Hey, welcome back. You're listening to Healed As Fuck, and I'm your host, Erin Javins. As always, this podcast discusses topics and uses language that may not be suitable for all listeners. Listener discretion is advised. I'm so glad you're back this week. This episode is Episode 4 and yesterday was the one month anniversary of the podcast launch, so that was super exciting. I love getting messages from listeners telling me what they gained from each episode every week. I love hearing what resonates with people and what they're taking away from it. That means so much to me. So thank you so much for all of that information and feedback and support. I love getting it from you. This week we're going to talk about a word that I have probably said 100 times in the last three episodes, and we're gonna dig deep into it and break it down. This week, we are going to talk about boundaries. Now, I don't know if you're like me, but the word boundaries is a word that I didn't identify with until I was an adult. It's not something that was discussed when I was younger. It's not something that was ever talked about when I was a child. But as I got older, I would hear people talk about it, but I didn't have any understanding of what that meant. I didn't know what it meant to set a boundary. I didn't know what it meant to hold a boundary. I didn't even know what the **** a boundary was, so I had to break that down for myself. And I had to learn what boundaries were and how do I set them and how do I hold them. And I had to learn how to respect other people's boundaries. So we're going to talk about it. We're going to break down boundaries. Maybe you are in the same boat and you find yourself Googling what a boundary is, so we're going to talk about it. So for starters. To say it in simpler terms,

a boundary is deciding what you will and won't accept. Now we have different types of boundaries. Um, usually you have boundaries that are emotional or physical or sexual. You can have boundaries in your workplace. But. All in all, we are talking about what you will and won't accept from people around you. So. I'll give you an example. For starters, let's talk about physical boundaries. Anytime that you're talking about boundaries, it's important to remember that boundaries are fluid. What boundaries you have with one person may be different with another person. That's very true for me. What I'm willing to accept from my husband, for example, is very different than what I'm willing to accept from other people. Because I know that my husband is a safe person, I know that I can allow certain behaviors from him that I can't allow from other people. One particular example, my husband is allowed to grab my *** anytime he wants. I allow that. If any random stranger on the street grabbed my ***. It would be on site. So they would not get the same reaction from me that my husband gets. That is a boundary. That is an example of a physical boundary. I am not allowing random strangers on the street to grab my ***. Let's talk about emotional boundaries. I allow my husband into my emotional space in a different way than I allow other people. I have different levels of boundaries depending on who these people are in my life because some people are not safe people and so we have to learn. How

does that boundaries to keep them at a safe distance?

So whenever you start considering boundaries in your life and what things you do and what things you don't want. Always consider the people that you're thinking about those boundaries for. Because there's going to be people in your life that are going to have different boundaries than other people. There are going to be people that you feel safer around than other people, and you're going to need different levels of boundaries for those different types of people in your life.

So once I figured out that a boundary was just identifying what things I were and were not going to accept from other people. Then I had to understand how do I set a boundary. And how do I hold that boundary? How do I make people treat me the way that I want them to treat me? This is where it starts to get a little uncomfy, guys, so stick with me. The way that you hold a boundary, the way that you get other people to respect your boundary, is that there has to be a consequence for them not respecting your boundary. If you set a boundary and people blow through your boundary and you never have a consequence, there's never any consequence for their actions, then they're never going to respect your boundary. A lot of times that consequence is removing yourself from their life. And that's real hard for a lot of people. But that's really what it comes down to. If you can't respect my boundary, then you are showing me that you are not a safe person for me to have in my life. And if you cannot be a safe person in my life, then you cannot be in my life.

Now, for a lot of people, that's really hard to hear because we can come up with 1000 reasons to let unsafe people stay in our life. Maybe because they're family, maybe because we've known them our whole lives, maybe because we're married to them, maybe because we gave birth to them. You can think of 1,000,000 reasons to let unsafe people stay in your life. But the bottom line is until you are ready to enforce your boundaries with people. And to enforce that consequence of saying if you cannot be safe in my life, you cannot be in my life, people are not going to respect your boundaries. Now for some people. That's a tradeoff that they're willing to make because for all different reasons, you may have someone in your life that you know is not a safe person, but you are just not able to cut them out for whatever reason. And so you are aware that they are not going to respect your boundaries, but there is nothing that you can do about it. As long as you are aware and you are consciously making that decision to allow someone to keep harming you, then that's your choice to make. But when you truly want to reach that healing place where you have walked out your healing journey and you have fully embraced the journey that you are on, that's when you come to a point where you start realizing that, holding those boundaries and demanding that respect from people to respect your boundaries. That's when it really, truly begins. I have literally quit a job before because my employer could not respect the boundaries that I had set with regards to my work and my employment, and it was not something that I was willing to negotiate with. It was something that was that important to me. And once I reached a place where I understood the real value of

my mental health and my well-being, there was no salary price tag that could be put on that. So I dipped. The hardest part of setting boundaries is communicating those boundaries to people. This is where conflict arises, because people don't want to hear that you're not going to allow them to do something that you've always allowed them to do before. That's when you start being gaslit. That's when you start seeing the narcissist come out because they are not going to accept that you are going to demand a change in their behavior in order for them to stay in your life.

It's important whenever you're communicating those boundaries that you try to remain as calm as possible. Use really clear, unambiguous language so there is no question about what you are asking for. Make sure that you are clearly communicating your needs. And that you are expressing that there is a consequence for them not respecting that boundary. Be prepared going into this conversation that it may not go well. People don't like being told that they have to change their behavior in order to stay in your life, but that is OK. They are allowed to be mad because they are allowed to be wrong.

Them being mad doesn't mean that you setting that boundary is wrong.

no Even after all of the work that I have done to get to this place in my healing journey. I still. Get new revelations about myself all the time. This week I was faced with something. Something happened and I had a really, really emotional reaction to it. And I I struggled to identify what exactly it was about. This incident that made me so emotional. And when I really started to reflect on it, I realized that it was because someone had disrespected a boundary. That I hold in my life. And the more I thought about it, I realized that I had never expressed this boundary explicitly to this person. I had enforced this boundary in my life for so long that I assumed that it was a boundary that everyone had in their life. I thought that it was just a normal boundary that people kept and that people respected. But the fact that this person disrespected this boundary. Made me have to reconsider that maybe not everybody holds the same boundaries and I need to really work on being more clear about. Identifying my boundaries with people whenever I am entering into new relationships.

I haven't had a lot of experience outside of romantic relationships with having to set boundaries with new relationships, like new friendships. So this was new territory for me. So I hadn't really practiced that in real life. So it was definitely a learning experience for me, and it was something that I was actually really grateful that I got to do because it was something that I needed for my own journey. I needed to learn how to set and. Cold boundaries in friendships and in non romantic relationships like that. So even though what this person did really sucked and it really hurt me and it really upset me. It gave me an opportunity to grow, and that's always what I'm looking for, even in my worst, darkest moments. I'm looking for ways to continue to grow.

So I have never issued a homework assignment from this podcast before, but I'm going to challenge you a little bit for the coming week. I want to challenge you to identify one behavior that you want to set a boundary for. It can be one individual person, one individual thing that one person in your life does that you realize is not healthy for you and set a boundary for that. And I want you to try to initiate that conversation with that person. Even that one boundary, that one. One conversation. It will make such a difference. It will empower you to start setting and enforcing those boundaries in every aspect of your life. But you have to take that tiny step and start with just that one.

As always, I am so glad that you are here with me. I cannot express that enough. I know that I say it every episode. I genuinely mean it from the bottom of my heart. The messages that I get every day from people telling me how much they are getting and learning from this podcast, it means so much to me. I want to thank every single one of you. I am so glad that you're here with me. I am so glad to be doing this. This has been something that I have wanted to embark on for a while and I just never took the leap and here I am. I am leaping with arms wide open and the support that I have received has been overwhelming. So thank you so much. I hope that you have a great week. And I'll be back next week. Thanks.