Ep. 343: Other People’s Chaos Is Not Danger: How to Build Internal Boundaries

343 Other People’s Chaos Is Not Danger: How to Build Internal Boundaries

A few days ago, I had coffee with a former sponsee of mine. We started working together in about eight years ago. I’m not going to share her name, but I will tell you this: when we first started working together, she was completely enmeshed with her parents.

She was Parentified from childhood. Even thought she was the Youngest sibling, she was running the emotional household and had Lived in a constant state of hyper-responsibility for over 40 years.

Back then, if her mother was in crisis, her nervous system would have detonated.

That’s the phrase I keep coming back to.

Detonated. It’s such a good explanation for what happens internally when you feel like you’re insides are on fire.That feeling of being detonated leads to all the rescucing beahviors many of us are familiar with:

Scrambling.
Researching.
Calling.
Fixing.
Advising.
Managing.
Trying to prevent disaster.

Because when you grow up that way, someone else’s chaos feels like danger.

It doest feel like  inconvenience or disappointment when you’re enmeshed like that, it feels like
Danger.

So we’re sitting at coffee and she tells me this story.

Her mom recently got into an online relationship with someone claiming to be a Hallmark actor. She googled him and immediately saw scam warnings everywhere. She told her mom, this looks shady. Please don’t do this.

Her mom snapped at her and said, “You know what I think?!” and she said, “tell me, what do you think?” and her mom came aback with “you think you fucking know everything!”

After that, she said, okay. You do whatever you want.

And then she left.

She didn’t argue with mom. Things didn’t escalate.
She didn’t try to prove anything or launch a rescue mission.

she Later found out her mom lost the money from the condo. And guess what?? The relationship was a scam. A cousin ended up helping her move across the country because no one locally would take her in.

And as she told me the story, she wasn’t activated.

She didn’t collaps.
She wasn’t angry or frantically managing the fallout.

She said something so simple and so powerful.

“I feel badly for her. But I don’t feel responsible for her.”

That is an internal boundary.

And what’s wild is that mirrors my own story regarding my brother. In case you haven’t heard me talk about it, briefly the story is this.

A mutual friend called me and told me my brother was in crisis. Hospitalized. Our childhood home going to auction. “You need to do something. He’s your brother.”

And I said, yes. He is my brother. And I’ve spent my entire life rescuing, fixing, and saving people.

And I’m not doing that anymore. I still help ppl all the time, but you know who I help. People who help themselves.

I had zero difficulty with that.

I didn’t got into a guilt spiral, and I didn’t attack myself.

Not because I didn’t care.

Because I have boundaries. Now, as you also may have heard, things have changed drastically since that phone call from my friend last year. My brother and I have reconnected and reconciled, and he stays with me on and off while he’s working to buy another home. So that right there is proof that boundaries don’t necessarily disconnect you from people. I would argue that I’m connected to my brother now, in an authentic way for the firs ttime ever, BECASEU OF my boundaries!

This is an example of what I mean when I say I don’t set boundaries anymore. I have boundaries.

In the beginning, I absolutely had to set them.

I had to talk to myself and say things like

“I am not a bad person.”
“It’s not  happening to me.”
“It’s not my job to rescue other people, I can help people anytime, but I don’t rescue them anymore.”

That was active work. And don’t get me wrong it was fucking hard, 

That was installing internal guardrails.

Because when you’ve been a rescuer your whole life, not rescuing feels like you’re doing something wrong. Like you’re a bad person, or mean.
It feels cold.
It feels dangerous.

So let’s clear up a myth.

Internal boundaries do not make you harsher.

They make you steadier.

You can care deeply and not intervene.

You can love someone and allow them to crash into their own consequences.

You can feel compassion without taking responsibility.

Compassion and responsibility are not the same thing.

Before internal boundaries, compassion automatically turned into obligation for me.

After internal boundaries, compassion exists without compulsion to leap in and rescue.

That’s the shift.

And I think this is why people get confused.

They don’t really understand what internal boundaries are because they’re looking for behavior.

They want the script so they know just the right words to say, They think I If I only knew what to say everything would be okay. And though the words are important and helpful, having them doesn’t mean you can actually speak them in the moment, or can stand behind them once they’ve come out of you mouth.

internal boundaries are not primarily about what you say.

They’re about what doesn’t happen inside you.

There’s No spiral.
No self-abandonment.
No collapse or caving in to what others way.
No compulsion to fix in order to regulate your own anxiety.

That’s the effect.

So the real question is how.

How do you build internal boundaries?

Here’s the process.

First, you notice the activation.

Maybe Your chest tightens.
Your brain speeds up.
You start planning solutions.
You feel a sense urgency.

That’s your old wiring saying, this is danger.

Second, you interrupt the automatic meaning.

Instead of “If I don’t fix this, I’m bad,” you consciously insert something new.

“it’s not happening to me.”
“I can care without intervening.”
“Their chaos is not my emergency.”

You won’t believe this at first.

Say it it anyway,, repeatedly.

Third, you separate compassion from responsibility.

You can say internally, I’m so sorry this is happening to them.

Without adding, and therefore I must solve it.

Fourth, you tolerate the discomfort of not intervening.

This is the hardest part.

Your nervous system will scream.

It’ll tell you you’re selfish, something terrible will happen to them and if it does it will be your fault (it won’t).
It’ll tell you you’re abandoning them.

And you stay.

You stay present in your body.
You let the discomfort flow through you. IT won’t stay, it’s energy that morphs and changes.
You don’t fix in order to make your anxiety go away. You let it pass naturally.

Fifth, you allow consequences to unfold.

This is where you integrate these changes into your very being. It’s like installing these boundaries inside yourself energetically.

When you stop intercepting reality, reality teaches. People get the real, natural consequence of their behavior instead of you being a buffer for their consequences.

And over time your nervous system learns something revolutionary:

Other people’s chaos is not danger.

Let me say that again.

Other people’s chaos is not danger.

When that belief shifts, everything changes.

You don’t need to be a jerk.
You don’t need to posture.
You don’t need to defend yourself.
You don’t need to over explain or even regular explain yourself. You don’t owe people explanations about your boundaries or your decision.

You just stay with yourself.

My former sponsee used to say all the time in early recovery, “At least I was present.” At least I was present.” At least I was present.”

Because she was constantly dissociating.

Now she’s steady.

She later realized that she used to make every decision from fear.
Fear about money.security, the future.

Now she’s living from choice.

That’s not personality change.

That’s internal safety.

And that’s what internal boundaries create.

Internal boundaries create internal safety.

And internal safety allows you to remain whole in the presence of someone else’s crisis.

You’re Not cold, or punishing.

You’re Whole.

If ,five years ago your nervous system would have detonated and today it doesn’t, that’s not luck.

That’s internal boundary work.

And if you’re listening to this thinking, I still detonate.

That’s okay.

You start where I started.

You set boundaries internally until you have them.

You talk to yourself.
You interrupt yourself.
You stay.
You practice.

And one day you’ll realize you’re in a situation that used to level you.

And you’re steady.

And that’s when you’ll know.

You don’t just set boundaries anymore.

You have them.