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 that 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 and 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 going to 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 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 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 and 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 bullseye 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 going to do this anymore.
So I started to decide for myself what I was going to do for her. I even went to my, the person who
was a religious guy for me at the time, a spiritual guy for me at the time, I went to him to get his
suggestion and talk to wise people around me. Because I recognize that sometimes when you're
in the middle of something, you don't see clearly because you're sometimes ass over elbows in 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 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 going to 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 going to think I'm bad. They're going to think I'm a
bitch. Well, they might. They probably will. 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 hear my side. And that's in the moment, it's the hardest thing to do.
And that's when you're practicing healthy boundaries, you know that you know your story.
You cannot control. They probably don't want to hear your side. And they're going to look at it.
They're going to filter it anyway. They're going to 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 there might be an other side to the story as well.
And you don't have to share this. Did your mom ever come around
with things that we 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 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 co-dependency 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
more I tried to set healthy boundaries, 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 there's a problem, it's you. You're the problem. And so that was never going to change.
That was never going to change. And 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.