Well hello there and welcome to this episode of The Terri Cole Show.
I wanna start with a question.
Your phone starts ringing and you look down and you see that it's your friend who talks
and talks and talks and talks and talks and is always dumping stuff on you, and maybe
you don't feel like talking or listening to their problems.
So instead of picking up the phone and saying you're unavailable or saying you don't feel
like talking, you actually just let it go to voicemail.
Or you have a friend who assumes that simply because you live close together, that you
don't mind always picking them up and dropping them off when you guys go out together.
But actually, you do mind, you just don't say anything about it because you're not sure
how.
So, if you're nodding your head yes, then this video is for you, my friend, because
in today's video I'm breaking down why it's hard for us to talk true, as I would call
it, where we learn to not honor the way we actually feel or what we want.
And I'm sharing with you steps that you can take to be more real in your real life.
So before we get moving, if you happen to be new here, my name is Terri Cole, I'm a
licensed psychotherapist, a relationship expert, and the author of Boundary Boss, which you
can get at boundarybossbook.com.
So before we get started, if you are not already subscribed, if you didn't already hit that
bell, this would be the moment to do that right now, because I don't want you to miss
anything.
And I put out new content every Tuesday and every Thursday.
I also wanna say thank you so much for all of your questions, comments, participations
in this channel because we are a very active group and you know I read everything and I
respond to as many as I possibly can, and I love to highlight your comments and your
questions.
Today I'm highlighting one from Aneesa under the video, What is the Mother Wound?
"Thank you for this video.
I am face-to-face with my mother wound.
Your video has helped me so much in making sense of how I'm feeling and why I'm feeling
not good enough and not worthy.
I've done so much work in this space and suddenly it crept up on me again.
I'm probably now ready to deal with the root of my co-dependence and imposter syndrome.
I am eternally grateful."
Well, Aneesa, I'm eternally grateful for you taking the time to write that really nice
note.
You are the reason I do what I do, so thank you.
All right, let's move into today's content.
All right, so why don't we say what's on our mind so much of the time, right?
Not telling someone that you don't like something, right?
What happens when we don't tell the truth about how we feel?
And this is just unexpressed things, opinions, feelings, thoughts, preferences.
A lot of it is about our boundaries.
And the question is, why don't we do it?
So you might avoid expressing your displeasure about something directly.
You might do it passively aggressively, but you might avoid doing it directly because
you are upset, because you are sort of suppressing your displeasure around something because
you're not gonna express it, right?
Some of us very naturally, I learned this in childhood, I had to unlearn it in many
years of therapy where I learned if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything
at all.
I really did learn that, like, that was like a rule to live by.
And so I learned a lot about being hyper-positive, about bypassing sort of negative feelings.
You know, if a friend makes a hurtful comment, you might choose not to say anything or laugh
it off, even though down deep you're hurt.
And I would do that when I was younger, and part of that was to smooth it over.
Even if I made like a funny sort of comeback to something that someone said that I didn't
like, my hurt feelings would still be there.
I just wouldn't say anything about it.
Other reasons we may not talk true: we don't know how to assert ourselves.
We actually don't have the skills.
It's sort of like, think about it.
If you're in a situation and you feel like someone is taking advantage of you, let's
say you're at work and you have a coworker who's always sort of dumping some of their
work, they're managing to figure out how to make it your responsibility to do it.
You may just accept it and do the work rather than confronting the coworker.
And why is that?
Partly because most of us don't do confrontation very well.
We didn't learn how to do it.
And that's not everyone.
But I know a lot of you in my crew have this because you write in to me, and this is part
of why I'm doing this episode today, is how someone wrote in about wanting to be more
truthful in their life, to tell the truth about how they feel, not just the positive
things.
It's almost like they were selective.
They were able to say the positive things, be grateful about things, but not be able
to say the things that were getting on their nerves or that were upsetting them or hurting
their feelings.
I think this desire to sort of conceal our preferences or our boundaries, part of this
is learned behavior where if you learn to put other people's needs, wants, desires above
your own, it's not natural to constantly be pointing out what you need or what you want.
And it's really important that you do.
I had a client once who was in a situation where she was not being honest about how she
felt because she felt like the way she felt was being a bad friend.
So these are two people who were friends for a long time.
One of them was always in some kind of drama and would call the other and just sort of
start emoting and dumping whatever was going on in her life at that moment on the friend.
And the friend, who was my client, was like, you know, I would like her to check in, see
if it's a good time for me to talk, like ask if I'm up for it.
And I was like, okay, I understand that.
But here's the thing.
You've gotta assert that boundary.
So we don't have to make it mean anything about the other friend, right?
When we don't say anything, then we have a tendency to get into the judgment of, well,
she's just entitled, she just expects me to be here at all hours.
No, that may not be true at all.
You haven't said anything.
So we came up with what she was going to talk about and her friend totally understood.
We came up with sort of a boundary script of like, Hey, I know you're here for me and
I'm here for you, but I'd like to make a simple request that you check in with me before you
start going into a story or some heavy thing.
Because a lot of times I'm in the middle of something else and then I don't want to interrupt
you, so that would be great if the next time you wanna talk about something or if you're
upset about something, you check in with me first that I actually have the bandwidth to
do it.
And her friend was like, oh my God, you know what?
You're so right.
I never even thought of that, and I'm sorry, you know?
And my client was like, wasn't making it a big deal.
And she said, thanks for saying that.
Like she accepted the apology, but my feeling is, because I could see that she was going
to sort of get done with that friendship if she didn't say anything.
And the fact that she did, she feels so taken care of and so taken into consideration every
time her friend says, Hey, is now a good time?
And that's all it takes.
All it took was one bit of communication from her.
I had another situation, a friend of mine, she had lent her truck to her neighbor next
door.
The neighbor had to take the kid to and from school twice a day.
My friend wasn't, her truck was sitting home all day.
She would just leave the keys in it.
They live in the middle of nowhere.
And then after two weeks of doing this, the neighbor hadn't offered to put gas in the
truck.
She had a whole narrative about the neighbor.
She was like, I just feel really taken advantage of, and I feel like it's really rude and I
feel all this judgment.
And I was like, okay, I understand that.
But, cause when I said to her, did you say anything?
And she's like, no, I don't- I feel like I shouldn't have to say anything.
And I was like, no.
That's like falls into the category of like the lies we tell ourselves to avoid doing
what we need to do.
You don't know.
Your neighbor is a single mom.
She might be super overwhelmed.
Let's not write a whole script or a story or a narrative about what it means that she
didn't put gas in the truck.
Just make a simple request that she does.
So she was like, okay.
So the next time the neighbor was like, okay, I'm coming over to grab the truck.
My friend said, okay, heads up, it needs gas.
And she said, great, no problem.
Happy to fill it.
And she filled it up and there was no problem.
Like part of it is we can ruminate about something for days, weeks, and years that had we just
had a- that was literally one text message that had like five words in it.
It's on empty, it needs gas.
That was it.
She was like, great.
And I think that a lot of times we build it up in our minds that I'm gonna say something,
they're gonna be mad.
This whole thing is gonna ensue that I don't wanna deal with.
And a lot of that is like, we really have to look at our past experiences and go, where
did we learn this?
So in the guide you'll see there's a bit of a truth telling inventory and where we're
gonna go back a little bit and see what did you witness in childhood?
What did you see in your family of origin?
I learned that it was rude to be too honest, that it was not cool, again, if you don't
have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.
That was a rule to live by.
So what I saw was people not talking true.
That, trust me, s**t was being acted out left and right, right?
Because we don't have the power to not feel our feelings forever.
We don't have the power to shove our feelings down forever.
We just don't, it doesn't work like that.
Sooner or later, as I like to say, the emotional chickens are gonna come to home to roost.
And so much of the time when we are stuffing our feelings about something, it's coming
out sideways.
What do you think displaced aggression is, right?
It's where we'll, you know, get into a fight with an inanimate object because we're really
off at our boss, but it's too threatening to say anything to our boss.
But if it's too threatening for you to tell the truth in a lot of relationships in your
life, this is where the downloaded blueprint basically of where did you learn this behavior?
How is this familiar to you is important for you to understand because this is how we can
shift going from being a non-truth teller to being a truth teller.
Because it's the same way, and let's talk about actually how boundaries come into all
of this.
What does it mean to have healthy boundaries?
At this point, if you are a long-term listener of this show, you know it means that you know
your preferences, your desires, your limits, and your deal breakers.
And you have the ability to communicate them with transparency when you so choose.
What I'm really talking about with teaching you how to be fluent in the language of boundaries
is really this exact thing that this episode is about.
It's learning to talk true and honor the way you feel.
Because part of what happens when we don't, like what was happening with my friend with
that truck example, is that she had anticipatory resentment, right?
Every day she was feeling more and more resentful, like her neighbor was doing something intentionally
to her and she really wasn't.
And they have a good relationship.
Like they have a friendship.
She wasn't just some rando who wanted to borrow her truck, like she knows this person.
And all of that ruminating was just taking away present moment awareness for my friend
where she was like, who?
I would never do that to someone.
I would never be like that.
Rather than just being generous in the assumption that maybe she didn't think of it, she wasn't
trying to get over on you for 20 bucks, she was overwhelmed.
Like try to make a generous assumption for the people.
And I'm not saying people who do these things over and over again, once you've established
a boundary, that's not what I'm talking about, but I'm talking about we will talk ourselves
out of having the boundary conversation, asserting the truth about how we feel under the guise
that they should already know- if they were a decent person, they would know.
I shouldn't have to tell them, which I really see as an excuse to just not have a hard conversation.
You feel uncomfortable with the conversation, so you're putting it on them, basically.
But these are conversations.
Listen, we are responsible for our resentments, we are responsible for our grudges.
We are responsible for them.
They're happening in the vacuum of your own mind.
So much of the time when we're holding a grudge against someone, they literally don't even
know it.
So it's not doing anything to the quality of their life, but it's really negatively
impacting the quality of your life if you're doing that.
So boundaries, boundaries, boundaries.
And again, going back to where are you not telling the truth in your life?
And another thing that happens to the other people in relationship with the non-truth
tellers is that when they find out the truth, if they do, they feel embarrassed, right?
If something's been bothering you, if you let someone think that you like something
that you didn't- I told this story years ago, but it was true.
I had a client, the first date she went on with her husband was at a Mexican restaurant.
And so she never really told him that she didn't like Mexican food.
So every anniversary, they went back to this Mexican place and they were married for like
15 years.
And she's like, so am I telling him that?
I just never told him that I don't like Mexican food because like, am I telling him that?
And I'm like, how about you just tell him that you'd like to try something new?
And then she ended up telling him, you know, I never really told you.
And he was like, wait, so you've gone for our anniversary dinner for the past 15 years
to this Mexican restaurant, even though you don't like Mexican food?
Why didn't you just tell me?
And he was really pissed and upset.
He was like, you know, here it is.
I thought that this was like a special thing between us and the whole time you were like
stuffing down beans and rice that you didn't even like, like why did you do that?
And she came in and, you know, part of it was us talking about, I was like, why did
you do that?
She's like, I felt like I waited too long to tell the truth and it was too late.
And I was like, well, I actually think that there's many other ways that we could have
gone about handling this.
You can tell the truth.
You could also say, I really just wanted to try something different.
We've gone to this place for 15 years.
I don't really have much of a taste for Mexican anymore.
You could say that.
Now, is that being fully transparent?
No.
But do I think that would be a terrible way of giving that news?
No, I think that would be a little bit of a softer way of doing it, and she still would've
been taking care of the whole point, which is that she didn't wanna go out and eat Mexican
food anymore with him.
So I'd love to know what you think about that.
I just feel like sometimes people get into honesty in a way where they feel like they
just have to confess it, direct, tell the truth.
And when you start telling the truth early and often, you won't find yourself in situations
where you weren't telling the truth for years on end.
And then the other person doesn't have to end up feeling like a jerk about it, which
is what happens.
And then you feel bad as well.
So my hope for you in this episode is that again, you'll take away the fact that how
you feel, what you think, what you want matters.
And it needs to matter to you more than what anyone else wants, thinks or feels.
And again, doesn't mean we can't compromise, but you need to know this and you need to
prioritize this.
And this is what talking true will bring into your life.
Your ability to tell the truth about how you feel and who you are is going to positively
impact every relationship in your life.
And the people who you want to be known by will know you so much better, even if it's
just your preferences that you're sharing
with them in a way that you didn't used to.
Just know that this is the way that we build deeper intimacy.
It isn't always just these big huge things.
It is the small things that make up our daily lives.
So I would love to know what you think about this.
How good are you at Talking True?
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Anyway, I hope you guys have the most amazing week and as always, take care of you.