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You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today my guest is Terri Cole. Terri is a licensed psychotherapist and global leading expert in personal empowerment. For two decades, Terri has worked with some of the world’s most well-known personalities, from international pop stars to Fortune 500 CEOs. She has a gift for making complex psychological concepts accessible and then actionable. With Sounds True, Terri Cole is the author of a new book, a comprehensive, beautifully created book. It’s called Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free.
It might sound like having healthy boundaries is a good psychological skill to have, but I have to say, listening to Terri on becoming a boundary boss helped me appreciate how absolutely critical this skill is and how, in some ways, I think it might very well be the apex of how we as humans can learn to put truth and truth-telling at the very center of our lives, which is something I value so much. Here’s my conversation with Terri Cole, talking true on being a boundary boss:
Terri, as someone who’s been a psychotherapist and empowerment expert for many years, how did it become apparent to you that the topic of health boundaries—being a boundary boss, as you put it—was going to be the topic that you would focus your big book in the world on? How did that become clear to you, “Yes, that’s the topic”?
Terri Cole: I think part of it is that you most teach what you most need to learn, so it was a combination of my personal experience of having a lot of painful experiences that were directly connected to not even knowing what boundaries were, being a people pleaser, having the disease to please, a lot of outside validation. Then, when I became a psychotherapist, which was sort of later, it was like a second career, I just started seeing all of these presenting problems.
It may have been someone not getting paid what they were worth, having conflict in their love relationship, or not being able to assert themselves with their family of origin, but all of those things I could connect the dots backwards to this lack of knowledge around the right to have personal boundaries, the ability to speak those boundaries, to establish those boundaries, to enforce those boundaries. I was like, “Wow. This is an epidemic. It’s not just me, my friends, and people I’ve seen.” Once I was a therapist for, I’d say, at least the first 10 years, I was like, “This is a whole thing,” and I kept creating little handouts for my clients like, “Well, this will help, and maybe these are some things that you could say that might be assertive, might be truthful, and whatever.” That started just taking shape after many years.
TS: In the book Boundary Boss, you talk about your own “boundary bootcamp” that happened in your early 30s when your father died, and also when you received a cancer diagnosis. What was that boundary bootcamp? What happened?
It became apparent to me when major things happened in life, catastrophes and things that shake up the normal way we do business, right? There was an opportunity, but it was obvious where I was having difficulty asserting myself. With being a cancer virgin, not really asserting myself in a medical way, not being knowledgeable. I think back, and I kind of can’t believe it was me, but it was. You know, thinking the doctors know. I did get a second opinion, but what ended up—my experience was it was very difficult for me to assert myself with the first surgeon, and I ended up having to have the same surgery again.
I do see it as directly related to me not asserting myself, not getting my questions answered, feeling rushed to make a decision. That was really painful, obviously, and a long, drawn out process of not knowing. Even in my early 30s, not knowing my boundary bill of rights, as I call it. What are my rights, even if the person is a surgeon, a doctor, and very well-known at what they do? I still have the right to have my questions answered, to have what I think considered. But I didn’t do that, so that was one that was very painful, because my gut instinct was telling me to assert myself. I didn’t, and I ended up having to have the same surgery twice, so that was one thing.
Then, with my father’s death as well, I had actually about six months before my father passed, I went through an experience where I had a choice to either assert myself or not. It was boundary bootcamp in that I did assert myself with the help of my therapist, and really had a profound shift in my relationship with my father at that time. He was someone who I was afraid of. So were all my sisters. So was my mother. And I was out of the house for many years. I was in my early 30s, and I went into my therapist office. I said, “Hey, I’ve decided I’m not going to invite my father to my grad school graduation,” so I was becoming a psychotherapist.
She said, “OK. Can I ask you why?”
I said, “Well, he won’t come. That’s why.”
She’s like, “OK, but let’s ask a different question. Do you want to invite him?”—which was a different question than saying, “Did I want him there?”—but did I want to invite him?
I was like, “Of course. He’s my father.”
She was like, “OK. So, I want you to understand that if you want to invite him, you should invite him whether you think he will come or not. You’re blurring the boundaries between your side of the street and his side of the street. Your healing will come from asserting your true desire, your preference. It’s not about what your father does,” which actually really blew my mind. So, what ended up happening is she gave this to me as an assignment. I was seeing him. I would go to Florida once a year to see him, and she said, “OK. I want you to invite your father to your graduation.”
Now, I’m coachable if nothing else, and I was like, “I have to do this.”
So, it’s the last day. I still have not asked him. I’m packing. He’s like, “OK. We need to leave for the airport.”
I was like, “OK. Well, I have between now and the airport, because I cannot go back to New York and tell Ruth I didn’t do it.” We’re driving, and I said, “Hey, dad?”
He was like, “Yes?”
I was like, “Hey, I’ve got an extra ticket to the graduation in May. Visit—if you want it,” type of a thing.
He was like, “Terri, I really can’t,” because he really, really hated New York. He worked there for years. Too stressful.
I was like, “It’s OK,” I said, “No problem.
Then, he said something really odd. He said, “Oh. Here comes the guilt.”
I was like, “Are you kidding? I haven’t guilted you a day of my life? I don’t even know what that means,” but it opened up this dialogue where I was able to say, “Dad, it’s not about guilt. It’s about that you are my only father, and you matter. Our connection matters. I can absolutely, as a grown adult, accept it if it’s too much, but I wanted you to know that nobody can replace you.” My mother would be there, my sisters. I was like, “But you’re the only you.”
He was like, “OK.” So, not much else on that topic, but what shifted between us, when we hugged goodbye, it was like he hugged longer than he normally would. He just kind of held on, and then for those six months I started getting a card with his little scrawly handwriting that just said, “Love, Dad,” which was very out of character. He would normally send me a note about my retirement account, and [anything] that he thought I should be doing. He was very dutiful in that type of a way, so it was very interesting to just get a note being like, “Thinking of you,” even though it would never say anything more in the inside in his handwriting other than, “Love, Dad.”
We opened up this dialogue. Started having phone calls on Sundays, and I truly believe that all of this happened from having the courage to simply ask for what I wanted with the full-blown boundary boss-ability to accept someone else’s no. My father actually died very suddenly six months after that trip. He just died of a massive heart attack. He was quite young.
I was so grateful that I had that courage and that moment. But that really shifted something for me, because I learned that it really wasn’t about controlling other people, manipulating other people, getting them to do what we want, and if we can’t, then we shouldn’t. It was about being truthful and asserting my authentic self, even though I was afraid.
TS: The title of your book, Terri, is Boundary Boss. It’s such a great title. As I was preparing for this podcast, I just was walking around and being, “Boundary Boss. Boundary Boss. Boundary Boss.” Yes, OK. What is a boundary boss? Describe it. Put it in action for us. Show us this person who’s acting, speaking, conducting themselves, and feels inside like a boundary boss.
TC: What it means to be a boundary boss is that you know what your preferences, your desires, your limits, and your deal breakers are; you know who you are. But in your relationships, you know what those things are, and you have the ability to clearly communicate them so that you’re true to yourself as a boundary boss. The misconception is that to be a boundary boss you’ve got to be hard, you’ve got to be fighting. You’re confronting people. You’re always saying no—like, isn’t that a boundary boss? No, because when you really learn this skill, which is what it is, you can always do it if you so choose with kindness. You can always do it with ease, with grace, and with love when appropriate.
It’s knowing who you are and having the courage to allow the people in your life to also know who you are to take up space. A boundary boss is someone who loves themselves, who knows that prioritizing your preferences, your desires, knowing your deal breakers, that is not being selfish, who knows that self-care—legitimate self-care—is not selfish.
There’s a whole mental health aspect to this, but it’s really about the way we interact in our relationships and in the world, that comes from a place of who you are, knowing that you are ever evolving. It’s accepting where you are right now too with whatever you do and don’t know about boundaries. You are in the exact right place in the exact right moment in time to hear about this book, to pick up this book, to learn this process. It is never too late.
TS: No. You say that being a boundary boss is a skill, and I noticed when you said that it’s a skill, I thought, “Oh. That’s good. That means it’s learnable. It’s something I can develop.” When you were describing the qualities of feeling and acting like a boundary boss, it felt a little bit more like some awesome, not necessarily attainable goal, but if it’s a skill, “Oh, OK.” So, help me understand step-by-step—what are the components of this skill?
TC: Part of it, the book itself, and what I’ve been teaching for the past two-and-a-half decades is based on what I’ve created, which are the five pillars of self-mastering. So, visualize it like the first pillar is self-awareness. This is knowing, just being aware. “How am I interacting in the world? What am I doing?” Because you can’t change anything you are unaware of, and then we move into self-knowledge, and the steps I give you—in the book itself, I give you tons of strategies, tips, and small exercises. In each chapter, you’ll see that I bring everything. I teach you something, and then there’s something called back to you. The reader now takes this thing we just learned and goes, “OK.” Now I’m like, “This is how we do it in your life. Answer these questions. Get your answers,” because, of course, I am nobody’s guru, obviously, and I don’t have your answers or anyone’s answers, but I definitely know where your answers are. I’m a damn good GPS to get you to where that is.
First, we have self-awareness. Then, we move into self-knowledge, so we do a lot of taking inventories. We do a lot of sitting down, because self-knowledge, when you talk about becoming an expert on anything, if you wanted to be an expert in finance, you would learn from someone. This process of becoming a boundary boss is you becoming an expert on you, your life experiences, and all of the things that have come together to create where you are right now and the way that you relate to and express your boundaries, like your boundary style. Self-knowledge, which is, we go into the basement, as I call it, which is the unconscious of your mind. But don’t worry; I’ve got a little miner’s lamp, and I’m holding your hand. You’re never alone throughout this entire process, and everything is very small, doable steps. We need information, though, right? We need to know what happened.
I teach you how to connect what happened in the past to what might be happening right now in your life that you might not want to be happening right now in your life. We move into awareness, knowledge, and then we have the third pillar, which is acceptance, self-acceptance, not just accepting yourself. It’s really accepting your life experiences and the things you got in childhood and the things you didn’t get in childhood. Again, we can’t come from a place of denial or repression of this information and fix what we want to fix, to change and transform the things we want to change.
The fourth pillar, which I find is probably the most challenging, is self-compassion, because I find that the women in my crew in particular are incredibly compassionate. A lot of empaths, highly sensitive people, very compassionate of others. Somehow when it comes to themselves, they’re like, “I should know this. I shouldn’t be so weak. I don’t want to blame my parents. It was so long ago. I should be over it. It happened four decades ago,” right?
There are all of these ways to not treat ourselves compassionately, so everything that we do throughout this process of becoming a boundary is we are meeting ourselves with compassion, with understanding, with acceptance, because that’s really the only way that we can heal, transform, or change what needs to be changed. We can’t be mean enough to ourselves to get these skills. It’s through self-love that they will come.
Then, the fifth pillar is self-mastery, which encompasses self-love and self-celebration. Self-mastery means any situation that you find yourself in, in your life, you’re like, “I’m OK. I may not know exactly what to do, but I know how to buy time. I know how to create space. I know how to say no. I know how to not give an instant or auto yes.” All of these things, from communication, to your childhood experiences, to asserting boundaries.
Then we actually, within the book, we need to learn the actual language of boundaries, so that is exactly like learning any other language. You would never think that you should just be fluent in another language and like, “What’s wrong with you that you don’t know it?” if nobody taught it to you. That’s the way that we approach the actual language, and we approach different people differently, because folks in our life—and you, Tami, probably can think, “Huh.” Have you ever known someone who you might consider a boundary bully, let’s say? Right? Who hasn’t?
A lot of times, we think that people are pushy or a boundary bully. But the way that I make the distinction within my practice and within the book is we have people who are boundary first timers, so even if they are more assertive than you are, if you’ve never spoken truthfully about your feelings, your thoughts, if you’ve never made a request (a simple boundary request, we call it in the book) then we can’t put them in the category of being a boundary bully, because we really don’t know how they’re going to respond when you make a simple boundary request.
What I have found by teaching this—because, before I created the book, I actually beta tested it for five years in a course to see what sticks, what works, what’s the most efficient way to do something, what’s the fastest way from A to B, what can go because it’s not really producing what I wanted, because I wanted to try it in real life. That was the process of beta testing with the course to move it into really just keeping the hoping and knowing that the cream would rise to the top if I had more experiences; that is what would end up in the book, because you can’t all go in the book, because there’s not a book that is long enough. The mindset is that this process is like learning a language.
TS: I want to get much more into the language of boundaries, but before we do, you said something really important in terms of the whole process of self-mastery and the importance of self-knowledge. Having the self-knowledge of what happened in our past and understanding how that’s formed us today, you write about it as discovering your boundary blueprint. And I’m wondering if you can give some examples of maybe some classic boundary blueprints that happened for people early in their life that then led to their current behavior around boundaries, and starting to help people make those connections?
TC: Yes, I sure can. Think about your folks. Part of what we do in the boundary blueprint is you think about your family of origin. I just call them your parental impactors, because it could be any organization of humans—but the adults in your life, the way that they interacted. If you had, let’s say, a mother, a maternal impactor, who was a pleaser, and that is the way they interacted in their relationship, that’s not someone who’s teaching you, right? You’re learning that, like, “Oh. This is what love is. When I’m in a love relationship, I say yes even when I want to say no. I do things that I don’t want to do simply because it makes the other person happy,” which is fine to do if there’s mutuality there, but a lot of times there’s not.
What does that create? We end up having these repeating boundary realities, and then we find ourselves in similar situations in our adult relationships. What does that lead to? Let’s say—that example of a mom who was a pushover, who said, “Yes, yes, yes,” but really wanted to say, “No,” who over-gave, over-felt, over-functioned, let’s say, ends up feeling a particular way in life, which is underappreciated, angry, bitter. Without some intervention, we will most likely repeat the model to behavior in our childhood, even when we say we won’t, right? Have you ever been like, “I will never have that bickering marriage that my parents have”? If you don’t do something to have some kind of an intervention to not do that, you will find yourself doing that—and that’s not according to me; that’s according to Freud; but it’s true.
TS: Let’s say someone’s trying to sniff out, right now, in their own experience, “How does my current approach to boundaries connect to my early parental impactors?” I like that phrase that you used. Where would you point them to start looking? Where can they start sniffing for clues?
TC: The first thing is, and we do this right within the book. You’re actually filling out your own very unique blueprint by answering these questions. Just start thinking about, “How were the boundaries within your family?”—meaning, how either enmeshed or separate was your family system? Was it an open system, where lots of people could come in and out, or was it more of a closed system, where—you know, some families, nobody could come in and out. You know, the friend who couldn’t have friends over, and then you have the friend who—you were constantly sleeping over that friend’s house? We look and go, “Oh. Those are all representative of a particular kind of way of relating to boundaries.”
If you’re in a family system that was very enmeshed, and everyone knew what was going on in everyone else’s life, and everyone talked about everyone, were you allowed to have privacy? Were you not? Could you have a private phone call? Or, like in my husband’s life, […] the one [phone] in the house was in the kitchen, and the cord was two inches long, so there was no private conversation ever. Those are all ways that you start to look at, “Huh. This is how my boundary blueprint came about.” How was it in your circle, your culture, your country? Let’s look at, let’s say sexual boundaries. If you came from a very repressed culture, there would be an expectation to not be sexual until a certain point in your life. In some cultures, even now, being sexual before marriage is considered a terrible thing.
Those are also boundaries, so if you look at your family of origin, were you allowed to have a different way of thinking about things, or was it more group think, that we all have to be on the same page? Were you allowed to differentiate in any other way? Were people allowed to take your things? Did you have your own room? And I go through all of these things in the book, but there’s all different kinds of boundaries. So, right now, when we’re talking about family stuff, we talk about all of them, but really emotional boundaries, let’s just say. How do we relate to the other people? How did you problem solve? How did you talk to each other? Those are emotional boundaries. Were people screaming at each other? That’s a boundary violation. Was there no conversation when someone was mad? Did someone withdraw an anger? That’s a dysfunctional boundary response.
TS: OK. Now, I told you how happy I was strutting around the house, just saying the words, “boundary boss,” but the question that was also happening inside is I was trying to think through, how good am I actually with boundaries really? I want to be a boundary boss, but I don’t think I am, truth be told. So, if somebody is asking that question of themselves, and they’re trying to look at their life right now and they’re trying to assess, “Huh. How good am I actually?” what guidelines would you give them for coming up with that truthful assessment?
TC: How often do you say yes when you really want to say no? Where in your life and in your relationships are you over-giving, over-doing, twisting yourself up into a pretzel, or inconveniencing yourself for others who might not even be high priority people in your life? That’s a beginning. You can also always know if a need is not getting met, which means there’s some kind of boundary dysfunction happening, by checking in with how you feel. Think about a friendship. Think about a relationship or your love relationship. Are you resentful? Do you feel underappreciated? Do you feel like that person should be doing more for you or there’s not enough mutuality? I always look for the anger. If you’re kind of pissed, we can then take the anger, how you feel, and connect those dots backwards to find some kind of injury, some interaction, or someplace where you are not talking true, not sharing the truth about what you want with that person.
It’s really about your level of satisfaction, I think. And how known do you feel? Do the people in your life—do you tell the truth about how you feel? I don’t mean all the people, because not all the people should be getting your truth-truth. Our heart truth is reserved for the people in our VIP section, as I call it, our front row, our important people.
Those are a few ways of looking at how often do you want to say something. Even if you are in a conversation with other people at work, let’s say, but you don’t speak up, or you might have disordered boundaries in a different way, and you might speak up so much that you don’t let anyone else talk. That’s a different kind of boundary dysfunction, but your level of satisfaction is really the best litmus test to see where you’re at, because if you’re angry, if you’re frustrated often, then I promise you that you have disordered boundaries.
TS: You talk about three different kinds of boundaries, that it’s possible that our boundaries are porous, rigid, or healthy. As we’re looking inward during this conversation, how would we know if our boundaries are on the porous or rigid side?
TC: Porous means very malleable, right? They’re sort of too loose, let’s say. Those of you who have taken the boundary quiz, there’s like seven different things that you could sort of be. That’s more of the chameleon, the pushover, the peacekeeper. If you abandon yourself to avoid conflict, if you want to avoid conflict—even if it’s not your conflict and you might be diffusing conflict for other people—that says that your boundaries are more porous. This leans itself towards more co-dependency type of relationships. If you’re more rigid, you might be more like, “My way or the highway.” You could be a great leader, but you also might be a little insensitive to others. You could be kind of bossy. You could be not as sensitive to other people’s stuff. That would be considered more rigid.
Rigid boundaries can also express themselves more like the loner, where deep, messy, emotional stuff is not your thing, so to not deal with that you may remove yourself. You may just be like, “OK.” If it gets complicated, you may disappear. You might be the person who’s kind of ghosting other people emotionally. If we’re doing it super simply, we would say that rigid boundaries are too firm, so if we were going to boil it down to really simple (and as human beings we’re a little more complicated than this) we would say that rigid boundaries are too firm. Porous boundaries are too loose. What is it that we’re seeking? We would like to be somewhere in the middle of those things and have healthy boundaries, meaning that they’re appropriately flexible. We can take context into account if something is going on.
If your friend asks you to go to a concert, but you hate outside concerts and you don’t like that music, you can say no. If your friend says, “But actually I would love it if you came, because I really like this person, and I really need a wing-woman to come with me,” that’s context, and you may say, “Oh. Well, that’s a different story.” It’s not about the concert. It’s about you, and you can make that different choice. I think that the healthy boundaries mean we trust our own opinion, we know what we think, we’re not afraid to say what that is. Again, imagine this all being done with ease and grace, because if you’re really masterful at something, there’s almost never a need to do it with harshness. There’s almost never a need to be unkind. There really isn’t. When you master this, you can do it all with kindness, but it’s the truth about how you feel.
TS: And for those who are interested, you can go to boundaryquiz.com and take the quiz that Terri’s referring to. Now, you mentioned, “Yes, when you’re really masterful, you can do this with ease and grace.” I had a moment of like, “Yes, really? OK, so why is this so hard, Terri?” Why is this so hard for so many of us?
TC: There are so many reasons, but let’s just start with the most prevalent, which is that most of us were raised and praised to be self-abandoning co-dependents in life. This is what a good girl did, was. “Smile. Turn that frown around. Where’s my happy girl?” Nobody was like, “I care about how you feel,” most of the time. If we’re looking at traditional gender roles, we were raised to be the bridgers, the assuagers, the soothers of life, and it was like the highest compliment. Being nice was the highest virtue of all virtues, but it became corrupted, because what we learned is that “It’s better to be nice than to be honest.” Then, of course, truthfully, is that really being nice? Obviously not, if you’re saying yes when you want to say no, but we didn’t learn that. Many of us had been just trained to automatically self-abandon.
Automatically, we are accommodating. There’s this auto-accommodation of other people in situations. All of those things set you up to be a boundary disaster, not a boundary master, because it’s basically saying it doesn’t matter how you feel and what you think. It matters what other people think of you. It matters that people think you’re nice. How many times do clients say to me, “I just don’t want them to think blah, blah, blah”? Like, listen, dude, we can only worry about what you think; what they think is their side of the street. But we were raised to worry about what everybody thinks and make sure everyone is happy. It is a whole process that requires a certain amount of intention and commitment to “I want this to be different.” We can’t be sleeping in life. We can’t be on automatic pilot and be like, “But I’m going to suddenly have this amazing skillset,” because automatic pilot is the old thing. It’s hard, because nobody taught us.
TS: You mentioned that one of the things we can do if we want to see where we might have—I think one of your phrases is “disordered boundaries”—but, I might just say, boundaries that aren’t so great. Something like that as, “Look at our relationships and see where we’re not satisfied,” and that’s a good feedback for us. In the book, you have this great quote. You say, “Be the change you want to see in relationships,” and you’re referring to the “Be the change” quote that so many people use from Mahatma Gandhi to talk about being the change we want in the world, and then be the change you want to see in relationships. That really stuck with me, because as I was serving and thinking of various friendships in my life, and even some family relationships and even aspects of my intimate relationship, truth be told, that aren’t where I necessarily one hundred percent want them to be, then I thought, “Oh Tami, be the change you want to see in relationships.” That really inspired me. When it comes to speaking the language of boundaries, I wonder if you could give us some examples of that, of how you’ve helped people be the change they want to be in relationships using this communication skill?
TC: The first thing you’re going to want to do—everyone wants to in the beginning—when they’re like, “Wow. Everything is going to change. I cannot wait to get a bullhorn and tell everybody, ‘People, we need to talk. Everything is going to be different now. There’s a new boundary sheriff in town.’” Literally. Because it’s so anxiety-provoking to even think about changing our boundary dances that we can’t wait to warn the people. But we won’t warn the people, because the most profound changes—and to be the change you want to see in your relationships—is that that is one small shift at a time within yourself.
Every time you want to focus out on what your person should be doing differently, on what this one should be doing differently, and “If my boss just wasn’t a big jerk, it would all be fine,” we’re going to focus in and really get clear, “What is my 50 percent of this interaction? What if I simply asked for what I wanted? What if I didn’t write a whole dissertation around how they should already know it, or I mentioned it once in 1978, and I can’t believe they didn’t remember?” What if we just got healthy enough to say, “Hey, I’d like to make a simple request that you not leave your wet towel on the wood floor, as I’ve asked you a bunch of times, but I’m going to ask you again”? That is a simple request. Every request is simple, whether they do it or not. Instead of looking out, part of it is, “We’re going to look in.”
TS: Very good. You have a section towards the back of the back, scripts for assorted boundary challenges, and I thought this was so helpful. We won’t be able, obviously, to give lots of examples, but I wonder if you could give some examples in terms of starting this ease of communicating our simple requests, the language of boundaries. Give us some good examples of this.
TC: Sure. Sure. Let’s say you’re having a conversation with someone who is interrupting you. You’re telling a story, but we know who these people are, so these are conversational boundary situations. In the past, let’s say that you let them interrupt you, but you’re hurt. It stings. You feel a little “Mm” inside. You’re like, “Wow. They’re not even listening to my story.” Instead of doing that, I like the one finger method, because it’s not super aggressive, but we hold up one finger. If you were to say to someone, “One moment,” you would hold up one finger. Say, “Oh, hey, I would really appreciate it if you could let me finish my story before telling yours, but then I’m all ears for yours.” Sometimes I’ll say to someone, “Please let me finish my thought, because I promise you if I don’t, I will forget it.” I will use humor, but I am pointing out that they have interrupted, so that’s one sort of easy way.
Let’s say you have a friend who every time you’re going to get together, they’re like, “Hey, can’t wait to see you in Brooklyn in our favorite spot.” Of course, they live in Brooklyn, and you live in Queens. You’re like, “Why do I always got to get on the train to go to Brooklyn? Why?”
Instead of saying that, you could say, “I’d really appreciate it if we could decide together where we’re going to meet, and I would love it if you would come to Queens,” rather than just staying. We fall into a pattern of behavior, even if it’s unsatisfying. Then, even though we love that friend, and we want to see them, why not negotiate for your preference? And literally saying, “I would appreciate it if we could decide together where we’re going to eat” or “Let’s do something new,” or, “I would love it if you would come to Queens,” instead of just letting it go. Depending on the relationship with the interrupter, you can go a little further like, “I thought you should know when you interrupt my story, it makes me feel unimportant, or makes me feel like you’re not listening, and that hurts my feelings.” Now, I would say that to someone I was close to and maybe not someone who wasn’t, because it wouldn’t hurt my feelings if I wasn’t close to them. What other situations do you want to know about?
TS: One thing, just as a comment before we go onto other situations, is that when you describe this language, I notice there’s not a lot of charge on what you’re saying. Truth be told, I’m an interrupter, and as you were just holding up your finger, “Hold on. Let me just—” I thought, “Oh, that’s easy,” and even, “It hurts my feelings,” that was a little more intense, but I was still OK with it. But I noticed sometimes when people, they’re like, “Stop interrupting me. I can’t stand it,” and it’s like the whole thing is blown up. I wonder just how do we make sure we’re in a place where we’re not making the situation worse or creating a whole blow-up as we’re communicating our reasonable boundaries?
TC: By the time you get to the scripts in this book, you will have gone through this whole process of de-activating these wounds, these experiences, because a lot of times when someone blows up like you just described, I promise you it is not because you interrupted their story about Cancun, because that is a very hot reaction and response. That is, in my estimation, most likely what is called the transference, so you learn to look at yourself and go, “Ah. Was I more? Was my response amplified, because this is a familiar experience to me? Because I grew up with a sister,” let’s say, “who always interrupted me, and then never listened ever, and I was the one who nobody listened to.”
Maybe that’s your story, so maybe, that person who yells, “I can’t stand it when you interrupt,” it’s because they haven’t got into the basement of their unconscious mind to mine for this important information. We deactivate so much stuff throughout the book, because we go, “Oh. Well, that makes total sense now of why it would make me crazy when people interrupt me, but now is not them, and my coworker is not my sister, so I don’t need to. I will still assert myself, but I don’t need to explode.” Part of this process is we learn to not react, because we create space within us, because what you’re describing is a reaction.
TS: OK. How about some simple examples of how to be skillful when I just need to decline and say no? Maybe someone’s inviting me to something socially. Maybe it’s professional. Who knows? But I really just am not interested, flat out, but how do I do it in a graceful way?
TC: I’m going to give you two ways. We’ll give you a couple for each, like sentence stems for each. If you’re someone who—it’s very difficult for you to say no—then my advice is that you buy time. What we really want for those people who are sort of the “auto yes” people, you’re just going to stop that. So, how to stop the auto yes is, “Let me get back to you on that. I need some time to think about that. I need to check with my roommate, my partner, my lover,” whomever you need to check with. There’s another one that I used to give my clients to say, and it’s funny. Some people would be like, “Oh my god. I could never say that.” Other people are like, “I love that so much.”
“Hey, let me get back to you. I’ve instituted a 24-hour decision making policy, so I’ll be back to you tomorrow.” Like, I’m just giving myself a day to decide. That’s really for the people where you are more prone to the insta-yes. We just want you to stop that, because then the no will be so much easier, and it will be truthful. We’re really valuing the truth. We’re valuing how you feel. If you’re less threatened, and you feel like in the moment you could have these in your hip pocket too, to say, “Oh. I’m afraid I can’t,” they ask you to do something, with no explanation. Because here’s another really, really important thing: if saying no is hard, a lot of times it feels like you need to have a good enough reason to say no; it feels like you’ve got to write a dissertation, you’ve got to make a case for your no, here’s the thing: you really don’t. You really don’t. The more that really sinks in, that just not wanting to do something is completely legitimate, even if the other person wants you to. If it’s a friend, and you choose to mindfully do it because you love them, that’s a mindful choice and that’s fine; but get that someone else’s reality, their desire, their preference should absolutely not supersede your own. The point is you have the right to say no. If you mindfully choose to say yes, even if you don’t want to—but it has to be a choice—that’s what this entire process is about.
Other easy ways to say no in the moment—because we’re going to give a couple of stem starters—is to tell the truth. If someone asked me to go see loud music anywhere, I literally don’t want to. I’m sensitive. I don’t want to. I just say, “Hey, I’m not really into that type of music, that food, or outdoor events, bugs, grass, or sun,” or whatever it is, “But I hope you have a wonderful time.” You can literally just say, “It’s not my thing, and you’re still my thing.” “No to dinner with your horrible in-laws, but I’m still a yes to you, my friend, Betty.” There’s kind of a funny way to do it. You can also just say, “You know, I’d actually rather not.”
Where I give a little more context, so let’s say with someone who is a friend, and they say, “Can you do this?” I say, “You know, I’d really rather not. I’m actually really tired. I want to get a good night’s sleep tonight.” That, to me—I’m not convincing them: I’m giving context, because I care about them, and those are two different things. You don’t always need to do that. A no to someone who you really don’t care about, you are not required to give any context. We have all of this fear, it seems, at least my clients do, and in my groups, of being perceived as being rude, but there’s a way to also do this where I always say, “Thank you for thinking of me, but I’d rather not.”
“Thank you for thinking of me, but I’m already committed on that date.” I assert a lot of my no’s with folks I care about with saying, “I really appreciate you thinking of me. I appreciate you,” basically, and then, “But I need to decline” or “I’m already engaged on that day,” or whatever it is. I think that the shift in your mindset that when you get to the point where you go, “I really do have the right to be self-determined and that my no just has to make sense to me.” Someone else being like, “That doesn’t make sense. I don’t even get it,” I’m always like, “You know what’s amazing? You don’t have to get it, but you do have to respect it.” You literally do not have to get the other person, but that doesn’t make it not valid
I think in this process in close relationships, wanting to give context sometimes is because I want to be more intimately understood by the people that I love, and I don’t feel compelled to do that with people who I work with, my mail carrier, or whomever. That’s not necessary.
TS: You know, early in our conversation you gave the example, when it comes to boundaries, of someone who feels underpaid, is not getting paid what they feel they deserve. How might that person, whether it’s talking to themselves or talking to other people, their clients, what kind of scripts would you help them with?
TC: Listen, if you feel like you’re being underpaid, it’s really your boss or the person who has control over paying you that you want to figure out […], because this isn’t something that you want to be telling anyone else about. You have the conversation, which is—most places have an annual review, but if it’s a small place and they don’t, you can say, “Hey, this last year has been a big year, and I would love to sit down when you have a minute and talk about what’s coming up for the next 12 months.”
You can arrange to sort of do your own review by getting on the calendar, and then it isn’t just language here. You actually have to, data-wise, build the case for what you’ve done for the company. How much money did you make them with the things that you did and whatever it is? But I can’t tell you how many of my clients would just go years. The company doesn’t do it, and they just don’t. They just work for the same salary for 10 years, and I’m like, “But why? You have a right.”
“Well, they don’t have money.”
“Well, that’s not your side of the street.”
Trust me, I used to negotiate contracts for a living. You’d be shocked at how money can be found when you’re at a take-it-or-leave-it, but again that’s a mental and even emotional boundary, disordered boundary, because what they can or can’t afford does not change what you’re worth. So, you can still ask for it. Let them say, “Hey, it’s a hard time for the company,” but have the conversation. The first thing is to set up a meeting and sort of move into it from there, but of course that’s the type of thing you have to be prepared with your data to say, “I’ve been at this rate for the last 12 months, and I believe that I am due for an increase.”
TS: OK. Let’s say someone’s listening to our conversation, and they’re identifying, “You know, there’s this area where I feel some resentment. I do, in this relationship, in this situation,” and I’m not going to get the bugle horn out, like Terri said—“Now it’s my time!” But I do want to work through this and free myself from it as more of a boundary boss human. What would you suggest? They’ve identified this area of resentment.
TC: Real clarity on what it is they’re resentful about is the beginning, so you’re saying they have this. There’s clarity. “You said you would do this thing.” (I’m going to make up a situation, because it’s easier to do it.) You said you would come with me to this thing, and then you bowed on the last minute. Then, you have to decide. This is clearly sticking in your side, sticking in your craw, so you want to have a conversation, and you can say, “Hey, I was thinking about last weekend, and I wanted to bring it to your attention that I was really bummed out that you canceled at the last minute, and now I find myself feeling resentful, so I really want to talk about it.”
That’s one. The intro to this is like, “I want to bring this to your attention, because I don’t want it to be between us. I can tell that I’ve copped negative feelings about it. I should have said something at the time. I didn’t, but I would love to talk about it now. I would like to make a simple request that when you commit to doing something with me, that you keep your word. I mean, unless it’s an extreme situation, which of course I can understand, but I would just like to make the simple request that if you say you’re going to do it, that you do what you say you’re going to do.”
TS: I’ll tell you what I’m reflecting on during this conversation, Terri. It feels, to me, like being a boundary boss is sort of the ultimate human developmental achievement when it comes to being connected to other people in a healthy and truthful way. It seems like such a big deal in that sometimes when you think about having healthy boundaries, it’s considered more like some psychological skill over there, and then there’s enlightenment, self-mastery, or these other—they’re the real holy grail, the real achievement. But in hearing you describe the way a real boundary boss operates in the world, I’m thinking like, “Oh. That’s actually the apex in some way of human development,” and I’m curious what you think about that.
TC: That’s very beautifully said and absolutely true, because if you do not master the way you are in your relationships and in the world in this way, how can we ever have even enlightenment, right? It’s like a notion. I don’t even know what that even means personally, just because I’m so grounded in this, but it’s like this is you becoming masterful at yourself, and then interacting in the world as your highest self in a real way, your most developed self. It also stops you from colluding with the lowest instinct in others. When we have good boundaries and someone is doing something that is really a deal breaker for us, instead of staying in that situation, there’s a consequence. We step back. We know how to interact in difficult relationships and protect ourselves, but keep in mind you’re also protecting the other from their lowest, right? We stopped colluding with their lowest, so there’s really something. Yes, I’m just going to say I fully agree with what you said, Tami.
TS: Are there aspects of being a boundary boss that you still find challenging, and if so, where does it come up for you? In what kinds of situations does it come up for you?
TC: Yes. Yes, and it’s so funny. I always teach this, like just because you know how to do it, it doesn’t mean you’re ever going to love the things you used to wholeheartedly avoid, right? I still do not love a confrontation. I don’t love disappointing the people that I love. Sometimes I must, because I must choose what I need to do, but I will never love that—but I won’t avoid it. For me, it really is about a hot or angry conversation, because I don’t do a lot of anger in my life or disappointing people. Never going to love it. Even if it’s “my right” to say no, there will still be times when I feel a little bit of a boundary hangover, because I really would like to make that person happy. Yet, I know if I do it at the expense of my own happiness, ultimately we will all be unhappy.
TS: Again, because I think the actual examples are so helpful, can you give me an example of when you felt, “I’m going to be disappointing somebody here, but I have to do it, and I’m going to do it in a gracious way”?
TC: Yes. Spending time with my mom is one. While I was writing a book she lived here for four months, because she was going through treatment for cancer while I was writing the book. Then, once she went home, I was going three or four times a week, and then it got crunch time with the book, and I just couldn’t. Now, I have other sisters, but that was difficult, and I had to say, “Mom, I have to do this.”
She was like, “Babe, I understand. Of course you do. I understand.” It wasn’t her reaction that was the thing that was going to make me feel guilty. It was my need to be the hero child that made me feel guilty. She was like, “Obviously, it’s OK,” but that was still hard for me to choose my book deadline, [to] keep my word to what I said I would do, when my mom was in a physically vulnerable place, even though I knew other people were taking care of her.
TS: All right. This is your big book, Boundary Boss. How does it feel that it’s finally now out in the world?
TC: So hard to describe. I’ve got lots of mixed emotions, mostly great, relieved, excited, very vulnerable for sure. I had a conversation with Vic, my husband, like months and months ago. Now it’s out, but before we were this close. I was like, “Oh my god.”
He was like, “What?”
I was like, “People are going to read this book.”
He was like, “Yes babe. Isn’t that the point of writing it?”
But I’m not kidding. I had one moment where I was like, “I wrote about my family. I wrote about my life. I told the truth.”
And he was like, “OK, but are you ashamed of any of that?”
The answer was no, but I just felt very, “Wow. These are things that usually people who are either just in my practice or whatever would know about,” so that was kind of funny, but the overwhelming reception that I’ve had has been so beautiful and very affirming of what I prayed, what I prayed. Let this reach everyone who needs less suffering, more joy, more skills. Just as many people as possible to be legitimately empowered in their life. That’s what the book is about, and if you do it, that’s what it creates.
TS: A last question here is just about the sub-title, “The Essential Guide to Talk True”—I think we’ve covered that really well. “Be Seen”—clearly, we’re seeing you as you describe in the book, and we’re also letting other people see us in our truth. Then, this last part, “(Finally) Live Free”—how does becoming good at being a boundary boss let us feel like we can be free?
TC: You are free to be your most authentic self if you’re not spending all of your bandwidth pleasing others or hiding parts of yourself that you feel ashamed of—the self, the process, the self-evolution that we go through in the book—where in the end you are madly, deeply in love with yourself, and that is liberating. We’re accepting the light and the shadow. We don’t need to be “good girls” anymore. We just need to be good, but not good girls. Not good for someone else. Good for ourselves, our partners, our families, our businesses, and that is liberation. When you are less worried about what other people think about you, and more dialed into what you’re passionate about, what is your dharma, what is your purpose in life, you can’t do that when you spend all of this bandwidth worrying about what Bob in accounting is thinking about you.
TS: We’ve been speaking with Terri Cole. She’s the author of a brilliant and comprehensive book, a book that will take you on a real journey to becoming a boundary boss. Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free. You can learn more at boundarybossbook.com or come visit us at Sounds True. Terri, thank you so much. The work you’re doing is brave, beautiful, practical, and helpful. Thank you.
TC: Thank you for having me, Tami.
TS: Thank you for listening to Insights at the Edge. You can read a full transcript of today’s interview at soundstrue.com/podcast. And, if you’re interested, hit the subscribe button in your podcast app. Also, if you feel inspired, head to iTunes and leave Insights at the Edge a review. I love getting your feedback, being in connection with you, and learning how we can continue to evolve and improve our program. Working together, I believe we can create a kinder and wiser world. SoundsTrue.com: waking up the world.
