- Hi there, it's Kati again, thanks for checking back.
I know you're thinking, "Where is she, what is this?"
I'm doing my video a little different this week.
I know normally I bring out my fancy camera,
and I sit everything up, and I try to get some studio time
so it's a little different setup than today's,
but I figure it's very telling of the topic today.
This is my office so that's what you're getting
a little peak into, and today's topic is about boundaries.
Oo, boundaries, I'm sure many of you have talked about this
if you've been in treatment, or just if you've worked
with a family therapist at any time.
I'm actually going to go through the steps that they
talk about in Structural Family Therapy,
but the thing that I mainly want you to remember,
is that I'm not just applying this to family members.
I'm applying this to all of your interpersonal relationships
so whether it's a best friend, or a boss at work,
or different parts of your family, your mom,
or your grandma, or your grandpa, or your aunts,
your brother, your sister, or whatever.
We're gonna include all people.
It could even be those kind of fringe friends I call them,
the ones that are like your associates kinda.
They're not really your friends, but you might call
them up and get together ever once in a while.
We're going to apply it to all of them.
There are three types of boundaries we're gonna talk about.
The first one in Clear Boundaries.
Sounds pretty basic, this is the healthy boundary.
This is what we're striving to get, and the way
that they describe that in the Structural Family Therapy
is that it is clear yet flexible.
Okay, what the heck does that mean?
I mean, it's clear, we know the boundary, we know.
For instance, I know that I wouldn't talk to my boss
about going out on Saturday night with my friends,
and we had a really good time.
I wouldn't talk to her about that
because that's not really appropriate.
Does that make sense, that's a very clear boundary,
but I may talk to her about something.
Let's say I don't talk to her about my family
that much because it's not work-related,
but let's say a family member passes away.
I have to leave work for a week.
I'm gonna have to talk to her about that
so my boundary's flexible because
in that particular scenario, it's important for me
to let her know so that's what I'm gonna do.
So, that's a Clear Boundary, that's the first type.
Now, the second type is a Rigid Boundary, oo, rigid.
These are kind of cold boundaries, I like to think of.
I think of rigid as they disturb the communication.
Okay, does that make sense?
I know that many of us may have a family like this,
or know that maybe either our family's like this,
or one of friend's family is like this.
But a family like is, you're on the outside.
If you're an outsider,
you don't know anything about the family.
Don't talk about the family to anyone not in the family.
Friends can even sometimes be like this.
I know that secrets need to be kept,
obviously for trust, and that's what
building a friendship relationship can be about is trust,
but what I mean by this, is you don't share anything.
They don't want anybody else coming.
Let's say you're going out to dinner.
They don't want it to be a group.
If you're going out for drinks, it's just you and them.
It's always you and them, it's very rigid.
In families, you don't talk about anything
outside of the family.
That would be shameful, it'd bring shame on the family.
"How dare you talk about our problems."
Have you every heard that term airing your dirty laundry?
"Don't air your dirty laundry blah, blah, blah."
People say stuff like that like,
"Keep your skeletons in your closet."
All the random stuff they say about keeping
those rigid boundaries, and it really hinders communication
as well as understanding, and a lot of times some of us,
I know if we grew up in a family like that,
we're left always wondering, "What was wrong with Dad?
"Why did Mom and Dad get divorced?
"Nobody ever talked about this?"
Thinks like that so that's the second type.
Now, the third type is Diffuse, it isn't a boundary.
Everybody floats in and out.
I call it the Small Town Syndrome.
Everybody's in everybody's business.
Your mom shares all your information with all your friends.
I had a girlfriend whose family was like this,
and her mom told everybody when she started her period.
We were like 12-years old, it was horrifying to her.
That's a Diffuse Boundary, they call it enmeshment
in the therapy world, but really it just means
everybody's in your business all the time.
You have no privacy, things like that.
Okay, why am I telling all of this?
The Diffuse Boundary and the Rigid Boundaries
tend to be what most of us with eating disorders
deal with all the time.
Oddly enough, it seems to be that our families tend to be
very rigid so nobody talks about anything
outside the family, but we may have a member of the family,
like a mother, who has no boundaries with you.
She'll tell you everything.
"You're dad and I broke up because he was cheating
"on me with this woman, and he said
"I wasn't having sex with him enough."
Stuff that you should not hear from a parent, as a child.
We tend to have a lot of those relationships,
so not only family, our family tends to kinda fall in one
of those categories where you don't talk about anything,
and "How dare you," and
"You're shameful, what a terrible child you are."
Blah, blah, blah, so we hear a lot of that garbage
that our eating disorder probably now tells you
because that's kinda what we learned, or we have
that complete enmeshment, where there's no Mother/Daughter,
Father/Daughter, there's no separation.
They're like your best friend.
We also find that in our relationships with other people.
Your mind is probably already spinning.
Well that friendship that I had that was really sick,
like toxic, you know we talked about toxic friends
in one of my other videos.
We tend to have a lot of these kind of relationships
in our life, where someone dumps a lot of stuff onto us,
more than we should actually have to handle
in a very healthy relationship.
That hopes that's kinda making sense.
I know it can be a little overwhelming,
but what I'd like you to do is to grab that journal.
I know, it's the journal, oo, but grab the journal,
and write down Clear Boundaries,
Rigid Boundaries, Diffuse Boundaries.
Leave some space between them, and start putting
relationships that you have, like my relationship
with my mom under whatever one it falls under.
Does she not tell you anything?
Do you always feel like you're left in the dark?
And, it's not very warm and comforting, it might be rigid.
Is it diffuse?
Does she tell you everything and share everything?
Do that for quite a few relationships.
You might have some clear boundaries in there too.
They're not all bad, but this is something that is
really good to take stock of periodically
in your life because the same reason we say
we need to get rid of those toxic friends.
We need to protect ourselves,
not with rigid boundaries, but with clear boundaries.
For instance, that enmeshed friend that calls you
all the time, and dumps stuff on you all the time.
It might be good for you to say, "You know what,
"after 9:00, I just don't have my phone on me, I just don't.
"I usually turn it off and charge it."
Or, whatever you need to say.
Creating a boundary around your private time and your space,
when you're not available.
We have so many ways to keep in touch with everybody,
sometimes that's one of the first boundaries to lay down
that can be more easily dealt with.
Just think about this, take some notes,
and don't forget to subscribe to my videos.
I think it might be on the other side right now
since I'm doing this video in this weird way.
Don't forget to subscribe, and as well as comment below.
I've been loving your comments as well as
those of you who've hopped on my website,
and have been communicating with each other.
I love the community that we're creating,
and I'd love to keep perpetuating that
so please leave your feedback and subscribe
so that next time I post something you know about it.
Thanks for checking back, and we'll continue
to work on this, and these boundaries, and other issues
as we take one step at a time towards
a healthy mind and a healthy body.