Ep. 353: What My Coaching Clients Taught Me About Internal Safety

This month, we’ve been talking about self-care and self-care boundaries, and today’s episode is a little different.

Recently, I spent time analyzing 12 different coaching sessions from my work with clients. I wasn’t looking for testimonials or success stories. I was looking for patterns.

I wanted to understand more deeply:
What actually happens when people struggle with boundaries?
What causes people to override themselves?
Why do people who intellectually understand boundaries still collapse emotionally in real life?

And honestly, what emerged surprised even me.

But before I got into that, I want to share something that I learned this past week when hanging out with a couple of fellow travelers in ACA. one of them is a survivor of incest and they just recently found the fellowship SIA “survivors of incest anonymous” and in it, they’ve found the place they’ve been looking for all their lives.  

even in the ACA program, which is for people who grew up with integernational family dysfunction (many of whom experienced sexual abuse), this fellow traveler has not gotten the understanding and support of the people in the room that they wanted, needed deserved their entire lives

I’m sharing this here and now because I’ve been in recovery programs for 11 years, and I’d never heard of it. I was talking to a sponsee in another region of the country who’s been in recovery for 17 years, and she’d never heard of SIA either, so clearly we need to get the word out. I’ve put a lnk to the SIA website in the show notes. Please let others know that this fellowship exists: SIA Survivors of Incest Anonymous.

Ok, now, Back to this insights and understanding I got from analyzing 12 different coaching sessions:

One of the biggest realizations I had was this:

My work is not fundamentally about teaching people how to set boundaries.

It’s about helping people remain connected to themselves when emotional discomfort appears.

And what I mean by “remaining connected to yourself” is things like:

• noticing your own needs, feelings, limits, and truth in real time
• not overriding those signals when discomfort appears
• tolerating guilt, disappointment, or tension without abandoning yourself
• staying grounded in what’s true for you even when someone else reacts
• no longer allowing other people’s emotions to become the determining factor in your choices
• holding onto yourself emotionally under pressure

That distinction showed up over and over and over again.

Again and again, clients came into coaching believing their struggles were about communication, conflict, difficult people, saying no, work stress, guilt, or relationships.

But underneath those surface concerns was the same recurring mechanism:

“I leave myself the moment discomfort starts.”

That’s what I kept seeing.

And once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it.

What became really clear is that most people do not actually need more information about boundaries.

Many of my clients already know what healthy boundaries are, what they “should” do.
and what they need.

Their struggle is not lack of knowledge.

Their struggle is nervous system activation when boundaries become emotionally real.

People become dysregulated by what boundaries expose:

• Possible disappointment
• Loss of role identity
• Uncertainty
• Fear of disconnection
• Guilt
• Grief
• Lack of control
• Not knowing how others will respond
• The loss of external validation as a stabilizing force

And for many people, the struggle doesn’t even begin after they set the boundary.

It begins the moment they think about setting one.

The guilt starts rising, they start second-guessing themselves, they go into fear.

Their body starts reacting like they’re under threat, even if logically they know they’re allowed to say 

That was absolutely the case for me.

When I first started setting boundaries, I literally felt like I was gonna die, as if my life was under threat.

And I think a lot of people listening will recognize that feeling.

Intellectually, they know they’re allowed to say no.
But emotionally and physically, it can feel terrifying.

And honestly, this connects deeply to self-care.

Because I think many people assume self-care is mostly about behaviors.

Taking time off.
Saying no.
Resting.
Doing nice things for yourself.
Not overworking.
Creating balance.

And yes, those things matter. Of course they do.

But what these transcripts revealed is that many people can’t sustain self-care because prioritizing themselves does not feel emotionally safe.

Their nervous system interprets self-prioritization as dangerous.

Not logically, but Emotionally, in relationships, and  Internally.

So what happens?

They override themselves.

One of the strongest patterns I noticed across these coaching sessions was that clients were repeatedly trying to create emotional safety externally rather than internally.

They were trying to feel okay through:

Being useful.
Managing others reactions.
Avoiding disappointment.
Over-functioning.
doing Emotional labor that wasn’t theirs to own
trying to control outcomes.
Preventing conflict.
Keeping everybody happy.

Performing happiness
Trying to make sure everyone understood.
Trying to avoid upsetting people.

And I want you to really hear this:

For many people, over-giving is not just generosity.
It’s a strategy for emotional safety.

That’s why boundaries can feel so terrifying.

Because boundaries don’t just threaten convenience. They threaten our very identity.

They threaten:

“Will people still like me?”
“Will people still need me?”
“Will I still belong?”
“Will I still feel safe if someone’s disappointed?”
“Can I survive conflict?”
“Can I survive someone misunderstanding me?”

That’s much deeper than communication skills.

Another thing I saw repeatedly was that clients were treating discomfort as evidence they were doing something wrong.

This was everywhere.

If they felt guilty, they assumed they were guilty of doing something terribly wrong and they had to fix it.
If they felt anxious, they assumed something bad was happening or going to happen
If someone was disappointed, they assumed they had caused harm.
If there was tension, they assumed the relationship was in danger.

But discomfort and danger are not the same thing.

I’m going to say that again in a slightly different way

Discomfort does not mean danger!

One of the most important things I found myself doing repeatedly in these coaching sessions was helping people reinterpret discomfort.

Helping them understand that

Guilt does not automatically mean you did something wrong
Anxiety doesn’t automatically mean danger.
Tension doesn’t automatically mean the relationship is doomed.
Disappointment doesn’t automatically mean you’ve harmed someone.

Sometimes discomfort simply means:

You’re doing something new.
You’re interrupting an old pattern.
You’re no longer abandoning yourself automatically.

And honestly, that can feel incredibly uncomfortable at first.

Another huge pattern that emerged was anticipatory living or what I call living into the wreckage of the future.

Many clients were reacting not to actual events, but to anticipated emotional experiences.

They were reacting to:

anticipated guilt
anticipated rejection
anticipated anger
anticipated disappointment
anticipated conflict
anticipated judgment
anticipated abandonment

By doing all this you’ve been trying to prevent discomfort, rather than survive it. And. You CAN survive it.

So often, people were trying to solve emotional experiences that had not even happened yet.

And I think many listeners will recognize this.

Rehearsing conversations over and over.
Trying to predict every reaction.
Trying to soften every possible disappointment.
Trying to avoid every uncomfortable feeling before it arrives.

That’s exhausting.

And it keeps us externally focused.

Another thing these transcripts reinforced very strongly is the role of resentment.

Resentment showed up again and again as information.

Usually not because someone was inherently selfish or terrible.

But because the client had overridden themselves for so long that resentment became the only remaining signal.

Resentment often tells us:

“I’ve left myself.”
“I’ve overextended.”
“I’m doing too much.”
“I’m trying to earn safety through usefulness.”
“I’m tolerating something that doesn’t work for me.”

That’s incredibly important information.

One of the most powerful insights that emerged from analyzing these transcripts is this:

People often think boundaries are about what you say to other people.

But internal boundaries are about what happens internally when discomfort appears. That means..

Can you remember what’s true for you when someone’s disappointed instead of immediately talking yourself out of your needs, limits, or feelings?

Can you tolerate guilt without automatically deciding you’ve done something wrong?

Can you stay anchored in your own reality when someone else’s emotions make you want to collapse into people-pleasing, over-explaining, or self-abandonment?

Can you still hear yourself clearly when fear or tension shows up?

Can you hold onto what’s true for you instead of automatically prioritizing someone else’s comfort over your own internal signals?

Can you take your own needs seriously without putting them on trial?

Can you avoid overriding yourself just because discomfort appears?

That’s the real work.

And honestly, I think this is why so many smart, insightful, self-aware people still struggle with boundaries.

Because insight alone is not enough.

You can intellectually understand boundaries and still emotionally collapse once the discomfort begins.

That’s why I’ve become so interested in internal safety.

Because internal safety is not about controlling other people.
or becoming hard. And
It’s not about never feeling uncomfortable.

It’s about learning how to stay emotionally anchored in yourself during discomfort instead of automatically overriding your own feelings, limits, needs, and truth.

And honestly, I think that’s one of the deepest forms of self-care there is.

Not bubble baths.
Not productivity hacks.
Not perfect morning routines.

But being able to hear yourself clearly. to remember yourself.

Being able to stay anchored in your own needs, limits, feelings, and values even when discomfort appears.

Taking your own needs seriously without putting them on trial.

Allowing discomfort without treating it like catastrophe.

That’s real self-care.

And it changes everything.

One final thing I want to share.

As I analyzed these transcripts, I noticed that so many clients already knew what they needed.

Their body knew.
Their resentment knew.
Their exhaustion knew.
Their tension knew.
Their sadness knew.

But they kept overriding those signals in order to preserve harmony, avoid guilt, maintain identity, or prevent emotional fallout.

That’s why the title of my upcoming course feels so important to me:

Boundaries That Hold: How to Stop Overriding Yourself in Real Time.

Because that’s what I kept seeing.

Not people who lacked intelligence.
or who lacked insight. or caring.

But People who started overriding their own feelings, limits, needs, and truth the moment discomfort appeared.

And honestly?
I think many of us do that.

So if you take nothing else from today’s episode, let it be this:

You do not merely need help setting boundaries.

You may need help learning how to hold onto yourself when boundaries activate fear, guilt, uncertainty, disappointment, grief, relational tension, or emotional discomfort.

That is the deeper work.

And that work is possible.

Here’s to becoming more whole.