Intention Into Action ~ Serenity Wellness Podcast E86

Gather your values and personal radar to move Intention into Action.

Communicating healthy boundaries can feel overwhelming and unfamiliar. The Family Roles we play and different layers of Cultural Learning can impact our relationship with communication.

Let's explore those roles, break down 4 Types of Communication, and build tools for success in settling boundaries with yourself and others.

Transcript

Hi there.

Welcome to Serenity Wellness Podcast and Episode 86,

Intention into Action.

Let's explore a little about the family roles you played,

What it has to do with communication,

And how to start to move that into healthy boundaries.

And then we'll go over some tools to help you get moving.

And welcome to Week 4 of Balance and Boundaries.

I hope you've enjoyed the practice over the past few weeks of gathering information and sitting with yourself.

Last week,

You started working on collecting the top three values that you found you hold,

As well as those personal radars,

Our felt sense,

How our body and our whole system tries to guide us and allow us a little bit of internal wisdom.

And then the 15-minute experience each day of trying to select something with boundaries you wanted to practice,

And then sitting in 15 minutes of just imagining putting that into place,

Collecting more information in that experience of what did you feel,

What emotions came up.

You might have even had different memories or experiences in the mind,

Body,

And emotions in the 15-minute experience.

All the information you gathered there bring that awareness with you as we move into today's information,

Which is going to be how to put all this in action.

How do we begin with what we know,

Our values,

Our internal wisdom and guidance,

And also maybe what we recognized when we started sitting with ourself of,

Ooh,

Anxiety come up,

Walls or barriers of I don't know that I can do this and move forward and put this in action.

All of those things,

Quite natural and normal to come up during these experiences.

Today,

We're going to talk about a few areas related to putting that in action in terms of communication,

Things that might block us there.

And then I'll give you a little bit of insight in how to pull all this together so that you can start creating healthy boundaries in your life for yourself,

But also in your relationships with others.

Communication can be one of the most challenging things when we are trying to set boundaries.

There's certainly the boundaries with self and our internal communication.

I'll give some examples as we move through the information today about what I'm talking about in terms of self.

You know,

If we want to,

For example,

Like clean up a space and then we'll have a lot of internal language that might block us from creating a healthy boundary,

That would be a healthy boundary,

Right?

Like organization of space impacts how we feel,

How we think,

If we feel cluttered,

If we feel overwhelmed.

So even our personal boundaries with how we're moving through life,

Including how we keep a space.

So like our office space or our kitchen would be common examples.

Our bedroom would be another common example.

And we might have a desired boundary for ourselves to have it a certain way,

To keep up with it in a certain way.

And then the mind clutter,

The I'll do it later,

Or the even the stuff of like,

We don't think we have the worth or value for it.

So we can certainly have communication towards self in terms of boundaries.

When we are trying to communicate our boundaries with someone else,

It can be,

You know,

Turn up the volume of difficulty.

And there's several different reasons for that.

There's many,

And I'm not going to be able to cover all of them,

But I'm going to kind of pull together some of the ones that I noticed the most through the years of practice.

One area is about our self-esteem.

How do we feel in terms of self,

Our confidence,

Our ability to notice our worth and value?

If you think about our personal value,

Our personal worth,

The values that you collected during that week one,

How confident are we to uphold those values for ourselves in our everyday interaction and how we move through life?

And that factors into how we communicate,

How we communicate with ourselves,

Our internal judgment towards ourselves,

The ways we block ourselves,

Self-sabotage.

As I talked about last week,

I think it was last week or for week two,

About how once we start moving and changing our relationship with self,

Boundaries,

Values,

We notice through time that we are less drawn towards self-sabotage as well.

Because we're in alignment with what our soul is speaking,

That internal wisdom,

But the connection,

The ability to identify and continue to move through life,

Holding that as a high value,

Holding a sacredness around our personal value when it's diminished or when it's blocked or in this foggy,

We can't see it,

It can make communication really difficult when we're trying to communicate these boundaries with other people in our life.

Another area related to communication blocks has to do with information we've gathered or maybe even our own belief cycles or belief cycles that we have gathered from other people that maybe we find ourselves still moving through or even just so many areas here in terms of what I'm going to explain.

It can even be related to cultural environments,

Depending on our culture.

So just when you're thinking about the culture of who we are,

You can see there's so many layers of culture.

Not only the culture in terms of our genetic upbringing,

Our ancestry,

But even the community culture,

The work culture,

The academic culture,

The peer culture.

So who we surround ourselves with,

Understandings,

Teachings can be interpreted and digested to create a barrier in communication of differences here.

And so all those different things I just mentioned have to do with how communication barriers can come into play.

At times,

A cultural digestion,

Each person being different,

Right?

We all have our own backgrounds,

Our own teaching,

Our own perception,

Our own belief cycle,

Our own values.

But in certain ways that people digest,

Interpret those things,

There's this difference in communication and gender of what is acceptable assertiveness.

What I might say in an assertive type of language,

Which I will be explaining assertive communication and the difference between that and other types of communication.

But if I were to be in assertive communication and say something assertively as a female,

It may get interpreted and even feedback I may receive can be quite different than someone maybe in a masculine energy saying the same thing.

I've experienced it multiple times in my life as a therapist.

I've heard it multiple times in my life from both genders.

It can happen all over the place.

The more we are aware though,

We are the ripples of change that we can be who we are in assertiveness and recognize that as we change through boundaries and creating healthy boundaries through our dialogue,

Through our connections and relationships,

It's a ripple effect.

So we get to also move the change,

Lever a different direction.

In that example of self,

I've certainly received different types of feedback,

Some being very supportive,

Very dialogue.

That's what assertive communication is.

We have had the ability to really have dialogue with people,

Others not so much.

Individuals who are themselves a little bit more into the aggressive or passive aggressive type of communication can push back a bit there,

Especially if you're setting hard boundaries with individuals who might have really been crossing boundaries in your life.

The more that you are in alignment with all of this,

Then regardless of what communication barriers or pushback that you might get from different places,

Staying in assertive communication is building self-esteem,

It's building confidence,

And it's creating healthy relationships in yourself and with others around you.

I will talk about the different styles of communication in just a moment,

But just want to first talk about a few other things that might block us or move us away from being able to feel healthy and in alignment with setting these boundaries with ourselves and with other people in communication.

We have our self-esteem,

We have our confidence,

How that ties into personal values and personal worth.

You could see kind of how there's this foundational building there within it.

And then you might have cultural dynamics,

Community dynamics,

Even understanding within certain aspects of upbringing even that might bring in differences of how we move through digesting communication.

Another few examples here that could block us is in relation to how we can feel around emotions.

If we find that we are rather uncomfortable with different emotions,

We might find that it's difficult for us also then to create healthy boundaries because we want to be the peacekeeper.

We want to just not create waves.

Let's just make sure everybody's happy and peaceful.

I'm just going to keep saying yes even though I want to say no or I will just continue to let someone treat me poorly because it's going to be too hard or too challenging emotionally,

Mentally,

Maybe physically,

Even exhausting to try to move or change that in a different direction.

All understandable things that can block us,

But what are we doing on the back end?

When we know our values,

When we know our personal radar,

The internal wisdom,

We feel it,

We hear it,

We know it,

And then we bypass it,

We ignore it,

We numb out for whatever reason any of the above reasons that I'm talking about here.

The end result though is if we keep moving forward in the same situation,

Same action without creating boundaries,

We are disrespecting and betraying ourselves.

If you're trying to move through life to create external peace or maybe even external chaos,

Which you'll understand when I talk about these communication dynamics here,

But if that's how we're moving through life,

Well,

What are we doing to self?

If you're moving through life being the peacekeeper,

Are you keeping peace with yourself or are you keeping peace with everyone else?

And in the meantime,

You're a bottled up mess.

What is the personal value there?

Where is the personal worth?

It's not easy sometimes to create boundaries as you're learning through this process here,

But where do we betray ourselves in the meantime?

Another aspect here,

And it might even tie into the peacekeeper,

Has to do with the family roles that we grew up around.

We all can tend to play different roles within our family system,

Whatever your family system looks like.

I know that does not mean our genetic family in a lot of different ways for people.

We are not all fortunate to be raised with our biological families or even sometimes being raised with our biological families doesn't really feel so fortunate.

We might have been raised in families that were full of trauma and chaos as well.

In our roles within the family system,

You can think about how each person plays a little bit of a different role.

I'm just going to name off a few common ones,

And there's certainly more than this.

And depending on the number of family members,

You might not have all of these.

You might have a few.

You might notice people playing multiple roles.

And keep in mind,

Our family units can look different.

We might have a very nuclear family where it's just like parental units and children,

Or we might have a much more extended cultural family dynamic where aunts,

Uncles,

Grandparents,

Cousins are very much part of the family.

We might have family that we were adopted into.

We might have family that just are friends that become our family.

But this is kind of about the early childhood foundational family,

Whatever that looks like for you.

And these roles can often play out how we then find ourselves communicating our boundaries later in life.

One role would be the lookout,

The person that might be standing on the watchtower,

And they're very hypervigilant,

On guard all the time,

Kind of checking everybody out,

Making sure everyone's doing okay.

There's no crisis coming.

No fires are starting.

They're on guard all the time.

Not only on guard for self,

Though,

They're on guard for everybody,

Kind of the peacemaker trying to keep the peace.

So they might be the watchman,

They might be the tower person.

I don't know what the proper term for the lookout person is who stands on a tower.

I just use a mix of those terms when I'm talking to people about it.

Like the person on watch,

Hypervigilant,

On guard all the time.

And then another family member might be the fire starter.

So they might be the one that is running around starting all the fires.

You can think about tornadic chaos going on at all times,

And that might be their role.

Maybe it's very subconscious or maybe even it's what gets pinned on them.

So maybe they're not actually setting fires,

But they're the scapegoat in the family that everyone points to them initially as the fire starter.

And maybe they were sound asleep,

Not starting any fires.

I say this also,

I should point out,

I'm not talking about actual fire setting,

Okay?

These are just like roles,

Okay?

Fire setting is a whole other situation in mental health.

Okay,

I'm not talking about that.

I'm sure that most of you are aware of that,

But I do want to be very clear.

I'm just talking about,

It's like the hats we wear,

The costume we've got on,

The role that we play in our family unit.

And then you might have a bystander.

So they're the ones who they're just kind of stuck.

They're like watching here,

They're watching there.

You know,

If you drive by an accident,

Like,

Ah,

What's that called?

What's the term for that?

Rubbernecking?

Do you have a rubberneck?

I think that's the term.

I don't know.

I know people listen to this outside of Pennsylvania for sure.

And so also outside of America.

So we have strange terms here.

I don't know if you have that where you're at,

But I think that's the term if you drive by an accident.

I think that's what it's called.

So anyway,

The bystander,

You're watching,

But almost like frozen.

You don't have anything to offer to put out the fire.

You don't really want to take watch either because that's going to keep you maybe feeling like you got to do something if you see somebody coming in when you're on watch.

But you're just watching in a different way.

Like you're the bystander.

You have no desire to take action.

You're just kind of observing,

Collecting the information.

And then you might have the firefighter in your family.

They are putting out fires all over the place.

They might be often into fix it mode.

You know,

They're just trying to get things fastly extinguished.

Like just let me get this fire out and let me move on.

I need to wash away this emotion.

I need to get out of this crisis.

I need to be done with this and I need to move on.

And then another person might play in their family role the EMT.

So I don't know if everyone knows what that means,

EMT.

This is like the person who runs the ambulance,

The medic who arrives at the scene.

So you have the person who is going to put out the fire,

But who's going to tend to the wounds,

Right?

The fire fighter,

They're just going to put out the fire.

They're going to bring out the hose,

Hose it all down.

And then they're going to be working on putting the hose away,

Getting off all the heavy equipment they have to put on to put out the fire.

And then the medics,

The EMTs,

The ambulance runners,

They're going to patch things up,

Maybe be able to attend to the wounds.

You might even have a crisis worker and maybe that's the role where now they're attending to the emotional,

Mental needs.

What can I do for you?

Do you need anything?

Whatever it is.

They're trying to meet the mental emotional where maybe the medic is helping with external wounds,

Internal wounds,

That kind of thing.

Again,

Those are just some examples.

You might notice as I'm talking through those other things or other roles that were in your family unit,

But those different roles,

You can see how they might play out how we communicate our boundaries because the roles that we play have to do with what we're learning in that family unit.

And in the roles,

We're also learning how to communicate.

That environment,

Even like again,

Family unit,

Cultural,

Community unit as well.

Where we grow up impacts how we move through life.

I share that many examples in my own personal experience where I grew up way different culturally than where I live right now in terms of emotion regulation.

Just one example,

There's so much traffic where I grew up.

And so emotion regulation,

In that area,

It's just higher rate of road rage.

I'm trying to think of how to gently explain this,

Higher rate of road rage.

Because there's traffic all the time,

There's people cutting off,

There's people leaving the horn,

You're in a rush,

You're late for everything,

There's road construction.

It's like,

Yeah,

Any city.

I'm definitely not speaking of just where I was raised,

Any kind of high traffic city versus I'm kind of in the mountains now.

Lots of football traffic where Penn State has games and things like that,

But I'm pretty much in the mountains.

There's not a lot of traffic here,

When people talk about traffic,

I'm like,

Where's the traffic?

I missed that location.

And so it creates a different calmness.

That's like one of a million examples about our communities and how things impact us there too,

Even in terms of communication.

And how we learn to communicate those roles that we play.

Those roles you might even notice family unit and maybe there's a different role that you play or played growing up in your community unit.

But how we learn that how to communicate our tone,

Posturing,

And our communication style.

There are four primary communication styles.

I'm not going to get in depth of them greatly,

But I'm going to explain them to you and I'll give an example using each of them.

The four different communication styles,

And again,

We learn these from different ways early on,

And then maybe we modify and change them through life.

But you can just,

As I'm talking this through,

Try to think back to earlier years,

Like what you learned in terms of these areas and maybe people in your life that are very close to you,

That nuclear kind of unit,

And how they communicate or how you communicate.

Postive communication is where we are really not saying at all what our boundaries are.

If we are emotionally impacted by something,

We are not going to let the person know,

You know,

Are you okay?

Oh,

I'm fine.

And meanwhile,

Not fine,

Not fine underneath.

It might be the go to.

We just are not in a place that we feel comfortable or even safe,

Or maybe we just don't,

Haven't practiced it,

Not really sure how to do it.

But we will not speak our authentic truth of what's really happening for us.

Aggressive communication is where we are speaking our boundaries,

But we're doing it in a way that is not respecting the other individual.

You might really put the person down or call them names,

Yell,

Posture with aggressive posturing,

Getting in the person's face,

Trying to intimidate,

Trying to gain control over a room would be another example.

So it's about domination and control when you're in aggressive communication,

Passive aggressive communication is where we are kind of in this mix or middle ground.

We're taking a bit of passive and we're taking a bit of aggressive language and we are combining the two.

We're not quite speaking our truth,

But we're not quite holding back.

You're having boundaries over here,

But you're not respecting the person.

You're having boundaries over here,

But you're not respecting yourself or the person really,

Because you're not expressing it.

You're not being genuine.

And then this passive aggressive mix is this,

It's like the compliment sandwich kind of thing.

It's like,

Say something nice,

Say something crappy,

Say something nice,

Like,

Let me smush it all together and maybe you won't realize that I'm being condescending.

And so when you're using passive aggressive,

This mix of the two,

It's often sprinkled with a little kindness,

Not being authentic,

Trying to state your boundary,

But you're putting it on the other person to be the detective and figure out what you really mean because you're not really saying it,

Kind of talking down to them.

And it is putting the responsibility on someone else to figure out what you mean.

And often,

Then they don't figure it out and it creates a higher reaction.

Assertive communication is where we have our boundaries.

We've gathered our values,

Our personal felt sense,

Our radar,

Really kind of honing in understanding ourselves.

And then we have worked on the communication to be able to say that or express it in a way that we are being respectful,

But we're not willing to give up our boundaries.

We're willing to compromise,

But not if it means that kind of back to disrespect and betrayal of self,

That that part is not compromiseable.

And we can have the ability to say this,

To voice this in self-esteem and self-confidence because we know what our value is and why it is important to us.

An example using each of these,

I will give the example of say you have a friend who tends to run late.

Pretty much each time you make a plan to meet with them,

They run late.

I think it's also important to note that people who have poor management of time,

It's not always an intentional thing of disrespect.

Time and conceptualization of time and being on time can be very difficult for some people,

Whether it be on the area of they have anxiety or trauma.

So they might disconnect from time a little bit because of that.

Or perhaps for that person,

They're working through depression.

And that morning they had such a hard time even getting out of bed.

So them arriving 15 minutes late for them might feel like a very big accomplishment because they're actually showing up and we're able to make movement in their day.

That's where all that compassion comes in,

That we never know what someone's going through on the inside part of their life.

We only see little crumbs,

Little bits and pieces,

All the way up to maybe people who are very tapped in of their presence,

Of what they're doing.

And so if you think about maybe you're creating a piece of art,

You might lose track of time when you might have thought to do it for 30 minutes and all of a sudden an hour and a half has gone by.

That's that when you're living in your dharma,

When you're really experiencing something fully with all five senses in that moment,

Then you can lose track of time.

I acknowledge I myself have this situation sometimes.

Sometimes it might be because of anxiety and feeling a bit fragmented there,

Or I get really involved in things and just totally lose track of time.

No intention on the other,

Really have worked hard at it through the years and has gotten better with it.

But it definitely still happens to me as well.

So just know that it's not always intentional and intention or not,

You can still have these conversations through assertive conversations and boundary setting so that you are still being in alignment with what's important for you.

And the example would be how you would respond to this person using each of these communication styles.

They might sit down and we'll say the person says,

Oh,

Sorry,

I'm running late.

I lost track of time and got caught up in something.

Just leave it at that and say they're 15 minutes late.

Using the passive,

Kind of stay in the same order.

Again,

Internally not liking this,

But your response might be,

Oh,

No problem.

I was just reading an article online or I was just taking in the scenery,

Maybe you're sitting outside somewhere waiting for them.

That can be true,

But again,

Is it really how you're feeling?

The aggressive communication might be,

I'm going to make sure I say this in a way I don't have to bleep myself out here.

So it might be something like every time we meet,

You are constantly late.

I don't even know why I even bother to meet with you anymore because you have no respect for what I have to do.

It's not like you even care that I wait every time we meet.

It's like you think I have nothing better to do in my life.

Maybe all true,

Right?

Maybe all true.

Maybe you're really feeling like that,

But you can hear how that is a little bit aggressive and we can way go up the volume there and I'm sure you might know personal examples of when people really turn up the volume in the aggressive communication.

Passive aggressive,

You might say something like,

Oh,

I'm used to it by now.

I mean,

I don't have anything better to do.

You're kind of tone,

You might even have a bit of a smirk on your face,

Shrug of some sort,

But it's like you're not really talking about how you feel because in this example,

Maybe your true feelings are not really in alignment with each time you're meeting this person,

They're not respecting your time.

Respecting other people's time,

It's a value of mutual reciprocity.

Not wasting the time of others.

There's other Sanskrit terms for it,

But I'll just keep it at that.

But passive aggressive,

You're just like,

Yeah,

I'm used to it by now.

It's always late,

Right?

I'm used to it by now.

I have nothing better to do.

Assertive communication where you're setting a healthy boundary might sound something like I understand how that can happen,

Losing track of time.

I do though have other things I have to do later this afternoon,

So I'll still have to wrap this up at whatever time you had initially planned.

So say you planned for an hour to be able to get together with the person,

They're 15 minutes late.

So you might say,

I do still have to wrap this up in 45 minutes.

So happy to see you.

And then you can kind of move into the time together with the person,

But you're speaking your boundaries,

You're letting them know that you're valuing your own time.

And you're just doing it directly without a whole bunch of extra.

Just kind of right to the point,

Concrete,

But also not disrespecting the person.

You might also add in there that it's really difficult for me to plan things with you when oftentimes you show up late.

So these are all examples of different things that could block our communication in establishing boundaries where we might have collected the information from.

And then this last part,

How do we place it and put it into action?

You've been really working on that over the past few weeks of how to put this into action.

Some other things to keep in mind is when you decide to do this,

When you decide to allow yourself to start communicating healthy boundaries,

It does not always feel smooth.

Our body has that fight,

Flight or freeze response system within it.

So we might find that we get into one of those three different situations for higher level situations where we're trying to establish boundaries.

We might find anxious body takeover,

High adrenaline rushes,

Tension buildup.

Sometimes people even notice that they're like clenching their fists,

Holding their fists,

I don't know if clenching is the right word there,

Singing a draw,

But holding their fists like they're going to punch somebody even though they're not,

But it's just like,

Or maybe they feel like they want to,

I don't know.

But it's just like all the tension that is built up there.

So we can notice that our body is responding in this fight,

Flight or freeze.

If you think of the bystander,

The collector of information,

That bystander,

How I mentioned sometimes they feel like frozen,

They're just like collecting,

They can't really move.

They're just like taking it all in.

That would be like kind of the freeze element sometimes for people too,

Or the fight might be the fire setter feels more maybe higher emotion.

So they're more able to get pulled into crisis mode a little bit more on the ready.

So our natural fight,

Flight or freeze can get activated initially when we're trying to set boundaries because it might be something completely different.

It may be something you've never done before,

Or maybe you've tried it and you felt like that was really messy.

I don't want to do that again.

That was really painful.

I don't want to try that again.

So there might have been lots of different reasons that you didn't want to put it forward,

Or maybe you haven't put it forward before,

Or maybe you're trying a different type of boundary.

Maybe you've had a lot of success in other areas and you're trying something new or with a new person or situation,

So you can activate all of that.

And practice is key here.

Practice not only in how you did over the past week with the 15 minutes,

When you're finding a new situation,

Practicing in that way can be valuable in a lot of different ways.

You are giving yourself a little practice in trying it mentally in your mind,

But physically feeling it emotionally in the body.

And that way,

When you have maybe fight,

Flight,

Or freeze show up,

You're sitting with self.

You're letting yourself breathe through that.

You're not telling yourself,

Get away from the emotion,

But you're allowing yourself to practice moving through it.

So then when you put it in place,

You're not feeling so taken over by the emotion itself because you've had some practice there with it.

So the practice is a great tool and technique to continue before you move into the communication.

For some of those more difficult situations where we have to communicate our boundaries with maybe an individual who uses a little bit more of that passive aggressive or aggressive style of communication,

You can pop over to mental health therapy tools on YouTube,

Or there's an easy page on my website there,

And check out the Dear Man technique.

That's going to help you to really dive into communication when you're up against maybe a pushy person who isn't really respecting what you're trying to communicate with your boundaries.

And then also as you're doing this,

You might think of opportunities at low level to start first.

So you're not going to maybe want to jump in at something that's all the way up here.

Maybe a really challenging boundary that you are noticing lots of anxiety come up.

Maybe you start somewhere real low,

And a low level could be a personal boundary.

It might be something like cleaning up the office,

Kitchen,

Or bedroom,

For example.

And with it,

You might even let someone know what you're going to be doing.

Oftentimes I will do this with clients.

So if a client is going to clean up their bedroom,

We'll say,

Or their kitchen,

They will send me a picture of the before,

Their dining room table.

It's a common place that we have stuff pile up,

Right?

So they'll send me a picture of the before,

And then they'll send me a picture of the after.

Sometimes they'll send me a few pictures in the process,

Because it's just kind of helping them check in with themselves,

But it's kind of doing that little bit of extra where a little bit of that accountability effect is helpful for you.

So if that kind of check in with someone can be helpful,

Let someone know what you're doing.

Oh,

I'm going to work on my bedroom today,

Or I'm going to work on my kitchen today.

Check this out.

Look at what it looks like right now.

I'm going to send you a finish thing when it's done.

Start low.

That's a personal boundary that you're setting there in that example.

And it's something maybe pretty low level.

Start with a drawer,

But it's just about the practice,

Because we could still have,

Even though it's something like that,

All of the emotional avoidance that comes with setting boundaries,

The no thank you,

I don't want to do that anymore.

It's taking too long,

Or there's too much stress around it.

When we're establishing balance and boundaries,

It's creating change.

You're breaking cycles,

You're breaking habits,

But you're also creating fundamental change when you're creating boundaries with other people.

You might be creating whole new systems.

If you've come from a closed family system,

You might be breaking open the shell,

Talking honestly about family struggles or challenges.

So many times people will talk about how they just learned way later in life that there's chronic addiction in their family or chronic mental health,

And how it would have been helpful for them to know that information in their own history.

But it's like this closed unit,

We don't want to talk about anything.

So you might be breaking something open like that.

You might be changing relationship dynamics,

Because you're in tune with yourself and you're setting boundaries.

All those things are natural and normal,

And that's why when we're moving into it,

When we're starting to establish it,

It might feel a little uncomfortable.

The after part,

So you might set a boundary,

Like use that example,

The friend arrives late.

You were the assertive example there,

And then you leave within the 45 minute timeframe,

And then the after,

Contemplation that people get into.

Oh,

Was that rude?

Should I have just stayed?

I could have moved this other thing.

Guilt,

All the different things that come in to try to convince ourselves that we have done something wrong.

That is,

Again,

A natural normal part of the process,

Believe it or not,

Until you start the practice.

So the moving into action is just bringing everything with you that you have been working on over the past three weeks,

Trying to think of what your communication style is and where it came from.

What maybe moves you away from assertive?

What would move you into passive?

What would move you into passive aggressive or aggressive?

Notice where it comes from.

Notice how it feels.

If we're in aggressive,

Often if we give ourselves enough time to slow down in the after,

We notice it doesn't feel really great.

Even the passive aggressive or passive,

We often don't slow down enough and we just keep our own pattern going.

And then we question why our relationship with ourselves and others keeps looking the same as well.

I hope you found this information helpful and give yourself time to practice it.

Give yourself compassion and curiosity as you explore this.

You may have been in a habit for a really long time here.

It won't take as long to create a new habit because you're going to reap all the beautiful benefits that it creates inside when you start allowing yourself to move more into self-respect and help you train yourself by letting boundaries just wash away that you know are important for you.

Thank you so much and I look forward to seeing you again soon.

Have a good one.

Bye-bye.

Reviews

This short series was so helpful for me. It really helped me to put things in perspective. We all have those family members that reject our boundaries continually so it’s my responsibility to act accordingly. I tried different things with my family that constantly use aggressive communication. Most times now I just leave and go home where it’s quite and peaceful! I will continue to be an example of what good communication looks like when interacting with family and friends as well.
Great series Nicole! 💜