In this episode, I talk all about the collective experiences that people seem to be going through on an emotional level such as experiencing high levels of anger, all-or-nothing thinking patterns, and the experience of people lashing out toward others or projecting their own emotions onto others. I recognized that we are in some sort of "communication and understanding deficit" and will explain in this episode about what I mean by that and the steps that you can begin to take to gain a more meaningful understanding of both yourself and others.
In today's episode, I chat about:
My Current Reading List:
Bria Wannamaker, RP.
@betterboundariespodcast
www.briawannamaker.com
Support the show, buy COFFEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!
As always, please remember that these podcast episodes are for educational purposes only and are not a substitute for medical healthcare or mental healthcare. Podcasts are available as an educational and entertainment resource and are not advice, recommendations, or suggestions. Please seek out the necessary professional services if you require assistance.
In this episode, I talk all about the collective experiences that people seem to be going through on an emotional level such as experiencing high levels of anger, all-or-nothing thinking patterns, and the experience of people lashing out toward others or projecting their own emotions onto others. I recognized that we are in some sort of "communication and understanding deficit" and will explain in this episode about what I mean by that and the steps that you can begin to take to gain a more meaningful understanding of both yourself and others.
In today's episode, I chat about:
My Current Reading List:
Bria Wannamaker, RP.
@betterboundariespodcast
www.briawannamaker.com
Support the show, buy COFFEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!
As always, please remember that these podcast episodes are for educational purposes only and are not a substitute for medical healthcare or mental healthcare. Podcasts are available as an educational and entertainment resource and are not advice, recommendations, or suggestions. Please seek out the necessary professional services if you require assistance.
You have so many options. There's a beautiful range of options and possibilities that we often neglect to see because we are so stuck in this all or nothing dichotomous, black and white. Thinking of it has to be one or the other.
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Better Boundaries Podcast. It has been a long time coming. OK, I've taken a good sized impromptu break from podcasting but have been itching to get back into it. So I'm really excited to come back and chat with you vote all things boundary related and the boundaries that we have with ourselves and with other people and they just have such a big impact in our lives through our work and through our social relationships and our family. So this is a topic that really interests me. And
lately there have been a couple people that have said to me, Bria, you are so busy and not in a bad way. People have said this in like the most loving way of trying to be respectful. And like they're like, you're so busy, I can work around your schedule and and all that stuff. So they're trying to be accommodating. And I think about four people said it to me in the span of a couple days and I was like, Oh my gosh, what is this label that I have created for myself as being this person who is busy, busy, busy and never necessarily available? And I guess the question is, do I also want that label now? And sometimes we stick to these pieces of our identity because they used to serve us, but maybe they're not serving you anymore. And it's OK to let things go and adapt and adopt, adapt to new skills and adopt new ways of being so that you don't have to continue in old patterns that are distressing anymore. And I've kind of talked about this on the podcast before, about me personally taking on more work and just keeping really busy because it sets a natural boundary. It sets the boundary of I'm busy, I have a commitment, I have somewhere to be. It's an automatic know that people understand. It's clear and concise versus if you just don't want to participate in something or you want to take time for yourself, it can be challenging
to say no to things like that when other people are asking you. So I think that subconsciously, and I've mentioned this before on the podcast, that I have typically been the person to take on more work in order to,
in order to be able to just set a clear boundary with family, friends, whomever. And this might not be your motivator as well, but we've got to take a look at this in the scope of society as a whole. You know when we are saying our lives are busy, I said there was a a client who came in one day and they said, like, how are things with you? And my typical answer was, oh, busy. And they said, oh, is your life busy or is it full? And I was like, oh,
oh, I love that. I love when I get to learn from other people. It was such a beautiful moment to be like, yeah, you know what it actually is right now? Just full. And that's such a beautiful place. Because when we're busy, there's a layer of guilt. There's a layer of being spread too thin or pulled in multiple different directions and and not feeling that we're able to be attentive to everything that's on our plate. But when our life is full, it's just really beautiful. It's like, yeah, my life is full. I'm doing everything that I love and enjoy and you know I'm making money and I'm contributing and and I have family and I get to engage in these types of leisure activities. So when our lives are full versus busy, I think this is such a beautiful distinction to be able to think about and to make and to reflect on. And you've been asking yourself, right now, is your life busy or is it full? And where can you make shifts toward honoring the fullness and kind of detaching from the busyness?
There's also been an important piece of learning that comes, you know, when we can shift out of the busyness we're running at. Oh my gosh, such an incredible speed, just racing along. And maybe you have this feeling to where life is just chaotic. Things are happening all the time, whether it's good things or sometimes there's like crises that happen or just ups and downs that we naturally go through in life. But when you actually slow down and take things off of your plate so that you have more fullness, less busyness, you can actually start to apply yourself work, kind of emotional regulation skills to your life.
So if you're like me, you are someone who kind of loves the idea of personal growth, spiritual growth, Wellness, overall mental health and just that kind of growth mindset, well-being and just really taking care of yourself holistically. And our emotions are a big part of them. And something that I'm seeing regularly is the level of dysregulation that our society is in right now. And that's a globally as a whole, as a collective, but I'm seeing it on smaller scale. So for example, within people driving around town, within neighbors, with people that I work with and loved ones seeing it on a smaller scale like more I guess personal relationships. So this level of emotional and nervous system dysregulation that everyone's experiencing right now, I think it was heightened during the pandemic and post pandemic and just the cost of everything. But this has been a long time coming. And it's funny because we think that we are in this kind of Wellness culture where we're talking about mental health and quote UN doing things about it. But
we're not.
We're just talking about it and we have to make some changes. I believe that the changes first start with ourselves. You have to practice what you preach, and that is something that I've really found important over the last while. So you know, like humans are slow to change, slow to change. We get really stuck in these patterns and habits and ways of being, and it has to do with our brain want certainty. Our brain wants so much certainty that we are scared to go into the unknown, even if it could be something fantastic that serves us. We the grooves in our brain that we continue exploring become a habit and a pattern and we're scared to venture out into other potential neural connections that we could make and other habits and patterns that we can develop. And that's why it becomes so difficult for behavior change. So like I said, I think that we're seeing this level of chaos and emotional and nervous system dysregulation as a whole, global societal level, cultural in different communities, in different religions. We are seeing it in in industries. We're seeing it in agencies. If you work for a
company, maybe you're seeing it within your own agency. And then like I said, I'm seeing on a smaller scale too with people that I worked with. I'm seeing people in my city that I might not know, but I'm seeing their level of this regulation. Same with neighbors and then my own loved ones too. So that can be really challenging when we're in the midst of trying to learn to, one, manage that busyness versus fullness and take certain things off of our plate so that, two, we can work to regulate our own emotions. And what I say by this, what I mean when I say that we have this kind of collective sense of emotional and nervous system dysregulation is the level of anger that people are experiencing right now. And we can blatantly see people's level of anger because it's coming out toward others. People are lashing out. They are blaming others. They're maybe even seeking to get their needs met by other people who, you know, don't have the capability of meeting their needs because it's it requires more than that. It's a traumatic wound from the past or from not receiving the love that you needed as a child or the attention that you needed as a child. Or just even the safety and security that you needed. So I'm seeing this often 1. The lashing out and then. The next piece is blaming other people. And then a third part to that that can really show how dysregulated we are within ourselves
is when we are seeking our needs to be met by other people. And often we don't even know we're doing that, you know, and that can come up as you're even just wanting to have a conversation with a friend because maybe you're feeling rejected. You feel like they don't want to spend time with you. You feel like you ask them to spend more time together and they're not the ones reaching out to you. That can be simply a result of a wound in yourself that needs healing and some attention. So I think it's really important with all of these that we start reflecting in ourselves, reflecting doing our own mental health work. This is the work, right? This is the practice of looking continuously at ourselves. And you know, I try my best not to reach out to someone like to start a a conversation or communication for how they've quote UN failed me or haven't met my needs. Unless I've done some reflecting on it. And that looks like asking myself, is this related to, you know, something I've gone through before? Is this something that I could do myself? Is there something else going on here? You know, is this just like a surface level problem and there's something deeper happening. So really reflecting, like asking yourself those deeper questions, what is it that I actually need? Because sometimes we'll ask for things, but it's not the true it won't get us what the actual need is. And I think remembering that other people cannot make us happy, that is our
job. That is an inside job, inside your mind, inside your body, your soul, really working to support yourself and your well-being. And we place that on to other people often because of this anger that we're experiencing. We have this grief and this loss and just not feeling like we're enough or we're able to to meet our own needs and and it creates a sense of frustration and anger within us. So then it's easier if we put that responsibility onto others and blame others and try and change others and control others. But really it's about us. And now there are five things that we can control in order to put our Wellness at the forefront of our lives. And like I've said before, that's what to me, that's what boundaries are, is when you can put your well-being in your holistic sense of self at the forefront of your life, then you are able to contribute and be present from a grounded, energized, overflowing state versus a depleted state. And I think that many of us are moving through life in an exhausted, depleted state.
So here are the five things that are within our control.
We can control our breathing. Wild, right? I've been reminding myself of this often, many, many, many times a day. Taking a deep breath in, exhaling. Breathing all the way into your stomach. Expanding your diaphragm. Feeling your stomach rise and fall, connecting deeper with your body through your breath. You are in control of that. You are in control of your actions, what you say and do, those choices, you're in control of what you're thinking you're in control of. You have 80,000 thoughts or more a day. 95% are typically the same, with only about 5% obviously being more creative or novel. That's terrifying. What can you What thoughts can you invite in that are new and that aren't looping on these old patterns? We can control our feelings, our emotions. I know it doesn't feel like it. Sometimes when you're emotionally dysregulated and you don't even know where your baseline level is, you just know you don't feel good. You don't. You don't feel like yourself. But you can. Once we control our thoughts, we can control our feelings, because our thoughts lead to our feelings. And I want you to try this exercise next time you are having some kind of like meltdown or outburst or whatever's going on for you. You can even try it. And not an intense moment, but thinking about turning your thoughts off all the way, like stopping, thinking, and just feeling the actual feeling. Holy jump insurance, you will realize how much your thoughts impact your feelings. You know, I've done this a few times myself, and then when I shut my thoughts off and just feel the feelings, it's like, oh OK, that's cool. I'm just sad. But when we we attach a thought to it, we are giving it a deeper meaning. And that meaning is often rooted in a past history of shame or ways we feel like we've failed or fears of the future. And that creates
worse feelings, really uncomfortable, sad feelings. So when you are able to work on controlling those thoughts, then we can control the feelings and just feel the feelings and that is OK. And when we move from there, we can also control our belief systems. Our world beliefs are shaped when we are young, whether we view the world as kind of positive, more neutral, more negative, how we view other people and situations and events. So we have the power to change our belief systems. You know, are you someone who is typically more pessimistic and judgmental? Are you someone who is, like, really optimistic and, like naive? Are you someone who's in the middle? There's a whole spectrum of ways in which we can expand our world view and our beliefs about ourselves and others in this world, and we often stay really stuck in our belief systems because that feels safe. The brain has kept us there for a reason. You know, if you were let down in the past, we expect the worst. Maybe you're going to be let down again, says the brain. So I'm just gonna keep you at arm's length from everybody and set a really firm boundary because I don't want to be hurt again, I don't want to be disappointed again, and I don't want to feel like I'm disappointing others again. So the brain sets a really firm boundary there for us. This is certain, this I know for certain. This is how people act. This is how people are, right? You've heard people say that before. But the truth is we don't know that. And we have the capability to change and to shift our
belief systems just as everybody else does.
And that can be so powerful. When you begin to zoom out versus being in that tunnel vision of your beliefs, we can get really, really stuck there. So I invite all of you today to take a look at that. That can lead to this all or nothing, thinking that we have this good or bad, this right or wrong, that can be where we get really stuck in our decision making. If you classify yourself as an, quote UN indecisive person, maybe it's because you're terrified of making the wrong decision. But like what? What is? What's the wrong decision? I mean, we know that some things are very not good, so that aside. But I mean, if you're trying to decide between a small dilemma or if it's a relationship thing, or if it's a work thing, you have so many options. There's a beautiful range of options and possibilities that we often neglect to see because we are so stuck in this all or nothing dichotomous, black and white. Thinking of it has to be one or the other. So I invite you today to re examine what beliefs have you been holding onto for ages and where can you shift those and you'll see it coming up in your shoulds. When you're saying I should have done this, I should have done that. Those are your beliefs. Start questioning looking into those with a really curious and compassionate lens. And I guess
this next piece, which I'll go over in some detail, is
we are really in a communication and understanding deficit. What is that? What does that mean? I feel like we are going backward into caveman times with our ability to communicate and understand ourselves and to communicate and to understand other people as well. Communicate and understand, communicate with and understand other people is what I mean. See, I told you going backwards. I feel like we are at a deficit at this time. Our walls are up. We are not wanting to converse with others or take in new information or be curious or compassionate toward other people. We are stuck in defense mode, stuck in our egos, and we have to shift out of our ego identities and set those aside to be able to accept questions and feedback onto our self and also offer questions and feedback on to others to really just have a deeper understanding of one another. Because if we can't, then what is the point? That's my question. What's the point if we're gonna be in close community and connection with other people? I mean, this is how humans have survived and thrived. We're social beings, we're communal beings. And then we're just going through this whole mode of categorizing people into good, bad, right, wrong. And you're this, you're that, you're to blame. We're really not interested in understanding people. And it's sad because we're really not interested in understanding ourselves either. We tell ourselves you should do this, you should do that, don't do this, don't do that. And then we're not even doing things that we're interested in or passionate about. So yeah, I'd say there's a deficit deficit
in our current communication with others and understanding of others and understanding of ourselves. So how do we get to know ourselves better? And how do we get to know other people better?
It's fascinating, really, because I think that's all that we want in life, is to feel understood and loved and accepted, and that's all other people want too. But we put up this barrier, this defense, this ego, when, you know, people ask us questions sometimes because we feel like we need to know the answers. So I think maybe #1 is getting really comfortable with just saying, I don't know, or I'll look into that, or I'm not sure, or even being curious about their question to you. So if somebody asks you a question, it doesn't have to be met with an answer. It can be met with another question, you know, oh, that's a great inquiry. What fascinates you about that? Or I'm not sure. What do you know about that? Rather than we get irritable, we get snappy because we don't know the answer and we're judging ourselves. So then we're like, I don't know, how do you expect me to know that or whatever it whatever your reaction to that is. So we're shutting people down, right? We're in this cancel culture where we're shutting people down for just asking questions or just having a different opinion, and we're not allowing any flowing communication, any reciprocal communication. We are just in this culture of outputting information and with nothing coming in like our receivers not on. We are receiving information all the time, but we're choosing
not to take it in.
And sometimes that can be a good thing. Sometimes that is the boundary that you need to set. Sometimes you know, not attending to a bunch of external stimuli and being triggered by things around you or having your emotions activated by things around you and really staying in control of yourself and grounded and in your heart center is the way to go. And other times, you know, if it's really a deep connection that you're wanting to build with somebody, you know it's a a close friend, family member, loved one, romantic partner, and you're wanting to build these relationships. We have to be able to ask better questions. At times we have to be able to really get creative to learn more about other people, and it's an interesting mirror to look at. You know? When are you defensive or feeling emotionally activated? When people ask you things about yourself? Where are your walls up where they're needed, and where are your walls up where allowing them to come down a little bit could create a deeper, more meaningful relationship with somebody else and. I think one of the most important pieces about this is do not assume that you know everything about everybody, especially in your close relationships. Often times we try to predict how someone will respond, especially if it's someone we've been in relationship with long time for a long time, like a family member or even a romantic partner. And we try and we think we know, we
try to predict how they're going to respond
or what we think their reaction is a result of. But often times we don't really know. So it's on us to create that loving environment where people can come forward and actually answer our questions so that we can better understand them and where people are coming from. Because that's where the magic happens in a relationship when we actually understand one another. And even thinking about it, I'm like, what does that mean to be able to understand someone? And it makes you reflect on yourself and be like, OK, here's why it's important for me to feel understood. You do. You know that frustrating feeling when you're like in an argument with someone and you're like, oh, you don't even understand me? You don't even get where I'm coming from. Are you even listening to me? And so we all have that, right? And it can be on a smaller scale or it can be larger scale like in an argument, but it can just be that daily sense of, Oh my gosh, like, does anyone, does anyone understand me? Like, and and then we also know the feeling of what it's like when someone does understand you. You're like, oh, that's my person. That person gets me or my friend, like, they really get what I'm going through or I barely even have to say anything or explain anything. And it's like they know what I'm going through. And so I think that is kind of the marker to go off of of what it feels like to be truly understood. There's a piece of acceptance there and humans thrive when we are feeling accepted and loved versus when we are feeling lonely. You know, we went through that in COVID.
Loneliness was talked about so much and there is something to be said for the fact that now we are with people, we are able to be with people versus in COVID lockdown and stuff. We weren't. But would you rather be lonely because you're literally physically alone, or lonely while in a relationship because you don't have the depth, the intimacy, the connection emotionally with the people that are surrounding you? So yeah, I just wanted to bring this topic to light and maybe inspire you to find out more about the people you think you know already. Because chances are you don't know, You don't know. And how beautiful is it that you can cultivate an environment where they feel heard and seen and loved and understood? And how do you cultivate that for yourself and foster a sense of belonging within yourself rather than all this self rejection that we do? Like I said before, it's evident when we are rejecting ourselves because there is this resistance, this I should do this, I shouldn't do that. I should have gone here. I shouldn't have gone there. I don't know. You know what I mean? We are constantly judging ourselves for you know, not being enough, not being enough. Instead of looking at and understanding all the ways that we we just are enough. And loving ourselves for those reasons and creating a sense of peace within ourselves. So how can you foster that for yourself and offer that to those that you're in relationship with? It has been so nice to chat with you again. I'm really excited
to be on this journey with you and I'll see you again soon.