Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You.
[00:00:00] Speaker B: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason, and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 05:00 p.m. Or Wednesdays at 07:00 p.m. If you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison church, you can find us online at Madison church.
Be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our Sermons podcast Madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you.
[00:00:37] Speaker A: So here we go. I am Sandra de Niri. If you don't know me, I work at covenant counseling, and I'm a counselor there. So one of the things I work with all the time, and Becky and I were talking about this a little while ago is pretty much every person that comes in needs to hear about boundaries. So we are forever dealing with boundaries, and that is not where I want to be, although it's really cute.
Okay, here we go. So I want to tell y'all, I went to seattle with my mom, and my mom is a very Bible knowledge scholar, if you will. She is forever given me a scripture. And we were walking along the shore, and she quoted this scripture while we were there. And I have fallen in love with it, have always loved it. So I use it all the time, and it's in Jeremiah 522.
This is the english standard version, and it says, I won't be able to read it. It says, do you not fear me? Declares the Lord. Do you not tremble before me? I place the sand as the boundary for the sea, a perpetual barrier that cannot.
You'll help me. What is that?
Through the waves toss. Though the waves toss, they cannot prevail. Though they roar, they cannot pass. Over there. I'll just make it bigger. Even with my glasses, I can't see.
So this is a picture that I have up in my wall. Jennifer shared helped me put this together. We drove around, and we looked at different kinds of boundaries, because when you're in the room, we kind of want to give you an idea, what's a good boundary? What's a bad boundary? What's a boundary? That absolutely is not going to work. So if you can kind of see, and I'll zoom in a little bit.
So if we have Rapunzel's tower. It's kind of dark here on the bottom right for you.
You're not going to quite get up there. That's a pretty hard boundary. You're not going to get close. Just above that is Alcatraz. And you all know about Alcatraz. You're not going to get there very easily. You might even not make it. Directly above that is a prison with all the barbed wire. And I forget what you call this wire, but I'm not going to go mess with it.
So go back down to the bottom. And this one makes me kind of laugh. You can't see it too clearly, but it's a house. And they've got a fence on the front, but there's part of the fence missing. So always use that as well. We set boundaries, but we really didn't set them well because people can still come in. Then you look above that, there's a fence. It doesn't have any kind of handle, at least from our side, that you can see where you can come in. So that also is a pretty hard boundary. And this one above is a window, and they put metal bars around it. You are absolutely not going to get through that and then go across. And I kind of like this boundary. I think it's a decent boundary. You've got three layers of fence, but you can see all the way across it. So it's not a real hard boundary. It's a good boundary.
And then if you go down here, you see the two ropes with the wire just here on the very bottom.
That one, if it didn't have all the shrubbery in front of it, would be a really good boundary kind of one. I think Becky has one in her office that has a picture where that'd be a good one for your kids. They can still see everything, but it's a little bit harder. If you had a single rope, that'd be a great one for your spouse. Yes, we still have boundaries with our spouses, guys. Okay. And it's okay. It's healthy to do that directly to the left of that one. Is it showing up like, I want it, too?
See if I can do this.
This one, if you go on it, you're going to get hurt if you cross that boundary, because it's got rocks, it's got water, and you're just not going to make it.
This one here, no boundaries at all. So very porous, very dangerous.
And this one, he's just cute as he can be. So I wanted him in my office. He's real. His name is Peanut. He lives off of Mooresville Road. I don't know. A lot of you might know him, but he's a cutie pie. So he made it to my slideshow and into my office, and people really enjoy him. So what are boundaries? Boundaries are limits that we have. Boundaries are as soon as you get in your car and you drive away from your home, guess what? You're already dealing with boundaries. You've got your neighbor's house, your neighbor's yard. You have a street. You've got to follow stop signs, traffic lights yield signs, and you also have lines in the road to keep you and keep the other car safe. And you got to stay in your lane. So, as you can see, boundaries are there to keep us safe.
In relationship, boundaries are about creating protection, either for you or for others. If you don't feel safe. Operative word, guys. If you don't feel safe personally or in the relationship, you cannot progress to higher level needs like affection, love, and self actualization.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs, he's a psychologist that, in the 1940s, developed this needs for how a person can function and best have their needs met. And as you can see, at the bottom, it's the physiological needs. These are the things that we all need. Breathing, food, shelter, things like that. But just above it is safety and security.
That's your health, your employment, your property, your family, and your social ability.
And notice just above that, love and belonging, friendship, family, intimacy, a sense of.
A sense of correction. And you've got self esteem, confidence, achievement, respect. And then above that, you have this self actualization. And that's at the peak of what we all want to achieve. So when you start setting boundaries, be prepared. There will be resistance. There's going to be pushback.
That means that you're on the right track. And it kind of stinks because most of us don't want to deal with any conflict. We want it to be easy, simple, and we just say, hey, here's my boundary, and people are going to just jump right in. It doesn't quite work that way.
They tend to infringe on what you need as your personal space. They are not a punishment or you dictating to someone what to do.
Um, so, okay. Understanding boundaries. This is absolutely one of my favorites of all time. This is Brene Brown. If y'all were here last week, becky showed a video of her. She's got several books. Really, really good. I have this up in my office, and it says, daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves, even when we risk disappointing others. Did you catch it? Even when we risk disappointing others, and sometimes you will disappoint others, and it's okay.
Boundaries are about creating protection.
Boundaries are not about the other person.
They are for you, for you and your expectations.
So these are different types of boundaries, styles that we have. You have a handout that'll have that in there.
Porous boundaries. Okay? And these are going to be on the opposite ends. You're going to have porous, and then you're going to have rigid boundaries. So with porous boundaries, lets almost anyone get close to them. It doesn't matter who you are. You kind of just speak your mind and you talk to them. You let them know all your stuff. It's kind of one of those things. It's just very porous, overly trusting. You overshare your information.
I'm sure some of you been in a store and somebody stands by you and they just start to spill their guts to you. And you're like, I don't know you. And it gets a little uncomfortable.
So those are very porous boundaries. Overly involved in others problems, having a difficulty to say no, quick to adopt others opinions, avoids conflict by giving in to others, does not assert personal values and communicates passively.
So let's go to the far right side. And these are your rigid boundaries. You keep most people at a distance, very untrusting of others, very guarded with personal information.
You say no to others most of the time detached from others problems. You tend to ignore others opinions, avoids conflict by pushing others away, has inflexible personal values and communicates aggressively. Now, if you brought in those two far ends and you bring them right here, this is where you get healthy boundaries. A healthy boundary. You're selective about who you let in and who you keep out. You take time to build trust with others, and we're going to get a little bit more into that in a minute. You share personal information appropriately. You're able to say no when needed. You support others without being too involved. You value both your own and others opinions.
You accept conflict as a normal, pottered life. Again, conflict is really hard for a lot of us to work through. So what we have a tendency to do is we just run from it. And a lot of times we become very passive. And with us becoming passive, people tend to run over us. And when people tend to run over us, we become resentful. That's the key word or key feeling. If you begin to feel resentful, kind of take a step back and take a look at what that might mean. Okay. Typically it means they're infringing on your boundaries and your personal space where you're comfortable and communicates assertively. And I'll talk to you about that in a minute as well.
I chose these. There are several types of boundaries, but I thought what might be applicable that you all could connect to. So there are mental. You don't have a handout for this one. That was just something I threw up. The freedom to have your own thoughts, values and opinions.
A good boundary way to set is I respect your perspective, although I do not agree there's emotional boundaries. How emotionally available are you to others?
As much as I want to support you right now, I do not have the emotional capacity. I hope that doesn't make you cringe. You have every right to state to anyone what makes you uncomfortable.
Material monetary decisions, giving or lending to others already lent you money last week, so not again right now. And I remember my dad always telling me, he said, if you don't have the money to lend and do without, then you probably don't need to be lending. So kind of keep that as a little bit of a standard. I think it helps that if you have it, go ahead and give it with no expectation to get it back, because that's kind of what money does. A lot of times it ruins friendships. At least I get to see that quite a bit.
Internal self regulation, the energy expended on self versus others.
I have been social all week. I need the weekend to myself. You have permission to just take a day off if you need it to put back into you. A lot of moms, we give and give to our children. We give and give to our spouses and doing for our home. And sometimes we just need to put back into us. It does help us to do better conversational topics that you do and do not feel comfortable discussing. I would rather not be a part of this conversation.
So I had a client tell me the other day they were talking to somebody, and it was a political conversation, which, of course, should already have its own limitations. But this guy just started telling him his political views and really his stance, and he politely listened. And at the very end, when the guy was done, he said, I'm uncomfortable with this conversation, and I would prefer not to have that with you. Wow, great boundaries. And it wasn't hurtful. It's okay for you to be able to voice it.
Physical.
We're looking at privacy, personal space, your body. I prefer not to hug people. I do not know guys, even counselors are this way I've got two counselors that I work with and you cannot walk up to them and give them a hug. They will not receive it. And they've let us know up front, I do not like to be hugged, and that's okay. So that's just a boundary that they have and it's not a disconnect. It's just a respect level that we need to be able to give others time. How much time you spend with someone or doing something? I can only say for 30 minutes. And you get to establish what those are. Okay.
Non negotiables, guys. These are biggies. Personal, physical touch, sexual contact.
Can't help but get on my soapbox just for 1 second and tell you if you've got teenage daughters, they are coming in and they are telling me. I'm not saying anybody's teenage daughter comes to me, okay. I'm just telling you. That's what I see.
They've got a boyfriend. The boyfriend says, I'm your boyfriend. I'm allowed to touch your body. And it's happening.
And it is a really hard experience for them because they have so much guilt and so much shame that they carry with it that we've got to work through to get past. So don't forget to have those conversations with your daughters. It's okay to say no.
In terms of relationship.
I see this a lot. Abuse, infidelity, come up with what your boundary is with that, with your spouse.
If you hit me, I'm leaving. Or you're going to have to go or you're going to have to get some counseling, whatever that might be. I'm not saying for any of you exactly what you should say. You come up with that, what that boundary looks like for you.
Infidelity happens far more than I ever thought, namely because we don't know about it, but it happens a lot.
I think one of the greatest blessings that I have experienced in counseling is I have two couples who there was infidelity and they have opted to work through the marriage.
Talk about hard work. It is a lot of hard work, but they are doing it and they are doing it very well. And I think they will have a very strong marriage by the time it's completed for them. But it can be done. So it's not the end to all. So just know that although it is definitely the option, this one's kind of funny. One of the counselors gave me this and it says, setting boundaries, you will get gas.
Guilt, you don't love me or you would do this or if you really cared about me. You would do this anger, they're going to get mad. They're not going to like the fact that you have set a boundary. It's uncomfortable, especially if there's a mental health issue with that person.
You're really going to receive a lot of anger, silent treatment, sadness, and these are ways that you just be aware of them. I think if you know that that's coming, then you can kind of protect yourself and know there's a potential for this to come. So what can I do to protect myself? Okay, you do have this handout.
This one is setting boundaries.
I think I'm going to use mine with this one. Boundaries should be based on your values or the things that are important for you. For example, if you value spending time with family, set firm boundaries about working late. Your boundaries are yours and yours alone.
Many of your boundaries might align with those that are close to you, but others will be unique. Know your boundaries before entering a situation.
This will make you less likely to do something that you're not comfortable with, doing things to say. I think I sat back there last week and I asked a couple of people, what do you think? What would you like to hear about boundaries? And what do we say? How do I not feel guilty?
Here's some things you can do.
I'm not comfortable with this. I can't do that for you.
This is not acceptable.
Please don't do that.
This doesn't work for me. I'm drawing the line at fill in the blank. Not at this time.
I've decided not to. I don't want to do that.
In a great conversation starter, anytime that you're interacting with someone, if you say, let's say you go up to somebody and you say, you always make me mad when you say that the automatic response that you've just generated is defensiveness, it's automatic. We're human. That's kind of what we do when we feel attacked. And when you begin a sentence with you always, you never, that's typically the response you're going to get instead.
I care about our relationship.
I want to prevent problems by clarifying. I want to continue to feel safe with you.
I feel sad, bummed, hurt, disrespected, or potentially you could say, when you make fun of me, when you say things to shame me, hurt me, when you are critical of me, those are soft ways to engage in the conversation. And before you ever start, some boundaries are hard to set because they're really difficult. It's kind of been going on in a marriage or in a relationship.
What you want to do is you want to start with somebody who is safe. It could be a parent, could be your spouse, unless they're the culprit. Okay, but start with somebody that you feel very safe with, and if you start that way, then it kind of starts to build that up for you. So what do you do? Use confident body language. Face the other person. Make eye contact, and use a steady tone of voice in an appropriate volume. Don't scream because you're making your point. And don't talk so soft because you're trying to be meek about it. Be firm.
Plan ahead. Think about what you want to say and how you will say it before entering a difficult discussion. This can help you feel more confident about your position you're taking. Be respectful. Avoid yelling, using put downs, or giving the silent treatment. It's okay to be firm, but your message will be better received if you are respectful.
Compromise when appropriate. Listen and consider the needs of the other person. You never have to compromise, but give and take is part of any healthy relationship.
Tips for healthy boundaries I believe I put that in there's.
So we kind of went over this. Know your limits before becoming involved in a situation. Know your values. Super important to know your values, guys. Every person has limits that are different, and they're often determined by your personal values.
For example, if you value family above all else, like we said earlier, you're going to make time to say, I need to spend time with my family. I need to spend time with my daughters, whatever that is. Okay. Feel okay. To set that boundary, listen to your emotions. If you notice feelings of discomfort or resentment, don't bury them. Try to understand what your feelings are telling you. Resentment, for example, can often be traced to feelings of being taken advantage of. And that was kind of what I was telling you all earlier. Once you start feeling resentment, just key in on that word. If you'll hang on to it, you'll know what I'm talking about. If you can go back and start to think, you're going to feel that they're pressuring me, they're moving me in a direction that I'm not comfortable with.
Have self respect. If you always give in to others, ask if you are allowing as much respect to yourself as you show to others.
Boundaries that are too open might be due to misguided attempts to be liked by elevating other people's needs above one's own. We often call this people pleasing skills, and if you find yourself in that direction, we can help you.
Becky and I both know enough skill sets to try to get you through that, because often that stems from a past where you've just been caught up in having to do that so that you can be accepted or well received or loved or seeking that relationship. Okay.
Have respect for others. Be sure that your actions are not self serving at the expense of others. Interactions should not be about winning or taking as much as possible. Instead, consider what's fair to everyone.
Given the settings of the relationship. You might win, but at the cost of a relationship. Long term health. Be assertive. Really wanted to hit this one, guys, because being assertive and being aggressive are two very different things. Being assertive, you want your voice heard and you're taking the other person's feelings into account when you're being assertive. When you're being aggressive, that is about your needs and what you want, and you are not taking the other person's needs into account. Okay? So let that be another marker for you.
Consider the long view. Some days you will give more than you take, and other days you will take more than you give. Be willing to take a longer view of relationships when appropriate. But here's the key. If you are always the one who's given or taking, there might be a problem maintaining boundaries. We're about to get to my favorite part here in a minute.
Try to be consistent. This is not a slide. I mean, not in your paperwork. Sorry. Try to be consistent. Deal directly with the person. Be firm. Talk honestly about what your experience is, and don't do something you don't want to do. Here comes that word again. It builds resentment. Okay. I hope I've hammered that home because it's so important. And here, guys, is my most favorite thing I work with my clients on.
This is called a relationship circle. And what this is, is when clients come in, a lot of times they'll come in and there's a lot of dysfunction in the interactions that they have with either family, a loved one, friends, it doesn't matter. But often that's what the cut off is. There's some relationship, unless we're doing grief or there's marital issues or things like that. But typically, people that come in with a lot of anxiety and a lot of depression, you can almost stem it back to not all, but a lot of it comes to relationship issues. So I work very hard on relationships to really give the support that people need in that arena. So if you look in the very center, you've got me, God and spouse. Not all spouses are in this inner core.
I would love to tell you every spouse or every couple that comes in, and even for premarital, they're pretty good. But once you start extending outside of that, you start to see that that relationship sometimes is not safe for somebody. If it is not safe, guess what? We're going to move them out of that circle and I'll teach you how to do that here in just a minute.
But for now, we're just going to kind of go over what these are. So you kind of know.
So it's a very intimate relationship.
Some people come in and they don't have God in the center. So I know that I've got my work cut out to do. We're christian based counseling, so we really do focus on that relationship with God as well, for healing. Some people are very angry at God for their situation.
This is something I do. I'll just have the circles with nothing on them and I'll ask them. So who's at your core, who's the most important people in your life and where's God? It's a great question. And you learn a lot about where that client is when they put down that their spouse is like three or four rings down, which should be an acquaintance or even a stranger, even relationally, where's your family? A lot of family is way out here in stranger mode, rather than maybe two or three circles out.
So close friends, these are people. And when I say close friends to my clients, it is who are your close friends that are like family that you can call at 02:00 in the morning and you can say, hey, I'm struggling. Can we talk?
If you do not have that in your life, I encourage you to build that. It is one of the most important outside of your marital relationship, in my opinion. And your relationship with God, of course, that's a given.
That's one of the most important relationships you can have, is to have that support from other people.
Family, does it always make it into this little circle? Sometimes family gets booted way out there and that becomes very dangerous unless they're not safe. But sometimes people just get mad. Somebody didn't come to my wedding or somebody didn't take off, or it's little things, but it's so valuable to them that by the time they come and see me, it's grown into this huge snowball effect that was over something so small. And so they move these family out, and I'll tell you what happens in a minute.
So acquaintance. An acquaintance is just somebody that you see.
You might go to the grocery store and you might use the same clerk if you go to the same place, post office, things like that. These are people that you kind of see, but you may or may not know their first or last name, but you at least have a gesture of waving or shaking hands or making eye contact. Okay. That's an acquaintance.
Strangers are just exactly what that means. They're a stranger. You don't know them. They are not part of your inner circle. They are not part of your life in any way. You may or may not even look at them. You may not even acknowledge them. That's a stranger to you. Okay.
So here's where my favorite, favorite part is. Not that that wasn't, but there comes another. So I want you to imagine that there's a brick wall.
See where every black circle or ring is. I want you to imagine that there is a brick wall and put it all the way out here where you have stranger. Okay. And what you do when you meet a stranger. How does a stranger make it all the way to your inner core? Because my husband, at some point, was a stranger to me. I didn't always know who he was. How did he make it into my inner core? This is how it happens.
Think of your brick wall and you hand one brick to that person and you say to them, any exchange, hello, my name is Sandra. How are you? Hey. How are you? I'm Conrad Daenery. Wow. There we go. It went well. It was good, right? Kind of reciprocated, felt good. Kind of liked it. So then we give another brick. So you might share something a little bit more. And it goes on. It takes time. It is not something that just goes fast track from stranger all the way into the inner core. Okay. It's got to take time to develop. Sometimes we go so fast on these relationships, we get excited. Somebody paid attention to me and, boy, we fast track them. They're in our inner core. They know everything about us.
But we haven't had time to develop that relationship.
That is key to every relationship that you have in order for it to be successful. Give it time.
Let the trust develop. So all these bricks that I was talking about, if you go to the very bottom, guess who gets those bottom bricks?
Only the inner core. Those bricks are never handed out to a lot of people. There should be in your inner core, guys, probably three people. It's pretty safe. You start getting those numbers any bigger, you're getting unsafe.
Kind of scary, isn't it? But it works. And if you'll keep other people out here where we have close friends and close family.
It's very, very healthy. So now what do we do if somebody in our inner core hurts us? Let's say there's an affair.
What's the tendency?
The tendency is we're going to throw them all the way out to stranger mode.
What happens to our mental health as a result of that?
Depression, anxiety. And it is off the charts. It's at the very top.
Because what you want to do, just like you did when you're meeting somebody and you are giving them little information and over time developing the relationship, you kind of do the same thing as you move them out. They're not safe. So you might move them one to two rings out.
We don't know. I wish they had times to, and we might. With marriage, you all need to let me know. I'm going to do the marriage talk as well.
If there are things specifically that you want me to talk about, I will, gladly. I don't care what it is.
I'm not afraid to talk about anything. So please let me know. I will bring it up. I will form a slide that has whatever information you need that will be helpful to you and your marriage. But I got off track. But if somebody is in your inner core, you move them out one or two rings. You don't move somebody completely out to stranger, even though they have hurt you somewhere along the way, they earn the right to get to be in there. We just need to move them out one or two rings. Don't move them all the way out. If that's still unsafe, then you continue to move them out and they may have to go to stranger mode and it's okay. But you've got to do that in a healthy way and break that down a little at a time. Okay. That's my favorite, favorite, favorite thing in the whole wide world to teach. I love it because I think it's so helpful to everybody that comes across because this gives you healthy connections and healthy boundaries. Now put values and behavior here for a reason. I love this analogy. My boss showed it to me and I just think it's so cool. And I use it just about every single day. So I get people that come in and they say, you know, I've decided that there were people, I'll give you an example. Today somebody told me my coworkers are really mean to me and they're not treating me well, but all along for ten years, been doing the right thing. Finally got fed up and said, so I'm just going to do like they do. So I showed her this, I said, so this is what's happening to you, if you will let me. This is your values and this is your behavior. If you take your values, can you all see me and behavior here?
All of us, every single one of us. Our behaviors are going to move this way. We're just going to sometimes make bad decisions. Sometimes we're going to do things that, hey, maybe we shouldn't have done, okay? Everybody does that. So long as your behavior comes back to your value, you stay congruent, you stay true to yourself.
What my client did today, she said, here's my behaviors. I'm beginning to act like them, and I'm okay with it. What happened to her value system?
She moved it. She changed. And I told her, I said, do you want to be a different person? Because that's what you're going to be. People aren't going to recognize you at work. They're not going to know who you are because you're different doesn't mean they won't recognize her face. But I'm saying, her behaviors, if you go follow, then you become somebody different.
You're also going to come see a counselor at some point if you do that, because that's a hard place to go. Okay.
Those are my favorites. I couldn't wait to get to it. I hope I spend enough time telling you that part because it is my absolute favorite thing to do and work with clients to help them have healthy interactions with others, because it's that helpful. Okay. And if you have questions, you can keep them. I'll answer them here at the end.
Boundaries in relationships, they give you autonomy.
That's where you can be an individual.
They empower you.
They give you the clear expectations that you can have of one another.
I put a little note here to remind me, don't mistake a boundary for someone who's trying to control you. There is a difference. Control is you have to call me, you have to do this. And they start filling in all these things that you need to do in order for the relationship to be healthy. Guys, that's control. That's not a boundary.
A boundary is a very healthy connection to other people. It is not a disconnect. It is a healthy connection. So a boundary does not move you away from a person. It draws you closer to them. Okay. And I love this cartoon. One of my coworkers gave me that. She said, you draw beautiful boundaries. Thanks. I practiced. I showed it to my daughter. She said, give me the eraser.
No eraser, kid.
And then this is just, we're almost done. We're down to the wire, guys. When you notice someone else does something toxic the first time, don't wait for the second time before you address it or cut them off. Many survivors are used to the wait and see tactic, which only leaves them vulnerable to a second attack. As your boundaries get stronger, the wait time gets shorter. You never listen to this. Have to justify your intuition. Follow your gut, guys. Trust it. It's there for a reason.
And Brene Brown made it again, y'all. I just love her. It's Becky's fault.
Choose discomfort over resentment. So worth it, guys. It's just discomfort. It's not the end to everything just because. Okay, so choose discomfort as you set your boundary, and then this is my closing. I'm fixing to be done.
Boundaries need to be strong enough to fix the problem, but they need to be soft enough to put your head on at night.
Love that. My boss told me that one. I said, tell me something profound to close with. And I said, I like it. So that's it.
Any questions?
Okay, no questions?
No. Any questions? Really, I don't mind answering. Yes, ma'am.
[00:39:26] Speaker C: Do you have anything to say on boundaries with someone with mental health concerns like anxiety or depression? Because in my experience, it seems like there's the thought that they need more grace, they need more empathy. And I'm not saying that's not true, but do boundaries look different in that relationship, or are they the same?
[00:39:50] Speaker A: Does that make sense?
Okay, so what's a boundary for you? So where are you comfortable with it? Right.
[00:40:00] Speaker C: Well, I don't want to trigger them.
[00:40:03] Speaker A: Okay. Who's the boundary for?
That's the hard part because we do want to accommodate other people, and it gets you into trouble. That's where your resentment is going to build, and you're going to be uncomfortable. Do what's comfortable for you. I hate to say that it almost sounds like we're not caring, but that's true. Caring because you're protecting yourself to not build resentment and break the relationship, because that's what's going to happen in the end. If you build enough resentment, that relationship falls apart. Okay.
I'm so sorry.
Sure. She said, how does a boundary look with someone who has mental health issues, anxiety, depression. And how do I do my boundary?
I don't want to hurt them. I said, who's the boundary for? The boundary is for you. So when you're setting boundaries, you're not necessarily setting them for someone else. They're for you. Okay. So sorry. I should have thought of that.
That it. Oh, come on. Kidding.
[00:41:10] Speaker C: What if someone else has set a boundary that you don't feel comfortable keeping?
[00:41:15] Speaker A: What if someone else has set a boundary you don't feel comfortable with keeping?
I'm going to go get my slide now.
You're not comfortable with the boundary they set for you?
It's their boundary.
They're allowed to have that boundary. Can you be more specific? And maybe.
[00:41:36] Speaker C: I'm not dealing with this, but the first thing that popped into my mind is something my parents dealt with. And they had a relative who had left the church. And they were trying to get him back desperately because he was going through some health scares. And he said, if you don't stop talking to me about this, then I'm going to have to cut you off. And they didn't want him to be cut off in his last few months of life.
[00:42:04] Speaker A: That hurt. And it's hard not to, but you have to respect their boundary. It's their boundary.
I mean, it is. And that's a tough fee, because it does hurt. And sometimes. Remember what I said. There'll be sadness. There'll be anger. Can you all hear me okay? Okay. Thank you all.
