Tina 00:00:00 Hey guys, we are on week five of the Boundary Series and this week we're talking about rebuilding self-worth through boundaries. And I'm going to share some really personal stories. How I used boundaries to really build myself back up again after I was broken down in an emotional abuse of relationship. When you start to align with your self-worth, you attract situations that honor your boundaries. Healing starts within and it reflects in your reality. So let's get into it. You're listening to the Soul Aligned Self-care podcast. I'm your host, Tina Stinson, and I had a stroke at the age of 39 from stress and burnout that shook my world. Now I'm laying it all out. The deep level self-care practices and mindset shifts that I needed that kept me healthy, balanced, and thriving. Join me in this intimate space as we explore healing, resilience, and the soul's journey to alignment. This is where real conversations about deep level self-care happen. Let's get into it. Hey guys, welcome back to the Soul Alliance Self-care podcast. This week we are on week five of the Boundary Series, and we're talking about rebuilding self-worth through boundaries.
Tina 00:01:27 So boundaries are essential and healing from verbal abuse of any or any form of like emotional abuse. They restore your sense of safety and self-worth. And today I'm going to be sharing some personal stories with you of how setting and maintaining boundaries really was the foundation for me. Building myself back up after I was completely broken down and disconnected with myself. And so it's been one of the most powerful, what I call deep level self-care practices that I call the foundation of all self-care and self-love. This helps you be able to use all the other types of practices to help you reduce stress and anxiety. Build up that resilience in order to be able to deal with just life on a everyday basis. So before we get into it though, I just want to share with you, I think last week I talked about this. Also, I have a 30 day self-care visibility challenge going on. We started on October 15th and we are ending on November 15th, so you could still join us. It's really cool. I am using the, Instagram page for soul aligned self-care for the podcast for this challenge.
Tina 00:02:44 And so if you head over to at Soul Aligned Self-care and you follow me there, or you could also follow the hashtag self-care is not selfish, then you could see what I do every day on a daily basis to practice self-care, to help take care of myself, to build up that resilience. Just the little things. And one of the things I want to emphasize is that you don't have to spend a lot of time on self-care for it to be effective. And so if you want to join the challenge, the link would be in the bio on the Instagram page. I'll also put the link in the show notes so that you have that, and you'll get a worksheet that will share with you 50 different ways that you could practice daily self-care really quickly. Okay. And so you could join along with me, or you could just support me and follow me on the page to see what I'm doing. But either way, I just want to bring more visibility. And I want to also change the mindset that self-care is selfish and make it.
Tina 00:03:44 I just want to normalize daily self-care for yourself in order to be able to show up as the best version, that higher version of yourself for everybody else in your life. So definitely check that out. Definitely go over to Soul Aligned Self-care and give me a follow over there. I'm trying to build up that. That's a new page for me. I haven't really promoted it too much yet, so I would love for you to come hang out with me over there. Okay, guys. So as I said, we're talking about rebuilding self-worth through boundaries. And one of the cool things is that when you start to really align with your self worth, your and your authentic self, you start to just automatically attract situations that honor your boundaries. So by starting to set and maintain boundaries, then you're going to start to attract more situations and people that just honor your boundaries. So healing always starts within you. You have to you have to do this for yourself. Nobody else is going to do this. Nobody's just going to respect you automatically.
Tina 00:04:48 And once you start to do this type of healing, then it starts to reflect back at you in your reality. So the more we set and maintain boundaries that are true to us, the things that we need in our lives, the more that we're going to bring situations and people into our lives that automatically align with that. So I think that's just really cool. So some of the things that we're going to talk about today is how boundaries help you separate who you are from how others treat you. because our value is not created by the way others treat us, we're automatically worthy in our lives just because we are right. But we have to take care of that. We have to take care of ourselves. And if somebody is kind of like not, you know, aligned with us and they're not really respecting us, then we need to set a boundary in order to protect us ourselves from that. Also, I'm going to talk about how after any type of abuse and like I experienced in my relationship, which was very verbally and mentally abusive.
Tina 00:05:54 Setting boundaries can be a challenge. It could feel not really safe at first, but then it helps you rebuild the trust in yourself and create that safety for yourself. So it could be really hard. And I talked last week about this saying, start small and be patient with yourself. It's not always going to look perfectly when you first start, meaning you might set a boundary and you might not hold it, you might not maintain it. Just keep going until you can. It just takes time. Another thing we'll talk about is how every boundary that you set sends a message to yourself, like you're telling yourself when you even start and you're you're beginning to set boundaries and you're doing these little, these little changes, you're sending the message to yourself every time you do this that you're worthy of respect. You're automatically starting to build up that self-worth. Okay. Also, we're going to talk about how boundaries remind you that it's okay to be to distance yourself from harmful, draining relationships. It helps you identify some of those harmful, draining relationships.
Tina 00:06:59 So let's let's get into it. So the connection between boundaries and self-worth boundaries are an act of self-respect. Right. And so if you're a people pleaser like myself, then you're having some self-worth issues. And it's not necessarily something that you created yourself. It might like in my, in my case, have been created by being in a very mentally and verbally abusive relationship for way too long. So. But boundaries will help you define how others treat you. So when you set boundaries, you affirm your worthiness and prioritize your own well-being. You're prioritizing and protecting your energy. So when I started to set boundaries within my this abusive relationship that I talked about, the more and more the relationship became hard for him to keep going and less appealing for him, because when I was a people pleaser, I did everything that he wanted me to do. I did all the work, I mean everything, right, and I was I never created it caused any type of conflict. So when I started creating these boundaries, it was very, very inconvenient for him.
Tina 00:08:11 It was something that he was not used to. And this was a benefit for me because it really showed me how he was just kind of like this, this energy vampire using me for like my free labor. And it showed me how he cared very little for me and our family unit, which included three children. And it was very painful wake up call when I realized what a small part I was, me and my children in his life and his reality. And but it was the wake up call that I needed at the time to move forward. So as I said, it was super painful to realize how unimportant I was in his existence, but it showed me what I needed to see at the time to break away from it. so why does setting boundaries feel so challenging when you're in that abusive relationship? And I could say for myself is it was it was very fear based. and I'll talk a little more about it, but emotional harm can leave you doubting yourself. So you start to begin to not even trust yourself, especially when you're dealing with somebody who is very narcissistic or they they're, you know, constantly making you second guess your decisions or even the way you talk or anything that you do in your life, it makes it really difficult for you to assert and set and maintain boundaries when you don't have any self-confidence whatsoever.
Tina 00:09:45 as I said, fear of rejection or conflict often holds people back from setting boundaries. This was definitely the case for me. but that's hard part of the healing process. So when I, the more broken down that I became in this relationship, the more disconnected with myself. I realized I just I just didn't have the energy to argue, and I had no energy for any type of confrontation. And that was pretty much probably his goal was that I would not argue, I would not cause any type of confrontation. I didn't have the energy for it. People pleasing was a way for me to protect myself and my energy in a an impossible situation. It also was a way for me to protect my children from any kind of confrontational type of arguments or yelling that I didn't want them to be exposed to, so I was willing to do anything. So I was constantly walking on eggshells. So. But what I didn't realize at the time was that by doing this, it took away even more of my energy, and I also lost because it's a lot of work not being yourself.
Tina 00:10:52 Okay, it's a lot of work trying to please someone who's never pleased. And so I and then I so I, I spent more energy, I lost more energy. And then I lost trust and respect for myself. And when I started to set and maintain boundaries, it helps me build that trust back. And that in turn also helped me build my confidence. But it can be really like this double edged sword. It's really hard to get past that point. And that's why I always say to start small, always start small. So the power of small boundaries. Oh my God, so powerful. It's it really starts with you. So like when you start setting these small boundaries, you're really rebuilding trust with yourself. So like what would be a small boundary, like saying no to like just a draining conversation. Did you ever get stuck in one of those conversations where you're like, why am I here right now? Why am I listening to this person? I don't want to be here like just you don't.
Tina 00:11:56 There's no rule that says you have to be polite. There's no rule that says that you have to stay in that conversation. you know, so that's like a really small boundary to set that's protecting your energy and your time. Like you don't want to waste your time there. This isn't the person that you want to be talking to. Now, you don't have to be mean or nasty, but you could just say, I'm sorry. I just remembered something came up, you know, walk away. Whatever it just whatever it is you need to do to get away from that conversation. But every time you do this, every time you respect your time, your energy and the way you feel, you're sending that message that I'm worthy. I. You know, I'm worthy of safety. I'm worthy of respect. I'm worthy of care. I am worthy to use my time the way I want to use my time. my favorite, favorite self-care quote or, that really aligns with this message right here, is that it's not necessary for you to set yourself on fire in order to keep somebody else warm, right? So how many of you been in a conversation with someone you don't? Maybe it's at a gathering, a family gathering, maybe it's at a networking event and you're just like, this is not aligned at all, and you feel it, but you're just sitting there because you're being polite, right? But it's not your job to set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm.
Tina 00:13:15 It's that person. Probably if they knew you didn't really want to listen to them, they wouldn't want to be talking to you because they don't want to waste their time either. So really, you're not just respecting yourself, but you're also respecting the other person that's involved in the conversation. And so, this is just a very, small, small example of a small boundary that you could set that could really Protect your energy and your time. Stop draining yourself in order to make other people comfortable. And once again I said, I just want to repeat it. This isn't about being nasty to other people. This is just about respecting yourself, okay? You don't have to. Like if you're in that conversation with that person, it's not like you're going to be like, I have no interest in you whatsoever or what you're talking about, and I'm sorry. I'm just I don't want to talk to you like you don't have to do it that way. You could just say something came up or, I'm sorry, I have to take this call or I'm sorry.
Tina 00:14:14 Whatever. Like to get away from the conversation, but save yourself. You don't need to, like, make yourself uncomfortable to make other people comfortable now. So how to boundaries really? What? What do boundaries? How do they affect your relationships okay. And your like emotional safety. So one of the things that I always say is boundaries. Teach others how to engage with you in a respectful way. So I always say this boundaries. When, when, when we take care of ourselves at the deepest level, we are showing people how to treat us. We teach people how to treat us. So when when someone. I think the question to ask, when you're setting boundaries and maybe somebody you know that you're in a relationship with has a real problem with those boundaries. I definitely this has come up so many times with so many of my clients where they'll come back to me and they'll be like, they're, you know, telling me that my boundaries are ridiculous. They're out of hand. I'm I'm asking for too much and blah, blah, blah.
Tina 00:15:23 And they're like, well, they're questioning themselves, they're doubting themselves. And a lot of times this is definitely not always, but definitely aligned with someone who's a narcissist that really benefits from you not having boundaries. So when when somebody is telling you that they have a problem with your boundaries, I think the question that you really need to start asking yourself is why this person benefits from you not having these boundaries. What is the benefit to them and really like start to dig deep and why this person has a problem with it. Okay, now sometimes it's just people don't like change. It doesn't necessarily mean that this person that has a problem with your boundaries is the worst person in the world. Some people just have a lot of problems with change, so give it some time. But over time, if they're still really fighting you on this, then then I think you need to ask yourself that question. We teach people how to treat us by the way we treat ourselves. Boundaries are a way for us to define what is acceptable to us and what is not.
Tina 00:16:28 We don't just set boundaries with other people and other situations. We set boundaries with ourselves too. So if you see yourself having a problem with the way somebody is treating you, then start to ask yourself the question, how am I showing up for myself? That is, telling them they can treat me this way because the only one who's going to change that situation is you. If you expect that person to just like you, snap your fingers and they're going to automatically start treating you like the queen that you are. that's just that's just not most likely never going to happen. You have to create this space for yourself, and it does feel like it can be very challenging and a lot of work at times. But let me tell you what I said. Like just what I said earlier, once you start setting those boundaries, right, and you send that message to yourself, I am worthy of respect. And then you begin to attract the situations that honor those boundaries. The healing always starts within, Always within.
Tina 00:17:36 Okay. Where was I? So when we set and maintain boundaries, what we're doing is we're really beginning to show up authentically as ourself because everybody's boundaries are unique to them. Right. That's what I always reiterate that because there's no like societal like, social like guideline that says these boundaries are okay and these aren't because everybody is so different. Everybody has different circumstances in their life. Everybody has different resilience. Everybody is in a different place. Right. So your individual like boundaries are just their are aligned with you. So this is really you showing up as your authentic self. So when you do this, you create space for more meaningful, healthy connections by filtering out harmful relationships. That's what these boundaries do. So if you find yourself surrounded by people that you don't want to be surrounded by, then maybe that's a clue that you need to start setting some of these boundaries and ask yourself, how am I showing up that created these relationships? And then maybe set some boundaries to show up more authentically as yourself? A lot of people don't really realize that, we create our own experience.
Tina 00:18:58 So by doing this, we're just creating the experience we want to have. We're creating the, relationships that we want to have. Okay. We're making we're creating a safe space for us to show up authentically, 100% as our selves, like as our freaky little weird self where we're creating this space for ourselves. So if you think you're if you think you're going to be able to create authentic relationships just by doing things to please the other person, you'll be unpleasantly surprised because you're basically showing up as you're not self, you're not being yourself, and at some point you're going to get tired of that. It's exhausting showing up as somebody else. It's exhausting. That's like, you're an actress and you're always like, have to be at work. Okay? So at some point you're going to get tired of that, and at some point you'll be exhausted with, showing up as this person that you created. That's not yourself. You're going to want to show up as you, and then it's just going to be this weird conflict because you're going to be like, wow, I have all these people in my life that I don't align with, and now I don't want to be here anymore.
Tina 00:20:15 Once you start becoming your authentic self, it kind of filters out those harmful relationships or those relationships that just aren't aligned. They're not always harmful. So how do boundaries kind of help you align with your true self? I think boundaries help you stay aligned with your your values and your authenticity. Authenticity. And so. So going back again to how you know your boundaries are so individual to you, like they're very it's just so specific to you. And that's because you have different values. You have different things that are important to you, different things that aren't important to you. Then the person next to you, right. And you have different expectations and you want to you everybody wants some kind of a different experience. We don't all want the same things in life. And that's why all these boundaries are different. So by setting and maintaining boundaries that are aligned with you, you're you're stating your values and you're stating who you are as a person rather than trying to become someone who pleases others or just pleasing others.
Tina 00:21:29 So when I was in a point in my life, when I was like this professional people pleaser, I had no boundaries. I was not aligned with myself, and I really lost that connection with myself because I was so busy pleasing other people. I, you know, and I did it for so long, I didn't even know what I liked anymore. I didn't even know how to have fun with myself anymore. I lost trust in myself because I was doing everything for other people. I was so disconnected. Setting boundaries, really helped me reconnect with myself, build my self-confidence, and it keeps you aligned with your values and your wants and your needs and who exactly you are. This isn't about just getting things to go your way. This is. It's about taking care of yourself and your energy at the deepest level, creating that foundation for yourself of self-care and self-love. And this in turn will help you build your resilience up to be able to deal with the ups and downs that come up in your everyday life.
Tina 00:22:34 So when you start to embrace your boundaries and you'll start to embrace your self-worth, your reality mirrors that worth with more aligned opportunities and relationships. And I think that's what's so cool about it. You could just start small and build up, and as you do this, your reality starts to change. And and it mirrors that back at you, different opportunities will pop up. Different people will come into your life. The people that really benefited from you not having boundaries will start to like slowly move out of your life. So I hope that this was really helpful to you today. So but to to kind of go on with the, you know, what I've been doing every week with you guys, I'm always going to have an action step and a journal prompt. So last week we set our first boundary. Now, I want you to set another boundary this week that will protect your mental and emotional space. So this could mean something like limiting contact with someone that's triggering or politely declining conversations about certain topics, or removing yourself from maybe a friend group that is not aligned anymore.
Tina 00:23:47 And just to like, just talk on that topic a little bit when I said it's not aligned anymore. We're constantly changing as individuals and as we change as individuals, our boundaries are going to change. So this is not just something like a one and done kind of a deal. This is something that we just have to consistently do over our lives, and it's going to shift over time. But once you start to set and maintain boundaries, it's going to get easier and easier, and I promise you that it's going to become second nature. It's not going to be something that you have to think about. Like last week when I went over how to write a script and how to maintain that boundary. It's going to be it's just going to come really natural to you. So what boundary can you set this week to potentially protect your mental or emotional space? So is are you doing something in your life or your business that is draining? You really start to pay attention to how you feel. I want to go back to, I think it was maybe week three where I talked about, paying paying attention to your feelings as guidance, you know, using your intuition and the way your body feels as guidance to where you need to set those boundaries.
Tina 00:25:02 So where where do you feel drained mentally or emotionally? And how can you set a boundary to protect that? Sometimes even with yourself, you know, so sometimes we do things to please others, right? Nobody's asking us to do it. They, you know, they might not even notice when we stop doing it. That's the worst part, right? But it's like. But it's draining you. You don't like doing it, but you feel like you have to because you've been doing it. Where can you start to protect your mental and emotional space? Okay, so I would love to hear from you. Also, I want to, invite you again to come to the soul aligned Self-care Instagram page for the 30 day Self-care Visibility Challenge, and come hang out with me there every day. I share with you a new self-care practice that I am actually doing that day. I usually share it. Probably not first thing in the morning, but by the end of the day, because some sometimes I do my self-care practices in the morning, sometimes I do them in the afternoon.
Tina 00:26:11 It just comes up at all different times. Sometimes I do them in the morning, in the afternoon and at night. I'm always practicing self-care, but I'll share at least one with you every day. And I would love for you to join me. Oh, before I leave, let me share a journal prompt with you. Okay, so in what ways have you been compromising your self-worth by not setting boundaries? And what boundary can you set this week that reflects your worthiness? Okay, so I really think that when setting any boundaries really build your self-worth up. So, so in what way have you been compromising yourself by not setting a boundary? What boundary can you set this week that will help you build up your self-worth and your confidence? That's a really great question to ask yourself. Okay guys, I will see you next.
Tina 00:27:05 Week.
Tina 00:27:06 For, week six of the Boundary Series. We're going for eight weeks and I'm really enjoying this. I hope you are too. I'll see you in the 30 days Self-care Visibility challenge.
Tina 00:27:19 Love you. Bye.
