Ep. 341: The Inner Safety Skill Building Method: How to Build Boundaries That Actually Hold

It’s March, and this month I’m focusing on internal boundaries.

And today I want to tell you the origin story of my coaching method. I call it the Inner Safety Skill Building Method, which did not start as a coaching framework.

It started in recovery.

I didn’t learn boundaries from books or therapy.

I learned them as a byproduct of working the Twelve Steps. Specifically in Adult Children of Alcoholics and later in Overeaters Anonymous.

My core wound is codependence, And since boundaries are the antidote to codependence, they had a profound effect on my life. Mind you, I didn’t even realize I was building boundaries as I was doing it. It was only in retrospect that I realized I was building boundaries. What I did know was that I was recovering. I was changing my ways – my behavior, my thinking, my relationships, including my relationship with myself.

When I began building healthy boundaries, the effect was profound. Not because I was trying to become empowered. Not because I planned to build a coaching business. But because I was desperate to change. What I didn’t know then but I understand deeply now is that I was desparate to stop abandoning myself.

When I stopped rescuing.
When I stopped overfunctioning.
When I stopped taking responsibility for other people’s emotions.

life got quieter, More calm.

As I started to see “oh, these are boundaries” and the massive effects they had on my life, I wanted to understanding why. Because,truth be told, I learned boundaries as a byproduct of recovery. No one said, “Okay Barb, we’re going to teach you how to build boundaries.” 

So I started reading about boundaries.

And here’s what I noticed.

It was all words.

Paragraphs. Definitions. Concepts.

But no visuals.

And I’m a visual person.

So I started drawing.

I drew fences. Circles. Gates. Internal spaces.

I visually mapped what I was reading and what I was experiencing. And that helped me retroactively understand what happened to me such that I did not develop boundaries in the first place, and what happened in the process of building them so that I could actually name the skills I was practicing. I continue to refine those visuals to this day.

Those drawings turned into handouts.

Those handouts turned into my workbook.

And that workbook became the backbone of my boundaries coaching program.

there was a pivotal moment early in my recovery that informed my understanding of boundaries that happened before I did all that reading.

In September of 2016, I went to an OA convention.

One of the keynote speakers said something that changed me.

He said, “I now have boundaries of self protection and boundaries of self containment.”

He didn’t explain either of those.

But something inside me shifted. Something I’d  been experiencing had been named.

Boundaries of self containment.

That language described something I had been experiencing internally but didn’t yet have words for.

So I defined it for myself.

Boundaries of self containment are things I need to either contain or stop doing entirely.

And when I began practicing them intentionally, I cleaned up about 85 percent of the drama and chaos in my life.

Not because I controlled other people.

But because I contained myself.

Some of those boundaries of self containment only affect me, some also affect others. Today we’re only talking about the ones that only affect me.

They don’t require a conversation.
They don’t require anyone else to change.
They’re internal.

They look like:

Stopping negative self talk.
Interrupting rumination.
Refusing to catastrophize.
Ending blame spirals.
Stopping chronic complaining.
Disengaging from mental rehearsals.
Not activating my own nervous system unnecessarily by engaging in these behaviors. Actually, that knowledge came much later – and even when it came, It was years before I named it “nervous system activation” for myself. I realized that the bulk of my problems were NOT external., they were internal. And this was info, not ammo. That is, information, not ammunition. 

Because when I realized that my internal experience was setting off my nervous system, it was taking my thinking brain off line and making me into a Reactor rather than an actor in my own life. Or as we say in OA, I was reacting to life rather than acting on life.

I realized that if I’m the problem, that’s good news, because that means I can actually be the solution. If other people, places and things are really the problem, I’m screwed. But if I’m the source of my problems -well, that I can do soemthng  about.

No one can do anything about my internal conversation.

That’s mine.

And that’s where self containment connects directly to internal boundaries.

Internal boundaries are the limits you set with yourself.

They are the decision to stop engaging in patterns that create internal danger and ns activation.

When I ruminate for hours after setting a boundary, I’m violating an internal boundary.

When I attack myself for having a feeling, I’m violating an internal boundary.

When I catastrophize and spin myself into anxiety, I’m crossing my own boundary.

Self containment is how internal boundaries become actionable.

Its the practice of saying:

I’m not going to keep doing this to myself.

External boundaries protect you from other people.

Internal boundaries protect you from yourself. Now I know to name that  a bit differently, they protect you from self abandonment.

And without self containment, external boundaries feel shaky.

You say no, then shame yourself.
You hold a limit, then replay the conversation all night.
You tolerate disapproval for initially, then collapse internally.

That’s why scripts alone don’t solve the problem. Most people think, “If I just knew the right words to say, that would do it.” Though knowing what to say is important, it’s not enough. Just because you have the words, doesn’t mean you’ll be able to say them. And even if you can say them, it doesn’t mean you’ll stand behind them. And it doesn’t mean you won’t abandon yourself afterward by beating the shit out of yourself in some way, shape or form.

Because the real work is internal containment.

Over time, what I began to understand is that internal safety is built systematically.

Skill by skill.
Practice by practice.

And that realization eventually crystallized into what I now call the Inner Safety Skill Building Method.

This method is not about perfection.

It’s not about never feeling guilt.
It’s not about suppressing emotion.

It’s about building the internal skills that allow you to stay with yourself instead of turning on yourself.

Inside Unshakable You, this work unfolds in five phases.

Unshakable You is built around a skill-building framework called the Inner Safety Skill Building System. This system helps you build the capacity to show up for yourself and continually rely on yourself instead of trying to extract your safety from others by pleasing, overgiving, peacekeeping and pretending things are okay when they’re not.

It’s not a step-by-step process you complete. It’s a set of skills I coach you to develop and return to over time, depending on what life is asking of you.

Together, these skills create inner safety so you can relate to yourself, others, and your nervous system differently and build safety from within.

They include

🧹 Clear the Noise
This is about identifying distorted beliefs, inherited guilt, unrealistic expectations, and false responsibility. It’s separating facts from stories.

🧘‍♀️ Stabilize the System
This is nervous system work. Increasing your capacity to feel discomfort without panic. Learning that feelings are not emergencies. Understanding that the discomfort of growth does not mean threat.

🪞 Reveal the Real Self
Many people who are codependent don’t know what they want or need. In this part of the framework, you start to discern and name your values, preferences, desires, and limits through experimentation.

📐 Build the Boundary Blueprint
Here, external and internal boundaries align with your values. You practice both self protection and self containment.

🧭 Integrate and Live Unshakably
This is repetition. Repair. Staying with yourself until things make sense from the inside. Internal safety becomes your baseline rather than something fragile.

The method is iterative.

We circle back.
We strengthen.
We refine.

Without internal boundaries, you can set a limit and still feel unsafe.

With internal boundaries, you can feel guilt without obeying it.
You can tolerate disapproval.
You can repair your relationships without self destruction.
You can stay connected to others without collapsing into your people-pleasing and self abandoning ways.

That’s unshakability.

Not rigidity
Not defensiveness
Not posturing.

It’s Steadiness.

And that steadiness is built, not inherited.

Unshakable You is where I teach and coach this method in depth. It’s not a quick fix. It’s a structured, supported process of building internal safety from the inside out.

If you’ve ever thought, “I know how to set boundaries but I still feel awful afterward,” this is the missing piece.

You don’t need more scripts.

You need more internal containment.

All month, we’re going to unpack internal boundaries.

Not as theory.

But as practice.

Because wholeness is not perfection.

It’s the absence of self abandonment in the presence of emotion.

I’m glad you’re here.