Episode 219: How to Establish Boundaries with Diane Sanfilippo
It's one thing to talk about boundaries (Episode 218), but it's another thing to establish and uphold them because let’s be honest - it can be a hard thing to do.
So in this episode, I invited my friend, Diane Sanfilippo, to join me for a conversation on how to set boundaries.
Diane is a certified nutrition consultant. She’s the owner and founder of Balanced Bites Wholesome Foods, a New York Times bestselling author, and the co-host of the Full Plate Podcast, a new podcast talking about anti-diet culture, mental health, & boundaries. And, she’s been helping people establish boundaries for years, both in real life and on her social media platforms.
You’ll hear us talk about:
How Diane naturally embodies her Human Design
How she came to help people with boundaries
Why boundaries are a good thing
The different levels of boundaries
Practical tips that you can try today to set boundaries
Listen to the Episode:
Mentioned in the Episode:
FREE GUIDE: Your Human Design, Discovered
Connect with Diane Sanfilippo:
Balanced Bites Wholesome Food’s website
Connect with Diane on Instagram
Balanced Bites Instagram
Connect with Naomi:
Share the Episode:
“Resentment is one of the biggest signs that you need to set a boundary, anger, resentment, frustration, all those things.”
Read the Transcript:
Naomi Nakamura: Hey there, and welcome back to The Live FAB Life Podcast. I'm your host, Naomi Nakamura, and I am really happy to be back here with you for another episode.
Now, last week at Episode 218, I did a solo episode talking about Human Design and boundaries, because I feel that if you are leaning into your design and aligning yourself to your design, boundaries are inevitable, and I also talked about where you can look to on your human design chart that can illuminate what areas you might want to consider establishing boundaries.
Now, it's one thing to talk about it, establishing boundaries, and it's another thing to go about actually, one, establishing them, and then two, upholding them, because what good are boundaries if you're not going to uphold them for yourself.
So today, I invited my friend, Diane Sanfilippo, to join me in talking about how to go about setting boundaries.
Diane is a certified nutrition consultant. She is a New York Times bestselling author. She's the owner and founder of Balanced Bites Wholesome Foods. She is the past co-host of the award-winning podcast, Balanced Bites, and she's the current co-host of the Full Plate Podcast, a new podcast talking about anti diet culture, mental health, boundaries, and a whole lot more.
I consider Diane an expert in boundaries. She's taught workshops on them. She's helped many people both through her online forum, as well as people in real life go about establishing them. And so, we talk about how she came to be an expert in this area. We talk about why boundaries are a good thing and can be something that's very beneficial in cultivating healthy relationships. She talks about different levels of boundaries and she shares some really practical, actionable tips that you can start doing today to go about establishing those boundaries.
And then, we share some personal experiences that we've had throughout our lives in establishing boundaries. So, with that, let's just get to the show.
Hello, my friend. Welcome back to the show.
Diane Sanfilippo: Hello. Naomi Nakamura: Yeah. It's been a little over three years since you're on.
Diane Sanfilippo: I don't have a memory of when that was, so...
Naomi Nakamura: It was when your last book came out.
Diane Sanfilippo: Wow.
Naomi Nakamura: So, it's been over three years. It's way back in-
Diane Sanfilippo: Well, also, the last two years are such a blur.
Naomi Nakamura: That is true. That is true. Well, so for those who are new to the show, and actually, obviously, my audience has shifted, so there are a lot of people who are newer, can you introduce yourself and tell us what it is that you do?
Diane Sanfilippo: What do I do. Well, I'm best known as an author, a New York Times bestselling author of a couple of different dietary cookbooks, so Practical Paleo being the first one, 21-Day Sugar Detox, and then I have a keto book that came out, that was probably the last time we did a podcast.
Although we are connected more so through the sugar detox stuff, but what I do lately, I am running my real food business, called Balanced Bites, and people can find out about that at balancedbites.com. We sell organic spice blends, some snacks like granola and frozen meals that people can get delivered nationwide, anywhere in the country.
Naomi Nakamura: Which is very great during the summer when you don't want to cook, you don't have air condition like in San Francisco.
Diane Sanfilippo: They're Naomi's favorite thing during the summer, for sure. But they're great during the winter too, or any season, because there's basically just yummy, wholesome comfort food, but healthy.
Naomi Nakamura: And you don't have to cook.
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah.
Naomi Nakamura: That's my main thing, that I don't have to cook.
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah. So, yeah. So I'm basically running the company now, and I've also switched gears. I guess you could call it that. Basically, over the last couple of years, I've made a real shift in the way that I think about health and wellness and nutrition, and I actually now have a new podcast about anti-diet topics, which is so interesting that it's flipping so many things on their head, of things that I used to talk about.
And I know we're going to talk about boundaries, but today, and so, it is a really interesting thing to actually speak on a topic almost in an opposite way, and also need to conduct myself in a way that I'm able to both maintain my boundaries with people who have questions or concerns, but also, I have worked on flexing them a lot more than I used to, because I'm now treading in very new waters with the topic that I'm speaking about, and I know that people have questions, and the great thing is, people are genuinely just curious and asking good questions, and not coming at me in an attacking way.
So, we can talk more about that later, but basically, yeah, I guess, for what it's worth, also some sort of influencer, social media, just because of having written books and having built a following through that, and also having had a previous podcast for about eight years, the Balanced Bites podcast, from 2011 to 2019. But now the new show is called Full Plate, so if anybody's curious and wants to listen in and know what the heck it means to talk about anti-diet and all of that, we do talk about boundaries as well and mental health topics and all of that.
Naomi Nakamura: So before you get into boundaries, you are actually the one that, I don't want to say turned me on to human design, because I had actually... I was aware of my hype and all of that from two or three years before a mutual friend of ours did turn me onto that. But again, I wasn't in the space for it at the time, but during the pandemic, I remember we took our dogs for a walk around the block in your neighborhood and you had just had a reading, and of course, me being a 1/3 as well, the curiosity got ahold of me, and so I had to go down that road. But your design, you're a 1/3 student manifestor, and I would say-
Diane Sanfilippo: Your face.
Naomi Nakamura: I would say, of anyone I know, you embodied your design before you likely even knew about human design. And so, even in what you just said, just now introducing yourself, I could see the embodiment of your design coming through.
Diane Sanfilippo: What do you mean?
Naomi Nakamura: When you said how you are flexing your boundaries and how there's a lot of curiosity, because you've shifted your perspective on different of things, but people have been genuinely curious and not trolls, as we know social media can be.
And to me, that is because you've been very upfront and communicative and informing people, which is the strategy of the Manifestor, and when you inform them, then people know what to expect from you and understand, and it manages their expectations, which then decreases friction for you.
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah, yeah. I would say that. I think I knew that very inherently before learning my human design. I knew it because I watched it happen, I've watched it happen where... I feel like I've always been that way, though, where I let people know what I'm doing and they can decide if they're interested or not, because especially-
Naomi Nakamura: Spoken like a true manifestor.
Diane Sanfilippo: But I think it's especially true in the time and space of social media, and knowing that something that you share is available for an infinite number of people to see, but it is not for an infinite number of people. And I know that if people want to be along for whatever it is I'm doing, cool, they can click in and be like, "Okay, that's interesting." And if not, then they don't have to. But I witnessed people who are interested, but just not sure how to follow along, but I'm like, "Just hang with me, it's going to take some time." And anyway, yeah. So, but on human design, I think I'd had that reading, and I'm the same way you are, where I like to discover things. I'll get a inkling from someone, and then I like to dive into it.
Naomi Nakamura: It's our 1/3. Well, it's the 1, where we need to have all the knowledge, and then the 3, where we have to experience it, and then, that's where our wisdom comes from.
Diane Sanfilippo: I like to choose how I-
Naomi Nakamura: Yes.
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah, I like to choose how I'm going to learn something, and certain things I'll learn in certain ways, and certain things I'll learn in other ways, but yeah, that is pretty interesting. That's funny that you can hear the Manifestorness.
Naomi Nakamura: It's funny, when I hear people speak and I know their design, and I can... Literally, the words coming out of their mouth, they are embodying their design and they don't even realize it. I know somebody who's a generator, and when she's like giving advice about something, she's like, "Just feel it in your gut." I don't want to be like, "Manifestors and manifesting generators and generators do, the rest of us don't." But knowing who you are, that is how you feel with it.
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah, that's so interesting.
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah. So when it comes to boundaries, I guess, is this something that, in hindsight, you practice, even in your formative years?
Diane Sanfilippo: I can't really remember too much, probably more boundaries, just like the self-protection was the way that I, I guess, grew up, or just like taking care of myself. I was one of those kids who... I, by all measures, that someone from the outside looking in would have seen I was very provided for, we had a roof over our head and clothes and shoes and food and nothing... Wasn't missing anything, but we had a tragedy in our family when I was a freshman in high school, and for the next handful of years... And there had been other things before that, just caused a lot of like turmoil in the house, that looking back, I realized there was a bit of a tumultuous energy in the house, and I was like a go to my room on my own and just close the door, close the world out, take care of myself, bring my food, take my dinner into my room where it would be quiet and just peaceful, do my thing.
And I think that is probably my first memory of me creating my own boundaries, of, I'm not participating in whatever that is. And so when I teach about boundaries now, I always talk about these different levels of boundaries. And I think most people think that a boundary has to be like an ultimatum, where you're telling someone, "Well, if you're not going to stop doing this, then X, Y, Z." Whatever the consequence is going to be. And the reality is, the first level of boundary that I see as this light touch of a boundary, that doesn't involve confrontation, doesn't even involve other people knowing what you're doing, it is just a boundary that you set for yourself, and it's based on how you feel, and just being very in tune with recognizing how the outside world is affecting how you're feeling, and that you almost always have some kind of choice, even... I did, even as a kid, I had some kind of choice to just go to my own room and opt out of whatever was happening. So I think that's probably what I can remember of it.
Naomi Nakamura: Did you, I guess, encounter resistance when doing that? Did your parents get upset at you? Like, "Why are you eating your room?" Or...
Diane Sanfilippo: No, never. I think it made things easier because I just... No, I don't remember any resistance to that. Now, I would also test boundaries, in terms of my parents would try to ground me for something that was...
Naomi Nakamura: I Love that way, they were trying to.
Diane Sanfilippo: I don't remember what they would try to tell me I was in trouble for, but I remember thinking, "You're just trying to punish me to punish me." And whatever that was, probably for talking back, honestly, and I would just leave, I would go to the same friend's house that I always went to. It's not like I was off getting into trouble. I was literally going to someone else's house to sit in a basement and drink soda, eat chips, and watch movies.
This is what we did in the 80's and 90s, or I guess this is probably the 90s, when I was old enough to do stuff like that, like leave the house on my own. But yeah, I think that was probably... I was like testing those boundaries at that point.
But yeah, I don't remember ever really saying much to people until I got a bit older, and really verbalizing those things, and probably through language of just, no, I don't want to do that thing, just declining an invitation, for a lot of people, is really, really hard. There's so many people pleasers out there, and people have a lot of trouble just saying no to something, I think saying no, or just not ever picking up a cigarette, to smoke a cigarette. I think as a teenager, whatever, as I got older, that was probably a boundary of my own too, where it was like, "Nope, I just... No thanks, not interested." Those types of things.
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah, I've never had a problem say no, so I get that.
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah, but I recognize that a lot of people do, and just inherently through their own nature or through the way that they're brought up, whether it's just the way that their parents raised them, or if it was a different... Sometimes a religious family might have certain expectations of you, depending on what that upbringing is like. So I know that there are lots of people who really struggle with that in different ways, and I think that first line of struggle is just the ability to say no to something.
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah. What was the moment or what was the situation when you realized that like, "Hey, this is something that I can help other people with?
Diane Sanfilippo: It was probably... I didn't really have the language of saying like, "We're going to talk about boundaries." Although maybe I did a little bit, I remember looking back through episodes of the Balanced Bites Podcast and the archives, but some of the first times that I was talking to people to help them stand up for themselves, essentially, was regarding food and nutrition, and particularly around things like not drinking, if they didn't want to drink alcohol, and if they were doing my sugar detox program. This is probably many, many years ago now, and they weren't sure or how to respond to people who are lightly pressuring them for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it's coworkers, hopefully it's not people you're close friends with who are pressuring you, but sometimes people that, they don't have a closer relationship with, and you just never know why they're acting that way.
Naomi Nakamura: Their intentions are.
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah. I think for the most part, whatever, we can get into it, but I think the context of who you're talking to matters. When it's people who are not as close to you, and you're just trying to put up this light boundary of, how can I just respond and deflect in the moment so that I don't have to get into it with these people, because we're not close. Just helping people with that language, I think that was the beginning.
And I did look back and we did have some conversations around boundaries and all of that. People would ask, "What do I do if my parents are watching my kids for the weekend, and here's what we normally do with them, and here's the way that we feed them, or what types of things we want them... Activities or technology or any kind of boundaries that they put in place as parents." And they would ask us questions about how to kind of handle that with other people.
So that was the type of advice that people would ask. This was many years ago now. And then it came to a head over the last, I would say, five years, with social media, because the number of people. When you have a large number of people following you, and the amount of access that they have is just beyond the amount of access that you would normally give anyone, it's essentially as if thousands of people can be text messaging you all day long, and you never know what kind of message you're opening, you could be opening flowers or a bomb.
Naomi Nakamura: I've been with you when you've opened bombs, so yeah, I've witnessed it.
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah, do you remember when we were in LA and somebody was messaging me.
Naomi Nakamura: It was The Parents of Kids With Allergies.
Diane Sanfilippo: That was [crosstalk 00:15:52]
Naomi Nakamura: You had two at the same time.
Diane Sanfilippo: There were two things happening at the same time. And somebody was messaging me, telling me that I didn't support sex workers or something, and I was like, "I don't even know where that was coming from." It was very bizarre, and I was like, "You do whatever you want to do." And also-
Naomi Nakamura: I remember we were driving in the car, going to dinner, and you're like, "oh my God, I'm getting these messages."
Diane Sanfilippo: I really had no idea where they were coming from. It was literally, opening my DMS was like opening a series of bombs, and I've talked to other creators and influencers about it, and it's just extremely stressful, and you get this spike of cortisol. It's just, nobody needs to have that feeling.
But many years ago there were controls in place, you couldn't even turn off direct messaging. And then slowly over the last, I would say it's only been the last two to three years, that... And Instagram is primarily what I'm talking about. They put so many more controls into place, including ways to pause people who tap the follow button. You can actually put them in a holding, where they can't make a comment for a day, two days a week, two weeks. There's all kinds of settings now, but in the past, people could just come to your page and basically bully you into oblivion, or they could, whatever. There were just so many ways for people to bully you online, or to just be rude, or to drop comments that were super negative, and so-
Naomi Nakamura: I always find the psyche behind that really fascinating, which is not a topic for today, but I just want to say, I find the psyche behind people who can't help themselves and feel like they have to do that just fascinating. Because I'm like, "This is not something you would ever say to someone's face, whether you know them or not."
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah, yeah. It's sad because I've always known that that's not something that a happy, high functioning person would do. I think a lot of times people who act that way feel that they don't have a lot of agency in their lives, and they're unhappy, and it gives them a sense of control in a world where they otherwise feel that they don't have a lot of control. And I know that it's not about me, but it doesn't make it feel less stressful.
Naomi Nakamura: But it still invades your space and your time and your energy.
Diane Sanfilippo: Exactly.
Naomi Nakamura: It still invades it.
Diane Sanfilippo: So before all of these controls were put into place, I was verbalizing a lot of boundaries, and it was making people really uncomfortable, even starting with something really basic. This was probably, in hindsight, and I've said this on my own podcast, talking about this, I was probably more harsh than I needed to be from the beginning, but it's partially because there were no controls from the app, no protection, but I literally would... People would ask me a question that was a highly Googleable question, and I would respond and tell them that I thought that they should Google it. And you know, in a very direct way, I was also not softening the blow, a little bit of that.
And I recognized that at the time, that was new for a lot of people. People were just not typically met with any resistance whatsoever. They would ask the world of creators, and a lot of creators who are people pleasers or who relied more on the audience, relying on them, I don't know how else to put it, but they did not... A lot of people don't cultivate a community of self-reliant people, they want people to need them, and I don't want that. I don't want you needing me and nursing off of me, you know what I mean?
Naomi Nakamura: But I also think people don't necessarily understand, just because you're an influencer, that you all have the same business model. And so, your business model is very much not reliant on the clicks per page on your blog, whereas other people are. And so in addition to everything you just mentioned, yeah...
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah, totally. That's totally part of it. And just personalities in general, somebody might love answering those really inane questions, and I don't.
Somebody might love when someone says, "Where can I buy those tortillas?" And I'm like, "I am not a store locator." But somebody else genuinely doesn't mind it. And so I basically verbalizing these boundaries many years ago, and it really got people upset to the point where they would storm off and unfollow, and then they would come back years later, like, "I remember you said this thing and I got really upset and I realized it had nothing to do with you. I just wasn't used to somebody setting boundaries." And I was like, "Okay."
But yeah, that's the evolution of it, really started with me talking about like nutrition and health and how people can have those conversations, and then it got into this whole social media thing. And then over time, people were telling me that they were learning about boundaries from me, even though I wasn't formally teaching about it at that time, just through the example that I set, which is ultimately, I know part of my Human Design, too, is that I am someone, or just my... [crosstalk 00:20:37] I don't know, it's in my Human Design, but I'm someone who teaches through my own example.
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah, and that's the Third line, yeah. Yeah, so you now teach, or you have taught workshops on boundaries. How did that come about?
Diane Sanfilippo: People asked me to teach. People asked me to teach some workshops, and I put them on pause for the moment, but maybe it's something that I'll bring back, but...
Naomi Nakamura: I attended one of them, and it was really... I don't know, I'm just really into observing people's motivations, and again, their psyche and where they're at. And it was really interesting conversation, but based on your interactions on social media and conducting several of these workshops, what would you say are maybe the top one or two challenges people have with boundaries, whether they be setting them or upholding them or anything?
Diane Sanfilippo: The first one, I think is, because I've seen the type of question come in a lot. The first one is about work expectations, especially the work/life balance and the time balance, now that a lot of people are working from home. And it's either, how do I prioritize and set boundaries for myself? Or how do I let my boss know, basically, that I'm not available outside of these working hours? So I would say like the work/life balancing is definitely one of the biggest ones. And the way that I end up talking to people about that is, there's a few ways to approach it, and you can have this light touch, as I was saying, it's not like you need to set an ultimatum with your boss, like, "You need to stop texting me or I'm quitting." It just doesn't need to get to that.
But the first thing that people need to work on, their own expectations of when they are going to be working, and let's just say somebody currently works from 9:00 AM, loosely until 9:00 PM, maybe they pretty much stop at 5:00, but they're still responding to emails until 09:00, I just tell people, give yourself a cutoff of 08:00, give yourself a cutoff of 07:00, keep inching it back, and you'll notice that the world does not fall apart. And I say this to the people who are not literally saving lives, because most of us are not saving lives, and obviously if you work an ER job, or you are on call and you're a medical professional, this is not about you, that's a whole other mess of, probably, a way bigger lack of boundaries for a lot of people who are overworked by virtue of their systems. But just inching it back so that you can see that you're going to be okay and that people will be okay to get that response later. People have to prove to themselves that lightly setting those as boundaries and treading into waters of, maybe, I'm just going to throw it out there, slightly disappointing someone in the moment in order to protect your time and energy and boundaries. But the other thing that people can often do as well is just, again, this is in a light boundary realm, you're not confronting anybody, but you can just reclarify with your boss, like, "Hey, I just want to clarify, what are my expected working hours here? I've been under the impression that it's from this to this, can you just remind me, is that what you expect?" And just be really breezy, just be breezy about it and get that clarification, because if your boss is like, "Yeah, this is what I expect." Then you can say, "Okay, sounds good." And you can respond to someone or set an autoresponder if people are writing to you outside of those hours, and just say, "Hey, thanks for getting in touch. I'll get back to you." Starting whatever time tomorrow with, again, an autoresponder or something that's just set up, or just don't respond until that next day, [crosstalk 00:24:07] and it'll Be okay.
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah. So I shared this in the last episode, but that was my first recollection setting a professional boundary. When I started at the company that I'm currently at almost 15 years ago, it was a totally different group of people who have since moved on, so I don't feel I'm violating anyone by telling this story, but the management at that time was very micromanaging, it was very demanding. And I had so much anxiety, this is literally what led me to therapy, and I still work with my therapist today, but this is back in 2008, 2009.
I literally, my stomach would turn every time my inbox would ping or I get a text message. And we're sitting at in a conference room because there happened to be an escalation over the weekend, and our director had said, "Oh, was is going on, and I sent a message to this person on Saturday, and he responded to me, so that let me know that it was okay to keep responding to him." And that was like a light bulb went off in my head, that was like, "Okay, she actually just said, she doesn't expect people to respond." That's actually what she said, so if I don't respond, they're going to leave me alone, and so I stopped responding after hours on weekends, and I didn't get in trouble, nothing happened, and that unspoken boundary was respected.
Diane Sanfilippo: That's the teaching people how to treat you thing, and I don't know if that was originally a Dr. Philism or who it came from originally. I feel like it can't be originally from him, but we do teach people how to treat us, and to your point- Naomi Nakamura: And that's the thing with, when you're responding to emails at 9:00 PM, you're telling people it's okay to email me then because I'm going to email you, I'm going to respond to you.
Diane Sanfilippo: Not only is it okay, but I will respond. Exactly.
Naomi Nakamura: Right.
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah.
Naomi Nakamura: Opposite to that, though, I do have a leader who I still work with now, and he is notorious for shooting off texts and, not texts, but emails at all hours of the night. In fact, the running joke is, does he ever sleep? And it was stressing people out because people felt like they needed be responsive. And he finally said, "You guys, you know that when I send you these messages, I don't expect you to on at that time, it's just, this is an idea going on in my head and I want to get it out soon before I lose that thought." But that really helped a lot of people in terms of like, "Okay, managed working with him as well."
Diane Sanfilippo: I've had that same conversation with people on my team, and that particular issue, I think for people who work with people were they're the boss, if they're listening and they're the boss, there's two different ways to deal with that, and one is the way that this person did, where they say, "Hey, just so you know, I'm going to send this message, I don't expect you to do anything with it." But the other is, if people are saying, "This is hard for us to deal with because these pings are coming in." And if a group of people is telling you that your behavior is unnerving to them, then it also, in some ways, can be helpful to check yourself and be like, "Is there another way I could collect these thoughts up to then share them on Monday?"
So I definitely have done that in the past, where I'm like, "Oh, I just don't want to forget." And now I start sending myself a text message, and then when Monday comes around and I have a meeting with my team, I just go through the three to five bullet points that I had texted myself over the weekend, of things that I wanted to make sure that I didn't forget, or whatever the method is that somebody can collect those thoughts. But instead of unloading on other people, to have them hold onto it and stress about it. And that's just a additional kind of, I don't know, just a development of leadership that I think we can choose either. And if our team is okay with us sending them and people saying like, "You know what, I'm just not going to respond." That's okay, but at the same time, I think that we can also manage that differently too, because ultimate, pinging people at off hours, I think it can be managed differently.
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah, you can capture those thoughts in many different ways. Simply Apple Note, a note on your phone.
Diane Sanfilippo: Right. And chances are too, the amount of urgency that you felt will diminish over time, to the benefit of other people. You know what I mean? The thing that they thought was so urgent in the moment, two days later, when the time comes [crosstalk 00:28:10]
Naomi Nakamura: They forget about.
Diane Sanfilippo: ... it might not be that urgent, or maybe it's still relevant and urgent, but I think there are a lot of things that are less urgent [crosstalk 00:28:17].
Naomi Nakamura: I will admit, when I get like these, I feel like they're random and not very thought through requests, I will actually sit on them for a day or two to see, are you still asking for it in two days? Because I'm going to like bet that you're not going to be, so I'm just going to silently ignore it and see what happens. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't.
Diane Sanfilippo: Oh my gosh.
Naomi Nakamura: What about with more high stakes boundaries? I find that it's a lot easier to set them with people who I'm less emotionally invested in.
Diane Sanfilippo: Right, yeah, that's the other common one, would be with a parent or a loved one, a close family member, something along those lines, in laws, that's really common too. And it is hard, and I think that the context is always important, who is this person? How often do you see them? How often does this issue come up? What is the likelihood that it will keep coming up up? Because we don't need to set a boundary around every interaction that may have been upsetting or stressful to us.
Sometimes it's going to happen once, like something that happens at a wedding could be really stressful, but how often is that likely to repeat itself? Not that often. Something that happens every holiday that you get together, okay, that might be worth addressing. So the first thing is to really consider the context and how often this thing will come up, how important is to is it to you to make these interactions feel less stressful and less resentful? Resentment is one of the biggest signs that you need to set a boundary, anger, resentment, frustration, all those things.
But you also need to consider what is the outcome that you desire from that interaction and from the setting of the boundary. And so, for a lot of people, the outcome that we desire is a behavior change in another person, and the really hard part is, we have very little control over that, and we will have...
Well, we can't control it at all. We can hope that we have some influence over it by sharing our feelings and sharing how this interaction is affecting us, and it really depends on how open and, I would say, open-minded, loving and evolved of a thinker this other person is, to hearing that they might be upsetting you and potentially changing their behavior.
And so, what needs to happen is we need to be okay with the potential outcomes of setting that boundary, because ultimately, if your desire from setting the boundary is obviously an improved relationship, but that person is unwilling to do anything to make a positive impact on this issue, then you risk losing a relationship. But we always need to consider, what are we actually losing? Because if we don't feel good in that relationship, are we really losing something? And it's hard to say no when we are blood relatives with somebody, it's really hard to say, I'm actually not losing much if this person can't respect me, if they're family. That's the hardest, but that is not a reason to not do it, because what you're doing is sacrificing yourself, and then you're showing up inauthentically, and I think that's the worst part, is that you bring somebody to the interaction and to that relationship, who is not your true self. And then I don't really know what we're doing here if that's how we're showing up, and that's people pleasing, in that moment you're people pleasing.
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah, and then that bitterness and that resentment just sets in, and it just grows with every interaction. And I actually went through this very exact situation you just described last year. I had someone who I've always tried to be very supportive of and very there for, because this person had a lot of... Their life had a lot of disruption to it. That was not their fault of their own, but at the same time, being available to this person and providing emotional support, but yet not receiving it back, was, I felt, disrespectful.
And admittedly, I didn't go about setting that boundaries in the best way. What I did was I mirrored their behavior back one time, and it did not land well. And I knew that if I went about it than another way, it was not going to be a good outcome anyway. So all I did was, I didn't say anything, I just mirrored the behavior back. I got chewed out for it, which I expected to. Never closed the door, I'm like, "When you are ready to have an adult discussion about this, the door's always opened." That's never come back, and that relationship is nonexistent right now, but I knew that was a possibility, but I was willing to do that because it was a form of respect for myself, to set that.
Diane Sanfilippo: And that's all it is, setting a boundary is really just, how do I feel in this moment, and how do I want to feel? And if those two things are not aligned, is there something I can do about it? And you cannot change that other person's behavior. You can communicate how you're feeling, which I think is one of the most important things about boundaries, is that a lot of people think that we create boundaries or set boundaries to keep other people out of lives, and that's just not true. It's in order to keep a positive, healthy, loving, whatever type of relationship, respectful relationship, in order to keep the relationship, that's why we set the boundary. Because we need to have the relationship, but it cannot be the way it has been or the way it's been going. And so, I think ,ultimately, if we figure out that person is not interested in respecting our boundary, then we realize that's not a relationship that we actually wanted, and that can be really hard.
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah, you have to mention the cost [crosstalk 00:33:51].
Diane Sanfilippo: Again, especially with family.
Naomi Nakamura: What is the cost of me continuing to foster this, versus not.
Diane Sanfilippo: Right. Totally. And I think a lot of times those can be a little more unspoken for some people. If you're listening and you're like, "I don't want to tell this person exactly how I'm feeling, I'm embarrassed, or I don't know that they'll receive it well." Remember that you can set a boundary by just backing, like tippy-toeing backwards from the amount of interaction that you have with a person. You can respond less often, you can be a little more distant in the way that you respond, just to casually phase things out, that is an option, and I don't think that's a bad option to take in situations where you don't feel like confronting something very, very head on.
But if it is a situation where, let's just say it's like a sibling, and you feel like your sibling would want to know that they're upsetting you, and that they would handle that with, for lack of a better word, tenderness. They would actually receive it and hear, despite how hard it might be to hear, they might be able to say, "Wow, I didn't realize I was doing that when we spent time. I didn't realize that when I talked about this, that it was upsetting you." Or whatever. Give someone the benefit of the doubt if you think that they love and care about you, or respect and care about you, depending on the context. If it's a working relationship, give someone the benefit of the doubt, make that attempt.
Setting a boundary and communicating your needs is a very generous thing to do, because it assumes positive intent on the part of the other person, which I think is, and this is part of like what Brené Brown teach teaches about the anatomy of trust, is that we need to assume positive intent of the other person if we are going to have a trusting relationship. And I think that setting the boundary assumes that the other person is not meaning to upset you, and that they will have a positive reception, at least to hearing the truth.
Naomi Nakamura: Sometimes we do need to be confrontational. I am at least twice a month with my mom, because she just can't help but press that forward button of whatever email chain she got.
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah. And to try and remind them not to send email forwards, you may have a high level of confrontation, but the investment or the potential pain to your emotions is very low there. You're not going to be [crosstalk 00:36:24] personally attacked if she does it again, you're just going to be frustrated and annoyed that she didn't listen. Totally, and I get that too. I do that sometimes with my mom, where I'm like-
Naomi Nakamura: I'm like, "If you send me one more, I'm marking you a spam. I'm marking you as spam, that's it."
Diane Sanfilippo: That's a boundary, and I will not receive your future emails about holiday plans or anything else.
Naomi Nakamura: That's so funny.
Diane Sanfilippo: People are like, "I wish that was the boundary I need to set."
Naomi Nakamura: Sometimes it's received well and sometimes it's not, but I guarantee you, two weeks later, but I get another one of those emails in my inbox.
Diane Sanfilippo: That's funny.
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah. So this workshop, you're not offering them currently.
Diane Sanfilippo: Not at this exact moment, but I may again in the future. I have an email list if people are interested. They go over to my Instagram, there's a place to sign up for my email, so if I decide to teach it again, I think I just want to tweak it a little bit, because after every time, I'm sure that's in my chart, after every time I teach a workshop, I find something I want to-
Naomi Nakamura: You Learned a little bit more that you want to...
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah, I just want to improve it a little bit. And people can definitely listen to the podcast, they can listen to Full Plate and hear, we just recently did a series on boundaries, so we did a part one, where it's the foundational elements, and then part two is a lot more scenarios, so some of the stuff we were just talking about, but we go through a few more scenarios in the podcast episodes, so yeah...
Naomi Nakamura: And what is your Instagram?
Diane Sanfilippo: Just @ my name, @Dianesanfillipo, and you start typing in-
Naomi Nakamura: [crosstalk 00:37:53] in the podcast, in the show notes. And then what's the other Instagram for the podcast, as well as that's the business.
Diane Sanfilippo: So @balancedbites, B-A-L-A-N-C-E-D bites is our food brand, and then @fullplate.podcast is podcast Instagram. And we put up new episodes every Monday, so folks can tune in there and check it out.
Naomi Nakamura: Awesome. And for those listening, if you haven't listened to the episode before this, I did one talking about where in your human design chart might shed light on areas that you might want to consider setting boundaries around for yourself. So if you haven't listened to that, well check that one on too. But thank you so much for spending an hour of your Sunday with me.
Diane Sanfilippo: Always fun to chat about this stuff.
Naomi Nakamura: But yeah, that weekend in LA, that was a trip.
Diane Sanfilippo: I remember we were at the gym, and I was getting these messages.
Naomi Nakamura: Well, it went from the gym in the morning to sushi at night. It was an all day thing, from two different groups. Remember? It was from-
Diane Sanfilippo: Yes, I do remember.
Naomi Nakamura: It was Parents of Kids With Allergies, who were upset that you wrote something in your book eight years ago.
Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah, yep, that was one of them. Yeah, it was wild. Now Instagram has a lot more built in controls and boundaries that we can set digitally, which is really helpful.
Naomi Nakamura: Yeah, and on the flip side of that, I lost Coco's account, but that's a story for another day. Anyways, thank you so much. I will have links to all of the contact information in the show notes, and people can find you there to connect with.
Diane Sanfilippo: Awesome.
Naomi Nakamura is a Health x Human Design coach who’s creating a healthier society through aligned energy.
She blends a bespoke mix of Functional Nutrition and Human Design to help others shift into alignment to leverage and correctly manage their energy to support their body, mind, and spirit.
She believes that when we embrace our authenticity and lean into our bio-individuality, we naturally live a life of freedom, empowerment, and optimal health.
Naomi resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and can often be found exploring the area with her puppy girl, Coco Pop!
Connect with Naomi on: Instagram
| Pinterest
