Ep. 345: How to Build Internal Boundaries So You Stop Fixing Everyone

Over the past several episodes this month, we’ve been exploring internal boundaries from a few different angles.

We talked about emotional activation.
We talked about the conversations in your head that can torment you.
We talked about why other people’s chaos can feel like an emergency.

If I had to sum up the whole series in one sentence, it would be this:

Internal boundaries mean you stay connected to yourself instead of rescuing others or beating yourself up inside.

To expand it beyond one sentence, you might also say, internal boundaries keep you from abandoning yourself, whether it’s the self abandonment of beating the shit out of yourself, or the self abandonment of  neglecting yourself by putting everyone else and their needs before your own.

And today I want to talk about something very practical.

How internal boundaries actually get built.

Because when people first hear the phrase “internal boundaries,” they often think it’s something abstract or mysterious.

But it’s actually something very concrete.

And it develops through practice.

One of the phrases you’ve heard me say before is this:

I don’t set boundaries.
I have boundaries.

But I want to be very clear about something.

That wasn’t always true.

In the beginning, I absolutely had to set boundaries.

I had to consciously decide what I was going to do and what I wasn’t going to do, and  sometimes I had to tell people about my boundaries.

I had to stop myself from doing things I had always done automatically, some of them were inside my head like catastrophizing, and some of them were external like jumping in to rescue people or acting like things were okay with me when they weren’t

Over time, though, something changed.

Eventually those boundaries stopped being something I had to actively enforce.

They became something I simply had.

They became integrated.

They became internalized as a part of me.

And the same exact process happens with internal boundaries.

At first, you have to set them inside yourself.

This means interrupting your old patterns and reminding yourself of what’s true.

It means soothing your nervous system by what you say to yourself.

And eventually, after enough repetition, those internal boundaries become part of who you are.

You stop having the same internal flare-ups that used to light you on fire and felt like an internal emergency.

Here’s what this actually looks like in real life.

For many people, one of the biggest patterns is the urge to rescue.

Someone around you is struggling.

They’re upset or overwhelmed, maybe mired in chaos.

And something inside you activates.

Your nervous system speeds up.

Your mind starts automatically solving THEIR problem.

You feel a sense of urgency and You feel responsible for them.

You feel like you HAVE TO step in and fix it.

That’s the moment when internal boundary work begins.

Because instead of automatically following that impulse, you pause.

And you might say something to yourself like:

Their problem is not my emergency.

That sentence is an internal boundary.

You’re not saying it to them.

You’re saying it to yourself.

You’re reminding your nervous system that someone else’s difficulty does not automatically require you to intervene

But this is where the deeper work begins.

Because when you stop following the old pattern, you start to get a bunch of those pesky feelings. You know, the things you’ve been trying to avoid your entire life.

So Feelings arise, like guilt or you might feel anxious..

You might feel selfish or ashamed.

You might feel like you’re abandoning someone.

And those feelings can be very convincing.

And this is where another internal boundary comes in.

You remind yourself:

This guilt is a feeling, not an instruction.

Feelings are information.

But they’re not commands or instructions or dictates for you.

Just because you feel guilty does not mean you’re doing something wrong.

So instead of acting on the guilt, you allow the feeling to exist.

And then you do something else that’s incredibly important.

You calm and soothe your nervous system. 

Typically we do this by grounding ourselves in the present moment in some way.

Take several deep breaths, or connect with your senses by feeling you feet on the ground, your butt in the chair, naming 3 things in the room around you, listening to 3 different sounds –you can only do those things in the present moment,. So you anchored in NOW, not in the past or the future.

Then remind yourself that other adults are responsible for their own lives.

You stay with yourself instead of abandoning yourself in order to manage someone else. Grounding yourself is a way to keep your attention focused on you and the present moment instead of leaving yourself and pulling your attention to the external world. You keep the focus on yourself and IN yourself

Now something else I want to clarify here, because people often misunderstand this.

When people hear the idea of not rescuing or not jumping in to fix things, they sometimes worry that what I’m describing is emotional withdrawal.

They worry it means becoming cold or distant or building walls between them and others. It doesn’t.

internal boundaries are actually the opposite of withdrawal.

Withdrawal is when you disconnect from the other person.

Internal boundaries are when you stay connected to them without disconnecting from yourself.

You can still care.

You can still listen.

You can still feel compassion.

But you’re not taking charge of their experience.

That’s the difference between caring and rescuing.

And something magical happens once internal boundaries start to strengthen.

Your external boundaries begin to change too.

Because when you’re not activated internally anymore, it becomes easier to stand strong in your boundary of not jumping into rescue, fix and save others. 

When you’re not activated, you can access the frontal lobe of your brain which is the rational part of your brain where reasoning happens and where you can detect nuance.

That allows you to be able to recall phrases like the following and 

say them to the other person, phrases like:

“That sounds really hard.”

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

Or sometimes simply saying nothing and allowing the other person to handle their own situation.

You’re still present.

You’re still compassionate.

And that steadiness is what internal boundaries create.