tell me about your vision. My vision is to train as many people as I can to know
how to practice healthy boundaries because as a psychotherapist I've seen
so many people's lives wrecked because they're on this game board of life and
they don't know how to play. They don't understand the rules and when someone
explains how boundaries work then it's like the clouds part and the sun shines
down and they finally get it so they don't have to be manipulated by others.
They don't have to be tethered to other people's expectations. They can have the
confidence to speak their thoughts and not be scared to have those hard
conversations. It just it's very freeing and empowering and to be honest I don't
really see how anybody can live a full victorious life without knowing how to
practice healthy boundaries. Can you tell me more about that? Sure. So if you think
about boundaries as being twofold, think of it in terms of yards. Like you have
your yard that you're responsible for. In your yard is what you think, what you
feel, and what you do. Those belong to you and you can change those things.
You're responsible for those things. What's not in your yard, what is on the
other side of the fence, is what someone else thinks, what someone else feels,
and what someone else does. Too often what happens is people get those things
reversed. They do not take accountability for their own actions and thoughts and
feelings because they're embarrassed, they're ashamed, they feel guilty, and
they're tried they try to run from those things. And at the same time they are
uber focused on what their neighbors, meaning their friends, their family, their
co-workers, they're uber focused on what these other people are thinking about
them, what these other people are feeling, what these other people are doing. Like
if these other people are holding a grudge against them, they just think they
can't, you know, they can't deal with it. They take responsibility for that. They're
trying to manage someone else's anger. They won't have the hard conversations
because they're terrified of the other person's anger. They're trying to keep
the peace, right? That's impossible to keep someone else's peace because their
peace is technically in their brain, which we have no control over. So once
people go and they approach life knowing that they can have control over what's
in their own yard and they don't have to try to manage or accept responsibility
for someone else's feelings, it's amazingly liberating and empowering.
Amazing. How often do people that come across you that you're trying to
coach or help have this realization that you are only responsible for your own
yard and not someone else's yard? It takes them a while. When they first come
into my office as one of my patients or one of my clients and they're telling
me, oh, these are my problems. This is everything that's going on in my life.
This is why I'm willing to spend my time and money and effort to come here to be
with you. The first thing I'm doing is I'm parsing out in my head how much of
what they're saying actually belongs to them and how much of what they're saying
is someone else's thoughts, feelings, or actions. That has got to be our first
step. Otherwise, we're wasting our time. We're wasting our time ignoring what we
do have control over and focusing on things that we do not. Frequently,
they'll realize that they are very timid and scared to have the hard
conversations, to do the things, to engage in life because of, well, someone else is
going to think this or that. I'm going to hurt somebody's feelings. I'm going to
make somebody mad. Well, technically, we can't even do that because they're hurt.
Their anger is in their brain, which we can't access. They're going to
decide how they're going to respond to us. That's not on us to navigate.
It's very ubiquitous. I see it almost every time I'm with a person once we
decide what's going on with them. It becomes pretty clear that boundaries is
an issue. Thank you for sharing that. Dana, where would you say that this vision,
where does this vision come from of helping people with boundaries? Two
places. One is personal and one is professional. The professional one I
shared because I kept noticing, I've been in private practice for over 16 years
and I didn't start out trying to notice it, but the more people came in and I
started really analyzing what the core issues that they had were, so many of
them were boundary related. I developed more and more of a passion for
trying to train people so they don't have to fall victim to manipulators and
narcissists and these kinds of things. The other core of my vision is personal
because my mother has several psychiatric issues that are rather
severe and these issues cause her to behave in ways that are very, very
narcissistic and manipulative and gaslighting. She would engage in
what I would call emotional extortion where she wanted certain things from me.
She wanted a lot of attention from me more than I could give her, more than I
should be able to have to give her. It was issues that she had before I ever
came along, but she was trying to play this out with me and the only way that I
could survive it was to figure out how to set healthy boundaries because she
would try to get me to give her a lot of attention. She would
want to be in front of my husband, in front of my children. She would want to
be my number one person. I told her one time, you know what, I think if I told you
that I was gonna leave my husband and kids and come move in your condo with
you and make you the number one center of my universe, you would say, okay well
when should I put that on my calendar? So it was very unhealthy what she expected
from me, but if I didn't do, if I didn't give her the attention that she wanted,
she would do things like call 911, get herself admitted to the hospital to try
to extort the emotion out of me and I have many of those stories. One, I'll just
share one. I had an emergency room doctor tell me to stop bringing her to the
emergency room because she was doing it to manipulate me. So you have medical
professionals that are recognizing what she's doing and telling me stop this, but
so she would drag this out in public to try to make me look really really
horrible and try to force me to give her this huge level of attention that was
far and beyond anything that would be considered healthy. So the only way that
I could navigate that was to develop healthy boundaries.
There's a story I feel coming. In the moment when you realized that that you
were getting emotionally extorted, please forgive me I'm very new to
this too, so getting used to this. How did you feel in the moment when you like
you figured it out like hey I'm getting manipulated right now and how did you
get out of it at that point? In the moment because it happened numerous
times. In the moments usually I would get very frustrated to the point sometimes
of rage. I do not have problems communicating myself as you're probably
figuring this out. Plus being a psychotherapist I speak for a living, I
communicate with people for a living, I figure out how a person needs for me to
talk to them so I can meet them where they are. It didn't matter how I
communicated to my mother. She was just not going to hear me because I wasn't
saying what she wanted to hear. I mean I would do everything from try to talk
reasonably rationally, I would literally scream and none of it made any
difference. But I'm telling you there was one moment I realized I was screaming at
her. I was so full of rage of what she was doing that I felt trapped and I was
screaming and I saw this look on her face that looked the only word I can use to
describe it is smug. She was when I was angry with her she was right in the dead
center, the bull's eye of my attention, which is where she wanted to be. And I
saw that look on her face and I'm like I'm not gonna do this anymore. So I
started to decide for myself what I was gonna do for her. I even went to my the
person who was a religious guide for me at the time, a spiritual guide for me at
the time, I went to him to get his suggestion and talk to wise people
around me because I recognized that sometimes when you're in the middle of
something you don't see clearly because you're sometimes ass over elbows and
your emotions. And so I would reach out to people around me that I trusted that
I respected as wise counsel and the feedback I got was basically I could
decide what I was going to do for her and then I could draw the line and that
was my line to draw it was not her line to draw. And so when I figure that out it
was game-changing. Not that she liked it by the way and that's another reason why
I'm so good at what I do with training people with boundaries is because I know
what it feels like when you try to set a healthy boundary with someone that
doesn't like it. They respond back with fangs and claws and then they recruit
other people. They tell lies about you to other people and make you look terrible.
And so you when you set boundaries setting the boundaries just the first
step. Then you have to defend your boundary and then you have to know the
part of it is you have to know that other people might talk about you behind
your back they probably will. Other people are going to be calling you names.
I've been called all kinds of names. I literally had one relative of mine who
was codependent with my mother bare her teeth at me. She was so mad she just
bare her teeth at me like she could have just clawed my face off if she if she
could have got to me. So but when you're practicing healthy boundaries you
release people to have whatever feelings they need to have and you don't take it
personal. So it's just like okay feel what you want to feel. Hate me if you
want to hate me. Call me Satan if you want to call me Satan. Throw me in the
doghouse if you want to that's okay. I no longer care. I'm gonna do what I need to
do to be healthy for me and my family and then you learn your skin gets
thicker you get tougher and then you learn to let go of whatever these people
want to think about you because sometimes people get in that trap oh my
gosh they're gonna think I'm bad they're gonna think I'm a bitch. Well they might
they probably will and and what right you have to learn to just let that go.
I understand and in the moment it's super hard though right in the moment
you're feeling that agony you're feeling oh my gosh how can this person think
about me they won't even talk to me and they can not even do willing to hear my
side and that's in the moment it's the hardest thing to do and that. And that's
when you're when you're practicing healthy boundaries you know that you
know your story the you cannot control they probably don't want to hear your
side and they're gonna look at it they're gonna filter it anyway they're
gonna see it people generally see these things how they need to and so they're
going to view your story through a filter of how they want to hear it and
you can't change that and so when you have when you're practicing healthy
boundaries you release them you allow them to think whatever they want to
think about you you can state your truth and once you stated your truth you
stated it you're done and how they want to hear it if they want to hold a
grudge if they want to you know think kind of bad things about you they might
and you let them just okay think what you want. I feel like they might be an
other side to the story as well and you don't have to share this did your mom
ever come around but things ever got better is there a positive side to that?
For my personal story no I have talked to people that have been patients of
mine who did have better endings where their their significant person they were
dealing with was able to receive their new boundaries and they were able to
develop a healthier relationship they kind of pulled it out of that
codependency and they developed healthy relationships with one another in my
personal situation my mother was never going to change that was never going to
happen and the the more I tried to set healthy boundaries the the angrier she
became and the more she would blame me for her problems which narcissists do
narcissists do not accept responsibility for their own actions if if there's a
problem it's you you're the problem and so that was never that was never going
to change and I I couldn't change her all I could do was set my healthy
boundaries and she could either become healthy and interact with me in a
healthy way because I gave healthy options but she wasn't going to do that.
Thank you for being here today I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision
Pros Live I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes
continue to move forward this is gonna get more and more fun we'll have more
more engagement as well we'll invite people to participate in the show and
thank you for giving us your time and attention have an excellent time
building out your vision and becoming a vision pro yourself.