising, and limit-crossing is that we stop trusting ourselves. And that’s when things begin to unravel. Because without self-trust, we start to doubt ourselves: we are no longer credible in our own eyes.
Respecting our own boundaries is where we have to begin and it’s where we have to be the most vigilant.
This week on the podcast, I share some of my favorite tools for creating and upholding your boundaries and I also share my favorite way (a script, actually!) of asking for what I need that works 95% of the time.
So love, this week I want you to ask yourself, “How do I keep crossing my own boundaries?”
A quote to take with you:
“We have mistaken selflessness with being ‘good’ people. We’re not better people by not creating boundaries.”
Want to dive deeper through journal prompts?
If you want to be in the know and get each Mindset Monday straight to your inbox complete with journal prompts to take you even further, get on my email list.
About your host, Shirin Eskandani
Hi, love! I’m Shirin.
Coach, speaker, writer, and life alchemist.
I teach you how to trust your intuition again, tune out all the BS, and let your heart lead the way.
Because once you strengthen your inner GPS, decisions become easier, boundaries become clearer, and belly laughs become a daily thing.
A LITTLE BIT ABOUT ME:
I’m a certified life coach (accredited through the International Coach Federation)
My husband and I met on Instagram and we live in Brooklyn, NY with our plant babies
I have a masters degree in Music and was a professional opera singer for twelve years. I worked all over the world singing on stage at Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Opera (more on that later…).
I believe in the woo just as much as I do the work (internal and external). No amount of crystals and affirmations will make up for a lack of a healthy mindset and aligned action.
I love all the Real Housewives franchises. Don’t make me choose one… seriously, don’t.
+ Read the episode transcript here
[00:00:00] Welcome to wholehearted coaching the podcast. If you're looking for more purpose, more passion, more joy in your life. When you have come to the right place, let's create your dream life while living your dream life. Okay, love.
[00:00:21] Hi love. Welcome to whole hearted coaching the podcast. This is where we take a deeper dive into my mindset Monday post, which you can read on Instagram at wholehearted coaching, or you can get the full post plus my weekly journal prompts. When you sign up for my email. You can do that in the show notes, or you can head to my website, whole hearted-coaching.com.
[00:00:44] So if you're listening to this episode live, we are in the middle of November and we are on the crust of holiday season, especially in the United States. So it's almost Thanksgiving here. And, you know, the holiday season is coming up in December, whatever you celebrate this as a time of year in which we are really triggered, let's be honest, it's the most wonderful time of the year, but it's also the most stressful and anxiety inducing and really overwhelming as well.
[00:01:17] And so for the next three episodes, including this one, we are doing what I am calling instead of home for the holiday. At home within yourself for the holidays. I got it. It's kind of a long title, but I hope you get what I'm trying to get at the next three episodes are all about self-care during the holiday season and what that looks like.
[00:01:42] How can you take care of your emotional and spiritual wellbeing as you navigate this? Wonderful, but also tricky time. Whether it's a time for you that you spend with family and friends, whether it's a time that you spend by yourself. I know that this time of year can be incredibly hard on us. And so we're going to be exploring themes that are going to allow you to thrive during this season.
[00:02:11] All right. We don't have to get to 20, 22, you know, just slogging our way through. The holiday season? No. What I really want us to focus on right now and I'm giving us a headstart on this is how can I take care of myself throughout this season? There is a beautiful rom Doss quote that I love. And he says, you think you're enlightened and then you spend a week with your family, right?
[00:02:40] I mean, that's literally what it is. Y'all sometimes when I'm with my family, it's like, Have I ever done any self work on myself? You know, you just find yourself reacting to what they're saying. You find yourself doing things that you haven't done in years. And so I want to offer us some time to pause and reflect and just think about how we can make this season, the quote, unquote, best for ourselves.
[00:03:09] And so today we're kicking it off by talking about. Boundaries, because I think this time of year, this is such an incredibly important tool to be using again and again and again. And it's a tool that we often don't use because of so many reasons. So in today's episode, we're going to get deep around what boundaries are, how we can uphold our boundary.
[00:03:32] And I'm also going to be sharing a script with you, a script at the very end of this episode, that shows you how to ask for what you need from your loved ones. Yes, y'all this one is a game changer. Now let me tell you, we're going to get into this week's mindset Monday, and I'm going to be very honest, but this mindset Monday, even irks.
[00:03:57] And I'm going to read it to you and you're going to get what I'm saying, because man, this truth is just such a tough one. All right. So this week's mindset Monday reads the only person responsible for honoring your boundaries is yourself. Okay. Let's all. Just take a collective breath. That's the mindset Monday, the only person responsible for honoring your boundaries is your self y'all.
[00:04:31] This is the truth. The only person who is supposed to respect and uphold and commit to your boundaries is you and you alone. And I think this is one of the most tough things with boundaries is that we create them and we want other people to respect. That's what we want. We want, okay, this is my boundary, respect it.
[00:04:56] And y'all, that would be amazing. That would be wonderful, but we know that that does not happen so often. And sometimes it does, and it's incredible. But with boundaries of this thing that we have to keep on enforcing often, and it's something that other people often don't understand. So today's mindset Monday is really about you reflecting about.
[00:05:19] Where am I not upholding and committing to and following through on my boundaries because I am the sole person responsible for creating them and keeping them. So I'm going to describe a scenario to you. And it's a scenario that we have all been in and it is all about our boundaries and how hard they are to keep an uphold.
[00:05:45] So you're just doing your thing. You're living your life and you got a lot going on and you know that you can not add one more thing to the list that you have. Like you just do not have the capacity physically, emotionally, spiritually to do anything. And you get that phone call or you have that conversation or you get that email and it's someone, oftentimes someone we don't really care much about, but let's say in this scenario, it's someone you really care.
[00:06:15] And they're asking you to do this one thing, this one thing that they really need help with this one thing that is really important to them and everything in your being is saying, no, just say no, you know, you don't have the time for this note. Just say no, no, no. And then involuntarily, like a knee-jerk reaction you say?
[00:06:34] Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Sounds great. Yeah, I'll be there. I'll do it. I'll bake those 24 cupcakes. I'll help you organize that surprise party. Yeah, yeah, sure. I'll do it. I'll do it. And you hang up the phone, you send the email, you end the conversation and it's like this experience of ultimate self, the trail. Right.
[00:06:57] You already know what the experience is going to be like for you. Right? When you do the thing, like you're going to be overwhelmed, overextended, depleted, exhausted. And you're going to be doing this thing for this person. Totally resenting them, resenting the situation, resenting your self and all because you couldn't say no all because you could not uphold your boundary.
[00:07:20] Y'all we have all been there. I know you're listening to this laughing or nodding your head or smirking because we have all done it. Let's first define what a boundary is. This is my favorite definition of a boundary. Guidelines for ourselves and others that keep us mentally, emotionally and spiritually healthy.
[00:07:41] And I'm going to add one more word to that. Predetermined guidelines for ourselves. There are guidelines, whether it is about our time, our energy, how we use those beautiful resources that we say to the world. And we say to ourselves that this is how I stay healthy. To me boundaries are the ultimate form of self-awareness self-care and self-love self-awareness because boundaries require you to know yourself so well that you know what you need to be mentally, emotionally, and spiritually healthy.
[00:08:19] Right. We can't express to others. We can't create boundaries if we don't know what these things are. Right. So it's that real self-awareness. It's self care because boundaries are how we truly take care for ourselves. It's how we tend to ourselves knowing what is best for you and what will nourish you and really giving yourself those things.
[00:08:40] And it's self-love because boundaries are how we show others how to love ourselves. This definition of boundaries, looking at boundaries this way is the truest. And for me, it takes this word boundary, which I think has these connotations of like something external and brings it much more internal, that this is so much about who you are.
[00:09:06] This is about me letting other people know. And really for me to get clear on what I need, what makes me feel whole and what makes me feel my best love boundaries are all about you. And that is exactly why they're so hard to up hold because they're about you and they're about prioritizing yourself. And unfortunately, most of us, I would dare say everyone listened to his podcast because we are heart-centered people.
[00:09:40] We have grown up. We have been socialized. We have been conditioned in families, communities, and societies that have told us. That we're not supposed to prioritize ourselves that instead we are supposed to prioritize others. Y'all we are more comfortable, disappointing ourselves than we are disappointing others.
[00:10:06] This is a truth. Right. When we think of creating a boundary, oftentimes means that we can't do certain things for other people. We can't be available for them. We can't come through quote unquote for them. And so imagining them in their discomfort, imagining them being disappointed or let down or hurt it makes us talk ourselves out of our boundaries.
[00:10:32] Right. We don't honor our boundaries because of what other people are going to think. So often we want to make a boundary, right. And still be liked. We want to make a boundary and have them understand why we want to make a boundary and not disturb the peace and love. That's just not possible. A real boundary is going to elicit feelings.
[00:10:58] A real boundary is gonna involve conversation. A real boundary is going to require you practicing your strength and courage, and it's going to require a whole lot of self compassion. Bernay brown says daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves. Even when we risk disappointing others.
[00:11:21] Ooh. I'm going to say that again, daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves. Even when we risk disappointing others, because here is a truth. When we create boundaries, we feel selfish. And this is a word that has been weaponized against women. If you have been socialized as a woman, it's been weaponized against us for so long, they call us selfish any time we want to prioritize our wants our needs, our desires, our health, over others in our society, the female archetype, and this is changing, which is great, but the female archetype is ultimately selfless.
[00:12:10] Right. This, I knew I grew up around women like this, right. Women who were constantly caring for others, prioritizing their needs over themselves, like constantly depleted and run down. But everyone around them was like thriving. And a lot of us grew up around this and we have mistaken selflessness for being good people.
[00:12:34] We have made selflessness, our baseline. So when we think of boundaries, we are also undoing this conditioning, the socializing, which is so ingrained in us. And this is why it can be so hard for us to create them and to uphold them. I want you to think of, you know, what you saw growing up, right? What you saw in your family, in your community, when it came to taking care of yourself, to the women in your life, take care of themselves.
[00:13:06] Did they actually, you know, explore what was interesting to them? Did they prioritize their needs? Did they take time to do those things? If you grew up in a family that did, that is amazing, but if you didn't right, you really have to understand that we are on doing all of this. An analogy that I often use with my clients when it comes to boundaries is in the anti diet culture world.
[00:13:34] They talk about when people come off severe restrictive diets and they finally start to eat, quote-unquote normally right. Like, uh, whatever caloric intake is that really sustains their body, that's good for their body. And when these people who've gone from restrictive diets, start to do this, they think that they're actually bingeing and overeating, but they're actually properly nourishing themselves for the first time.
[00:14:00] They're actually taking care and loving their bodies for the first time. And this is what this experience of creating boundaries feels like at first, really overindulgent until you finally realized that, oh, this is what it's supposed to feel like to nourish your soul and to take care of yourself. So the paradox of all of this is we don't want to set boundaries because we don't want to be bad people who hurt and disappoint.
[00:14:29] But so often the result of us not setting boundaries is us become angry and resentful towards the people we didn't want to disappoint. I mean, isn't that the truth? I mean, I have snapped at so many people who I'm, you know, doing a quote unquote favor for, or snapped at my partner at home because I'm so overextended in all the ways.
[00:14:54] Right. And again, I'm going to quote Bernie brown, but she says that the most compassionate people are the most boundaried when we don't set boundaries. And we let people do things that are not okay. We're just hateful and resentful. She says I would rather be loving and generous and very straightforward with what's.
[00:15:13] Okay. And not okay. I'm not as sweet as I used to be, but I am a far more loving y'all. We're not better people. We're not more loving people. We're not more sweet people by not creating boundaries were actually kind of remorse, resentful, more unkind. And I have an episode of the podcast, which is about resentment, because to me, resentment is always a sign that you are not honoring your boundaries or others are not honoring them.
[00:15:45] But as we're looking at, in this podcast episode, right, you are the one most responsible for those boundaries. So whenever I feel resentful, I know that there is a boundary that has been crossed or that needs to be created. Resentment is a great check-in for yourself to really look at what you're saying.
[00:16:03] Yes and no to, and see how you can shift those things. So love when it comes down to it. You are the only person who is responsible for upholding and respecting your boundaries. Yes, we want the other people in our lives to do that, but more often than not, we kind of have to reiterate our boundaries more often than not other people won't understand our boundaries.
[00:16:30] And so really the Knight in shining armor that is boundaries is ourselves. And I know that's a hard truth to really wrap your mind and your heart around. But so often we know what's best for us. And yet we find ourselves negotiating our boundaries. We end up crossing our own limits, breaking our own promises, making these compromises that are unhealthy for us.
[00:16:58] And I truly believe when we talk about boundaries, this is what we need to be focusing on is how do you keep crossing your own boundaries? Love we have a big self betrayal problem. If we're being honest, the person who betrays our boundaries the most often is ourselves. Right? Like for instance, with me, when I say my work day is going to end at five and I keep answering emails, that's me betraying myself.
[00:17:27] When I say to myself, I'm going to go for a walk today and I end up prolonging a conversation with a client. That's me betraying my boundary. We do this over and over again, we hurt ourselves again and again, and the victim and the aggressor are one and the same and the issue. This is a really important thing to be mindful of when we don't uphold our own boundaries.
[00:17:52] We lose credibility in our own eyes. And that's when we get into a self trust deficit, right? Imagine you have a partner who keeps telling you, I'm going to take you out on a date tomorrow, or I'm going to do the dishes, or we're going to go on a big trip and they don't do that thing. What ends up happening?
[00:18:10] You stop trusting what they say. And that's when things start to unravel in any relationship. So when we create a boundary, it means that we have to change our behavior. We have to change how we think so that we can uphold and honor that boundary says it is true that I can lay down a boundary for others as well, but it will generally involve a behavior change for me.
[00:18:35] First, what you do is what you do, but my boundary was meant to activate and motivate my behavior first. I mean, y'all, that is the truth. So, as you are rethinking about your boundaries, this holiday season, as you're thinking of creating some right, as I said, boundaries are predetermined and predetermined can be like a minute before, or just taking a pause of five seconds and realizing what's best for you, right?
[00:19:07] They're not reactive, right? They're very well intentioned and very rooted in who you are and what you need. So as you think of those boundaries, I want you to get clear on what parts of you, what stories come up, what beliefs come up about actually upholding these boundaries. That's so incredibly important because we cannot really change how we are and how we move in the world.
[00:19:29] If we're not looking at what's stopping us from doing that from being that person. And what's often stopping us, is what we're believing, what we have been conditioned to believe or how we just think. So think of those boundaries, whether if you are going to visit your family, whether you want to go on a walk every day, or you need your morning time to yourself, or you don't want to stay with your parents, you want to stay in an Airbnb, right?
[00:19:58] What are those boundaries for you? And then look at what are those beliefs that come up. And dig their heel there, show compassion there because it's really hard to enforce and uphold those boundaries of underlying all of it. We think we're being bad people, right? We're being a bad daughter, a bad partner, a bad sister, a bad brother, a bad friend, whatever that is.
[00:20:23] So it's really getting clear on those things love. And then once you figure out what you need and healing those parts of you, that kind of get in the way. I have this amazing script that I want to share with you. That I have found in my life works 70% of the time. I mean, I wish it was a hundred percent effective, but you know what?
[00:20:44] 70% is incredibly amazing. So this comes from Alison Armstrong and she is a love and relationship coach. And I love Alison Armstrong. However it can be a little anti-feminist so I'm just going to put out there. Okay. But this is what Alison Armstrong calls her great ask. And so Alison Armstrong's belief is that the people who love us really want to be able to provide for us.
[00:21:11] They want to be able to make us feel safe, seen, heard, and loved. And when we ask for something. We oftentimes aren't clear about what we actually need. So a very common example of this can be you, you know, you and your partner having a disagreement about communication. And you just say to your partner, well, I need you to communicate better with me.
[00:21:34] And the issue there is that their version of communication or what they think communicating better is may not be what you think, communicating better. So in the grade ask you really get clear on what you need and also on what this gives to you. So there are four parts to it. The first part is that you need to be specific and say what you need.
[00:21:57] So the first thing you say is I need you to, so in this case, in this example of communication, it would be, you know, I figured out what I need, what communication means to me. And you say, I need you to text me in the. And then the second part is that you really get specific and tell them what it looks like.
[00:22:17] Right. So I need you to text me every morning and just check in on me. And then the third part is, tell them what this is going to provide for you, what this is going to give you. Right? And this is a really key part because they're more likely to do this thing if they know why it's important for. So in this case, I would say, I need you to text me every morning to just check in on me.
[00:22:43] And this would make me feel so connected and loved. And then the final part is asking them, what do you need to give me what I need? Or is there any way that I can help you do this? So really allowing them to also say, okay, well, um, you know, I can't do the mornings, but I can definitely do it in the evening or, or whatever that is for them.
[00:23:04] Right? So the four parts. I need you to be specific with what you need from them, right? It's not just, I need you to communicate, but what does communication look like to you? And then tell them what that really looks like for you. The third is telling them what it's going to give you what it's going to provide for you.
[00:23:25] And finally, is there any way that I can help you do this for me? And you can switch this all up, right. You can go with, you know, it would make me feel so loved and connected to you. If you could text me every morning just saying, Hey, that's good enough for me. Is there any way that I can help you do that?
[00:23:44] So it doesn't have to be so scripted or formulaic, but I have found that the people in my life, when they understand why I need something and what that specifically looks like. They do it for me. They do it for me again, seven times out of 10. And this is a really great way for you to communicate in a really grounded present way, in a way that is really describing what your boundaries are and connecting that all to write those guidelines, that show others how to love you, how to take care of you, how to provide for you.
[00:24:22] So this holiday season, When you're thinking of the boundaries you need really be thinking of maybe if the word boundaries doesn't resonate with you, how can I take care of myself this holiday season? What guidelines do I need to put in place? So I can really thrive and really tend to my mental, spiritual, and emotional needs.
[00:24:46] And as you do this, as you practice this practice of boundaries and know that this takes time and patience and. And honestly, it's a practice for me. Y'all, there's some moments when I can be beautifully boundaried and there are some moments where I can't and I show myself the grace and the compassion at those times.
[00:25:07] So love, try this out, see what comes up, try out the script. I'm telling you it is life changing until next week. I will talk to you. Thank you so much for joining me this week. If you liked this week's episode, please share it with a friend comment and rate this podcast until next week. See you later. Love.