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225: Boundaries in Relationships with Shane Birkel

Welcome back to The Couples Therapist Couch! This podcast is about the practice of Couples Therapy. Each week, Shane Birkel interviews an expert in the field of Couples Therapy to explore all about the world of relationships and how to be an amazing therapist.

In this solo episode, Shane discusses the purpose of boundaries in relationships and how to set them up. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots, and watch it on YouTube – follow and leave a 5-star review.

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  • Show Notes
  • The Couples Therapist Couch Summary
  • Transcript

The Couples Therapist Couch 225: Boundaries in Relationships with Shane Birkel

Sign up for TheraBundle: https://therabundle.com/shane

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In this solo episode, Shane discusses the purpose of boundaries in relationships and how to set them up. Hear why healthy boundaries create change, what to avoid when setting boundaries, when to take a walk or go in the other room, the things that make boundaries work or not work, and how boundaries can help maintain safety in a relationship. This episode covers everything from boundaries to safety. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:

  • Why are boundaries important?
  • What are the roles of the speaker and listener?
  • Can you change boundaries?
  • What's an example of boundaries in relationships?
  • How can couples set up a framework?
  • What should you avoid when setting boundaries?
  • How can boundaries help maintain safety in a relationship?
  • When should you take a walk or go in the other room?

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Check out the episode, show notes, and transcript below: 

 

 Show Notes

 

What is The Couples Therapist Couch?

This podcast is about the practice of Couples Therapy. Many of the episodes are interviews with leaders in the field of Relationships. The show is meant to help Therapists and Coaches learn how to help people to deepen their connection, but in the process it explores what is most needed for each of us to love, heal, and grow. Each week, Shane Birkel interviews an expert in the field of Couples Therapy to explore all about the world of relationships and how to be an amazing therapist.

Learn more about the Couples Therapy 101 course: https://www.couplestherapistcouch.com/

Find out more about the Couples Therapist Inner Circle: https://www.couplestherapistcouch.com/inner-circle-new

Transcript

Please note: Transcript may not be 100% accurate

00:00
Boundaries are really something that should be used to maintain safety in a relationship. We have to have that reassurance of safety in order to open up, in order to be vulnerable, in order to get closer.

00:18
Welcome to The Couples Therapist Couch, the podcast for couples therapists, marriage counselors, and relationship coaches to explore the practice of couples therapy. And now, your host, Shane Birkel.

00:34
Hey everybody, welcome back to The Couples Therapist Couch. This is Shane Birkel and this is the podcast that's all about the practice of couples therapy. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist and my goal is to bring you the best in the world of couples therapy. Before I get in, today I want to talk about boundaries and it's something that people have been hearing all the time these days. People are talking about boundaries a lot.

01:04
And I definitely think it's important. I definitely think sometimes people don't see it the same way I do. And, uh, I don't agree with, with how they're using the term boundaries. So I'm going to get into that a little bit today and talk about my perspective on that. And I do think they're really important in the way that I understand them. But before I get to that, I wanted to talk about the sponsor for today, which is

01:33
idea and I actually contributed to the TheraBundle this year. There's a free live webinar on November 12th that you can jump on. I think you can see it even if you listen to this after November 12th. I think there's going to be like two weeks where you can sign up and probably see the free webinar just to get an idea of what TheraBundle is all about.

02:01
I think they have 60 some contributors this year. So people who have products for therapists have contributed their products. So a lot of these products are around $50 or $100. It's like a course where they're teaching you something about the practice of therapy, or they're teaching you something about running your therapy business. I contributed a course.

02:28
that I have on my website that I charge $97 for. And it's about how to do couples intensives. And so if you sign up for the TheraBundle, you get free access to all these courses. You get free access to that course I just mentioned that I contributed, and you get free access to 60 other courses that people have sort of donated to the TheraBundle. And the reason therapists donate their stuff is so that...

02:58
You can become familiar with them. They might have other products that they want you to buy, whatever. But I actually purchased it last year. This year is the first time that I've participated, but I purchased it last year. I think it's around a hundred dollar price point, maybe a little bit more than that. Actually, I have a link in the show notes so you can click and it's therabundle.com backslash Shane. And I think you'll get a discount. I purchased it last year and there were probably like 10

03:28
courses that I really got into and really helped me in my practice and I thought it was a great deal and like I said, you can access all 60 of them if you want to or you can just go through and find the ones that are a good fit for you that you want to take advantage of so anyway, if you have questions about that you can reach out to me or check out the link and they have Contact support you can ask questions to as well so

03:56
Let me get to the boundaries conversation, as I mentioned before. One of the things that I think people get confused about when we're talking about boundaries is they think that the purpose of a boundary is to change someone else's behavior. This is a really important distinction that I think is that your boundaries aren't dependent on anyone else changing their behavior.

04:24
You know, and I say this from the standpoint of being an adult, right? It's different for kids and I'm going to talk about that. I'm going to get into that. Kids, children can't protect themselves, which is why they require adults to parent them and protect them. And when they are living in an abusive household with a parent who's abusive or, or being exposed to other abusive behaviors.

04:53
That's why it's so traumatic for children to go through that. As adults, if I am in an abusive situation, hopefully, unless I'm living in a society where I don't have support, but in a lot of societies, if I'm in an abusive situation, I have a choice. I can be empowered to protect myself, to leave the situation or to get support or to get help.

05:23
And this is important, you know, where I often have couples, you know, that I'm working with in therapy and one partner will say, well, my partner is being emotionally abusive to me. And that's absolutely concerning and something that I would, you know, work with their partner on and make sure they understand what's happening and make sure they're taking action. But

05:51
One of the questions I have is, well, what, what have you done to try to set a boundary for yourself? Because I think that that is what can create change as much as anything else. When we have healthy boundaries in a situation and it's basically the message of, listen, this doesn't feel good for me. Like the way you're talking to me doesn't feel good for me. I'm going to go in the other room. I'm willing to talk to you when we can.

06:20
do it in a healthy way or something like that. And so there is, you know, me, I'm naming the behavior that doesn't feel good. I'm naming what I'm going to do to take care of myself and protect myself. And if it's someone I care about being in a relationship with, like my spouse or my partner, then I'm offering, you know, a time to repair, a time to reconnect. But they have to be willing to be open to.

06:49
being accountable and apologizing and all of those things as well. If we're talking about physical abuse, I think it's a whole different thing. I think in those situations, the number one priority is just making sure their safety and making sure that that's never going to happen again. And possibly there isn't room for communication and you just need to get help. So, but I'm, I'm really talking about more like the emotional hurt, you know, the way that

07:18
people talk to each other, the, you know, breaking commitments. Like if I say that I'm going to do something and then I don't follow through on it, you know, things like that, those are, those can be very emotionally hurtful for people. The other thing about that is sometimes I don't know if it's fair to say, Oh, my partner's being mean or my partner's being abusive or something. They might be doing something that

07:48
they would feel totally comfortable with someone doing to them. And absolutely, it might feel hurtful to you as their partner, but that's an important thing to communicate to them. There's a very diff, the very big difference if they have the intention of being hurtful. And a lot of people hurt others from the victim position, attack from the victim position. It's sort of,

08:17
like they feel like, well, I'm being attacked, so I have the right to attack back. And I think, we get wrapped up in the fight or flight reaction in the parts of our brain that aren't thinking rationally. And that's where I think some couples just need to take a time out. And there has to be the ability to repair and come back. But

08:42
If I grew up in a family where everyone was just talking loud and it was chaotic and my partner grew up in a family that was really quiet and reserved and we're getting into a heated discussion, I might feel like, oh, this is just a normal discussion. And my partner might be sitting there feeling like, why is he yelling at me? Why is he being so mean? And I have to be able to take the feedback.

09:11
If my partner says, hey, this isn't working for me, that's them attempting to communicate a boundary. If my partner says, hey, and that's how I would suggest trying to set a boundary is by speaking from the first person, by saying it in that way of this isn't working for me. I don't want to start going into blame or judgment or criticism. I don't want to say...

09:39
you're yelling at me, you're talking too loud, you're being mean, you know, because that's sort of attacking back. That's name calling or like I said, criticizing or something like that. What I want to say as I communicate my boundary is this doesn't feel good for me or this isn't working for me or I don't feel like I can be around this kind of communication. And then,

10:09
the taking the action of like, I'm going to go take a walk or I'm going to go in the other room for a little bit or I'm going to go listen to music or whatever. You know, it's sort of like not dependent on my partner changing. Now I hope that they can get the message and if I'm receiving that message, it's really important to take it in. Like this is feedback about your partner. This is information that's going to help.

10:36
make the relationship better, that's going to help lead you back into reconnecting with each other. If your partner is saying this isn't working for them, then it doesn't mean you're a bad person. It doesn't mean that you're trying to be mean. It doesn't mean that you have bad intentions, but it's certainly something that you want to take in so that you can be mindful of in the future and possibly make some changes in the way that you're communicating and doing things with.

11:05
your partner. So I think this is very important. And one of the the ways I see the boundaries is the ability to take that feedback, right? If my partner is speaking in a way that's very respectful, and kind of owning their reality, and they say, Hey, this isn't working for me. You know, sometimes what happens is, the person receiving that will take it as blame. And they'll be like, Well, I don't know why.

11:34
You're getting upset at me. And to me, that's a porous boundary. That that's a, I have a partner who's trying to tell me something respectfully, give me feedback in a respectful way. And I don't have a healthy enough boundary to separate their reality from my reality. Right. Because in order to have a healthy boundary, I have to have the ability to say

11:59
I know I'm a good person. I know I have good intentions. I also know I make mistakes sometimes. And if my partner's giving me feedback, I need to have enough boundaries where I'm not getting activated and defensive. A lot of times if someone doesn't have good boundaries and their partner's trying to give them respectful feedback, then they'll go into defensiveness, minimizing their partner's experience or invalidating their partner's experience.

12:29
and they just won't be able to hear it. And so if I have good boundaries, that has to come from me having a healthy self-esteem, me feeling like I'm enough, me feeling like, uh, you know, it's okay to make mistakes. Not that I want, not that I'm trying to do that, but if I feel, if I have enough self-esteem on board and my partner says, Hey, this doesn't feel good for me.

12:56
I might feel an appropriate amount of shame, not a toxic shame, but an appropriate level of shame where I say, oh my gosh, I feel bad that I hurt you. I'm so sorry. That's being accountable. That's being sensitive to their experience. And that's what the goal would be. But I hope it makes sense where I have the healthy enough boundaries.

13:23
to take that feedback and not go into a shame spiral of, I'm a terrible person, or I start going into, I'm a terrible person and that doesn't feel good, and then I attack back and say, well, you're a terrible person and you're the one who's doing this wrong and blah, blah, blah. That's just coming from my own insecurity at that point, or it's coming from my own fear and I'm not able to take in the feedback. So I want...

13:52
to have enough self-esteem to have a good boundary where when my partner gives me feedback, I can tune in to their reality. I want to make it about them. I want to, this is someone I love, someone I care about, and if they're feeling hurt by something that's going on, I want to really be curious and learn about that and keep the conversation open and make them feel validated and accepted for whatever their experience is even if I have a completely different...

14:22
experience. And I'm sure you've probably heard me say before, it really doesn't work when people get into right and wrong sort of conversations when they're going back and forth arguing the point like, you know, I can't believe you did this. Well, no, I didn't. Yes, you did. No, I didn't. Yes, you did. And it's just going back and forth and they're arguing the truth of the reality. And we can avoid that by speaking from the first person by keeping our communication.

14:50
on our side of the street, so to speak, and saying, this is my experience. This is my reality. This is what's going on for me. And the other person is a listener. The other thing you've probably heard me talk about is the speaker listener roles, right? So if someone's feeling hurt, they are in and they're bringing it up. They are the speaker. And the other person is by default, the listener. And that's really important. So you know.

15:20
what your role is as you're trying to approach that type of communication. So let me give you another example. And I'll just speak from the first person. I'm just totally making this up. It's not true. But let's say that, you know, I come home from work and I'm really tired. I'm not feeling like I have good boundaries at that moment. You know, I'm not very

15:50
I'm hungry, I'm feeling a little bit sensitive or in a bad mood or something like that. And my partner says, hey, you forgot to take the trash out this morning. That's really important because the trash is going to build up if we don't stay on top of that. Now there are two options here, right? If I have four boundaries, I could perceive that as a criticism.

16:19
I could perceive that as an attack and I might feel really bad and I might go to this deep dark place of, well, maybe I'm not enough. No matter how much I do, it's never enough. Or I'm not just one more example of how I'm not a good husband and I'm not a good partner and everything else, which is going into the shame, the toxic shame.

16:49
sometimes that feels so uncomfortable that we then go into grandiosity or go into attacking back or go into, well, I'm not the problem, my partner's the problem. And if I say that out loud, I might say something like, well, you're always criticizing me. You're always attacking me about everything. Nothing I do is good enough, right? Could be a passive aggressive comment, could be a name calling, it could be attacking back.

17:18
So that's where I wouldn't be having good boundaries. And if my partner doesn't have good boundaries, then they might attack me back and it can really spiral out of control. Now, if I have good boundaries, my partner could say the exact same thing, where she says something like, hey, you forgot to take the trash out. This is really important to me. And if I have really good boundaries, I could take a deep breath.

17:44
and I could say, oh my gosh, you're right. I'm so sorry I forgot to take the trash out. Let me take care of that. And I know this is important. And that could be the end of it. When we have good boundaries, sometimes that's all it takes. Now the other thing is maybe my partner's not having a good day. And maybe it sounds a little bit more like, hey, you're such a jerk. I can't believe you didn't take the trash out. What's wrong with you? You never do anything right.

18:14
My wife wouldn't say that. I'm just making this up as I said. But, you know, she could be, even if she said it in that way, which I, which I would say is attacking. I have the ability. If I haven't, you know, if I'm in a good enough head space and I can have a good enough boundaries, I have the ability to take a deep breath and to see, Oh, my partner's just hurting and struggling.

18:41
I can still move into compassionate understanding for her. I could say, oh, well, taking out the trash is really important to her. I get that, and I feel bad about that, and I wanna make sure I do a better job. And I could be accountable, and I could set aside my hurt feelings about the name calling or the attacking or the criticizing. And maybe I could come back to that in a few hours if I wanted to. I could say, hey,

19:10
I totally understand you're upset about the trash, but that didn't feel very good when he called me a jerk. Can we try to avoid that in our relationship? But me saying that in the heat of the moment probably isn't the time to take it on. If I can have healthy enough boundaries and she's coming at me with that message, in that moment probably the best thing I can do is just be accountable, take care of the problem.

19:37
and give her a lot of compassion and support for her perspective. Now, again, like I said, if I want to change a boundary or set a boundary, maybe a little later I could approach that conversation and say, hey, it didn't feel very good the way you were talking to me. Here's what I need because that's really important too. You have to have the ability to protect yourself. Now, if I can't, that's understandable. If you can't, you can't.

20:04
And in that moment I could say, hey, this feels really hurtful. I know I forgot to take the crash out, but the way you're talking to me feels really hurtful. I'm going to go take a walk and cool off before I come back to this conversation. We have to come to some sort of agreement about staying respectful with each other, using the communication skills, things like that. So that's my basic overview of...

20:33
boundaries just as a starting point for the conversation. So I hope that's helpful. It's really important that couples have frameworks that they're using, have a plan. When things start getting heated, what's the plan? What's my responsibility versus what's your responsibility? How are we continuing to treat each other with respect? Because

21:03
boundaries are really something that should be used to maintain safety in a relationship. And we have to have that reassurance of safety in order to open up, in order to be vulnerable, in order to get closer in the relationship. If there's someone who's unwilling to respect a boundary or unwilling to take feedback about what doesn't feel good, it's going to be hard to keep opening up to that person. It's going to be hard.

21:33
you know, to feel connected and create the safety. And so sometimes maybe you need to get help from a professional or something like that. But these are some basic ideas to help you with those boundaries, or if you're working with clients to help them with those boundaries. Like I said, it's not about determining who's right or wrong, or what is right and wrong behavior. It's about saying.

21:59
if this person feels hurt, that's their reality and that's valid and that's real and they need to feel safe. And so we need to help create boundaries. And the other thing is, I know there are people who feel hurt by everything all the time, and that type of person might require a lot of self-esteem work, a lot of ability to work on

22:27
kind of identifying like what's getting in the way of them feeling more confident in the world. And part of it is not being so dependent on my partner's approval in order for me to feel okay about myself. But these might be some bigger conversations we could talk about. But if you have any questions, definitely feel free to reach out and let me know. As I mentioned before, I just want to mention the Thera bundle one more time.

22:55
Use the link in the show notes. I think it's either today or tomorrow. There's a free webinar, but just click on the link. It'll give you all the information. And I think for the next couple of weeks, you'll be able to sign up, you know, right up to around November 25th or somewhere around there. So I hope, you know, I really encourage all of you to do that. Like I said, I have my product as part of that. It's a

23:23
a course about how to do intensives. So I think just getting that is almost worth the cost of the whole bundle. So I encourage you to take a look at that. Thank you all so much for listening. My name is Shane Birkel. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist. This is The Couples Therapist Couch, the podcast. It's all about the practice of couples therapy, and I will see you next time. Have a good week, everybody.

 

 

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