April 28, 2025 • 41 mins
Have you ever felt trapped by your own inability to say "no"? In this powerful conversation with boundaries coach Barb Nangle, we explore how setting healthy limits can transform your life from constant people-pleasing to genuine freedom.
Barb shares her remarkable personal journey that began when she invited a homeless man to stay in her home during a snowstorm – a seemingly kind gesture that quickly spiraled into feeling trapped in her own space. This crisis point led her to discover 12-step recovery programs and the profound concept of "reparenting" herself. As she explains, many of us grew up in environments where dysfunction was normalized, leaving us without models for healthy boundaries.
The conversation delves into practical strategies for developing an "inner loving parent" to counter the harsh inner critic most of us carry within. Barb introduces the transformative concept of "info, not ammo" – using self-knowledge as information for growth rather than ammunition for self-criticism. This shift from judgment to curiosity creates space for genuine healing and empowerment.
What makes this episode particularly valuable is the honest examination of how uncomfortable boundary-setting can feel initially. Many people describe feeling like they might "die" when first establishing limits, especially if they've spent a lifetime in enmeshed relationships. Yet as Barb powerfully states, "Choose your difficult – do you want difficulties to last forever and get worse over time, or do you want to go through a very difficult time for a brief period and then have healing on the other side?"
Whether you struggle with people-pleasing, feel responsible for everyone's happiness, or simply want more freedom in your relationships, this conversation offers practical wisdom for building the boundaries that will transform your life. Subscribe now and discover how emotional intelligence can become your greatest asset and key to success.
Barb's links:
Free Boundary-Building Starter Kit: boundariesstarterkit.com
podcast: fragmentedtowhole.com
https://higherpowercc.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/barbnangle/
https://www.instagram.com/higherpowercoaching/ https://www.youtube.com/@higherpowercoaching https://www.facebook.com/HigherPowerCoaching
Want to learn how to build your EQ? Let's meet to see if working together is good fit.
* Calendar: https://calendly.com/jami-carlacio/virtual-coffee
* Email: jami@jamicarlacio.com (mailto:%20jami@jamicarlacio.com)
* Find out more about my coaching services: https://jamicarlacio.com
* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jami-carlacio/
* FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/jamicarlacioEQ
* Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jamicarlacio1/
* YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/jamicarlacio1
* TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@jcarlacio
* Substack: https://substack.com/@eqmaven
* I'd appreciate your support the show by buying me a cup of coffee: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2167520/supporters/new
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
So it could be that you had super dysfunctional
parenting.
It could be also that you haddecent parenting, but there was
some dysfunction here and there.
Sometimes the dysfunctiondoesn't come from the actual
parents.
Sometimes it comes from otherenvironments or a little bit
later in childhood, maybe aschool experience or something
like that, but frequently it'sintergenerational family
(00:22):
dysfunction, and so and this isnot about blaming our parents,
this is like our parents did thebest they could.
And also, just because you grewup in dysfunction doesn't mean
your parents don't love you, soyou can be in a loving home and
suffer intergenerational familydysfunction and relational
(00:43):
trauma, which is the kind oftrauma that I'm talking about,
which is different than likeblunt trauma of being like
attacked or in a hurricane orsomething like that.
So reparenting yourself is it'sa really wide continuum of
behaviors, but it's most basic.
It's that you're good andloving and kind to yourself,
because most of us have thisinternal critic that just rakes
(01:07):
us over the coals.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Welcome to the podcast Emotional Intelligence
your greatest asset and key tosuccess.
I'm your host, dr JamieCarlaccio, coming to you from
the Greater New Haven,connecticut area, as an
emotional intelligence or EQcoach.
I'm committed to helping peopledevelop both emotional
intelligence and mental fitness.
That is, you'll come to regardproblems as situations that help
(01:40):
you learn and grow.
Eq is a way of being and doingin the world that enables you to
develop and sustain.
Eq is a way of being and doingin the world that enables you to
develop and sustain a positiverelationship with yourself and
others, at home, at work andeverywhere in between.
Please subscribe to thispodcast and tap the like button
so more people can enjoy thebenefits of EQ.
And now here's the show.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Hello and welcome everybody to the podcast
Emotional Intelligence yourGreatest Asset and Key to
Success.
I am extremely thrilled todaybecause I have with me a
boundaries coach.
We are going to talk aboutboundaries and the woman you are
going to hear from today isBarb Nangle.
Hi Barb, hi Jamie, so good tosee you.
(02:24):
It's good to see you.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
It's been a minute, yeah, and it's really a pleasure
to be on a call with somebodythat I actually know because
many podcasts I'm on, I've nevermet them before.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
So actually, you know , that's true, I have not met a
lot of my guests face to face,but I feel like I know them.
Yeah, absolutely yeah.
You know, after pre podcast andand just kind of talking about
things that we have in common, Iactually forget sometimes that
I haven't actually met them inperson, unless I know they live
(02:59):
in another country.
Yeah, yeah, so for our guestswho are not familiar with you,
let me tell them a little bitabout you, okay?
So Barb Nangle is a boundariescoach, she is a speaker and she
is the host of the podcastfragmented to whole life lessons
from 12 step recovery, and sheoffers a free boundary building
(03:22):
starter kit, and thatinformation will be in the show
notes.
So be able to grab that.
So, barb, at the age of 2015,.
Excuse me, you're not that old,are you?
Not quite In 2015, at the age of52, after decades of therapy
and tons of self-help work in avariety of areas, barb got into
(03:45):
12-step recovery, and she hasbeen in two such fellowships
since then, and she has changeddeeply and profoundly as a
result.
As a former addict andpeople-pleasing rescuer, I just
think that's an amazing phrase,and people may want to take a
moment to savor that, because Ithink a lot of us are people
(04:06):
pleasers.
So, as a former addict andpeople pleasing rescuer, she
empowers people to thrive and totake more control over their
professional and personal livesby coaching them to build
healthy boundaries.
She works with organizations inthe helping professions, as
(04:26):
well as with women entrepreneursto avoid burnout and reduce
turnover.
Her specialty is working withprofessional women who say yes
when they really want to say noand who are so focused on others
that they neglect themselves,and she's coached hundreds of
people using her boundarybuilding system.
(04:48):
That's a lot.
Yeah, yeah, it's quite so.
It is a story.
So actually, let's get rightinto the story.
I know a little bit about it,but I know our listeners don't.
So the first thing I want toknow is what?
What kind of was the straw thatbroke the camel's back?
Or the catalyst that saidsomething has to change in my
(05:08):
life.
This can't go on.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Yeah, I befriended a homeless man named Dan from my
church right at the same timethat I had started volunteering
to serve on a project servinghomeless people and I had felt
like he was like a gift from Godto help me get to know homeless
people in a really personal wayand that so I would be serving
like homeless people, not likethe homeless and I, and he
(05:32):
actually was really helpful andwe became really friendly.
And two, three months into ourfriendship, it was a really bad
snowstorm here in New Haven,connecticut, and I invited him
to stay at my home instead of ahomeless shelter, which I now
know is not normal behavior andhe did.
And then he stayed another timeand another and within a few
weeks he was practically livingwith me and I soon felt trapped
(05:53):
in my own home.
So he was a self-proclaimedaddict and alcoholic.
I now think, on reflection, hemay have also had a personality
disorder.
And this guy messed with myhead in a way I had never
experienced before and I wastalking about him one day in
therapy and in the middle of asentence, jamie, I went oh my
(06:14):
God, do you think I need to goto Al-Anon?
And my therapist said yes.
So, whatever, I plugged intoGoogle looking for Al-Anon, the
word codependent came up and Iwas like, wait a minute.
I've literally been in therapysince I was 15.
I've read a gajillion self-helpbooks.
Never heard this word.
How is this possible?
So I started going toCodependence.
Anonymous very quickly felt asense of relief in knowing
(06:38):
there's this.
It's almost like a syndromeabout me.
If there was a recovery program, there's other people like me
and I soon said to somebody Ithink I need to be reparented.
But I didn't know thatreparenting was an actual thing.
And a few weeks into my CODArecovery I went to Cape Cod to
visit some friends.
One of whom had been in AA formany Alcoholics Anonymous for
(07:02):
many years and she had alwaysjust raved about how
dramatically her life was, wasrevolutionized and I was like
you're gonna love it, I'm goingto codependence anonymous.
And she was like, well, let'ssee if we can find a meeting
while you're here and we'll gotogether.
And she couldn't.
But she found a CA meetingwhich I knew of as a CEO, a
adult children of alcoholics.
(07:22):
I now know it's actually adultchildren of alcoholics and
dysfunctional families.
I think if I heard the anddysfunctional families, I might
have thought that I qualified.
But I went to the meeting forher, not for me, because her
dad's an alcoholic.
And I walk in and in theopening readings they say we
reparent ourselves.
And I was like what.
(07:43):
And then they read the 14traits of an adult child and my
friend Heidi tells me I sobbedthe whole meeting.
I don't remember that.
But I bought the literature.
I came home to New Haven,connecticut, I started going to
TA and I was like this isliterally what I've been looking
for my whole life.
I soon found out that it's atrauma recovery program where
(08:05):
you reparent yourself and youuse the 12 steps to recover.
I didn't know that I had trauma.
I now know that I haverelational trauma and I just was
really just rapidly gettingamazing recovery.
I was seeing recovery around mein the rooms with the other
people in the meeting.
I was reading about amazingrecovery.
So that went on for about a yearand I decided to let go of CODA
(08:27):
because it just wasn't as goodof a fit.
And that turned out to be alike a higher powered moment,
because one of the women that Iwas doing the 12 steps with and
ACA had started sharing abouther relationship with food,
especially sugar, and that shestarted going to Overeaters
Anonymous and she invited me togo and I was like, oh my God,
I'm a compulsive overeater,which I didn't know was a thing,
(08:50):
and so I joined that program.
I'm now down over 100 poundsfor my top weight and my like
drastic change in my life hasbeen just astonishing the way
that I talk about it, jamie, isthat, like all of that work I
did before, recovery sort ofscratched the surface of the
iceberg of my life and recoverymelted the iceberg of my life.
(09:12):
And I think that partly it'sbecause the 12 steps are such an
amazing technology and I alsothink because of the trauma of
recovery.
You know of the trauma ofrecovery, you know it's been
just so profound and I think ofmy core wound as codependence
and boundaries are essentiallythe antidote to codependence.
So I learned to buildboundaries through this sort of
(09:35):
meandering, haphazard path in 12step recovery, and so for me,
learning to build boundariesjust had a just really far
reaching impact.
They do, boundaries do permeateevery area of our life.
So that's part of it, but Ithink also because of the core
wound of codependence.
And then what happened for mewas after I got a hold on oh,
(09:59):
yeah, we should maybe slow downjust a little bit.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Just because you said a lot in there, ok, sure, and
maybe just take a moment tounpack some of that.
Okay, sure, okay, yeah, becauseyou mentioned therapy, you
mentioned trauma, you mentionedreparenting and you mentioned
other 12 step programs.
And so for people who aresaying, well, I've been to
(10:23):
therapy, why do I need a 12 stepprogram?
Or I don't know whatreparenting means, how can I
parent myself?
I mean, there's a lot going onin there.
So just to pull one littlepiece out of that, when you talk
about reparenting, first of all, that would assume that the
parenting you got wasn't good orwasn't enough or was so
(10:45):
dysfunctional hence the name forACA Alcoholic Adult, children
of Alcoholics and DysfunctionalFamilies.
So why would anybody need to bereparented and how can somebody
reparent themselves?
We will get to the boundarything in a minute, yeah, sure.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
So it could be that you had super dysfunctional
parenting.
It could be also that you haddecent parenting, but there was
some dysfunction here and there.
Sometimes the dysfunctiondoesn't come from the actual
parents.
Sometimes it comes from otherenvironments or, a little bit
later in childhood, maybe aschool experience or something
like that.
But frequently it'sintergenerational family
(11:24):
dysfunction and so and this isnot about blaming our parents
this is like parents did thebest they could.
And also, just because you grewup in dysfunction doesn't mean
your parents don't love you.
So you can be in a loving homeand suffer intergenerational
family dysfunction andrelational trauma, which is the
(11:46):
kind of trauma that I'm talkingabout, which is different than
like blunt trauma of being likeattacked or in a hurricane or
something like that.
So reparenting yourself is it'sa really wide continuum of
behaviors, but it's most basicit's that you're good and loving
and kind to yourself, becausemost of us have this internal
(12:07):
critic that just rakes us overthe coals.
We in ACA call it our innercritical parent.
When I first got into theprogram, that title didn't
really resonate with me.
I more resonated with the ideafrom OA, which is I have a
disease, my disease wants medead, and if it can't it will
(12:28):
just settle for me suffering.
So it tells me things.
Over the last couple of yearsI've really grasped a hold of
this critical inner parentconcept.
But so at its most basic, youchallenge yourself.
When you say negative things toyourself, you turn those things
around and you say good andkind things to yourself and on
(12:49):
the other end of the continuumof reparenting it can mean that
you develop this whole in yourimagination.
You develop this whole innercast of characters.
So we recommend in ACA thatpeople cultivate an inner loving
parent.
So a lot of people are likewell, if I didn't have loving
parents, how can I possibly knowhow to parent myself?
(13:11):
So I'll give you some examplesfrom some of my friends in ACA.
So one of my friends has chosenBig Bird and Mr Rogers as her
parents, those are wonderfulparents, right?
So she knows how Mr Rogers andBig Bird would talk to her.
She personally doesn't know howto be a loving parent, but
(13:33):
she's like oh well, here's thekind of things Mr Rogers and Big
Bird would say.
Well, I have another friend inrecovery who grew up in a very
violent home.
Another friend in recovery whogrew up in a very violent home.
His inner loving parent is JedClampett from the Beverly
Hillbillies, if people are likemy age and he needed Jed
Clampett because Jed Clampetthas a shotgun and he needs an
inner loving parent with ashotgun because he grew up in a
(13:55):
violent home.
There were a lot of like knivesand stuff in his home and he
felt like a shotgun is waybetter than a knife.
So it's whatever you need tolike love yourself in the ways
you wanted, needed and deservedto be loved.
That weren't, you weren't fullyloved.
And so the other thing, like Iwould say at minimum, is not
(14:18):
just an inner loving parent, butyou connect with your inner
child and everybody has one.
You may or may not be aware ofit.
I was not aware of it, and thenat first I was like I'm aware I
have an inner child and that'swhere it stops.
But the way that I was firsttaught to connect with my inner
child is through non-dominanthandwriting.
(14:38):
So I'm right-handed, mydominant hand is my right hand,
so I would write to my innerchild with my right hand and
then I would use my left handand maybe even a crayon, my non
dominant hand to write back.
And there's something aboutthat process that allows us to
tap into our inner child.
Now, I don't know how it works,but I also don't know how
(15:00):
electricity works, but I knowthat it does.
So I learned to do that and Iwould say you know, over the
first seven or eight years inACA that I did that maybe 10, 12
times, mostly when somethingreally bad was happening or when
I was in an ACA workshop and Iwas astonished at, like, the
(15:20):
stuff that came out, that it'slike I'm me and there's a part
of me that was holding on tothis information that only got
revealed.
The last couple of years I havereally made consistent,
conscious contact with my innerchild without there needing to
be something wrong, and I havebuilt a relationship and now
it's like she's and I actuallyhave multiple inner children.
(15:42):
They're all me now and I have afull blown relationship like an
inner family.
And you know, I was talking to afriend the other day about this
and there are some people whomay think this is crazy and you
go ahead and think that it isridiculously healing for me.
I cannot express how deep thehealing has been for me.
(16:03):
So your reparenting journeycould be.
You just stop raking yourselfover the coals and you start
treating yourself kindly and saygood and kind things to
yourself, and it can be all theway up to developing this entire
inner cast of characters andhaving interactions and, like
one of the things I've done,that's been super healthy, is
(16:25):
and super healing is.
I had several incidents as achild that were very
traumatizing to me and I broughtmy inner loving parent with me
in some cases to explain whatwas going on, because a big part
of my trauma is I never knewwhat was going on, like
emotionally, psychologically,factually, and so she explained
(16:50):
things.
I also had her like step in forme and like block what was
going to happen and stop it andlike take care of me and pick me
up and nurture me and it doessomething like I literally feel
like my DNA has changed fromdoing that.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
That makes a lot of sense actually, and and there's
definitely research on thereabout changing your DNA.
But I want to step back just alittle bit Because in talking
about the inner critical parentversus the inner loving parent,
you know, as an emotionalintelligence coach and a
positive intelligence coach, Italk about this a lot.
(17:30):
The judge and my judges thesize of the Lincoln Memorial,
but the judges is often thatinner critical parent, or that
inner critical voice that wehear, because I call it a
ventriloquist, because it has myvoice.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Oh, that's a good one .
I love that.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
And so I think of it as so.
I used to believe it's lies,because it was my voice when I
finally realized that was just ajudge and that I could tell the
judge to be quiet, and Ilearned to reframe or say oh,
that's just my judge talking,that's actually not me and it's
(18:07):
actually not true.
And when you can change thejudge out for, or at least bring
in, the loving parent to be theloving voice, the truth is the
love, the lie is the criticism,the lie is the denigration and
the cutting down, and so Ireally like that you brought
(18:30):
that up, because when we talkabout emotional intelligence,
the first thing we learn is howdo we replace the saboteurs that
are dogging our every step?
And we'll get to the peoplepleasing one in a minute.
But the judge, this, the, theavoider, the, the people pleaser
, the hyper vigilant, the hyperrational left, the controller
(18:52):
right, all of those kind of stepin at any one moment to
sabotage our lives, and we Iconsider you and I in the same
group here are incredibly luckyto have found the kind of
recovery that wasn't availableto our parents or they didn't
have access to it, they didn'thear about it.
(19:12):
But one of the key points abouta parent, a loving parent and a
loving higher self, you know, ifwe want to bring a higher power
into it and a loving higherself.
You know, if we want to bring ahigher power into it and a
higher self is empathy.
Yeah, right, it's that.
Hey, you're okay, yeah, you'reokay.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
I love you, yeah, yeah and yeah, and compassion,
yes, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I think you know one of thephrases I learned really early
in recovery that helped me tobuild a bridge from
self-judgment to compassion wasthis phrase info, not ammo.
So when I learn things aboutmyself, it's information for me
(19:52):
to learn, integrate and growfrom.
It's not ammunition to beatmyself up.
So what what I'm talking aboutis curiosity.
So I love curiosity.
Curiosity it's neutral and thathelps you build that bridge
from from judgment to compassion.
And I always thought I likemyself, I have high self esteem,
and when I got in recovery Iwas like, oh my God, I'm
(20:14):
literally like scanning thehorizon all times looking for
reasons to beat myself up, but Ididn't even know it Right.
So when I heard this info notammo, I really internalize that
I'm like, okay, this is info,not ammo.
And so for me, what am I goingto do?
Like, typically, it's what canI do differently.
You know, rather than why am Isuch a piece of crap?
(20:38):
But because when you ask acrappy question like that,
you're gonna get a crappy answer.
But if you ask what could I dodifferently, you start realizing
wait, I have options.
So you come out of victimmentality, you stop victimizing
yourself, yes, and when yourealize I have choices by asking
(20:58):
what could I do differently,then you start to actually see
choices, that you have optionsand you can make different
decisions.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Yes, okay, so info, not ammo I love that and I
hadn't heard that, but I'mkeeping it.
And the second thing is, sinceyou mentioned victim, I want to
say a word about that, and thatis that one of our saboteurs is
a victim, and as soon as you'rea victim, you're powerless.
Yes, you know you have noagency.
But if you can say, like youwere saying, I'm not a victim
(21:30):
here, this is just information,and how can I do it differently
next time?
Or what did I learn from thisthat I can take away?
Or what, what area did I justgrow in?
Where did my opportunity forgrowth just come in?
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Yeah, yeah, and I will say, jamie, that for me
personally, the biggest paradigmshift of recovery was coming
out of victim mentality and I amnot the quintessential victim,
I'm not the like.
Woe is me, the world is againstme.
I can never win my victimmentality way more so.
So mine was like, well, if onlyhe would fill in the blank,
(22:06):
then everything would be okay.
And I first saw that when I didmy relationship inventory in
ACA and I saw literally everyman I ever dated.
I thought, if he would just so.
I started to see like, oh, thisis me acting like I have no
influence on the status of anyof my relationships.
Well then I started to see, oh,it's also true at work, in my
(22:27):
family, with my friends,basically everywhere.
And I think I have I think it'snine episodes about victim
mentality, because literallyevery time another layer comes
off, I do another episode aboutit.
And what's interesting is,since you're a PQ coach, I also
do PQ and I have a zero score onmy victim saboteur.
(22:48):
Like that is how far I havecome.
It's the only one I have zeroon, by the way.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
Yeah, that's pretty amazing.
Yeah, my my top score.
I think People Pleaser was oneof my top scores, and Avoider
was up there too, because one ofmy survival strategies was to
avoid conflict, and so I had tolearn how to avoid.
But, as you know, and for thoseof you listening or watching
(23:17):
when you are always walking oneggshells or looking for where
the next landmine is, you learnhow to be a good conflict
avoider.
You learn how to be a goodpeople pleaser.
You learn how to behypervigilant, and those served
us.
They did help us survive.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Right, we're alive, so we know they worked.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Yes, but now we don't need them, and so now I call
them paper tigers.
It's like when you see a tiger,our brain wants to say real
tiger, run, get out of here anddo something.
But if it's a paper tiger, youcan say oh, thank you for
helping me, you've really gottenme this far, but I don't need
that anymore.
(24:00):
I'm empowered, I have aself-determination, I'm a good
person just because of who I am.
I don't have to do anythingspecial.
I don't have to open my home toan unhoused person, I don't
have to run every church bazaarevent and I don't have to be a
(24:21):
philanthropist and open uporphanages in developing
countries.
Mm-hmm, yeah.
So in that light, with regardto, say, boundaries, now you
came to a place where you said,okay, wow, people pleasing and
(24:41):
this going all out for otherpeople, without even realizing
what you were doing.
What made you get intoboundaries coaching?
Speaker 1 (24:53):
what made you get into boundaries coaching.
So I was working full time atYale University when I got in
recovery and about two and ahalf years into recovery I got
laid off and just by a series ofserendipitous events I found my
way into the world ofentrepreneurship, startups and
innovation at Yale and New Haven, started my own coaching and
consulting business.
I started my podcast actuallyvery quickly because I was like
there's all this wisdom andrecovery I want to get it out.
There Never occurred to me itwould have anything to do with
(25:15):
my business.
It's now the number one waythat I get clients.
So I'm just sort of generallycoaching in the beginning and
then, as I got to know moreabout entrepreneurship, I
realized you have to have aniche of some kind.
And it just made sense for meto be a boundaries coach because
I was really good at helping,like my fellows in recovery and
(25:36):
like every client I ever hadneeded help with boundaries.
And other thing, jamie, is thatlike once I got a handle on
boundaries because again Ilearned boundaries there's like
a haphazard, meandering path inrecovery I decided to go and
read about boundaries and Iretroactively understood oh,
this is what was going on bothbefore and in the building
(25:56):
process and while I was doingthe readings, I would do these
visual drawings to like visuallydepict the principles around
boundaries, because I'm a prettyvisual person.
Well, those drawings turned intohandouts, which turned into a
workbook which is the backboneof my boundaries coaching
program and I just over time,just created, you know I have
this multimedia curriculum onboundaries and there's 12
(26:21):
modules and it's based on myunderstanding of the principles
like that I retroactivelyunderstood, of the principles
like that I retroactivelyunderstood and it just.
And the other thing is thatbecause boundaries permeate
every single area of your life,like learning to build healthy
(26:42):
boundaries can clean up so muchin your life, and then also
because of my core wound ofcodependence and the you know to
me boundaries being theantidote to that it just for all
these reasons it really made alot of sense for me to be a
boundaries coach.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
That does make a lot of sense, and I can say that you
and I have known each other forseveral years and I have always
respected your boundaries, I'verespected the fact that you
have them, and I say thatbecause when I was growing up, I
didn't have any boundariesbecause it wasn't safe to have a
boundary, and so I never knewwhat.
(27:21):
Where I ended and somebody elsebegan, I often would let people
walk all over me because Ididn't know how not to and I
didn't know that it was safe todo that, and I also felt this
was my, my kind of my sixththinking, if you will, my
unhealthy thinking, was well, ifI, if I just say yes, you'll
(27:42):
like me.
If I just say okay, if I justgo along with it, versus, this
isn't good for me, this doesn'tserve my higher self, or maybe
it doesn't even serve yourhigher self or your highest good
, and I can say no and still beokay.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Yeah, yeah, but it's quite the journey to get there
because, when I started buildingboundaries first of all I
didn't even know that was what Iwas doing, but the like not
even saying no.
First of all, I didn't evenknow that was what I was doing,
but the like not even saying no,thinking of saying no, made me
feel literally like I was goingto die, like my, my life was
(28:20):
under threat.
So that is not uncommon forpeople and it's because, if
we've grown up and matched theidea of unenmashing feels like
death, because it is the death.
It's the death of an identitywhich is I'm you and you're me.
And so for me, I think I don'tthink I understood until a
couple years later how importantbeing in that 12 step group
(28:42):
with other women was in terms ofme being able to build
boundaries, because I neededtheir support and their
affirmation.
I needed them to say thingslike you are not a bad person,
barb, you deserve to do this,you know, this is the right
thing to do.
They also said things like keepyour hands away from the
keyboard, like don't respond tothat email, and also I don't
(29:03):
know if you really want to sayit like that, barb, you know, or
that might have been a littlebit too harsh.
And speaking of which, the firsttime I don't remember what it
was, but the first time that Iremember knowing like this is me
setting a boundary.
This was me.
Wham, ooh, way too harsh.
Now, jamie, if I had known thatthat was going to be way too
harsh, that's not the boundarythat I would have set, but I
(29:24):
didn't know because I had neverdone it before.
And so, yeah, we have to, wehave to experiment when it comes
to boundaries, because youdon't know what your limits are,
because you've never had thembefore.
And so it's a journey.
And this is why info, not ammo,is so important, because can
you imagine if I was like wham,too harsh?
(29:45):
Oh my God, I'm riddled withguilt and shame.
I'm a horrible person.
I'm never going to setboundaries again.
Where would I be?
I'd probably be dead by now.
To be perfectly honest withguilt and shame, I'm a horrible
person.
I'm never going to setboundaries again.
Where would I be?
I'd probably be dead by now.
To be perfectly honest with you,with drugs, alcohol, food,
people that I was hanging outwith I mean, I wouldn't be
surprised I definitely would notbe the happy, joyous and free
person that I am carrying themessage of recovery to those who
still suffer, for sure.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
Right and just I want to say a little more about
(30:34):
about the harsh boundary atfirst, and the info versus ammo
thing, because like you said,when we're experimenting with a
new are and they're differentfor every interaction yes, and
instance and person yeah, soyou're going to have a different
boundary with your significantother than you are with a parent
or a sibling, or a friend or aco worker, or even the person
you just bought your coffee fromRight, right, yes.
Or even the person.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
You just bought your coffee from right.
Right, yes, absolutely,absolutely.
And you know, one of the thingsthat the women in my step group
we started doing when wewhether it was setting
boundaries or some other newbehavior where we felt like we
were going to die, we wouldliterally say to ourselves and I
didn't die, and I didn't die.
And we would say it over andover again and we kind of got
jokey about it.
It was like we're serious, likeI didn't die, and we would say
it over and over again and wekind of got jokey about it.
(31:11):
But it was like we're serious,like I didn't know.
It was almost like I needed myintellectual brain to keep
hearing that so that it couldget dumped into my lizard brain
and be like look, we've haddozens of experiences where we
felt like we were going to dieand we didn't.
So we're going to keep doingthis.
And then eventually I stoppedfeeling like I was going to die.
And every once in a while now Imight get like a little sort of
(31:34):
trickle of a difficult feeling,but it's not this giant flood
of like guilt and shame, that,or feeling like I was going to
die that I used to, and it justhappens over time.
And the way that I think of itis, you know, if you never set
boundaries, your life is goingto just get more and more and
more and more difficult as timegoes on.
(31:55):
If you start setting boundaries, you are going to go through a
difficult time, but thatdifficult time is finite and
there's healing on the otherside of it.
So choose your difficult.
Do you want difficult to lastforever and get worse over time,
or do you want to go through avery difficult time for a brief
period of time in terms of theyou know the the lifetime of
(32:16):
your life, and then have healingon the other side, like picked
your poison which one?
Speaker 3 (32:21):
Right, right, and you know I just thinking as you've
been talking.
What's been going through mymind is that when we do
something new and different thanwe've ever done before, it
feels weird, it feels awkward,it may feel wrong that doesn't
mean it is wrong but it's likeputting on brand new clothes.
Or you've decided to startwearing oranges and greens and
(32:44):
you've always worn browns andbeiges.
It's going to look weird, it'sgoing to feel weird, the fabric
doesn't feel right, but you tryit on, wear it around a little
bit and adjust as necessary, butdon't just throw the baby out
with the bathwater.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Right, you know.
You just reminded me ofsomething years ago Somebody I
met in recovery said which isanalogous to yours.
She said it was like I waswearing my shoes on the wrong
feet my entire life and when Iswitched them it felt weird at
first, right, and when I gotused to it it was like wait a
minute, this is what, and it'sthe same thing with boundaries
(33:25):
or other healthy behaviors.
We've never done it.
We're like this is weird andawkward and then, as we kind of
settle into, the new shoes werethe same shoes on the right feet
.
It's like, wait a minute, Icould have had life like this my
whole life.
Like this was an option to puton the other feet and I love
(33:46):
that metaphor.
I forgot all about it.
I'm so glad you said that aboutthe clothes that metaphor I
forgot all about it.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
I'm so glad you said that about the clothes and you
know what.
What I think is really awesomeis that when you've lived in a
dysfunction or you lived whereyour life was like a minefield
and you didn't even know wherethe mines were hidden, to have
some relief with regard to thatis absolutely priceless.
(34:13):
Oh, it's inescapable.
It's a relief, but you know,and it's sort of like a drug.
When we're used to taking in adrug, whether it's caffeine or
nicotine or something moreserious, you know, like abusing
alcohol or an opioid ormethamphetamine alcohol, or an
(34:34):
opioid or methamphetamine, whenyou stop giving that thing to
your body that it is so used tohaving, it's going to say wait a
second, you're not giving methis thing I'm used to, and
that's a withdrawal.
And some withdrawals they're allweird and they don't feel good.
Some obviously you have to gothrough if you're trying to get
out of chemical dependency oralcohol dependency.
But some of the withdrawals arewithdrawals from those negative
(34:57):
behaviors or those unhealthybehaviors.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
Yeah, yeah, In ACA we call that the inner drug store
and yes, we want to trade theinner drugs of like cortisol and
adrenaline for things like, andadrenaline for things like
serotonin and melatonin andstuff.
So we want, like we can stilltap into the good inner
drugstore by doing things thatare soothing and calming to us,
(35:20):
rather than things that you knowthat get us into fight or
flight mode, which is where Ispent most of my life.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
Sure, I did too.
So so, just as just a corollaryto that, because when we start
developing a little bit oftolerance for some of the
withdrawal from the unhealthyrelease of chemicals in our
system, we can start to say, oh,it's okay that I feel kind of
(35:48):
not on edge, kind of kind of,you know, not on edge.
It's okay that I don't feelexcited.
This is actually okay Not.
Oh, my gosh, how come I'mfeeling this way?
It's like, oh, this mightactually be okay.
Yeah, and if you are having aday, if you're having a day
where things aren't going theway you thought they were going
to go, or you were disappointedor you're sad, that's normal and
(36:11):
okay too.
We are not always going to beup and we are not always going
to be down.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Right, I mean, that's just the nature of life up and
down.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
Yeah, yeah, you know, it depends even on what time.
Did you wake up?
Did you get enough sleep?
Did you have breakfast?
Did you exercise?
Did you do something foryourself today?
Did you give yourselfpermission to do something for
yourself?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(36:41):
So there's a word, barb, andit's the title of the song I'm
going to play.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
Yes, and I'm not even going to say what it is, I'm
just going to share my screen.
Okay, so that was freedom fromGeorge Michael, and that is
(37:20):
that's.
That's the reward.
That's the reward, right, whenyou have boundaries and when you
know yourself and you can loveyourself or even just like
yourself.
Start with just accepting andliking.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
Yeah, you can love yourself or even just like
yourself.
Start with just accepting andliking.
Yeah, and I think you know I'vethought of recovery.
The greatest gift of recoveryis freedom of choice and for me,
the greatest freedom of thefreedoms of choice is the
freedom to choose what to think,and especially about myself.
And learning how to buildhealthy boundaries is actually
about learning like what are thechoices I want to make, how do
(37:54):
I want to live my life?
And then what are theboundaries or the choices I make
in my life to get that kind ofa life?
And then what am I going to doif other people don't sort of
come along with me on the ride?
Because sometimes people are notgoing to be okay with your
boundaries, and that's so.
The number one question I getis how do I deal with the guilt
and shame?
And the number two question Iget is what do I do when people
(38:15):
push back on my boundaries andyou can't?
You do learn to do that as youbuild boundaries.
And then part of the skilldevelopment of boundary building
(38:36):
is learning like what are theconsequences you're going to
implement if someone doesn'thonor your boundaries, because
it's up to you.
If they don't honor yourboundaries.
They're your boundaries, nottheirs.
Right, you are the one that isin charge of doing something
about it.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
Yeah, yeah, right, you are the one that is in
charge of doing something aboutit.
Yeah, and that reminds meoftentimes, when I maybe set a
boundary or whatever, I have toremember that just because
somebody else doesn't like theboundary doesn't mean there's
something wrong with me, right?
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Right.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
Maybe that they've got a situation where they're
not able to handle boundaries.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
Yeah, yeah, I mean I remind people.
There's a whole host of reasonsthat people don't honor your
boundaries.
It could be they forgot becauseyou never did it before.
It could be they don't believeyou because you never did it
before.
It could be because they havereally poor boundaries and it's
almost impossible impossible forthem to respect other people's
boundaries, which means it'seven more important for you to
(39:33):
enforce your boundaries becausethey can't Right right, right.
Speaker 3 (39:39):
And on that note, we cannot expect other people to
take care of our boundaries forus.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Right, exactly, yes, you're in charge of your
boundaries, they're not.
So if you say to someone, hey,please don't put that there, and
they keep putting it there andyou do nothing, it's not a
boundary.
But you know, the firstintervention would be maybe you
didn't hear me I asked you notto put it there, and if they
keep putting it there, like youknow, I'm not sure what's going
(40:07):
on here, but I've asked you notto put that there and you keep
putting it there.
What's going on?
And if they just don't do it,then what are you going to do?
I'm just making this up.
It's a table with keys, right,and you don't want them to put
their keys on it.
So then you move the table oryou put a rack with a hook on it
.
I'm just making this up.
This is not the best example,but you change your.
(40:34):
You change something.
You don't just let it go andthen be mad at them because it's
your boundary, not theirs,right?
Speaker 3 (40:39):
Yeah Right, and that is a great place to end, barb.
It has been a real pleasure tomeet up with you again and
Barb's information is in theshow notes.
My information is in the shownotes.
You want to learn more aboutemotional intelligence, positive
intelligence, boundaries, howto say no and mean it and feel
okay about it.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (41:00):
Yes, thank you and until next time, everybody,
please don't forget to like andsubscribe to this podcast,
because the more people who likeand subscribe to it, the more
people will see it and hopefullybenefit from it.
Thank you so much, barb.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Thank you, jamie, enjoy the day.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
Thank you, bye-bye.
So it could be that you had super dysfunctional
parenting.
It could be also that you haddecent parenting, but there was
some dysfunction here and there.
Sometimes the dysfunctiondoesn't come from the actual
parents.
Sometimes it comes from otherenvironments or a little bit
later in childhood, maybe aschool experience or something
like that, but frequently it'sintergenerational family
(00:22):
dysfunction, and so and this isnot about blaming our parents,
this is like our parents did thebest they could.
And also, just because you grewup in dysfunction doesn't mean
your parents don't love you, soyou can be in a loving home and
suffer intergenerational familydysfunction and relational
(00:43):
trauma, which is the kind oftrauma that I'm talking about,
which is different than likeblunt trauma of being like
attacked or in a hurricane orsomething like that.
So reparenting yourself is it'sa really wide continuum of
behaviors, but it's most basic.
It's that you're good andloving and kind to yourself,
because most of us have thisinternal critic that just rakes
(01:07):
us over the coals.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Welcome to the podcast Emotional Intelligence
your greatest asset and key tosuccess.
I'm your host, dr JamieCarlaccio, coming to you from
the Greater New Haven,connecticut area, as an
emotional intelligence or EQcoach.
I'm committed to helping peopledevelop both emotional
intelligence and mental fitness.
That is, you'll come to regardproblems as situations that help
(01:40):
you learn and grow.
Eq is a way of being and doingin the world that enables you to
develop and sustain.
Eq is a way of being and doingin the world that enables you to
develop and sustain a positiverelationship with yourself and
others, at home, at work andeverywhere in between.
Please subscribe to thispodcast and tap the like button
so more people can enjoy thebenefits of EQ.
And now here's the show.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Hello and welcome everybody to the podcast
Emotional Intelligence yourGreatest Asset and Key to
Success.
I am extremely thrilled todaybecause I have with me a
boundaries coach.
We are going to talk aboutboundaries and the woman you are
going to hear from today isBarb Nangle.
Hi Barb, hi Jamie, so good tosee you.
(02:24):
It's good to see you.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
It's been a minute, yeah, and it's really a pleasure
to be on a call with somebodythat I actually know because
many podcasts I'm on, I've nevermet them before.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
So actually, you know , that's true, I have not met a
lot of my guests face to face,but I feel like I know them.
Yeah, absolutely yeah.
You know, after pre podcast andand just kind of talking about
things that we have in common, Iactually forget sometimes that
I haven't actually met them inperson, unless I know they live
(02:59):
in another country.
Yeah, yeah, so for our guestswho are not familiar with you,
let me tell them a little bitabout you, okay?
So Barb Nangle is a boundariescoach, she is a speaker and she
is the host of the podcastfragmented to whole life lessons
from 12 step recovery, and sheoffers a free boundary building
(03:22):
starter kit, and thatinformation will be in the show
notes.
So be able to grab that.
So, barb, at the age of 2015,.
Excuse me, you're not that old,are you?
Not quite In 2015, at the age of52, after decades of therapy
and tons of self-help work in avariety of areas, barb got into
(03:45):
12-step recovery, and she hasbeen in two such fellowships
since then, and she has changeddeeply and profoundly as a
result.
As a former addict andpeople-pleasing rescuer, I just
think that's an amazing phrase,and people may want to take a
moment to savor that, because Ithink a lot of us are people
(04:06):
pleasers.
So, as a former addict andpeople pleasing rescuer, she
empowers people to thrive and totake more control over their
professional and personal livesby coaching them to build
healthy boundaries.
She works with organizations inthe helping professions, as
(04:26):
well as with women entrepreneursto avoid burnout and reduce
turnover.
Her specialty is working withprofessional women who say yes
when they really want to say noand who are so focused on others
that they neglect themselves,and she's coached hundreds of
people using her boundarybuilding system.
(04:48):
That's a lot.
Yeah, yeah, it's quite so.
It is a story.
So actually, let's get rightinto the story.
I know a little bit about it,but I know our listeners don't.
So the first thing I want toknow is what?
What kind of was the straw thatbroke the camel's back?
Or the catalyst that saidsomething has to change in my
(05:08):
life.
This can't go on.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Yeah, I befriended a homeless man named Dan from my
church right at the same timethat I had started volunteering
to serve on a project servinghomeless people and I had felt
like he was like a gift from Godto help me get to know homeless
people in a really personal wayand that so I would be serving
like homeless people, not likethe homeless and I, and he
(05:32):
actually was really helpful andwe became really friendly.
And two, three months into ourfriendship, it was a really bad
snowstorm here in New Haven,connecticut, and I invited him
to stay at my home instead of ahomeless shelter, which I now
know is not normal behavior andhe did.
And then he stayed another timeand another and within a few
weeks he was practically livingwith me and I soon felt trapped
(05:53):
in my own home.
So he was a self-proclaimedaddict and alcoholic.
I now think, on reflection, hemay have also had a personality
disorder.
And this guy messed with myhead in a way I had never
experienced before and I wastalking about him one day in
therapy and in the middle of asentence, jamie, I went oh my
(06:14):
God, do you think I need to goto Al-Anon?
And my therapist said yes.
So, whatever, I plugged intoGoogle looking for Al-Anon, the
word codependent came up and Iwas like, wait a minute.
I've literally been in therapysince I was 15.
I've read a gajillion self-helpbooks.
Never heard this word.
How is this possible?
So I started going toCodependence.
Anonymous very quickly felt asense of relief in knowing
(06:38):
there's this.
It's almost like a syndromeabout me.
If there was a recovery program, there's other people like me
and I soon said to somebody Ithink I need to be reparented.
But I didn't know thatreparenting was an actual thing.
And a few weeks into my CODArecovery I went to Cape Cod to
visit some friends.
One of whom had been in AA formany Alcoholics Anonymous for
(07:02):
many years and she had alwaysjust raved about how
dramatically her life was, wasrevolutionized and I was like
you're gonna love it, I'm goingto codependence anonymous.
And she was like, well, let'ssee if we can find a meeting
while you're here and we'll gotogether.
And she couldn't.
But she found a CA meetingwhich I knew of as a CEO, a
adult children of alcoholics.
(07:22):
I now know it's actually adultchildren of alcoholics and
dysfunctional families.
I think if I heard the anddysfunctional families, I might
have thought that I qualified.
But I went to the meeting forher, not for me, because her
dad's an alcoholic.
And I walk in and in theopening readings they say we
reparent ourselves.
And I was like what.
(07:43):
And then they read the 14traits of an adult child and my
friend Heidi tells me I sobbedthe whole meeting.
I don't remember that.
But I bought the literature.
I came home to New Haven,connecticut, I started going to
TA and I was like this isliterally what I've been looking
for my whole life.
I soon found out that it's atrauma recovery program where
(08:05):
you reparent yourself and youuse the 12 steps to recover.
I didn't know that I had trauma.
I now know that I haverelational trauma and I just was
really just rapidly gettingamazing recovery.
I was seeing recovery around mein the rooms with the other
people in the meeting.
I was reading about amazingrecovery.
So that went on for about a yearand I decided to let go of CODA
(08:27):
because it just wasn't as goodof a fit.
And that turned out to be alike a higher powered moment,
because one of the women that Iwas doing the 12 steps with and
ACA had started sharing abouther relationship with food,
especially sugar, and that shestarted going to Overeaters
Anonymous and she invited me togo and I was like, oh my God,
I'm a compulsive overeater,which I didn't know was a thing,
(08:50):
and so I joined that program.
I'm now down over 100 poundsfor my top weight and my like
drastic change in my life hasbeen just astonishing the way
that I talk about it, jamie, isthat, like all of that work I
did before, recovery sort ofscratched the surface of the
iceberg of my life and recoverymelted the iceberg of my life.
(09:12):
And I think that partly it'sbecause the 12 steps are such an
amazing technology and I alsothink because of the trauma of
recovery.
You know of the trauma ofrecovery, you know it's been
just so profound and I think ofmy core wound as codependence
and boundaries are essentiallythe antidote to codependence.
So I learned to buildboundaries through this sort of
(09:35):
meandering, haphazard path in 12step recovery, and so for me,
learning to build boundariesjust had a just really far
reaching impact.
They do, boundaries do permeateevery area of our life.
So that's part of it, but Ithink also because of the core
wound of codependence.
And then what happened for mewas after I got a hold on oh,
(09:59):
yeah, we should maybe slow downjust a little bit.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Just because you said a lot in there, ok, sure, and
maybe just take a moment tounpack some of that.
Okay, sure, okay, yeah, becauseyou mentioned therapy, you
mentioned trauma, you mentionedreparenting and you mentioned
other 12 step programs.
And so for people who aresaying, well, I've been to
(10:23):
therapy, why do I need a 12 stepprogram?
Or I don't know whatreparenting means, how can I
parent myself?
I mean, there's a lot going onin there.
So just to pull one littlepiece out of that, when you talk
about reparenting, first of all, that would assume that the
parenting you got wasn't good orwasn't enough or was so
(10:45):
dysfunctional hence the name forACA Alcoholic Adult, children
of Alcoholics and DysfunctionalFamilies.
So why would anybody need to bereparented and how can somebody
reparent themselves?
We will get to the boundarything in a minute, yeah, sure.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
So it could be that you had super dysfunctional
parenting.
It could be also that you haddecent parenting, but there was
some dysfunction here and there.
Sometimes the dysfunctiondoesn't come from the actual
parents.
Sometimes it comes from otherenvironments or, a little bit
later in childhood, maybe aschool experience or something
like that.
But frequently it'sintergenerational family
(11:24):
dysfunction and so and this isnot about blaming our parents
this is like parents did thebest they could.
And also, just because you grewup in dysfunction doesn't mean
your parents don't love you.
So you can be in a loving homeand suffer intergenerational
family dysfunction andrelational trauma, which is the
(11:46):
kind of trauma that I'm talkingabout, which is different than
like blunt trauma of being likeattacked or in a hurricane or
something like that.
So reparenting yourself is it'sa really wide continuum of
behaviors, but it's most basicit's that you're good and loving
and kind to yourself, becausemost of us have this internal
(12:07):
critic that just rakes us overthe coals.
We in ACA call it our innercritical parent.
When I first got into theprogram, that title didn't
really resonate with me.
I more resonated with the ideafrom OA, which is I have a
disease, my disease wants medead, and if it can't it will
(12:28):
just settle for me suffering.
So it tells me things.
Over the last couple of yearsI've really grasped a hold of
this critical inner parentconcept.
But so at its most basic, youchallenge yourself.
When you say negative things toyourself, you turn those things
around and you say good andkind things to yourself and on
(12:49):
the other end of the continuumof reparenting it can mean that
you develop this whole in yourimagination.
You develop this whole innercast of characters.
So we recommend in ACA thatpeople cultivate an inner loving
parent.
So a lot of people are likewell, if I didn't have loving
parents, how can I possibly knowhow to parent myself?
(13:11):
So I'll give you some examplesfrom some of my friends in ACA.
So one of my friends has chosenBig Bird and Mr Rogers as her
parents, those are wonderfulparents, right?
So she knows how Mr Rogers andBig Bird would talk to her.
She personally doesn't know howto be a loving parent, but
(13:33):
she's like oh well, here's thekind of things Mr Rogers and Big
Bird would say.
Well, I have another friend inrecovery who grew up in a very
violent home.
Another friend in recovery whogrew up in a very violent home.
His inner loving parent is JedClampett from the Beverly
Hillbillies, if people are likemy age and he needed Jed
Clampett because Jed Clampetthas a shotgun and he needs an
inner loving parent with ashotgun because he grew up in a
(13:55):
violent home.
There were a lot of like knivesand stuff in his home and he
felt like a shotgun is waybetter than a knife.
So it's whatever you need tolike love yourself in the ways
you wanted, needed and deservedto be loved.
That weren't, you weren't fullyloved.
And so the other thing, like Iwould say at minimum, is not
(14:18):
just an inner loving parent, butyou connect with your inner
child and everybody has one.
You may or may not be aware ofit.
I was not aware of it, and thenat first I was like I'm aware I
have an inner child and that'swhere it stops.
But the way that I was firsttaught to connect with my inner
child is through non-dominanthandwriting.
(14:38):
So I'm right-handed, mydominant hand is my right hand,
so I would write to my innerchild with my right hand and
then I would use my left handand maybe even a crayon, my non
dominant hand to write back.
And there's something aboutthat process that allows us to
tap into our inner child.
Now, I don't know how it works,but I also don't know how
(15:00):
electricity works, but I knowthat it does.
So I learned to do that and Iwould say you know, over the
first seven or eight years inACA that I did that maybe 10, 12
times, mostly when somethingreally bad was happening or when
I was in an ACA workshop and Iwas astonished at, like, the
(15:20):
stuff that came out, that it'slike I'm me and there's a part
of me that was holding on tothis information that only got
revealed.
The last couple of years I havereally made consistent,
conscious contact with my innerchild without there needing to
be something wrong, and I havebuilt a relationship and now
it's like she's and I actuallyhave multiple inner children.
(15:42):
They're all me now and I have afull blown relationship like an
inner family.
And you know, I was talking to afriend the other day about this
and there are some people whomay think this is crazy and you
go ahead and think that it isridiculously healing for me.
I cannot express how deep thehealing has been for me.
(16:03):
So your reparenting journeycould be.
You just stop raking yourselfover the coals and you start
treating yourself kindly and saygood and kind things to
yourself, and it can be all theway up to developing this entire
inner cast of characters andhaving interactions and, like
one of the things I've done,that's been super healthy, is
(16:25):
and super healing is.
I had several incidents as achild that were very
traumatizing to me and I broughtmy inner loving parent with me
in some cases to explain whatwas going on, because a big part
of my trauma is I never knewwhat was going on, like
emotionally, psychologically,factually, and so she explained
(16:50):
things.
I also had her like step in forme and like block what was
going to happen and stop it andlike take care of me and pick me
up and nurture me and it doessomething like I literally feel
like my DNA has changed fromdoing that.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
That makes a lot of sense actually, and and there's
definitely research on thereabout changing your DNA.
But I want to step back just alittle bit Because in talking
about the inner critical parentversus the inner loving parent,
you know, as an emotionalintelligence coach and a
positive intelligence coach, Italk about this a lot.
(17:30):
The judge and my judges thesize of the Lincoln Memorial,
but the judges is often thatinner critical parent, or that
inner critical voice that wehear, because I call it a
ventriloquist, because it has myvoice.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Oh, that's a good one .
I love that.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
And so I think of it as so.
I used to believe it's lies,because it was my voice when I
finally realized that was just ajudge and that I could tell the
judge to be quiet, and Ilearned to reframe or say oh,
that's just my judge talking,that's actually not me and it's
(18:07):
actually not true.
And when you can change thejudge out for, or at least bring
in, the loving parent to be theloving voice, the truth is the
love, the lie is the criticism,the lie is the denigration and
the cutting down, and so Ireally like that you brought
(18:30):
that up, because when we talkabout emotional intelligence,
the first thing we learn is howdo we replace the saboteurs that
are dogging our every step?
And we'll get to the peoplepleasing one in a minute.
But the judge, this, the, theavoider, the, the people pleaser
, the hyper vigilant, the hyperrational left, the controller
(18:52):
right, all of those kind of stepin at any one moment to
sabotage our lives, and we Iconsider you and I in the same
group here are incredibly luckyto have found the kind of
recovery that wasn't availableto our parents or they didn't
have access to it, they didn'thear about it.
(19:12):
But one of the key points abouta parent, a loving parent and a
loving higher self, you know, ifwe want to bring a higher power
into it and a loving higherself.
You know, if we want to bring ahigher power into it and a
higher self is empathy.
Yeah, right, it's that.
Hey, you're okay, yeah, you'reokay.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
I love you, yeah, yeah and yeah, and compassion,
yes, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I think you know one of thephrases I learned really early
in recovery that helped me tobuild a bridge from
self-judgment to compassion wasthis phrase info, not ammo.
So when I learn things aboutmyself, it's information for me
(19:52):
to learn, integrate and growfrom.
It's not ammunition to beatmyself up.
So what what I'm talking aboutis curiosity.
So I love curiosity.
Curiosity it's neutral and thathelps you build that bridge
from from judgment to compassion.
And I always thought I likemyself, I have high self esteem,
and when I got in recovery Iwas like, oh my God, I'm
(20:14):
literally like scanning thehorizon all times looking for
reasons to beat myself up, but Ididn't even know it Right.
So when I heard this info notammo, I really internalize that
I'm like, okay, this is info,not ammo.
And so for me, what am I goingto do?
Like, typically, it's what canI do differently.
You know, rather than why am Isuch a piece of crap?
(20:38):
But because when you ask acrappy question like that,
you're gonna get a crappy answer.
But if you ask what could I dodifferently, you start realizing
wait, I have options.
So you come out of victimmentality, you stop victimizing
yourself, yes, and when yourealize I have choices by asking
(20:58):
what could I do differently,then you start to actually see
choices, that you have optionsand you can make different
decisions.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Yes, okay, so info, not ammo I love that and I
hadn't heard that, but I'mkeeping it.
And the second thing is, sinceyou mentioned victim, I want to
say a word about that, and thatis that one of our saboteurs is
a victim, and as soon as you'rea victim, you're powerless.
Yes, you know you have noagency.
But if you can say, like youwere saying, I'm not a victim
(21:30):
here, this is just information,and how can I do it differently
next time?
Or what did I learn from thisthat I can take away?
Or what, what area did I justgrow in?
Where did my opportunity forgrowth just come in?
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Yeah, yeah, and I will say, jamie, that for me
personally, the biggest paradigmshift of recovery was coming
out of victim mentality and I amnot the quintessential victim,
I'm not the like.
Woe is me, the world is againstme.
I can never win my victimmentality way more so.
So mine was like, well, if onlyhe would fill in the blank,
(22:06):
then everything would be okay.
And I first saw that when I didmy relationship inventory in
ACA and I saw literally everyman I ever dated.
I thought, if he would just so.
I started to see like, oh, thisis me acting like I have no
influence on the status of anyof my relationships.
Well then I started to see, oh,it's also true at work, in my
(22:27):
family, with my friends,basically everywhere.
And I think I have I think it'snine episodes about victim
mentality, because literallyevery time another layer comes
off, I do another episode aboutit.
And what's interesting is,since you're a PQ coach, I also
do PQ and I have a zero score onmy victim saboteur.
(22:48):
Like that is how far I havecome.
It's the only one I have zeroon, by the way.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
Yeah, that's pretty amazing.
Yeah, my my top score.
I think People Pleaser was oneof my top scores, and Avoider
was up there too, because one ofmy survival strategies was to
avoid conflict, and so I had tolearn how to avoid.
But, as you know, and for thoseof you listening or watching
(23:17):
when you are always walking oneggshells or looking for where
the next landmine is, you learnhow to be a good conflict
avoider.
You learn how to be a goodpeople pleaser.
You learn how to behypervigilant, and those served
us.
They did help us survive.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Right, we're alive, so we know they worked.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Yes, but now we don't need them, and so now I call
them paper tigers.
It's like when you see a tiger,our brain wants to say real
tiger, run, get out of here anddo something.
But if it's a paper tiger, youcan say oh, thank you for
helping me, you've really gottenme this far, but I don't need
that anymore.
(24:00):
I'm empowered, I have aself-determination, I'm a good
person just because of who I am.
I don't have to do anythingspecial.
I don't have to open my home toan unhoused person, I don't
have to run every church bazaarevent and I don't have to be a
(24:21):
philanthropist and open uporphanages in developing
countries.
Mm-hmm, yeah.
So in that light, with regardto, say, boundaries, now you
came to a place where you said,okay, wow, people pleasing and
(24:41):
this going all out for otherpeople, without even realizing
what you were doing.
What made you get intoboundaries coaching?
Speaker 1 (24:53):
what made you get into boundaries coaching.
So I was working full time atYale University when I got in
recovery and about two and ahalf years into recovery I got
laid off and just by a series ofserendipitous events I found my
way into the world ofentrepreneurship, startups and
innovation at Yale and New Haven, started my own coaching and
consulting business.
I started my podcast actuallyvery quickly because I was like
there's all this wisdom andrecovery I want to get it out.
There Never occurred to me itwould have anything to do with
(25:15):
my business.
It's now the number one waythat I get clients.
So I'm just sort of generallycoaching in the beginning and
then, as I got to know moreabout entrepreneurship, I
realized you have to have aniche of some kind.
And it just made sense for meto be a boundaries coach because
I was really good at helping,like my fellows in recovery and
(25:36):
like every client I ever hadneeded help with boundaries.
And other thing, jamie, is thatlike once I got a handle on
boundaries because again Ilearned boundaries there's like
a haphazard, meandering path inrecovery I decided to go and
read about boundaries and Iretroactively understood oh,
this is what was going on bothbefore and in the building
(25:56):
process and while I was doingthe readings, I would do these
visual drawings to like visuallydepict the principles around
boundaries, because I'm a prettyvisual person.
Well, those drawings turned intohandouts, which turned into a
workbook which is the backboneof my boundaries coaching
program and I just over time,just created, you know I have
this multimedia curriculum onboundaries and there's 12
(26:21):
modules and it's based on myunderstanding of the principles
like that I retroactivelyunderstood, of the principles
like that I retroactivelyunderstood and it just.
And the other thing is thatbecause boundaries permeate
every single area of your life,like learning to build healthy
(26:42):
boundaries can clean up so muchin your life, and then also
because of my core wound ofcodependence and the you know to
me boundaries being theantidote to that it just for all
these reasons it really made alot of sense for me to be a
boundaries coach.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
That does make a lot of sense, and I can say that you
and I have known each other forseveral years and I have always
respected your boundaries, I'verespected the fact that you
have them, and I say thatbecause when I was growing up, I
didn't have any boundariesbecause it wasn't safe to have a
boundary, and so I never knewwhat.
(27:21):
Where I ended and somebody elsebegan, I often would let people
walk all over me because Ididn't know how not to and I
didn't know that it was safe todo that, and I also felt this
was my, my kind of my sixththinking, if you will, my
unhealthy thinking, was well, ifI, if I just say yes, you'll
(27:42):
like me.
If I just say okay, if I justgo along with it, versus, this
isn't good for me, this doesn'tserve my higher self, or maybe
it doesn't even serve yourhigher self or your highest good
, and I can say no and still beokay.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Yeah, yeah, but it's quite the journey to get there
because, when I started buildingboundaries first of all I
didn't even know that was what Iwas doing, but the like not
even saying no.
First of all, I didn't evenknow that was what I was doing,
but the like not even saying no,thinking of saying no, made me
feel literally like I was goingto die, like my, my life was
(28:20):
under threat.
So that is not uncommon forpeople and it's because, if
we've grown up and matched theidea of unenmashing feels like
death, because it is the death.
It's the death of an identitywhich is I'm you and you're me.
And so for me, I think I don'tthink I understood until a
couple years later how importantbeing in that 12 step group
(28:42):
with other women was in terms ofme being able to build
boundaries, because I neededtheir support and their
affirmation.
I needed them to say thingslike you are not a bad person,
barb, you deserve to do this,you know, this is the right
thing to do.
They also said things like keepyour hands away from the
keyboard, like don't respond tothat email, and also I don't
(29:03):
know if you really want to sayit like that, barb, you know, or
that might have been a littlebit too harsh.
And speaking of which, the firsttime I don't remember what it
was, but the first time that Iremember knowing like this is me
setting a boundary.
This was me.
Wham, ooh, way too harsh.
Now, jamie, if I had known thatthat was going to be way too
harsh, that's not the boundarythat I would have set, but I
(29:24):
didn't know because I had neverdone it before.
And so, yeah, we have to, wehave to experiment when it comes
to boundaries, because youdon't know what your limits are,
because you've never had thembefore.
And so it's a journey.
And this is why info, not ammo,is so important, because can
you imagine if I was like wham,too harsh?
(29:45):
Oh my God, I'm riddled withguilt and shame.
I'm a horrible person.
I'm never going to setboundaries again.
Where would I be?
I'd probably be dead by now.
To be perfectly honest withguilt and shame, I'm a horrible
person.
I'm never going to setboundaries again.
Where would I be?
I'd probably be dead by now.
To be perfectly honest with you,with drugs, alcohol, food,
people that I was hanging outwith I mean, I wouldn't be
surprised I definitely would notbe the happy, joyous and free
person that I am carrying themessage of recovery to those who
still suffer, for sure.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
Right and just I want to say a little more about
(30:34):
about the harsh boundary atfirst, and the info versus ammo
thing, because like you said,when we're experimenting with a
new are and they're differentfor every interaction yes, and
instance and person yeah, soyou're going to have a different
boundary with your significantother than you are with a parent
or a sibling, or a friend or aco worker, or even the person
you just bought your coffee fromRight, right, yes.
Or even the person.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
You just bought your coffee from right.
Right, yes, absolutely,absolutely.
And you know, one of the thingsthat the women in my step group
we started doing when wewhether it was setting
boundaries or some other newbehavior where we felt like we
were going to die, we wouldliterally say to ourselves and I
didn't die, and I didn't die.
And we would say it over andover again and we kind of got
jokey about it.
It was like we're serious, likeI didn't die, and we would say
it over and over again and wekind of got jokey about it.
(31:11):
But it was like we're serious,like I didn't know.
It was almost like I needed myintellectual brain to keep
hearing that so that it couldget dumped into my lizard brain
and be like look, we've haddozens of experiences where we
felt like we were going to dieand we didn't.
So we're going to keep doingthis.
And then eventually I stoppedfeeling like I was going to die.
And every once in a while now Imight get like a little sort of
(31:34):
trickle of a difficult feeling,but it's not this giant flood
of like guilt and shame, that,or feeling like I was going to
die that I used to, and it justhappens over time.
And the way that I think of itis, you know, if you never set
boundaries, your life is goingto just get more and more and
more and more difficult as timegoes on.
(31:55):
If you start setting boundaries, you are going to go through a
difficult time, but thatdifficult time is finite and
there's healing on the otherside of it.
So choose your difficult.
Do you want difficult to lastforever and get worse over time,
or do you want to go through avery difficult time for a brief
period of time in terms of theyou know the the lifetime of
(32:16):
your life, and then have healingon the other side, like picked
your poison which one?
Speaker 3 (32:21):
Right, right, and you know I just thinking as you've
been talking.
What's been going through mymind is that when we do
something new and different thanwe've ever done before, it
feels weird, it feels awkward,it may feel wrong that doesn't
mean it is wrong but it's likeputting on brand new clothes.
Or you've decided to startwearing oranges and greens and
(32:44):
you've always worn browns andbeiges.
It's going to look weird, it'sgoing to feel weird, the fabric
doesn't feel right, but you tryit on, wear it around a little
bit and adjust as necessary, butdon't just throw the baby out
with the bathwater.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Right, you know.
You just reminded me ofsomething years ago Somebody I
met in recovery said which isanalogous to yours.
She said it was like I waswearing my shoes on the wrong
feet my entire life and when Iswitched them it felt weird at
first, right, and when I gotused to it it was like wait a
minute, this is what, and it'sthe same thing with boundaries
(33:25):
or other healthy behaviors.
We've never done it.
We're like this is weird andawkward and then, as we kind of
settle into, the new shoes werethe same shoes on the right feet
.
It's like, wait a minute, Icould have had life like this my
whole life.
Like this was an option to puton the other feet and I love
(33:46):
that metaphor.
I forgot all about it.
I'm so glad you said that aboutthe clothes that metaphor I
forgot all about it.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
I'm so glad you said that about the clothes and you
know what.
What I think is really awesomeis that when you've lived in a
dysfunction or you lived whereyour life was like a minefield
and you didn't even know wherethe mines were hidden, to have
some relief with regard to thatis absolutely priceless.
(34:13):
Oh, it's inescapable.
It's a relief, but you know,and it's sort of like a drug.
When we're used to taking in adrug, whether it's caffeine or
nicotine or something moreserious, you know, like abusing
alcohol or an opioid ormethamphetamine alcohol, or an
(34:34):
opioid or methamphetamine, whenyou stop giving that thing to
your body that it is so used tohaving, it's going to say wait a
second, you're not giving methis thing I'm used to, and
that's a withdrawal.
And some withdrawals they're allweird and they don't feel good.
Some obviously you have to gothrough if you're trying to get
out of chemical dependency oralcohol dependency.
But some of the withdrawals arewithdrawals from those negative
(34:57):
behaviors or those unhealthybehaviors.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
Yeah, yeah, In ACA we call that the inner drug store
and yes, we want to trade theinner drugs of like cortisol and
adrenaline for things like, andadrenaline for things like
serotonin and melatonin andstuff.
So we want, like we can stilltap into the good inner
drugstore by doing things thatare soothing and calming to us,
(35:20):
rather than things that you knowthat get us into fight or
flight mode, which is where Ispent most of my life.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
Sure, I did too.
So so, just as just a corollaryto that, because when we start
developing a little bit oftolerance for some of the
withdrawal from the unhealthyrelease of chemicals in our
system, we can start to say, oh,it's okay that I feel kind of
(35:48):
not on edge, kind of kind of,you know, not on edge.
It's okay that I don't feelexcited.
This is actually okay Not.
Oh, my gosh, how come I'mfeeling this way?
It's like, oh, this mightactually be okay.
Yeah, and if you are having aday, if you're having a day
where things aren't going theway you thought they were going
to go, or you were disappointedor you're sad, that's normal and
(36:11):
okay too.
We are not always going to beup and we are not always going
to be down.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Right, I mean, that's just the nature of life up and
down.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
Yeah, yeah, you know, it depends even on what time.
Did you wake up?
Did you get enough sleep?
Did you have breakfast?
Did you exercise?
Did you do something foryourself today?
Did you give yourselfpermission to do something for
yourself?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(36:41):
So there's a word, barb, andit's the title of the song I'm
going to play.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
Yes, and I'm not even going to say what it is, I'm
just going to share my screen.
Okay, so that was freedom fromGeorge Michael, and that is
(37:20):
that's.
That's the reward.
That's the reward, right, whenyou have boundaries and when you
know yourself and you can loveyourself or even just like
yourself.
Start with just accepting andliking.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
Yeah, you can love yourself or even just like
yourself.
Start with just accepting andliking.
Yeah, and I think you know I'vethought of recovery.
The greatest gift of recoveryis freedom of choice and for me,
the greatest freedom of thefreedoms of choice is the
freedom to choose what to think,and especially about myself.
And learning how to buildhealthy boundaries is actually
about learning like what are thechoices I want to make, how do
(37:54):
I want to live my life?
And then what are theboundaries or the choices I make
in my life to get that kind ofa life?
And then what am I going to doif other people don't sort of
come along with me on the ride?
Because sometimes people are notgoing to be okay with your
boundaries, and that's so.
The number one question I getis how do I deal with the guilt
and shame?
And the number two question Iget is what do I do when people
(38:15):
push back on my boundaries andyou can't?
You do learn to do that as youbuild boundaries.
And then part of the skilldevelopment of boundary building
(38:36):
is learning like what are theconsequences you're going to
implement if someone doesn'thonor your boundaries, because
it's up to you.
If they don't honor yourboundaries.
They're your boundaries, nottheirs.
Right, you are the one that isin charge of doing something
about it.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
Yeah, yeah, right, you are the one that is in
charge of doing something aboutit.
Yeah, and that reminds meoftentimes, when I maybe set a
boundary or whatever, I have toremember that just because
somebody else doesn't like theboundary doesn't mean there's
something wrong with me, right?
Speaker 1 (39:07):
Right.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
Maybe that they've got a situation where they're
not able to handle boundaries.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
Yeah, yeah, I mean I remind people.
There's a whole host of reasonsthat people don't honor your
boundaries.
It could be they forgot becauseyou never did it before.
It could be they don't believeyou because you never did it
before.
It could be because they havereally poor boundaries and it's
almost impossible impossible forthem to respect other people's
boundaries, which means it'seven more important for you to
(39:33):
enforce your boundaries becausethey can't Right right, right.
Speaker 3 (39:39):
And on that note, we cannot expect other people to
take care of our boundaries forus.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Right, exactly, yes, you're in charge of your
boundaries, they're not.
So if you say to someone, hey,please don't put that there, and
they keep putting it there andyou do nothing, it's not a
boundary.
But you know, the firstintervention would be maybe you
didn't hear me I asked you notto put it there, and if they
keep putting it there, like youknow, I'm not sure what's going
(40:07):
on here, but I've asked you notto put that there and you keep
putting it there.
What's going on?
And if they just don't do it,then what are you going to do?
I'm just making this up.
It's a table with keys, right,and you don't want them to put
their keys on it.
So then you move the table oryou put a rack with a hook on it
.
I'm just making this up.
This is not the best example,but you change your.
(40:34):
You change something.
You don't just let it go andthen be mad at them because it's
your boundary, not theirs,right?
Speaker 3 (40:39):
Yeah Right, and that is a great place to end, barb.
It has been a real pleasure tomeet up with you again and
Barb's information is in theshow notes.
My information is in the shownotes.
You want to learn more aboutemotional intelligence, positive
intelligence, boundaries, howto say no and mean it and feel
okay about it.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (41:00):
Yes, thank you and until next time, everybody,
please don't forget to like andsubscribe to this podcast,
because the more people who likeand subscribe to it, the more
people will see it and hopefullybenefit from it.
Thank you so much, barb.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Thank you, jamie, enjoy the day.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
Thank you, bye-bye.
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