Tina 00:00:00 At the age of 39. I had a stroke caused by stress and burnout, and one of the things that I know for sure was that I had zero boundaries. I was 100% a people pleaser coming out of an abusive relationship. And so one of the ways that I started to build myself back up again was by setting and maintaining boundaries. And this week, we're on week seven of the Boundary Series, and I'm talking all about how to use boundaries for stress recovery. Let's get into it. You're listening to the Soul Online 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. Hello guys, and welcome back to the Soul Aligned Self-care podcast.
Tina 00:01:26 I'm your host, Tina Stinson, and we are on week seven of the Boundary Series. We only have one more week left, but this week we're talking about how to use boundaries as a tool for stress recovery. And as I said in the intro, one of the things that happened to me, my rock bottom moment, was when I had a stroke that was caused by stress and burnout. I had gotten to the point where I was just so exhausted, so stressed. I had so many things going on in my life that I ended up having a stroke. It was just the way my body was gonna force me to slow down and rest, and I'll talk a little bit about what I was going through at the time that caused this. because every stressful thing you could imagine that would be in someone's life was really happening, happening to me all at once. It was a really strange moment, and it kind of lasted for a couple of years, and it was just a little too much. And as soon as I came through all of it and I was able to just like exhale, that's when I had the stroke.
Tina 00:02:29 It wasn't like during everything. It was like after everything. And I see that happen all the time with a lot of people. As soon as they can like rest, they they have that moment of dis ease or whatever, however that stress shows up in their body. And so I'm going to talk about some of the things that led up to that, which were it's a very extreme example. I know not everybody has a stroke caused by stress and burnout. But stress shows up in so many different ways. It shows up as high blood pressure. It shows up as autoimmune disease. It shows up as headaches. It shows up as exhaustion. It shows up as well. High cortisol levels. It just shows up in so many different ways, in so many different people. And it can exaggerate any problems that you're already having. So even though most people's, outcome or response to stress will not be as extreme as what I experienced it, stress is always going to show up in your body somehow, and it's going to show up as some type of disease.
Tina 00:03:36 And sometimes it takes time, sometimes it doesn't. But just just know that one of the things that has been life changing for me was setting and maintaining boundaries, and that's why I've spent eight weeks. It's going to be totally counting next week On, you know, doing this boundary series, it's so important to set and maintain boundaries when especially when you're recovering from some kind of a traumatic event, or even if you're just recovering from, you know, burnout or on your way to burnout, setting and maintaining boundaries is the foundation of your self-care. So before you start applying all the things that are going to help build you up again or reduce stress and anxiety like the meditation, the breathwork, the bubble baths, the you know, all those things that we do to take care of ourselves, eating well, all those things. The boundaries is the foundation that's going to hold it up because it protects your energy and it helps you lived a more aligned, live a more aligned life and have closer, more connected relationships.
Tina 00:04:40 When you have that, and you also on top of that are doing all of the self-care practices, then you build up resilience and then you can respond to the day to day stresses that we all have to deal with instead of just reacting continuously to your life. And so I'm sure that sounds better for most of us, but I spent years and years just constantly reacting. Reacting. And when you're doing that, also you're really not getting anywhere in your life. You're just surviving. You're in that survival mode. You're not, you know, hitting those goals. You're not having too much success. You're just making it. It's like you're just what I felt like was I was I was flying by the seat of my pants. I was half assing everything at the time and it was just an awful feeling. So to get started, I'll talk about some of the things that I was going through at the time. So the first thing I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to like get the timeline right.
Tina 00:05:33 I was under so much stress at the time, and still when I look back at it now, I still can't always get the timeline right. But one of the first things I remember was when I was still married, my ex-husband and would promote with his job, which was a retail management job by taking some kind of, by, like, moving to another place. Then you can get like a raise or a new position by moving. So we moved around a lot. We had three kids. and during this time period, my oldest was about 8 or 9, and I had had enough of the moving because it was starting to affect her school and she was starting to like, settle in and make roots. And so I didn't want to move. And I, I told my ex that, but he said that he had to do this move in order to like, make more money and keep his job and stuff like that. So it was it was a move to from, New York to Pennsylvania, and I didn't want to make the move.
Tina 00:06:39 My family wasn't in New York, and I just really didn't want to make the move. He had friends in Pennsylvania at the time, which later on proved to be one of the reasons why he wanted to move there. I did eventually learn that that move was not necessary. He just wanted to move to be near friends. And so he put his friends and his career over his children and his wife at the time. But anyway, so we had just listed our house and it was a good time in real estate, and so we sold it within four days. We had an agreement at that same exact time, my my, former husband was experiencing different weird neurological, symptoms and being tested for all kinds of stuff like masks and stuff like that. And he was on different medications. And so it was a little stressful for that. And he had been at a conference for work and another state, and he experienced something where he sat down at a conference. And then at the end of the conference, he couldn't stand up.
Tina 00:07:41 He was starting to lose the ability to stand. And, what turned out, to make a long story short, he ended up in the ICU for eight weeks with Guillain-BarrƩ, which usually doesn't kill you, but it is very serious because you can end up on like a breathing machine for a while. But basically you you lose the feeling you get become paralyzed and it starts in your feet and it moves very fast. So he ended up hopping on an airplane. By the time he got home, he couldn't walk. He couldn't. He couldn't barely move. And by the time we got to the emergency room, it was almost up to his chest. And he spent, like I said, around eight weeks in the hospital. During that eight weeks, I learned a lot of things about my life. I learned that the people he worked with didn't know he was married. I learned that he had a whole nother relationship with another woman. I learned he had another place, a place to live with this other woman.
Tina 00:08:35 I learned he was hiding a lot of money from me. also, at that same time, his parents came to, you know, be close to him while he was in the hospital and they were staying in my house. And during that time period, supposedly they were going to help me with my children, but they they did not. And what was happening was I would come home. My youngest at the time was like, I don't know if she was like maybe two between 2 and 4 like a toddler. And I would come home 8:00 at night. She would be fully dressed, sleeping on the couch. One time I came home, she had a mouthful of crayons and she was sleeping, so they weren't being taken care of. And so I had to, like, change my schedule. I was feeding my ex-husband, bathing him, taking care of him in the hospital, and, I had to change how I was doing things in order to be home for the kids. As you can imagine, it was extremely stressful.
Tina 00:09:31 we had 3 or 4 neurologists working on this case, and they kept telling me that different things cause this, they they went everywhere. They kept telling me he had so many of these different diseases. Every time we went to the hospital, they told me something different, so it was very stressful. And then at that same time, I think his parents knew he was having an affair. So they were trying to take over the money of the household. I usually handled all the money, so of course I didn't let them do that. I tried to make them leave the house because they were being very aggressive with me, trying to take, take my computers and stuff like that. And so, and at the same time, I was being pushed to do the contract on the house. The house sold. We were in the middle of transferring to another state. I decided not to change anything because I was under so much stress. I decided to not make any major decisions and just deal with them later.
Tina 00:10:29 So I went along with the move. so I was moving, selling the house. My ex was in the hospital in the ICU for eight weeks. I was taking care of him at his request. Learned that he had another relationship with another person, another place that he lived, and he was hiding money. it was just really, really stressful. I lost weight, I lost all the hair in the front of my head. and this continued on when he did get out of the hospital the day he got out of the hospital, we closed on the house, and, he came home in a wheelchair and had to learn kind of how to walk again. And, I ended up helping him through that. It was something that I felt I had to do for my children. And so, I helped him do all that stuff so that he could get back to work. And then, I wanted to move back to New York because I knew I was going to divorce him. And so as soon as I got my back in New York, I filed for divorce.
Tina 00:11:31 And then that's when things really started getting interesting. So it was not a very friendly divorce. It was really hard. He was having a relationship with a stripper, and he wanted her to move into our house where my children lived. And so he was pressuring me to leave. so I had that pressure. I didn't leave until. I wouldn't leave until I got my equity in the house. And but while I was living there with the children, he was moving her things into my closet, into my bedroom. And so, like, these are all the things over probably two years continuous, like huge amounts of stress and, obviously eventually everything worked out. But I bought my own house. I moved there with my kids. we settled in, and then I had a stroke. That's when I had the stroke. And through this whole process, one of the things I have to share is that I was in really, really good shape. I was healthy, I ate well, I was physically so physically fit because what I did when I was going through all the stress was I worked out kind of excessively because I thought I needed to release my anger.
Tina 00:12:43 What I didn't realize was I was kind of emphasizing my stress levels. Because when you're doing really hard workouts, you're really putting your body in a state of fight or flight. So it really wasn't helping me the way I thought it was helping me. So I was really physically fit. I was eating pretty good. I just I had no boundaries. I wasn't taking care of myself. I was under an enormous amount of stress. I was experiencing so many changes in my life. And at the same time, on top of that, I was a stay at home mom for 13 years. I had no college degree, and I had to start figuring out what I was going to do for work. So I decided that the quickest, easiest thing I could do in order to be around for my children still was, become sell real estate. And so that's what I did, and I frickin hated it. I hated it so much, but it worked like I wanted something where I didn't have to change my children's life, they were already losing so much.
Tina 00:13:41 There was already so much change and so much stress. I wanted to be able to still be home for them as much as possible, still be able to take them to school, still be able to go to the sports. And so I wanted control over my schedule, and that's why I chose that. And it served its purpose, and I did. I sold just enough in order to take care of us as a family. And then I, but I didn't like, go all in. I wasn't like, breaking any sales records, so to speak. And so I was also starting a new career, and that was very stressful. So there was there was just a lot of stress. And so, as you can imagine, it was an enormous amount of stress. As I said, I lost a lot of my hair. I lost a lot of weight. I wasn't eating properly, when I was going through this. And so but what I learned was you can be in the best shape of your life.
Tina 00:14:36 You could eat pretty well and be in good shape, and you could still suffer from something like I suffered from. So what really happened was I had a vertebral dissection. So you have a vertebral artery on each side of your neck that serves brings the blood to the brain. And so you have two of those. And what happened was my artery tore just from all the stress. And so I had a tear in the artery, caused that to clot up a clot, went into my brain, and then also it clotted up so much on that one side that it blocked the artery. And so it wasn't a typical kind of stroke where, you know, I have like build up in my arteries and veins. It was just blood clots. And the doctors said it was too dangerous to do surgery. So we had to let it heal, closed like that. And I had one on the other side, and that's why I didn't suffer any real, dramatic damage. Right? I just had some, kind of, like, some balance issues and that's it.
Tina 00:15:37 It took me about a year to recovery and really get back to feeling like myself and still and I know there's people out here who can understand this. I it was like a new normal. Like I didn't remember what normal was, but I felt like it took me about a year to get as close back to what normal felt like to me. And so it was about a year recovery. And, now, one of the cool things about the story is that, I started running again immediately without like, any support from any of my doctors. I was a runner. It was very important to me. I started running, I had the stroke in May. I ran my first race, in that that December of that year, I ran A5K with my daughter. So I started running right away, little by little. and I could talk about in some other podcasts about how I got past the fear of, like, the artery, like cracking open again and also not having support of my doctors for me to be, physically active.
Tina 00:16:42 They didn't really want me to do that. I can't even imagine what my life would be like if I listen to the doctors. I just can't even imagine. So all of that, that whole story, all of that, all of that, that just told you, you know, that would have been avoided if I had maybe not completely avoided some all of that. There's a lot of a lot of that that would have still happen. The divorce, you know, a lot of that would have still happened. But the stroke, I truly believe the stroke could have been avoided if I had strong, self-worth, strong boundaries, all those things and how I started to build myself up again after the stroke was, setting and maintaining boundaries, learning those things. Learning slowly. I didn't have a coach. I didn't have anybody helping me. It was me reading and learning and getting certified as a health coach, you know, you know, doing all the things that I thought were the right steps and then shifting when it wasn't the right step.
Tina 00:17:46 And so I, I slowly built myself up. And one of the things I do today and the promises that I made to myself was, if I get through this and I can get to a point in my life where I'm, I'm doing really well and I'm feeling really good and I'm thriving, that I would do everything I possibly could to help other people avoid that. And that's why I do what I do, and that's why I help people and my my course. So aligned self-care intensive is all the steps that I used from that point. After I had the stroke, to build myself up to the point where I was thriving in my life. And one of those things, one of those modules inside of that course is boundaries. And so boundaries is so important. As I said, it's the foundation Of self-care. And this week I'm talking about boundaries as a tool for stress recovery. So when you're setting and maintaining boundaries, it helps reduce stress by limiting the demands placed on your energy. And so when you're able to, you know, say no to what drains you and give you space for rest and recovery and healing, that's setting boundaries.
Tina 00:18:57 And as I said, I didn't have any of those boundaries. So by learning how to say no to things that didn't serve me, learning how to say no to people, you know, learning how to like, remove people from my life that didn't, you know, allow for rest, recovery or healing, allowing to, limit my exposure to people like my former husband, like other people that were in my life at that time. There were so many boundaries I had to start setting, and it was so hard for me. I spent so many years as a people pleaser, and if you haven't listened to the series yet, I would encourage you to listen to the series, because I do talk about why it's so hard to set boundaries when you're coming from that people pleasing place, and it's because you're so I. I learned people pleasing as a response to, you know, verbal abuse, avoiding confrontation as much as possible, avoiding confrontation not just for myself but for my children. And so saying no and setting boundaries didn't feel safe to me.
Tina 00:20:03 And to begin to do that and realize that this was a way to start building my self-worth and my self-love. And that by doing this, not only am I helping myself, but I'm helping everybody that's in my life by doing this because I'm making it very clear what type of relationship I want to experience with them, with them. But I'm also showing them that it's okay for them to set boundaries and maintain boundaries in the relationship also. So saying no to what drains you and giving yourself the space to rest and be able to recover and heal from all the things that we have to deal with in our everyday life. That's what boundaries does for you. The goal is not to avoid responsibility, but to protect your energy for what matters most. So that's that's one of the the most important things that I could say. So boundaries are essential for protecting your energy. So I'm going to share five different reasons why it's so important to use boundaries and how it helps you with, you know, your stress levels.
Tina 00:21:08 So it's essential for protecting your energy. As I said, many people experience stress because they're constantly giving their energy to others without protecting it for themselves. They boundaries allow you to limit the demands placed on your time, giving you the space to recharge. So you know how many of us are constantly saying yes to things that are, you know, very, very strongly a hell no. Right. They're not aligned with you, whether it be like a social situation, whether it be a person in your friend group, a family member who might be abusive or just negative, whether it's different, practices in your business that feel icky, whether it's spending time on or in conversations that are not aligned like gossip or that perpetuate like negativity. It's about setting limits on those things or removing yourself from them completely so that you can protect your energy and give yourself some of your time back and and protect your energy, like I said. So the next thing is give boundaries, give you space for that recovery and healing.
Tina 00:22:13 So by saying no to the activities, the commitments, the relationships that drain you, you're automatically making room for rest and healing, which are essential for stress recovery, but you're also making room for joy and the things that you love, the things that you want to fill your life with. So, one of the things that I changed almost immediately, as I said at the beginning of the story, was real estate. I hated selling real estate. So as soon as my youngest two children went to college, they went to they weren't the same age, but they went to college the same year because my youngest graduated a year early. So they left for college the same year. And as soon as they did that, I started to make my exit from real estate because it served its purpose. It it served me and my family well, but I didn't want to do it anymore. I never liked it. And so by by saying no to real estate, I created space for me to start this new business that is completely aligned with my values.
Tina 00:23:15 And so when you start to say no to the things that, aren't aligned with you, you can start saying yes to the things that are. So the next thing is, when you set emotional boundaries, it helps improve your health. As I said, when you don't have any boundaries, the amount of stress that you'll be under and we all know what stress does to our body. So when we respect our emotional boundaries, we protect our bodies. Stress shows up physically. Almost always. We hold it in our body and unresolved stress can manifest an illness and injury. Just like I talked about at the beginning. My stroke, there were there were signs. A lot of people always ask me if I had signs. There were definitely signs that something was going on, but it never felt very serious. Like I did have like a pain in my neck. And I remember I was taking like Advil and I was I'm the type of person that never takes anything. So it was like annoying enough for me to take an Advil, but not annoying enough for me to go to the doctor.
Tina 00:24:16 another thing I experienced was pixellated vision every once in a while. So I would look at something and my vision would pixelate around the edges. And my neurologist told me that that was probably blood clots actually going into my brain, which is crazy. And he told me that whenever you experience any type of crazy eye changes like that, that's time to go to a doctor and take things serious. And I didn't know that, like I thought it was, oh, I didn't eat enough, you know? because I wasn't really good about eating. I would work, work, work, work all day. As I said, I had no boundaries, so I wasn't eating. And sometimes I would get really hungry. And I thought it was like, you know, like, you know, that feeling of like faintness when you get like, eye disturbances. That's actually what I thought it was. So there were like signs. They were definitely physical signs. Sometimes at the end of the day, my body would shake uncontrollably because I was so exhausted, but I was so disconnected with my body.
Tina 00:25:14 I was, suffering from trauma. So I was completely disconnected with myself in order to protect myself. And so I didn't understand what these messages meant. Like I didn't understand why my body was shaking and I would just guess I'd be like, Maybe I'm tired, maybe I'm sick. It would scare me. But I learned if I rested, the shaking stopped. So I was like, oh, I'm just tired. And so I was completely disconnected with my body, which made it so much worse because I wasn't really, taking any of the signs that my body was giving me seriously because I didn't. I just wasn't paying attention. And so when you start setting and maintaining standing boundaries, yes, this helps you emotionally, but it also improves your physical health. Now, number four, boundaries are about like prioritizing, not avoiding responsibility. So setting boundaries doesn't mean avoiding your responsibilities. It means focusing your energy on what truly matters in choosing to show up fully where you want to be. Now, yes, You're probably saying to yourself, well, yeah, I would love not to.
Tina 00:26:22 Like I, you know, I quit real estate and I started a business. Yeah, this took time. It didn't happen instantaneously. And yes, I was broke for a really long time and like, it's it wasn't easy, but it was an important. But I was showing up where I wanted to be. But if I never did it, I would still be selling real estate. I would still be stressed out. Right? I still would not be very happy. And so you have to start making these changes, and by setting boundaries, you're not really avoiding things. You're actually you're actually kind of naming the things that you want in your life, and you're taking the things that you don't want in your life. You're showing everybody what's acceptable, and then you're showing including yourself, and then you're showing what's not acceptable. So it's not always easy with all the societal and family expectations, all those pressures that expect, expect us to behave and act a different way, you know, so, you know, you're a woman, so you're supposed to, you know, there's this expectation that you're supposed to take care of the house and you're supposed to be this natural, like, you know, parent and, you know, and you're expected to do all of this with a smile while you're working full time, and then you're supposed to look good.
Tina 00:27:37 You're supposed to not be too fat, but not be too skinny. You're supposed to not look tired, right? You're not. You know, you're supposed to look attractive, but not overdone. Like there's so many rules. You're supposed to be a strong woman, you're supposed to be good at business, but you're not supposed to be a bitch, and you're not supposed to be bossy. Right? So there's all these expectations for you to behave a certain way. also the expectation to get into another relationship. There was always this pressure for me to be with another man, you know? And I got to a point where I was just like, I'm so much happier without a man in my life. I'm sure there's a man out there that could probably make me happy. But so far in my life at this point, what has been proven to me is that I am so much happier on my own. I have so much more passion. I'm I'm spending so much more time on the things that I love, and I'm learning how to love myself in a deeper way so that if a relationship did come along, I'm in a place where I could share myself and I have no expectations for that other person to create happiness for me, because I've created that for myself.
Tina 00:28:47 And I'm not going to put that on another person, which is what a lot of other people do when they're coming out of a relationship and they're scared. They just want to be in a relationship, to feel safe and creating that safety for yourself and creating that happiness for yourself, and not putting that on someone else to create for you, which is not really a fair way to be in a relationship, is what I think the key to like having happiness in your life, like true happiness. And so.
Speaker 2 00:29:16 I just.
Tina 00:29:16 Want to emphasize that boundaries are a form of like self-respect and intentional living. It allows you to give your best to what is aligned with your values, rather than saying yes to everything out of obligation or expectation of others, including society, family, even, you know, parents, children or whoever who has that expectation of you. so that's what that's what boundaries. Really, really how they really support you. So you're supporting, you know, you're reducing your stress levels, but you're also supporting your emotional health and your physical health.
Tina 00:29:54 So for this week's action stop, I want to encourage you to identify one thing that's on your plate right now that's causing stress that isn't really essential for you to be doing. Perhaps it's a commitment made out of a habit, or an obligation or an expectation by someone else. you know, I would encourage you to say no this week and feel the relief that comes with reducing this, this pressure on you and and reclaiming your time. Like, when you do this, I want you to really feel it. Because when you acknowledge that feeling of how good it feels, you're going to want to do it more, and you're going to start to prioritize your boundaries and prioritize your health, your emotional and your physical health and reduce your stress levels. So I hope these points really help you understand how powerful boundaries are and how much they play a role in your stress recovery, and I hope this inspires you to start making, start setting and maintaining boundaries in your own life. As I said, this is week seven.
Tina 00:30:59 We have one week left, but one of the things I want to also share with you is that I have a new course. It's called Boundary Badass and it's open Earlybird pricing is open. You could save up to $100 right now by getting in early, but we start. Is it next week already? I can't believe it's on the 12th. We're going to start on the 12th and it's going to be there's going to be five lessons over ten days or like two week period, so that you have time in between each lesson to implement. And this is basically going to help you go from people pleaser to boundary badass. You're going to be able to set boundaries when you get come through this course. And included right now in the course is one private call with me where I will go over a boundary with you and help you implement it. So it's a really, really if you're if you consider yourself to be a people pleaser, then definitely hop into boundary badass. I'll put the link in the show notes.
Tina 00:31:57 I would love to have you and if you have any questions, just email me at. Tina. Tina stinson.com. Okay guys, I love you so much and I'll talk to you next week for week eight. Bye.
