How to Have Healthy Boundaries in Every Area of Your Life

Episode Transcript

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Hi, everyone, welcome to the show. I’m Dr. Nicole, and today we’re talking about one of my favorite topics and something so important for parenting. That topic is boundaries. The content I’ve created around parent-related boundaries is some of the most popular, so obviously, you all realize this is key, not only for raising your kids, but for a healthy life in general. You have asked a lot of questions recently about how to set boundaries with various people in your lives, what to do when your child or another adult pushes your boundaries, how to deal with your own feelings around setting and enforcing boundaries, and I can’t think of anyone better to help us dig into this topic than the amazing Melissa Urban. I had the pleasure of meeting Melissa in person for the first time a few months ago, and had such a great conversation. I knew we needed to bring her on the show for all of you. She has literally written The Book of Boundaries, which was just released this week. There is so much to get into on this topic. Let me quickly tell you about Melissa in case you don’t know who she is.

Melissa Urban is the co-founder and CEO of the Whole30 program, and a six-time New York Times bestselling author. Her highly anticipated new book, The Book of Boundaries was just released this week. She’s the host of the Do the Thing podcast, a prominent keynote speaker on boundaries, building community health trends and entrepreneurship, and ranks number 19 on the greatest top 100 Most Influential People in health and fitness. She lives in Salt Lake City, Utah. I will also note that she is a Mom. Can’t wait to get into all of this. Melissa, welcome to the show. Thank you for being here.

Melissa Urban

Thank you so much. It’s so great to see you again, Nicole.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

So there’s so much to get into on this topic, we could probably do a series of 12 episodes on it. I said in the intro, this topic, more than almost anything, is the one that I get tons of DM’s and questions around, so I’m excited for us to have this conversation. I actually want to start by having you share why it is you decided to write this book on boundaries after really focusing on your career up until this point on health and wellness. You’re really known in the health and wellness world, Whole30 is obviously super popular, and then you come out with this book on boundaries. I just would love for you to share the connections there and why you feel so passionate about this.

Melissa Urban

Yeah, so I’ve been doing Whole30 since 2009, so it’s been 13 years, and it has been a 13-year progression to The Book of Boundaries. If you’re familiar with the Whole30, it’s a 30 day elimination program, and so you find that you say “No” a lot on the program to hold that health commitment to yourself. And so I discovered pretty early on in the process that people weren’t comfortable saying “no” to the break room doughnuts, or their mother in law’s pasta, or the glass of wine at happy hour. So I started by helping them set boundaries around their health commitments in food and alcohol and maybe diet talk or body weight talk. And once people figured out I was good at helping them say no in those scenarios, they started coming to me with “But my mother in law is always dropping by the house without calling first”, or “The grandparents are always feeding my kids sugar when they go stay with them, even though I’ve asked them not to”, or “My boss is always texting me after hours, how do I handle this?” And they’re all really just boundary scenarios. So it was a very natural progression for me to start helping people with boundaries scenarios outside of health and wellness, and what I found is that when people complete a Whole30, the sense of self confidence and self-efficacy spills into every area of their life, and they start looking at “Where else can I shore up my mental health, my physical health, my energy, my time?” So The Book of Boundaries was really just a very natural progression from the work I’ve been doing with Whole30 for more than a decade.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

So true. And I think sometimes it takes a specific experience like that for us to realize how much of a difficult time we have either saying no or setting boundaries in lots of parts of our lives. And yet it’s so, so important. I want to get into all the challenges around it. But let’s define, for people who are like “Yeah, I hear this term, it’s popular now, I see these posts around it, but what actually is a boundary?”, because I think there’s confusion around this. So let’s define that for people: What is the boundary? Why are they necessary?

Melissa Urban

Yes. So I define boundaries as a limit that you set around how you allow other people to engage with you. So if you picture yourself standing in the middle of a field and you draw a big circle around yourself, that is your boundary. And anything you allow inside that boundary is because it feels safe and healthy and it feels good. Any behavior or conversation person, whatever that looks like, that you keep outside of that circle is because it feels unsafe or unhealthy for your physical or mental health, or just doesn’t feel good. So I think a common misconception around boundaries is that it’s about telling other people what to do, or controlling other people, and that is not at all the case. Boundaries are about telling other people what you will do in the face of their behavior to keep yourself safe and healthy. So that’s a really important reframe, I think.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I think so too, because one of the things that comes up for parents in my community when I talk about boundaries, inevitably, there will be a flood of questions: “Okay, but how do I get my kid to do what my boundary is?” Or “How do I get my kid to respect or follow my boundary?” And it’s like, wait a second, let’s back up and actually define what a boundary is because the boundary is about what you will do. It’s not about what your kid will do.

Melissa Urban

So one of the things I have a rule around is I don’t talk about parenting advice outside of my area of expertise. My son is nine, so I’m not going to talk about teenagers. But at the earliest age, when my son was three or so, he would insist on wanting to interrupt phone calls. Now, I can’t make him be quiet when I’m on the phone, but what I can say is, “I will acknowledge you in one moment, please be patient.” And I would kind of pat his hand to let him know that I heard him and have a very natural break in the conversation pretty early on. I would say “Thank you so much for waiting, now I will address you”, and we’ve kind of stretched that area out. So that’s an example of I can’t make my son be quiet or stop asking me to talk to him when I’m on the phone. But what I can say is, “I will not respond until it is an appropriate moment for me to respond.” And that’s a good way to think about reframing a boundary.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I think so too. It’s about what we can control. So often, I mean, with lots of people in our lives, but I think especially with our kids, we focus on trying to control what they do. And actually what’s so critical to all of this is recognizing the limits on what we can control, that we are the only person we can control in this equation. And boundaries really help us focus on that, because it’s like, “What am I willing to tolerate? What am I willing to accept? How am I going to respond?” I think that’s very empowering for parents, especially, who maybe feel really disempowered with their kids or feel like “I don’t have any control here. I can’t get my kid to do things”, by reframing and focusing on, okay, but what do you have control over? I think that’s really empowering for people.

Melissa Urban

It’s incredibly empowering. And also what it requires is almost to take a step back, before you get to that point of “Okay, how can I respond in this moment to keep the relationship safe and healthy and keep me safe and healthy?” It is: How can I create a moment of space to check in with myself and ask myself what I need in this moment? And I think the pandemic brought to light, especially for working moms, this concept of putting everyone else’s needs above our own with work, and school, and homework, and kids, and housework, and relationships all bleeding into each other. I think in particular women, and especially moms, have lost the idea that it’s okay to create that space for yourself and ask “What do I need in this moment to keep myself safe and healthy, to keep this relationship on track?” And after you’ve had that moment of check in, that’s where you can start to have those boundary conversations.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I love that you raised that because I think for so many parents, moms especially, that is sort of a new idea, or you just brought that into their awareness, and a new way of: Wait, I’m allowed to check in with myself around what I might need here? I think it’s so ingrained, culturally, especially for women, especially for moms, that our needs are not part of the equation. When you become a parent, it’s all about your kids, it’s all about their feelings, what’s happening for them, and we just completely sideline ourselves. But what I see in my work with families is what happens then, when we don’t feel like we have permission to pause and create that space, like you just said, to check in with ourselves. we become super resentful, kind of bitter and angry. We become a mom that we don’t want to be and part of it is because we aren’t checking in with ourselves and we aren’t factoring ourselves in. I’m curious about your thoughts on that.

Melissa Urban

I mean, yes, so the patriarchy, and misogyny and stereotypical gender roles and perhaps religious influences, and certainly our parental models, because most of us weren’t modeled healthy boundaries, I sure wasn’t, have all taught women to be small, to be compliant, to put everyone else’s needs above our own, and that for us to even have needs is seen as selfish somehow, or manipulative or controlling or cold, or whatever word you want to use. So we have all been conditioned. And then of course, when we become moms, that’s like 10-fold, because now we have our children to pay attention to and not just our spouses or our jobs or other people who need us. So we have to unlearn this idea that boundaries are somehow selfish, that having needs or putting our needs first are selfish. It’s not “only me”, but it is “also me”, right? I’m not saying “Only me”, I’m saying, “Also me, my needs matter, my feelings count, and I can’t pour from an empty cup.” So until I put that focus on checking in with myself, asking myself what I need and setting those healthy boundaries to ensure that I am safe and protected and my relationships are healthier, because that’s the goal of a boundary, now all of a sudden, I’m feeling proactive instead of reactive. I’m ending bitterness and ending that anxiety. I’m ending that dread. I’m starting to reaffirm the story that I can be trusted to know my own feelings and my own needs because there are a lot of things that have told me that I can’t, and I am worthy of having these needs and having them be met.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah, it’s so, so true. And I think this conversation that I had with a mom several months ago is coming to mind right now as we’re talking about this. She has three kids, all I think under the age of eight, one of them a toddler, and she was reaching out to me because she was so frustrated at the struggle she was having with keeping herself regulated when her kids were having issues. I think we all deal with that. We know it’s important to keep ourselves regulated. And as I explored that with her, this issue of boundaries just came up front and center, because this was a mom who felt like her needs were not part of the equation, to the point where she felt like it wasn’t okay for her to have privacy in the bathroom. I remember her saying to me, “I just wish I could get 30 seconds to go into the bathroom and pee by myself.” And I said, “Well, can you say more about why you’re not doing that?” And she said, “Well, because my kids want to be in there. Like they don’t give me the privacy.” And this idea of that, actually, is a totally reasonable thing for you to want and need for yourself and set a boundary around, was really a huge shift for her, and of course, led to a discussion about many other things, but that stands out to me.  I know there are a lot of you listening, same kind of thing. Maybe it’s not your kids barging into the bathroom or whatever, it’s other things. But I think that can be a slippery slope when we start having kids, especially the stuff we realize, like, “I have no personal space to myself, I feel like I don’t have control over anything that’s happening.” And when we get to that point, it makes it very hard for us to do what we know we should do, which is to stay calm and regulated when our kid is throwing the tantrum, when they’re mouthing back to us, when whatever situation comes up. So to me, when people ask the question “I know I should stay better regulated, I know I need to stay calm. How do I do that?” Boundaries are a big part of how you do that.

Melissa Urban

Yes, they absolutely are. And I think that’s such a perfect example of giving pieces of yourself away until there is absolutely nothing left. You absolutely should have the ability to pee in a room with the door closed, and be able to demonstrate and model for your kids that this is a healthy space. And when you as a mom, model these healthy boundaries for your children, then they feel empowered to do the same, and then you’re kind of resetting this pattern for your entire family. But yes, this idea of not having any margin in your day, whether it’s time margin or energetic margin, and feeling like you don’t have control because everyone else’s needs not just supersede your own but erase your own, is really why we’re so exhausted all the time.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

It’s so true, especially women, especially moms, and you mentioned the pandemic. I think especially coming out of the pandemic, we are seeing rates of mental health symptoms like never before. And it’s like, well, of course, I mean, it would be weird if we weren’t, given what everybody’s lived through. But to me, this issue of really understanding and honing in on what are my needs? And what boundaries are going to be important at this point? It’s a super practical way of, like you said, resetting and saying, “Okay, how do we move forward from this?” So let’s get into some of the nitty gritty of this, because I think people are probably nodding along going, “Okay, yes, boy, I get this, this is me, I need to know how to do this”, it can be tough to implement this, right? And I think part of it, you just touched on when you said that when we are able to do this for ourselves, we model it for our kids, and we help them to then grow up to be adults who are aware of their needs and able to set and enforce boundaries. Most of us did not grow up with that model, so we are trying to figure out, now in adulthood, how to do this, and that’s tough. So what are some of the obstacles that you find come up most often, or the objections that people have? “Oh, yeah, Melissa, I know that’s important. But you don’t understand, I can’t…”, whatever. What are some of the common things that get in the way?

Melissa Urban

I think the most common objection I hear is that it’s just really uncomfortable. It’s uncomfortable to set the boundary you need to set because in order to set the boundary, you actually have to speak it. You can’t hint, you can’t eye-roll, you can’t make a joke about it, you can’t assume that they’re a mind reader and they know you have this limit and they’ve crossed it. You have to actually use the words to set it, and people say, “But that’s so uncomfortable.” And I won’t deny that it is uncomfortable to advocate for your own needs, perhaps pointing out gently and kindly the ways that other people may have been behaving or coming into your life in a way that wasn’t necessarily healthy. But what I point out is that what you’re also doing now is uncomfortable: Swallowing your own feelings, pretending they don’t exist, fuming every time you get the phone call or the knock at the door, but plastering a smile on your face and not saying anything, seething afterward with the “I could have said” or “I should have said”, not answering the phone, dreading the interaction, giving away all of your time and energy, that is also uncomfortable. And that discomfort doesn’t lead to anything productive, it does not restore your energy or your time or your mental health, it doesn’t preserve your sense of safety, it doesn’t improve your relationship. Having the one uncomfortable conversation, that’s the path that would. So that’s kind of one path that leads to this improved relationship and better energy and better mental health, less stress and less resentment, less anxiety, and the other path that you’re on just leads to more of the same.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

So pick your uncomfortable, right? I mean, things are going to be uncomfortable, and I think there’s so much about what’s ingrained in most of us as women, especially around people pleasing. And there’s a cognitive dissonance there, boundaries sort of bump up against, whether we consciously recognize it or not, this thing that’s been ingrained in us about being nice to people, please people make sure that people think good things about you, as if we could control that. But it’s this game that we play around that. And so you’re right, whether it’s our mother-in-law or our child, or our boss, or whatever, we will, on the surface, do the thing, say that thing, allow the thing that we think they will feel good about, “They’ll think I’m nice”, and then we’re angry about it, and we’re resentful and we’re bitter. We wonder why we’re exhausted and burned out and whatever. But I think that people pleasing tendency is at the core of it for a lot of us.

Melissa Urban

Oh, it very much is. And again, the influences that come down from systemic factors and from what’s been modeled for us. I think in many cases, or at least in some cases, people become accustomed to these privileges that you have given me that they do not deserve, and that are not healthy for you or healthy for your relationship. And so when you do set the boundary, it can feel as though you’re taking something away, and that certainly can perhaps lead to push back. However, remember that boundaries are designed to keep you safe and healthy and improve the relationship. Think about the mother-in-law or the in-laws that come over all the time without calling, even though you’ve said “Boy, next time I wish you would call” or “Oh, this isn’t really a very good time.” You have resentment, you have dread, you have frustration when you hear that knock on the door, when you do interact with them, when you let them in the house, you’re probably not the most pleasant version of you. It’s not healthy for the relationship, instead of, “Hey, heads up, I really need you to call before you come by. Please give us at least an hour notice because if we’re doing homework or having a family time, it might not be a good time to visit.” And you enforce that, then all of a sudden, no more dread, no more anxiety, no more unpleasantness when they come over, because you’ve either said “Yes, now’s a good time”, or you’ve said “No, now is not a good time.” And everything gets better about that relationship.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

So let’s take this example to the inevitable next question that some people will have, which is “Okay, so I set that boundary. I say, ‘It’s not going to work for us for you to just show up, we need you to give us an hour’s notice before you come over’, and your in laws continue to come over unannounced, let themselves in the house whenever. I can hear people sort of saying, “Okay, then what?”

Melissa Urban

Yeah, so in my boundary framework, I use this green, yellow, red model of boundary language, where it’s sort of minimum effort, maximum effect. You want to use the gentlest boundary language possible. The clearest, kindest language to accomplish the desired effect. So the first time you have the conversation, it’s a very simple and gentle, “We need you to call before you come over, please give us an hour’s notice next time”, that’s it. Then the next time, if they just dropped over, you need to escalate to the yellow boundary, which is maybe you open the door and you say, “Oh, remember we asked you to call? Now’s not a great time, we can visit with you for five minutes. But then we’re going to have to go”, or whatever that looks like. If at that point, they are still refusing to respect your perfectly reasonable limit, not to just drop by without notice, feel free not to answer the door if it’s not a good time for you. Feel free to have a conversation with your partner and say, “This is what’s happening with the in-laws. If you don’t mind it, but I do. If they visit without calling first, maybe you handle the visit, and I don’t have to entertain them.” Get on the same page with your partner about what that boundary looks like. But if you have asked again, and again, and again, then the enforcement of that boundary is, if they drop by and it’s not a good time, or you just don’t feel like entertaining, you don’t answer the door, or you answer the door and you say “I’m sorry, now is not a good time.” And that’s it, you’re done. And that is not being cruel, that’s not being selfish, that’s not being mean, this is their purposeful disrespect of your perfectly reasonable healthy limit, and the consequences of that disrespect is that they don’t get to see you exactly when they choose if it’s not a good time for you.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

It’s a beautiful example. And in working with families for 25 years, that particular issue comes up quite regularly, and I think it does wreak havoc, not only on the relationship with the in-laws, the parents, whoever, but also when it’s a couple of situation, it can wreak havoc in your relationship with your partner too, especially if you’re not on the same page with them or you’re not communicating clearly about it or one person is feeling resentful. These kinds of boundaries are not even just about the in-laws or the parents or whoever, the kids, whatever. They’re also about maintaining and supporting a healthy partner relationship.

Melissa Urban

Yes. And I have a rule with in laws, particularly, which is you handle your own parents. Each of you, handle your own parents, and in a romantic partnership, you two have to be on the same page about the boundary you want to set. Otherwise, you have no chance of it succeeding. So in the case of in-laws, your spouse would handle their own parents and have that conversation. And it’s not, “Melissa would really like it if you called before you showed up”, no, no, no, that’s throwing your partner under the bus. It is, “We have decided that this is a healthy limit we are going to set for the health of our family, we are asking you to respect this limit by doing XYZ.” That’s how you approach this. So there’s an entire script and set of conversations in the book about what to talk to your partner about before you even have the conversation with the parents or grandparents.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah, the scripts are so great. And I think it’s helpful because it gives all of us some language to think about. It’s one thing to understand the concept, it’s another thing to be standing there and going, “What are some words to use?” I think the scripts are great. While we’re on the topic of grandparents in laws, that whole thing, let’s give people an example, because another issue that comes up quite often in my work with families is grandparents, or let’s just even say extended family members and issues with the kids. So I think you referenced it early on in our conversation, a mom who will say “I’m so frustrated because whenever the kids go over to grandma and grandpa’s, it’s just candy all the time. I feel like tearing my hair out because then the kids come back, and this is not how we normally eat.” I even had family say, parents say that they really struggled because their parents or their in laws will feed the kids things, even if there’s a food sensitivity and allergy, something like that. I think food stuff comes up all the time. So let’s give people some ways to think about that, and maybe some language choose, maybe in terms of the green, yellow, red framework even.

Melissa Urban

I mean, I had this situation with my own dad. So my son had eczema when he was younger, and it was very seriously triggered by dairy. We identified that dairy was a common culprit for it. And so we’d go down and visit my grandparents, my parents, his grandparents, and I’d go run errands and come back and he’d be eating ice cream. And I would say, “Dad, what! I asked you not to!” And he’d say, “Well, it’s just one ice cream, it’s only…”, and so the conversation, the green boundary is “If you are going to spend time with my child, you cannot feed him XY and Z.” And you don’t need to have a food sensitivity or a reason. It can just be “I’m the parent and this is how we prefer it. So going forward, if you want to spend time with him, please don’t feed him dairy. If you want to do treats, you can do A, B or C. You guys can make gluten free cookies, these are some of his favorite non-dairy ice cream treats, I can bring a package down for you”, and offer alternatives. That’s the green boundary. If it happened again, the yellow boundary is “I’ve asked you to respect my parenting decisions around what we feed our child. And if you can’t do that or won’t do that, you won’t be spending time with the kid by yourself.” And then the red boundary is enforcing that, “Yes, we will come to visit, but I will not be leaving him with you. He won’t be doing an overnight, you won’t be able to take him out unsupervised because you have demonstrated an unwillingness to respect my needs for him as a parent and his health.” So that’s sort of the escalation of that. And again, what you’ll probably get from the grandparents is “You’re punishing me, you’re punishing me,” which is an incredibly immature response. Like, “Grandpa wants to give you ice cream, but Mom won’t let me”, and that is a separate conversation. But your parents have a choice. They can choose to spend time with the child in whatever way suits them as long as they respect this one healthy limit. If they are choosing not to respect that limit, then they are also making the choice to only spend time with their grandchild under these very specific circumstances. This is not on you. This is their choice.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Well, and that’s what I was going to say, is I think this is so hard for us as parents because again, we’re conditioned to perceive that we are the one who’s a problem in this scenario, and often are directly made to feel that way, right? Our parents say “Oh, you’re punishing me, I can’t believe you’re doing that”, we’re made out to be the problem when in fact, if we really objectively step back and look at it, we are not the problem in this scenario. They are the problem. And they may or may not be able to have awareness and recognize that, or we can have empathy for wherever they are in their journey with that, but we are not the problem. And I think that mindset shift is so important, because I hear that getting in the way a lot, of moms and dads being able to set those men because you’re like, “I don’t want to be a problem.”

Melissa Urban

Yeah, well, and then if you take into account the historical relationship that you’ve had with your parents, and how the patterns from childhood absolutely still reappear when you get together, even though you’re a grown adult taking care of your own human, absolutely, that can be a real challenge. But ultimately, the end conversation is this: You had your chance to parent me, and I am certain you did not appreciate it when grandma and grandpa tried to overstep your parenting. Now it is my turn, and I need you to respect that. When you are with my son, I am the parent and I make the rules. I want you to have all the best parts of being a grandparent. I want you to feel like you can spoil him and take him for treats. I’m just going to set some healthy guidelines around what that looks like, to both keep my son healthy and safe, and to make sure that you and I still continue to have a really good relationship.” That’s the end goal here.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah, and keeping that in mind that the end goal is that we’re on the same page and that this is good for everyone. I think that’s key. Let’s talk about an example, something that you find that comes up for parents in relation to their work, perhaps. I’m thinking about lots of parents, moms, especially, now are trying to work and also parent. There can be things that come up in the workplace around setting boundaries, around time when you might answer emails, when you’re available. I find that this can be really tricky too. Moms, especially, feel very pulled between “I need to produce and do what I’m supposed to do at work and be available. But I also want to be focused on my kids and prioritizing them.” I think this is hard for a lot of people. So what’s something you find that comes up often around that? And then give us some language?

Melissa Urban

Yeah, for sure. So obviously prioritizing your family time is incredibly important for having a healthy workplace culture, to make sure that you are recharging effectively before you go back to the work day or after a weekend. And I do think that moms, especially, can feel like or can be made to feel like, because of pressures, that they’re kind of like not doing a great job on any front. If they’re trying to blend work and family into one, they’re answering emails at night after dinner to go above and beyond or put in that extra effort. They feel like they’re not being a good mom or a good parent, and they also feel like they’re not really being super effective at their job. So I think setting some clear boundaries around out of office time is incredibly important. So you know, things that happen, typically, our bosses or coworkers will text or call after hours for something that is clearly not an emergency. And I think a good green boundary there is maybe responding in that moment, this one time, “Hey, I’ll help you out right now. But I’m off the clock. It is my family time. Going forward, if it’s not an emergency, send me an email, and I’ll respond the next morning.” If it happens a second time, you can feel free not to reply to that text, and the next morning, go into the office and say, “Hey, you texted me after hours. Again, that is my family time, and I’m asking you to respect that. Let’s look at the thing that you want to look at.” If it continues to happen, that’s the point where you go to the boss or the boss’s boss or human resources to say “This organization says that it values work life balance, and I’m not seeing that demonstrated right now. Here’s what’s happening. I’ve got documentation to kind of demonstrate the time after hours where I’m being encroached upon to do things for work that are not emergencies, and here’s how I would like that to look going forward. Maybe we could have a training where people can learn how to schedule email”, so that your boss can still get there after hours notes down, but it’s not encroaching on your time. Maybe we don’t text employees outside of emergencies. Maybe we use Slack and I turn off notifications on my end. There are certainly some self-boundaries I can set in this incident. But it is really important to protect that family time to make sure that you aren’t going back into the workplace feeling revived and recharged, and that your time outside of your employment is respected and valued.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah, absolutely. And I think again, this conversation is just putting it on the radar for us, maybe in a new way, or maybe for the first time, that it’s okay to do this. It is okay to need to have some separation of work and home, you’re not being difficult. These are perfectly reasonable things to need, to expect, and I think that gets lost. Sometimes people don’t feel like these aren’t reasonable things. But what you’re just reminding us of is that these are perfectly reasonable things.

Melissa Urban

Not only that, but people sometimes think that setting boundaries at work only benefits one person, the boundary setter, right? If I say, “Please don’t text me unless it’s an emergency during my family time, my weekends, my sick time, my vacation,” people assume that that only benefits me. Boundaries benefit everybody, they benefit the organization as a whole because employees feel valued, trusted and respected, because employees now are using their paid time off and nights and weekends and sick days to actually recover and recharge and recuperate, which brings them back to work feeling more productive. It leads to a healthier office culture where people can say no and have those collaborative, productive conflicts, and know that they’ll be respected and heard and valued. So boundaries are actually good for everybody’s bottom line, and don’t let your boss tell you anything different.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

It’s a great point. I think what was coming to mind as you were giving that last example, and you’re talking about the red boundary, is some people feel frustration because they’re like, “I’m setting boundaries, but it’s not working.” And I think one of the pieces is that we have to realize that it is on us not only to set the boundary, but to enforce or uphold that boundary. And if we’re going to set a boundary with our kids, with our partner, with our boss, with our mother-in-law, but then we actually don’t hold to it or enforce it, that then becomes problematic, and leads us to feeling resentful, frustrated. But that actually is an us problem of not enforcing that. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Melissa Urban

I can. The first rule of parenting that I learned was never create a consequence that I wasn’t willing to enforce. So right now, if I were to say to my son, “No iPad for a week, that little turd knows that that hurts me as much as it hurts him. So we’re not going there.” And the same is true of boundaries. If you decide what your healthy limit is, you also have to decide what you are and are not willing to do to enforce it. In the case of work, that can be incredibly challenging, because to actually enforce your boundary may require you to change departments, get a transfer, change locations, find a new job, and report the violations to human resources. So there definitely are challenges, even in family situations. Are you really willing to not have your dad visit with your son unsupervised? Is that a boundary you are willing to enforce? But you have to be able to think all of that through and decide what that consequence is going to be ahead of the time, because if you set the boundary and then don’t hold it, two things have happened: One, you have now given that person permission to continue to push past every healthy limit you want to set, from now until the end of time. And two: You have reinforced to yourself that your needs are not worth meeting and upholding. And that breaking that promise to yourself can be, I think, even more damaging than the effect it has on the other person. So yes, you do have to think through “What is my healthy limit? What am I willing to do to enforce it?” And then you actually do have to hold it. And I have a whole chapter on how to hold it and how to deal with pushback and what that looks like in practicality.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah, and that’s one of the many great things about the book, is you really do take people through all of the pieces of this. It’s not just a book about, “Oh, here are the things you should do.” But it’s also: Here are the problems you might encounter, here are the things that might come up. And it’s really practical in that way. Before we wrap up, I want to touch on one other area of boundaries that I’ve heard you talk about, that you include in the book, that I think often gets missed in this conversation. And that is, boundaries that we set with ourselves. Because we’ve spent this whole conversation really talking about boundaries that we set with other people in our lives. But you talk about the importance of setting boundaries with ourselves and how that can benefit us. Give an example and talk about that a bit.

Melissa Urban

One of the boundaries that I think is really important, especially for any parent who is working from home, is around their morning routine. And so one of the boundaries I set with myself very early on in my entrepreneur journey is that I don’t pick up my phone or look at any work related stuff before my morning routine is done. Now sometimes that routine is just 15 minutes because I’m pressed for time, other times it’s an hour. But I want to wake up, sometimes I do my cold shower, I always do some sort of healthy movement, whether it’s a quick walk with the dog or a little bit of yoga or whatever that looks like. And I don’t look at any work related things. I don’t pick up social media because that means that I’m starting my day feeling reactive instead of proactive, and that’s made a huge difference in how I start my day and how I feel in the morning. There are other boundaries you can set around work where you work in a separate and distinct area from the rest of your house. So your laptop isn’t on the kitchen table or the dining room table. You’re not blending work and home. Maybe you build in a 15-minute transition between work and home like you used to do when you commuted. That allows you a little bit of downtime to kind of energetically switch from work to home. So I think there are certainly boundaries that you can set with yourself, and I do think that they’re overlooked for a couple of reasons. There are some unique challenges with setting boundaries with yourself, which is to say “If I break my own boundary, what’s going to happen?”, and there’s actually quite a bit that happens if you do that, and I’ll kind of walk you through what that looks like, in the book. But I also think that it goes back to this idea of “How do I even know I need to set a boundary with myself?” And it comes with creating that time and space to check in and go “Okay, what are some incredibly stressful parts of my day? What are some things that are happening in the course of my day that I just dread or I have a lot of anxiety about?” For me, it was waking up first thing in the morning and already feeling super stressed, like I was already behind. And that for me was the first sign that maybe I needed to set a boundary in that area. So self-boundaries can be incredibly helpful in every area of your life, and can often be the very first place that starts building a new healthy habit.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah, I was going to say it’s a great training ground. If you’re feeling really uncomfortable or hesitant about starting to do this with other people, you can have practice doing it for yourself in these ways, whether it’s around your morning routine, or maybe even sleep or movement, whatever it might be, even just starting with some of that with yourself. I love that.

Melissa Urban

I have a lot of self-boundaries in my co-parenting situation. A lot of self-boundaries with how I showed up with my co parent early on in the divorce, and they absolutely changed the game.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

That’s great for all of you listening or in that situation. Because again, going back to one of the things we talked about at the start of this conversation, all you can control is yourself and how you show up, how you communicate, and so setting boundaries for yourself around that, that’s awesome. And I think an action step for people after listening to this is what you just were talking about in terms of setting boundaries with ourselves. It’s even just sitting back, taking 5 minutes, 10 minutes to think about those areas in our lives where we are feeling frustrated, resentful, that lack of energy, just taking stock of those, because those can be some good clues as to where we should start with boundaries, right?

Melissa Urban

Absolutely. So when you’re thinking about how do I even know where I might need a boundary, it’s the feeling of anxiety or dread around a certain person, or maybe a conversation topic. It is feeling as though the other person is either implicitly or explicitly telling you that their needs matter more than yours. It’s considering taking a break from a certain person, it’s a certain part of your day that feels the most stressful or anxiety producing. It’s not liking who you are when you’re in a certain situation or conversation, or with a certain person or how you feel after you leave. It’s leaving a situation and running through all of the imaginary things in your head that you could have, should have, would have said. All of those are signs that a boundary is needed. And then what I of course do is give people scripts. Actual word for word things that you can say, green, yellow, red to express the boundary, and I encourage people to practice out loud. Practice saying “No, thank you. I’m not drinking right now.” Or “Please don’t text me, I will not be answering emails while I’m on vacation.” Practice saying them over and over so that you embody them and so that they start to feel very natural and very organic, so when the time comes to set them, they come out sounding confident.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I think that’s a great tip, practice is important. And I think with our kids, noticing the scenarios, the situations, the times a day, whatever, where we are consistently feeling frazzled, resentful, frustrated, those are good things to start with. And it’s probably best to pick one or two things to set and enforce first, right? I mean, we’ve got some real type A go-getters in the audience who are like, “Oh my gosh, I’ve already got a list of 75 boundaries”, and maybe you and I would suggest, well maybe start with one or two, right?

Melissa Urban

If you want to go on like a boundary setting rumspringa in every area of your life, absolutely go for it. But yeah, I do think that you can pick one or two. Maybe you choose one that just feels the most immediate, that you can see immediate impact. Maybe it’s one that if you just alleviated this one piece of anxiety or resentment, everything would feel better. I always say go into these boundary conversations assuming the best. Assume that this person just didn’t know that you had a limit there and that they were overstepping it. And as soon as you express that, they’re more than willing to meet you halfway. And if there’s an instance where you think the person would be amenable, that’s a great way to practice. Or start with a self-boundary and prove to yourself that your needs matter, that you are worthy of holding this limit for yourself, and see the impact, the positive impact that this boundary can have in every single area of your life.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Oh, so good. We could go through 700 more questions and spend several hours on this, but I know we need to wrap up. The book is out now. Tell people where they can get it, and also where they can find out more information about you. You’ve got an amazing newsletter, you just have amazing things. So tell us where we can find all the things.

Melissa Urban

Yeah, thank you so much. So you can find the book wherever books are sold. The Book of Boundaries is out now. And then I am @Melissau on Instagram, and my website is melissau.com, that’s where you can find old newsletter articles, my podcast, and all of the good boundary related content.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah, and I’ll give a plug: If you’re not already on Melissa’s newsletter list, get on that. I get emails and I delete most of them, and yours, Melissa, I actually read every week. I find them very relatable to me as a woman, as a mom, as an entrepreneur; they’re just great. And if you have not been on her list for the last several months, you’ve done several amazing newsletter articles in more in depth on these topics we’ve talked about today. So I would just recommend everybody go on the website and look back at those. And of course, your Instagram is great, too. So go get the book, read the whole thing. You will be so glad you did. It’s very readable, very practical. And so Melissa, thank you for spotlighting this topic for all of us, for writing such a great book, and for spending time with us on the show today. We really appreciate you.

Melissa Urban

It was my pleasure. So good to talk to you again.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

And thanks as always to all of you for being here and listening. We’ll catch you back here next time.