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Hello, welcome to the show. This is Emotional Badass, where moxie meets mindful. I'm your host, Nikki Eisenhower, life coach and psychotherapist. And on today's episode, we're exploring why boundaries are your superpower. Hello, welcome to the show. If you're a long time listener, it's lovely to have you back. Thank you so much for continuing to tune in. If you're new, welcome. Push your sleeves up, get your feet wet. And this is a chance to learn what I'm about, what I offer, how I try to help people grow themselves. I think I'm really pretty good with language and explaining things, but when it comes to me explaining exactly what I do when I work with clients, when I teach in the Boundaries intensive or the 30 days to peace course, it's still, all these years later, it's still hard for me to put it into words because some of what happens at the human level of experience is just experience. I think it transcends language. So I want to get into trying to explain what it's like to work with me, what the boundaries course is like, and if it's right for you or if it isn't, because we're close, in a blink, it's going to start. We're less than a month out. It starts October 13th. What I try to do here on Emotional Badass is get very, very real and deep about what healing and growing actually means. How to do it, not just to talk about it so it stays as head knowledge, but how to have it become heart and body knowledge. And that's the place where we start to feel relief. And I know that if you're tuning in, you're someone who wants peace, you want to feel relief. You're likely healing your nervous system, just trying to figure out life as a sensitive person in a very overstimulating world. So I want to talk to you today about where our psychology meets our spirituality, where why boundaries are so important, how they really are the foundation of our superpowers as highly sensitive people. Boundaries really are the path to us becoming the most authentically powerful version of ourselves. So boundaries, right? It's a word we all know, but we don't really know how to have boundaries, how to form them. When are we allowed to have them? When is it our job to have them? When is it somebody else's job to have them? Why do they feel so confusing? Why are they so hard? Why haven't we ever had a boundaries class when we were in elementary or high school? Even those of us who are Professional social workers or counselors like I am. Why didn't we have a full boundaries course in our educations? I also want to talk to you about different kinds of boundaries. The boundaries I teach are probably not the kind of boundaries you've heard about before. I go at boundaries in a deeper, nuanced way. And I actually teach you how to implement boundaries that really work for the peace you're trying to get out of your boundaries work every day of your life. And what I can promise you is that when you understand some of these things, it gets easier and easier over time to implement these boundaries, to practice them. You get strong boundaries, muscles, as those people pleasing muscles atrophy. So if you're new to me, I want you to get beyond your assumptions about a life coach or a therapist. A lot of people make an assumption that a therapist has an easy life or a therapist has it all figured out. And therapists are just humans too. I grew up in a family where boundaries did not exist, at least not healthy ones. I mean, did not exist in any real way, shape, or form, in any way that I could understand, digest, implement. What did exist in my upbringing was a parenting style that was deeply confusing for me. Sometimes overly controlling, sometimes neglectful. It's why I had an aversion to boundaries for a long time. Because I thought to have boundaries, I'd have to be rigid or I'd have to be overly controlled. And I didn't like that. I didn't understand what boundaries would do for me in this life. Growing up, there was emotional shutdown modeled for me and the adults around me, even the healthier adults that created walls, walls that were disguised as politeness, passive aggression masquerading as keep the peace, and then at other times, full on aggression and shame. When and if my parents felt any loss of control over me, or in their own lives or in the household, there was this constant toxic dance of everyone walking on eggshells while cutting each other down without ever really building each other up. I thought boundaries were the closed doors that the dysfunction happened behind. I really had no concept of a healthy boundary. Later on, as an early teenager, I'd be abused by my own dad. It's the most epic boundary crossing that can happen. I learned early that having needs was selfish. I wasn't allowed to have needs. I learned that having needs was wrong. I learned that speaking up caused problems. And I learned that my job was to manage everyone else's emotions while completely ignoring my own. I didn't think about it this way back then, but from this vantage point, I can look back and see. I fully thought it was my job to keep everyone's boat steady around me, to not let anybody's boat rock. And if I could just keep everybody's boat still, even though the waves were rough and crashing all around, then maybe I could be okay. This is also where my perfectionism grew. If I could just be perfect, then maybe I could keep everybody around me from being upset. I hear very clearly in my adult self today how much that doesn't work. It was the best my kid brain and consciousness could figure out and trying to protect me and trying to get my emotional, my human needs met as a person, as a human being, even though I was a little young human being. It's very easy in dysfunctional family systems to sort of treat children like their need less like as long as they're fed and they're not in the street about to get hit by a car, yeah, they're cool. Kids are resilient, right? But especially deep kids. We're hungry for answers. We're hungry for understanding. In my household, I was also groomed into that sexual abuse by my stepdad who turned out to adopt me later on. But in a broader sense, I was groomed to bury myself under the rug. I was groomed to ignore the elephants in the room, those elephants even taking big shits in the living room of my life. I was taught and groomed to dismiss and deny myself. It's even attached to my survival. When I look back at that, I don't look back at that for myself, and I hope you don't for you in your story and go, gosh, what was wrong with me that I just dismissed myself, that I denied myself? Nothing was wrong with me. That really was the best strategy that was available to me at the time to try to sort of keep my head low and get through. And it worked. It's part of why I'm here today. But it's kind of like babies in diapers. It's cool for a season, but you got a potty train, you have to go to the next level. Not cool if I'm sitting here in a diaper trying to talk to you about these things. Have to move to the next level. It's just right to go to the next level of things. And if we've been groomed because of the experiences of our life to, to be people pleasers at our own dismissal, I'm here to say it's time to go to the next level. I don't care how hard it is. I don't care how scary it is. I don't care how much you doubt if you can do it or not. It's just time. It's the next right thing. When I look back at my life, I can see that it really was as if I was given a direct job to lose myself. And I thought my only value was propping everyone else up. I genuinely thought that the only reason I existed was to keep everyone around me as happy as I could. I thought it was exactly right to never go against the grain and just go with whatever anybody wanted of me. To go along to get along in ways that destroyed my self worth. I hid my authentic self, not just from the world, even from me. I perpetuated a shame that I carried around like a million pound boulder. I had no idea how to let go and then how to have boundaries. I had no idea that I had a right to need boundaries. That's what abuse and dysfunction teach us. We think that what we deserve is total and complete chaos when we really do deserve. Every baby that comes into the world, I have to look at a new baby and think, my goodness, you deserve peace, stability, safe love, respect. And you absolutely get to have different needs at different ages and stages and in different circumstances. I thought I was here on the planet to be whatever anyone else wanted me to be and that I was supposed to give whatever they wanted. Isn't that sad that a smart little being can still grow up thinking that that was all I was good for? I genuinely think of it as a spiritual miracle. Like angels or ancestors or guides or all of them, whatever your beliefs, whatever magical, unexplainable, energetic forces are out there that are all around us in this life, I very much believe that these are the forces that kept me alive when I felt utterly worthless. I didn't know that I counted as my own being, that I had my own personhood that I was allowed to protect and sometimes, yes, fight for. I was a gold medal people pleaser, y', all, with a fried and frazzled nervous system to match. And I never even let myself dream that I could feel any differently in this life. I was raw, depleted of life force, and I felt lost and broken. Even with loads and loads of therapy, y', all, even though my family was dysfunctional, they were interestingly also therapy minded. Now if any therapist tried to make my mother take responsibility, she would fire them and get a different one. But even with loads of therapy as a kid and in the school system, I didn't get it. I didn't understand What a boundary was how boundaries were supposed to work. Despite my best efforts. I have an undergraduate degree in psychology and a master's degree in counseling. I got out of those programs still having no idea what a boundary was that I had permission to set them and how to set them. My family would hear me try to set a boundary, because, boy, did I try. And I know if you're listening, I know you've tried too, but it's like trying to drive a car without anybody teaching you how, without ever really seeing anybody drive a car, but yet you're tasking yourself with learning how to drive it and follow all the rules of the road. I would try to draw lines. My family would look me boldly in the eyes as I tried to set a line, set a boundary, what I thought was a boundary, and they would look at me and step right over it like it was a game to thwart. The problem in my dysfunctional family, likely in yours, is that dysfunction doesn't lead to being very kind or respectful or understanding or compassionate or mature. I have some of those looks seared in my mind. Those looks, as they crossed my attempts at boundaries, communicated to me, yeah, Nikki, you want a boundary? I'm going to step right over that. We're not doing boundaries in this family. Now, what are you going to do when I step over your boundary? It was so perplexing and at times devastating because I was already exhausted and depleted from being a highly sensitive person on this planet. Add my childhood trauma, I was definitely fried and frazzled. So every effort felt like pushing a million pound boulder up a hill, like I would just fall out from exhaustion. So to also have that effort be fruitless, to have it backfire, ultra depressing. Does any of this resonate with you? Does any of this sound familiar? Seekers are the people who resonate with my work. They're the ones that tune in. You found me because you seek. Seekers have been trying to figure out boundaries all of their lives, even if they haven't been using that word. Now. The problem with traditional boundary teaching, this is what most boundaries work gets wrong. It treats boundaries. And there's far too many people online speaking about this now who don't understand the depth and the nuance of what sensitive people really need in boundaries. But traditional boundaries work. Treat boundaries like they're walls you build to keep people out. You just say, no more. Put yourself first. Cut toxic people off. Phrases like this would frustrate me and deepen my depression, frankly, because I didn't know how to put myself first. I Didn't know how to cut people off. When I had abandonment wounds. That's terrifying. That's like going on a 10 mile hike and deciding not to bring water. That's how it feels like. Like I am going to dehydrate and die. If I have boundaries and people leave me, if I have boundaries and they cut me off, if I cut them off, what am I even doing to myself? It made no sense to me. I knew there was a wisdom and boundaries that I had to sort out. I had to figure it out, I had to find it. I didn't know where to look, I didn't know where to find it. That's why I created what I used to call the course. Now we're calling it the Boundaries Intensive. To just be told, put yourself first, cut people off, just say no, left and right. This to me is a child's understanding of boundaries. And you, like me, have probably tried them and you felt it in your heart as your heart sinks, as the effort fails. We need more than this. We are complex people. Setting boundaries is complex. I think my skill is in simplifying without losing the depth and nuance what is really complicated. And that's how I teach. So here's the thing. When you've been conditioned to believe that having boundaries makes you a bad person, makes you even unloving, mean, cruel. When you've been conditioned year after year, particularly in your childhood development, that your nervous system just goes into panic mode at the thought of disappointing someone. Because your safety, your security. Yes. Even though it sounds like a big dramatic thing for me to say, your survival. See today as my husband leaves me, if he disappears, I will be sad and grieve. There will be things I need to figure out that he handles in our lives and for me. But I know that I'm a full fledged woman who can stand on our own two feet and survive. No child can know that we really are dependent as children on the people around us. So if the people around us let us down, abandon us, our survival is at stake. That's what happens to so many of our nervous systems. Many of us as children were programmed by our childhood experiences to be cellularly terrified of this kind of abandonment. Many of us who grow up in chaos and dysfunction, we have no concept of where you begin and end and where other people begin and end. And then when we get together and there's some overlap, we have no idea who's responsible for what, what I'm supposed to do, what I'm not supposed to do, and just saying no, just like that stupid drug program of my youth, Just say no to drugs. My generation did so many drugs. Because just saying no doesn't cut it. And it doesn't cut it with drugs and it doesn't cut it with boundaries. So here's what I try to actually do. When you sign up for one of my courses, this is my nuanced approach. I am intentionally different in my work. I combine gestalt therapy principles, stoic philosophy, ancient spiritual concepts that center and bring peace. I help people use their insight to connect the dots of their experiences and compassionately understand themselves. It doesn't sound like a big deal to be confused. Nothing about that sounds abusive or difficult. But when you seek deeper understanding, when you feel a calling to understand, you know, it's the deep people of the world that I find want an understanding. And when we understand, it's like we can exhale and then we can move forward. But we need that understanding oftentimes first and there's no perfect understanding available. But we do need to understand ourselves. We need to understand what happened in terms of our nervous systems, our anxiety, when it comes to setting boundaries so that we're not looking in the mirror at the end of the day, crying and sobb and going, what's wrong with me? It sounds so simple to just look at someone and just say no. Once these dots are connected, you don't ever have to wonder again if we spent a lot of our childhoods or a lot of years in our lives confused around dysfunction. It is not okay with me that any highly sensitive person today is staying in a state of confusion about boundaries, about what they deserve in this life, about what they need to do to stand up and step up for themselves so that they can claim their birthright of peace. A solid, stable, fulfilling, satisfying life. From this understanding, not before it, but from it, we then start to build permission inside of ourselves. See, nobody else can give you permission. I can't give you permission to do the boundaries you need to do. I can model it from the permission I've given myself. You can be in the boundaries intensive and see other people that are returning. A lot of people do the course two years. We will be working with boundaries all of the days of our lives. It doesn't matter that I'm an expert in it. Every single situation is nuanced. Every single situation has some newness. Every single situation in my life offers me an opportunity to fine tune, to strengthen. You know how surgeons get better over time? They do exercises with their hands so that they can be a precision practitioner as they cut into the body. As highly sensitive people coming from dysfunction, we need to understand just like that surgeon doesn't get to a certain level and go, that's it. I don't have to practice anymore. They practice with everything that they do. We get to live life through this lens of life is constantly offering me the strengthening of my boundaries. Work and once you have a deep, nuanced understanding, it'll be like riding a bike. You'll never forget it and you will know what you're tasked with practicing, but the permission must come from you to you. It must transcend the programming of being a people pleaser. For so many people. It is back to school. We are back into our routines. Finding the time to cook can be tough and I want to be outside peeping the leaves, y'. All. I use Factor and I love it and I think you'll love it too. Their chef prepared dietitian approved meals make it easy to stay on track and enjoy something comforting and delicious and easy no matter how hectic the season gets. Choose from a wider selection of weekly meal options including premium seafood choices like salmon and shrimp at no extra cost. For the first time, try Asian inspired meals with bold flavors influenced by China, Thailand and more. 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That's an $84 value for free. So if you try it and you don't like it, you can send it back. Air Doctor makes it easy. Get this exclusive podcast only offer now@airdoctorpro.com a I r D O C T O r p r o.com using promo code airdrop Badass. Boundaries are not about saying no to so much and becoming some kind of fortress. They're actually about becoming free. I'm a big believer in using our natural gifts, maybe even the things other people have poo pooed or shamed towards our healthiness. I teach people how to be healthily, positively stubborn. See, I know you're stubborn. I'm stubborn too. Stubbornness is a beautiful force. If we put it in the right place, we put it in the wrong place and we self sabotage, we screw ourselves over. We put that stubbornness in the right place, it becomes a beautiful force, a powerful force of self care, of evolution. From this healthy stubbornness, the boundaries work. You get to not just set a boundary, you get to see it through. You get to protect yourself from the insanity of this world, the dysfunction of this world. And what this boundaries work results in is self respect. You know, it's, it's so cutesy to me at this point to hear, oh yeah, self love, self love, self love, take a bubble bath. That's some, some cheap, easy, surface level self care, if you ask me. Being able to set a boundary and follow through with it and keep your head held high. Honestly, even as I say it out loud right now, it's like my inner child is like, yes, there's nothing better than finally knowing how to do this for myself. Most people go up boundaries wanting other people to respect their boundaries. I remember that season in my life. Boy, was I frustrated. I was resentful, I was angry. I carried around a disgust for other people. It made me feel icky. That did not help my fried and frazzled nervous system, not one bit. This backfires because frankly, we're not tackling the subject of boundaries to set boundaries with people who are easy to set boundaries with. We are seeking boundaries, understanding to set boundaries with people who are very comfortable being disrespectful. We lean into boundaries, work to deal with people who feel very entitled, they overstep, they take a lot from other people. They tend to have a low integrity, they don't really operate with reciprocity, they have low emotional intelligence, they maintain immaturity as they age and they don't understand or value real conscientiousness or consideration. These are the people that drive us batty until we understand boundaries are our responsibility and our right. Remember how some of us were called hard headed or difficult as kids? I certainly was. That same energy that made you difficult is Actually your superpower. You just need to learn how to aim it. So here's the levels that we work on in the boundaries intensive. We work on acceptance and permission. No one can give this to you but you. This involves actively letting go of the critical voice that basically grips the dysfunctional comfort staying the same. Isn't that interesting in the human condition that something could fail us again and again and again. It could not be working, and boy, we know it. And yet our dysfunctional critical voice will talk to us as if it wants us to stay the same forever. It will talk us down from change. Remember what I said at the beginning? I come from a family system that we tore each other down, we didn't lift each other up. So a part of me became a critical voice that learned to tear me down. Just because I get distance from my family system and get to have more birthdays and get older doesn't make that voice change. I have to do some work to make that voice change. And life is better when we do that work because that actually gets us out of the dysfunction. It's not leaving the family home, it's not getting your own house or your own relationship. These are the patterns that we accidentally soaked up from our experiences, and we must wring them out. Then we have space to soak up the good stuff. Our critical voices, our human egos, it almost defies logic how much they seem to work against us evolving. We have to understand this too, that there is a certain sick comfort in sameness. Because I know what to expect. And some kind of way, our human egos decided that was safer than risking change. That's often why we wait for something to be so bad before we let ourselves change it. Because our inner ego, our consciousness, wants to to believe that the change is forced. It doesn't want to just choose change that feels risky. It wants to be forced into it. So if someone hits me in the face, that gives me some permission to go, no, I'm not going to hang out with that person. But if they just call me nasty names, and I grew up with that normalized, my ego goes, whatever. You know how to deal with being called nasty things. That's normal, right? No. We want to learn how to empower ourselves to have the courage to change. This is how we change. It sounds so goofy when I say it like this, but many people come to a coach or come to a therapist basically wanting to kind of stay the same. But they also want things to change. But while keeping things the same, I am constantly saying to people, hey, you know, to change this, you have to actually, you know, change this, what are you willing to do differently today? If we don't accept that we're facing change and change is scary, change will scare us away and our human egos will allow that to happen, then we also have to work through the frustration and even eventually the self forgiveness of how long we stayed confused and stuck. If we don't accept that change is necessary, and facing the fears of change also necessary, then we will never, ever be able to slow down internally calm and truly regulate the nervous system and stop letting it get unnecessarily frazzled. Frazzled by the world, frazzled by others, frazzled by our own critical voice. And without this acceptance of, okay, we're going to change and some of it's going to be hard, then we cannot and we will not have healthy boundaries. And there are people out there who will read articles and books and listen to podcasts on boundaries till their ears fall off, till their eyes pop out of their head, but won't really implement newness into their lives. We have to understand as human beings where the rubber meets the road. So we work on internal boundaries. This is where I'm different. Boundaries are not about wagging your finger at somebody and telling them, hey, this is my line, you better not cross it. Most of our boundaries work, y', all, is about boundaries with our critical voice, boundaries with our own old dysfunctional patterns. And before you can set healthy boundaries with others, you gotta get this straight and right with yourself first. This means learning to sit with discomfort instead of immediately people pleasing your way out of it. And if you've done this your whole life, it's a strong pattern. If this is you and you're resonating with what I'm saying, take a deep breath right now and practice this right now in real time with me. Don't try to squirm away from it. Don't try to squish it under the rug. Yeah, I've done that a lot. To change it, we've got to actually change it. And part of this means sitting with it instead of running from it, instead of trying to get it to change shape, just looking at the shape, the texture, the quality my intensive walks you through, step by step of how to do this with yourself. We also work on recognizing when you're abandoning yourself. And I mean recognizing this means changing your people pleasing lifestyle. From this outward, I have to tend to everybody around me outwardly, to turning that around to use your precious energy, to tend to you, to observe you Instead of hyper vigilantly everybody and everything else. Believe it or not, over time we can easily start to recognize when you're abandoning yourself. We really can learn how to do that. And it's not hard. It's kind of like riding a bike or driving a car. Can you remember before you knew how to do those things? Can you remember how overwhelming it was to try to coordinate your balance on that bike? Your feet moving, your hands on the bars, not looking at the ground but looking up but just ahead and not hitting anything or letting the front wheel hit a bump and fall off. Or driving 10 and 2, the seat belt, the radio turning the gas and the brake noise in the car. If there's other people or the radio and the traffic and buses and big trucks. There were moments where certain things like driving or the bike felt impossible. Like we'd never get it. And then we got it and after we got got easy. What if boundaries can be that way for you too? Recognizing when you're abandoning yourself to manage someone else's emotions. By working with me in this intensive. You don't just get my head knowledge, you get my heart knowledge. I've had so much academic education and I will tell you I'm unimpressed with how most mental health interventions in modern life are either a medicalized pillar or a heady talking in circles. We need actionable emotional exercises that can be practiced as we move through life so that we can atrophy, actually weaken the people pleasing muscles. We don't want those suckers strong and build self respecting and authentic living muscles. When you know what to do and you then do it, that takes care of so much anxiety and depression, y'. All. And I want to ask you to really sit back, take a little inventory of your life. I know it's popular right now to have diagnoses to think you have generalized anxiety disorder or different forms of depression. What if the deeper truth is I put everybody else's needs before me? Isn't your true self supposed to be anxious watching you doing that? Isn't your true self your inner child, your deep self supposed to feel depressed if you're just a pawn for what everybody else needs and wants and you're treating yourself like a nothing that just has to go along. Like life is a river with a current that and you're not ever allowed to swim or get on the bank and get a little sun. You're allowed to do what you want, you're allowed to do what you need. To me, that's the difference between being a child and an adult. But so many people continue to carry a childlike obligation to their parents or family systems. That is depressing. I think it's supposed to be. If you're not launching into your own life, if you're not shedding and letting go of what no longer or never did serve you, I think depression and anxiety are right. I very much question if mental health as a profession has absolutely missed the deeper wisdom of us feeling such things that it's not that something's wrong with us. Maybe the anxiety and depression are calls to action for healthiness, for boundaries, for self respect. I will tell you, in my life, these things served me so much more than the medications so many different professionals tried to dump down my throat in my teens and early twenties. When we do this work, we develop what I call emotional moxie. Listeners of the show, you have heard me countless times say where moxie meets mindful. Is that what you want in your life? Do you want your moxie to meet your mindfulness? Think about it. Does anxiety and depression want this for you? Is that what they're trying to tell you? You will develop through doing deeper work with me, the courage to feel your feelings instead of numbing, instead of avoiding, instead of playing powerless victim or projecting and blaming, which just keeps old immature dysfunctions active. Let's be real. Many of us learn to be very low vibe from our family systems. I know that's sad. I wish that wasn't the truth of my development, but it is true. So healing has been teaching myself to be high vibe. That doesn't mean delusional or in denial about the bad forces that are in the world, the bad things that happen, the kids that go hungry. But it is about respecting this one precious life that each of us is is given. Emotional moxie, y'. All Learning to act out of your intuitive gut instead of shutting down the intuitive gut like you had to do to survive. Your childhood intuition is that knowing that knows damn good and well that you said yes to something and it's a problem because your gut knows it's wrong for you. Are you tired of living like that? Don't you want to be out of this pattern once and for all? So in this work, we work on energetic boundaries. This is so much more than just the words that come out of our face, the things we say yes to or the things we say no to. Energetic boundaries. This is where the gestalt. I said I was a gestaltist earlier. In overly simplistic terms, this means that as people, we are more than the sum of our parts. Now, if that's a brand new concept to you, think about a toaster. If we take a toaster apart, break it down into all its little individual pieces, we can see all those pieces, and then we put all those pieces back together, then that toaster is just the sum of its parts. It's no more, it's no less, it's nothing else. But when we consider all of the parts of being a person, a human being, a spiritual being, all rolled up into one, we are so much more than skin and bones and organs. We're more than the sum of our parts. That's a foundational tenant of what the Gestalt theory is. There's a spirit, a cosmic magic, a spiritual thread that makes a person more than the sum of these mechanical parts, joints and blood vessels. This is also why boundaries are tricky for us to figure out in isolation and alone. People are complicated. You, me, the people we want to have boundaries with. That's not a reason to avoid boundaries or stay confused about how they work for a lifetime. If you choose to work with me, you will understand where you end and other people begin. And you must give yourself permission to step up for yourself if and where there is overlap when we're with other people. And you will learn to notice that and deal with that overlapping space instead of just feel overwhelmed, confused by it. And that's often where a highly sensitive person just goes, yes, sure. Yeah, sure, I can do that, whatever you want. And then later goes, damn it, why did I say yes to that? If you work with me and take in what I offer and practice what I teach, you will learn how to stay present at your edges, those places where you typically shut down or give up, back off, shrink from your power. You will learn to step into it, to hold it, to own it, and to not guilt yourself. You're a person. You're allowed your personal power. I want that for you, but I can't make that happen for you. Only you can make that happen for you. You will learn to have a different relationship with what triggers you today. It's another thing that is going around dysfunctional land in the Internet. Anybody encouraging you, directly or indirectly to avoid your triggers is hurting you, is not helping you you. They're selling you on a momentary comfort today and discomfort for a lifetime. You will learn to have a different relationship with what triggers you today, so that in very near tomorrows, you no longer need to become triggered. This boundaries work will do so much more for you than keeping the draining energies out it will heal your triggers so that you can live with more flow and peace, ease, confidence, even healthy risk. Which really means at the end of the day, living with more self respect. Every highly sensitive person I've ever met seems to get this wrong. They seem to want to walk the world and have people respect their sensitivity. And then they expect to feel better in their bodies and in this world after the world will decide to respect them. This is such a powerless position. It doesn't work like this. You must learn to respect yourself from the inside out. Hold your head high, shoulders back. Stop apologizing for who you are, how you were built, how you process, how you feel in the world. And then, and only then, people will feel that self respect radiating outwards from you. And that is what makes others have to respect you because you know how to respect yourself and you will not settle for less than that. This self respect tells the entire universe that the only script available is respect. So it better get on board because it is all you will allow. That's where the confidence that you've been wanting to feel all of your life is waiting for you. You will learn in the boundaries intensive how your own expectations, even the expectations you think are reasonable, the obvious ones and the subtle ones, how our expectations accidentally sabotage our boundaries endeavors. I will teach you how to manage your expectations so that expectations don't manage you into debilitating frustration and even bringing on depression. You will learn to hold space for both your truth and other people's reactions without collapsing. Because you will be operating from a place of you count and you matter. And with every action you take towards practicing that you count and matter. Every step gets easier and easier and easier, y', all. Even when it's hard. We work on behavioral boundaries. Once we've done the deeper internal boundaries work, we get to the practical stuff of setting boundaries with others. As an art form, I give you scripts that are simple, to the point to help you sort out what you're trying to say so that you can then say it and get more artful every single time. You will learn how to say no without over explaining. Oh my goodness, raise your hand if you're an over explainer out there. You will learn to say no without apologizing. Are you sick of moving through the world apologizing for who you are, apologizing for how you do things, apologizing for how you think, apologizing for what you need? Or maybe you beg, maybe you threaten, Then you feel guilty, shameful about threatening or losing your cool. You know that begging is not self respecting, but you just don't know what else to do. I will teach you how to have a grounded power with yourself and to never try to do a boundary from a place of desperation ever again. You will learn how to set limits that actually stick because you will learn to stick to them yourself. We will learn to deal with boundary pushback without abandoning ourselves. Check with your gut when I say this. See if this is a yes or a no in your gut if you agree with this or you don't, because I know it with every fiber of my being and I wonder if you do too. There will be pushback to your boundaries. Absolutely there will be. They will push back every which way they can. You know how people try to push back on my boundaries? They say things to me like, wow, you think you're a highly sensitive person. You're not really a highly sensitive person. You're mean, you're a bitch. Wow, you have people fooled. You're kind of harsh. They will try to poke every button to get me to back up, back off and let them get away with whatever they're trying to get away with. How does that resonate with your gut? Here's a way to think about it. Just try it on for size like you might try on an outfit. You want boundaries with people who are fairly pushy, right? Whether that's sort of a bumbling, mindless pushing or a direct pushing that feels like a message of you are only allowed to do what I want of you. You are not allowed to do what works for you, and if you try to do what works for you, I am going to make you pay for it. This is the truth of boundaries work. It bothers me so much that so many people online talk about boundaries as if we're trying to have boundaries with reasonable people. Boundaries are easy with mature reasonable people. But we have to be very honest. We're trying to have boundaries. People we see as largely unreasonable, shaming, reactive, who don't take enough self responsibility, who lash out, who try to hit every single button we have. They try to make our boundaries as absolutely maximally, as difficult as humanly possible so that we'll give up because our boundaryless selves work for them. If we have boundaries, they have to be more responsible for themselves. They're not going to sign on for that. So we need support to do the boundaries. Intensive means that you are surrounded by other people who understand this. It is so validating to be with a group of people that have similar pushback in their lives. We're all different and yet we're all similar in these ways. You might have a different background of experiences than I do, but it's pretty universal. The people who are not maturing or doing their own self development work don't take boundaries very well. They're takers, they're users. And whether they ever realize it or not, they wind up being abusers in our lives. It's not just the people that hit us or steal from us that abuse and use y'. All. It's why we call them energy vampires. They actually suck us dry. I think of my boundaries intensive like someone might think about a physical self defense course. If an out of shape couch potato who is smaller than me tries to attack me on the street, y', all, I can probably ward off that attack. But I need some real self defense skill if I am to ward off someone double my size who's fast with big muscles and they have a weapon. This is how boundaries work feels, y'. All. You've probably gotten enough info on boundaries in your exploration into different aspects of self development as a seeker. But it's like being ready for a small black bear when you're in grizzly country. Those same techniques for the little black bear that you can run off like a dog. It's not going to work with a grizzly. Be honest with yourself that you would benefit from learning how to do boundaries when facing grizzly level boundaries work. So here's what I've learned after years of doing this work. This will be my ninth year teaching this course and I've learned it in my own personal life and with hundreds upon hundreds of clients over the years. Boundaries aren't just about saying no. They're about saying yes to you and yes to you with such a conviction and so much practicing that your no becomes natural. Do you know how as a highly sensitive person you might do what I call automatic guessing? Imagine if you could flip flop that by joining my intensive and learn how to grow yourself into a way of being a lifestyle where you honor yourself with the ease you used to automatically yes with. Imagine if you took care of yourself the way you have historically gone out of your way to take care of everybody else. I want your self respect automatic, not your people pleasing. What do you want for you when you really understand boundaries at this nuanced level that I teach it? You stop being afraid of other people's reactions because you know you can handle them and that this path is better for you in the long run. It might be uncomfortable in the moment, but you gain confidence in managing those moments for the greater good of the whole rest of your life. And you stop feeling guilty. Guilt is about doing something wrong. Having needs is not wrong. Understanding that you have needs, this is valid. And you start to learn that your people pleasing guilt has been invalid all along. You count. You matter. You will stop people pleasing because you finally trust that you're worthy of love even when people in your world are disappointed or upset. As a highly sensitive person, I want you to hear this loud and clear from me. You must stop believing and living as if disappointing somebody on this planet is death. You've been disappointed in other people a whole hell of a lot and not melted like the Wicked Witch of the West. Stop holding an energy as if someone else's disappointment in you needing to say no is like the worst thing in the world that could ever happen to them. It isn't. We all have to deal with being disappointed. We all ask people to do things hoping for a yes. We have to also grow some muscles in receiving no's. This is a life lesson. That's all it is. Disappointment is not a death sentence. Stop letting people manipulate you with that belief. So do you think it's time for you to be able to identify your specific boundary challenges? Someone with a controlling mother needs different tools and someone with boundaryless friends. Do you think it's time for you to work with your nervous system, not against it, Learning to regulate yourself when boundary conversations feel scary, it really is available to you. We practice communication scripts so you lean into developing an art form of communication that gets better and better, just like a real artist over time. As you practice through real life situations, we will address the deeper beliefs that make boundaries feel impossible. The most common is if I have boundaries, everyone will leave me. This is the biggest fear in general when it comes to boundaries. And we also happen to be living through a disconnected loneliness epidemic, making this harder than ever. You can work through these fears, y'. All. You really can. And you can learn to show up in your own life with love and respect. Working with me it's not for everybody. Working with me is for people who are tired of feeling resentful and burnt out from over giving and are sick and tired of being a powerless people pleaser. This work is for people who know that they need boundaries but freeze up when it's time to actually set them and don't really know how. This work is for anyone who's tried the just say no advice and found oh, it's more complicated than that. It needs more nuance. This work is for people who are ready to stop managing everyone else's emotions and start taking real responsibility for their own. It's for adults who were raised in chaos and dysfunction, who are determined to have a fulfilling and peaceful life. You are invited to this work if you are willing to bravely take a healthy risk and show up for six weeks. Yep, six weeks. Six weeks out of all of the weeks of your life to learn something that can genuinely change your life and how every day feels after you spend those six weeks. This work is for the people who have read all the books, done all the therapy, and something inside of them perks up when they receive how I speak and what I teach. If you've ever thought I've never met Nikki and she knows me, how is this possible? Then this intensive is for you who this is not for. This is not for people who expect or are looking for quick fixes, who want to put band aids over gunshot wounds. This is not for people who want magic words to make boundary setting easy. This is not for people who glorify continuing to run away from themselves and and sweep themselves and the work that they need to do under the rug. This is not for professional victims who want to feel better without changing how they move through life. This is not for people who aren't ready to take full responsibility for themselves. This is not for people who don't want to look at their own patterns and take responsibility for changing them. This is not for surface level people because I go deep and I will not give you a refund if you try to run because it's deep. Anyone expecting me to tell them exactly what to say in every situation? This is not for you. I'm going to teach you the art form and you are going to have some scripts and you are going to build on what you say. This is not for people who wish to stay in the dysfunctional comfort zone of committing to lifelong people pleasing. I've had people tell me things like, I finally understand why I couldn't set boundaries before. I was trying to control how others show up. Or I thought boundaries would make me mean, but they actually made me kinder because I stopped resenting everyone around me. That's kind of the secret sauce of this work, y'. All. It doesn't make you meaner. Even if there's a season of having to clear out some user types, you're making space in the theater of your life to invite new people in. New people that can meet you in your newfound self respect. New people that you can start relationships with with boundaries from the word go. This work will give you a level of freedom and authenticity you've probably never experienced. I do this show towards sensitive people freeing themselves, but I can't want that freedom enough for you to make you give freedom to yourself. You must recognize that everything that's worth it takes some hard work and that you are fully capable of this work. You can learn how to show up in this life unapologetically, to love people without losing yourself, to be generous from overflow instead of saying yes while you are still depleted. And that's the secret truth behind boundaries work. It actually makes us kinder, more authentic and more generous because we stop living from constant total depletion. Before we close, I want to give a shout out to my main healer, Lisa Tahir. She also has a show. It's called All Things Therapy. And we're very different and I think that's kind of fun. But life gave me three dysfunctional and abusive parents on the human plane. But on the spiritual plane, this life has given me many spiritual mothers and fathers who have shown me how to reparent and love myself. Lisa has been such a spiritual mother to me, at times a spiritual sister. This work transcends what therapists learn in their heady educations. It's a spiritual passing on of love, of maturity, of the deepest self care and respect. Healthy healers help you become who you've always been and then more so of who you are. Lisa first helped me see that my people pleasing wasn't actually about being kind, it was about being afraid. She showed me that real love sometimes looks like disappointing people. And that having boundaries doesn't make you selfish, it makes you real. I can see it so clearly from this healed and continuously healing place that for most of my life I kind of felt like Pinocchio. He didn't feel like a real boy, I didn't feel real. And this boundaries work has made me more honest with myself. And that honesty has made me realize I'm a real girl. I'm a real woman with value and I get to protect that value. So if you are new to me or on the fence about working with me this year, you are welcome and encouraged to go listen and feel out Lisa too. And know that even in listening to this show, you are a part of our spiritual lineage, our calling to pass along, to share the wisdom that has grown our lives into more happiness, peace and fulfillment. So even if you're scared, that's okay. Just show up. Your gut knows if it's the right thing for you to do. This will also be the last year that we offer payment plans so if you need that and are interested in that, now is really the time. You can find all the information about the Boundaries intensive. You can find more about my educational the background and work history on my website. Go to emotionalbadass.com boundaries and if you have questions don't hesitate to reach out Patreon people. That code still gets you the biggest discount and yes, the monthly live streams often, no matter the topic, touch on the very principles that we worked on in Boundaries. Most of you in Patreon have been through the Boundaries course and that helps to keep you integrating this work into who you are and how you live. If you're not a part of the Patreon, use the Code badass to save 50 bucks and I'll see you there. Remember, beautiful humans, your boundaries aren't walls. They're the foundation of your freedom. I'm an emotional badass. You were an emotional badass and together we are where moxie meets mindful. I cannot wait to teach starting October 13th. If you're meant to be there, I trust I'll meet you light and love. Take care of yourselves out there. Till next time. Bye bye.