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Oct. 20, 2022

The Personal Boundaries That Changed My Life | CPTSD and Trauma Coach

In this episode, I talk about how personal boundaries change your life when you have CPTSD. Boundaries for CPTSD and Trauma survivors are often looked at as parameters that we place around others for our safety and protection.
See show notes at: https://www.thinkunbrokenpodcast.com/the-personal-boundaries-that-changed-my-life-cptsd-and-trauma-coach/#show-notes

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In this episode, I talk about how personal boundaries change your life when you have CPTSD. Boundaries for CPTSD and Trauma survivors are often looked at as parameters that we place around others for our safety and protection. Those boundaries are very important, but they are not the only boundaries we should have in place. Why? Because for us to be successful in our healing journey we must give ourselves permission to heal by acknowledging that we are capable and then by forcing ourselves into executing the promises that we make to ourselves.

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Transcript

Hey friends! Today I want to talk to you about one of the most important facets of your healing journey and that is personal boundaries. Now, we always talk about boundaries as a whole, right? Boundaries, we set against people in places and things in our environment so that we protect ourselves, and it's very reasonable that we should do that.

For most of us as trauma survivors, we have got to find a way to protect ourself in the world, and that makes sense, we're never gonna argue that. However, what about when you're not showing up for yourself? What about those moments when you wake up, you put your feet on your ground and you go, eh, not today.

I might lose some people in this conversation and I'm okay with that, but I want to be very clear about something. The way that I think about boundaries is really simple when it comes to personal boundaries, and that is I always have to ask myself this question;

 “What am I willing to do to have the results that I want in my life?”

Often, we talk about we're trying, we're trying, we're trying, we're doing this, we're doing that, we're doing this. But realistically, we're spinning in circles. Why? Because we haven't done a couple of the key elements required to go forward in life.

One, we haven't acknowledged how we got to where we are right now.

One of the first things that you need to do is take an introspective look back at how you got to where you are now.

Two, you need to game plan what it is that you want your future to look like, and I don't mean day dream this.

Here's what I think people have to understand, these grandiose daydreams do not have to be that they can be true, they can be reality. I often say that the person sitting here in front of you, this Michael, this is the caricature of the idea of the Michael that I wanted to be. And so, I've built that, but that started with me sitting down, taking out a piece of paper and writing exactly what it is that I want.

And so, I challenge you. Go grab a piece of paper, hit pause, right?

Okay, we're back. And so, grab that piece of paper and I want you to write down a couple of headers;

  1. Personal Health
  2. Personal Goals
  3. Relationship Health
  4. Relationship Goals
  5. Career Health
  6. Career Goals.

Then you're gonna add hobbies and adventures. And underneath each one of these, I want you to write three to five bullet points about how you foresee those categories looking in your life over the course of the rest of your life. We are planning for down the road often we get stuck in this idea of tomorrow. What I want you to think about is how important it is to deploy patients against what it is that you want next in your life, right? And so, now we're gonna take these concepts that have been sitting in our head for a really long time and we're going to write them down.

There was a study done by Dominican Republic University that said people who wrote down their goals often hit them at 50% higher, increased chances than people who didn't. So automatically, just by writing down what it is, that is the life that you want to create. You have a 50% better chance of winning at life than you did before, that's a huge step, right? So, we kind of looked at where we've gotten and how we got there, and now we're talking about goals and where we want to go. And the hard part about this is the hidden little secret of this. Now you have to do the work. And so, you might be asking yourself, well, what does boundaries have to do with doing the work? What do personal boundaries have to do with any of these things? I'm gonna keep it really simple for you. The only way that we get to the place that we want to go in life is by forcing yourself there. Often, we wanna blame the world for things that happen in our life, both good and bad. Right. We wanna go, Oh, this happened because of X, not recognizing that we have this amazing amount of control to create the future that we want. Right?

And so personal boundary comes into play here because what we are going to do is we are going to build out our life based on the goals that we want to have. And so how do you do this? How do you take a personal boundary and make it the catalyst for change in your life.

The most important thing that you have to do as you start this is acknowledge that you are capable of doing this. People have told you for a really long time, you're not good enough, You're not worthy. You're not capable. You have to get that out. You have to stop caring about what people who don't matter, bring into your life, because the people who do matter, I can assure you, they are there to support you. And if they aren't, you need to have some deep conversations with them. But that's another topic for another. Okay. And so, what you have to do is first eliminate these thoughts of people who want to come in and facilitate your own belief. You have got to tap into self-belief in a really intense way, and so how do you do that, that falls in line with boundaries because by stepping ourself into understanding things that make us uncomfortable, we learn and we grow. And so, by both learning and growing, we start to get a better idea of who we are and we find ourselves being appreciative of ourselves, right? We thank ourselves for the journey that we are on, moving towards what the goals that we set, just starting to make sense. And so now that we have these set goals and we have this idea of what boundary means and personal growth, how do you get there? Boundaries isn't just about saying, I'm going to do it. Boundaries is about executing against that. And some of your ideas may be really big. And so how do you get that in life, in relationship and career and hobbies and adventure, you start at the top and then you reverse engineer back down to the first step.

So, for instance, if, for example, I want to feel good about myself in the morning when I wake up and I put my feet on the ground, that's the high-level header, overarching everything. How do I get there? I go all the way to the very bottom of the list of possibility, and I say, step one. What does step one look like? Step one for you could be a numerous thing, and that could be okay, step one means I have to go to therapy. Step one, I go to the gym. Step one, I have to eat better. Step one, I have to sleep better. Step one could be any of these things, right? And so that becomes the beginning of it and personal boundary comes back in around that step because now you have to hold yourself accountable to doing that because realistically, step one is often only the beginning of a lot of steps that'll lead you to where you want to go. And so now you have personal boundaries come in and you are going to force your yourself. Literally, you are going to force yourself to do the things that you know you have to do to get to where it is that you want to go in life. You are both culpable and accountable for everything that happens from this moment forward. And so personal boundary comes into play because what you are going to do is you are going to acknowledge the fact that you are capable of having the life that you want to have as long as you make yourself do the work to get there.

Guys, this is not easy. I'm gonna be real with you. The hardest thing that you are ever going to do in your life is become the hero of your own story, and that starts with accountability and personal responsibility and boundaries and goals and having a direction. And on these days when it's hard not beating yourself up because you know what, maybe you're on step four of four hundred and you are going to fall. You are going to teeter, and you have to get up. You have to go back towards it. Why? Because ultimately, you are the only one who is going to get you to where you want to be. Even just listening to this, will give you insight and direction of what to do, but realistically, the only way you're going to get there is by taking a really hard look at yourself and making a declaration that no matter what, I'm going to go forward. That's strength. There is strength in that. And I promise you, in these moments of being uncomfortable, and in these moments when you're like, ah, why am I still doing this? And ah, why am I not getting the results that I want? You know what is going to happen? You're going to slowly build your worth and your value and your esteem because you are going to keep getting up no matter what, every single day you are going to keep moving forward, even if it is just one step towards that goal of the life that you want to have, and you have to decide who's gonna stop you and nobody can stop you but you, I promise there is always a way to work through it.

So, now you have these pillars about how you move forward and how you set personal responsibility in your life. And I wanna caution you because a lot of people will take these ideas and concepts, write them down, create a game plan, block off time in their calendar, do 800 million things, and forget the most important core self-values.

Make sure that you are taking care of yourself and staying aligned with your values as you move through this, because that is ultimately how you are going to get there.

And I wanna leave you with one thing here as we start to wrap.

Keep in mind that this journey doesn't really have a destination. Yes, we have goals, and yes, we write these things down and yes, we move towards them, but it is always going to change and it is always going to evolve. Why? Because that is what life does, my friend. And in those moments, we adapt and we create change in our own life to continue to move forward. So, take this information with you. Go back, rewind the video, pause it, write down those headlines, put down those bullet points, get out that calendar, start moving forward because ultimately my friend, the only person that can do it is you.

And Until Next Time.

Be Unbroken.

I'll see you.

Michael UnbrokenProfile Photo

Michael Unbroken

Coach

Michael is an entrepreneur, best-selling author, speaker, coach, and advocate for adult survivors of childhood trauma.