Alecia St. Germain 00:00
Before we get started, did you know you can get behind-the-scenes access to these episodes before anyone else? Meet other listeners of this podcast and connect with show guests, my co-hosts, and me live in real time. All you have to do is become a member of Podcast Club. We record episodes in front of a live virtual studio audience. Then, after the episode is finished, we open a private, unrecorded conversation where you can share your thoughts, ask questions to go even deeper on the topic of the day, and even influence the content covered in future episodes. Here's the thing: I love podcasting, but I love having real conversations with real people more than broadcasting into the ether. Social media promised us connection. Now it's morphing into something else entirely-a distraction to keep you scrolling. Podcast Club is my way of reclaiming the space for connection. If this sounds like your kind of room, come join us. Go to consciousedge.com/club and become a member of Podcast Club. I'm setting a boundary and protecting my peace. This is something that is said many times today. It's a very popular way of being able to stand up for yourself. And as more and more people are really speaking their truths, the meaning in this may have been lost and be used in the way it wasn't necessarily intended. So today's episode is really how do you know when you're setting a healthy boundary or somebody that you're have a relationship with is setting a healthy boundary, whether they work for you or it's a personal relationship, and when are you maybe avoiding something, or just don't want to do something that feels uncomfortable. So that's what we're going to dive into today. Hey, you leader, entrepreneur, business owner, solopreneur, whatever you call yourself, we know you're a visionary business builder, wealth seeker, looking to combine a passion for doing good with leading consciously. It's time to shift from a traditional focus of pure wealth accumulation to one that integrates well-being and fulfillment. You're here for a purpose, and it's time to shine your light. So here we go. Welcome back to the Conscious Edge podcast. I'm your host Alecia Saint Germain. I am here with my very best buddy Jonathan Dugger. Yay! You're back.
Jonathan Dugger 02:34
Yay! Hey, everybody.
Alecia St. Germain 02:36
We took a little hiatus from recording these episodes, and what I found was it was getting really, really hard to just record myself out into the ether, and so I allowed myself the space to not do it. So, is that a boundary
Jonathan Dugger 02:57
or avoidance or avoidance?
Alecia St. Germain 03:02
And here's ultimately what I learned about myself during this time off was that I was trying to create in a way that I think I'm supposed to do it. The whole benefit of podcasting is it's asynchronous content creation. People can listen when they want to, and we can record when we want to. But I do a lot better in structure and a weekly rhythm, and I also do a lot better when I have people around me. I'm an extrovert by nature, so it became like being put in a sensory deprivation chamber and like saying okay, just create, and that's just not how I personally create content. It's how other people do, but it's not how I do it. So it was uncomfortable, but it also gave me the space to reassess what we want this podcast to look like and how we're going to record it. So you may have been hearing some things about Podcast Club, and that has evolved. So we're going to be actually recording this in front of a live audience, so the live audience will get to see these episodes before they ever get edited and hit the public, and all the mistakes that we make, which is cool. Oh
Jonathan Dugger 04:19
no! Right, and all the moments
Alecia St. Germain 04:21
that we edit out, but also after we're done recording the episode, then people will hop into a Zoom room and we'll actually get to connect in person with people who've just listened to an episode. We get to talk about what came up with that for them, completely private, and so they get to have like a little inside track and interact with guests and you and John and Jen and myself, so I'm really excited about that going forward and that opportunity really to take some time off and think about what I wanted this podcast to look like going forward. It's really exciting to me because that's not something that is done on a lot of podcasts. I know it's. Done in some, but it's not generally the way it's done. And I'm excited to bring some connection back to content creation,
Jonathan Dugger 05:09
creating community too. Yeah, it's just it's such a need, and it's so left out of a lot of things around social media and media in general.
Alecia St. Germain 05:21
We used to have Facebook groups, and like if you were in a program or you were in a something, you could be part of a Facebook group where you talked about stuff. And what we ran into in other groups that I've been in and in my own groups is that the engagement went way down, and nobody was talking because they weren't seeing it,
Jonathan Dugger 05:41
yeah.
Alecia St. Germain 05:41
Because they're just designed to have you scrolling.
Jonathan Dugger 05:45
That's exactly right.
Alecia St. Germain 05:46
Okay, so let's get into today's episode. The last time you and I were together in one of our mindfulness matters episodes, we started to talk at the end a little bit about teams and change and how there is this push on setting boundaries and speaking up for yourself, and speaking your truth, being heard. But it's starting to be done in a way where people are removing themselves from society and uncomfortable situations, and cutting off family and cutting off people who really are important to them, and then labeling it as toxic when it's just humans trying to interact with each other. So, can we dispel some of the myths around boundary setting and talk about what is healthy boundaries versus what is maybe avoidance and not wanting to feel uncomfortable. Things,
Jonathan Dugger 06:46
yeah. I mean, I think this is a hugely important subject, and it's become more and more relevant as our worlds have become more isolated or more siloed. From a standpoint of, I'm only going to do those things that make me feel good in the moment, that feed my dopamine centers, that that that's really, I don't want to say pleasure seeking, but I can't think of another way to put it. But then avoiding anything that's uncomfortable, and I say putting that out there in a general way because it has become very very generalized. So just from a high level, the way I was thinking about this, how to encapsulate a definition of one versus the other, and I think of avoidance, and this is how it's used a lot in research when they're looking at avoidant type behaviors. Avoidance is it's an immediate attempt to avoid anything that's uncomfortable. So it's something short-term, short-duration. It can come out of a form of self-protection, but it's very short-lived. Whereas the idea of boundaries is something that is based on our value systems, on how we see the world, how we try and navigate the world, and it's long term. It's goal oriented. It's the idea of if you do stop a situation that is harmful to you in some way, the goal is so that things can get better for you in the long term. Your job situation, relationship situation, your skills, whatever it is, it's long term oriented. So it's a way to change patterns and change your life. Whereas avoidance is about changing in the moment, but can become a habit to where you're using avoidance to you've changed from I really don't like going to the grocery store, so I'm only going to order online. To I no longer leave my house, and that may seem like an extreme reference, but it actually happens. You can see it's called progression of pathology, where it started from something that was simply an avoidant behavior because it was uncomfortable for someone, or because they just didn't like, so we've become a culture of trying to avoid anything that makes us uncomfortable, and we grow out of discomfort quite often. So when you look at that as that's become our mainstream, we have a whole society of people that are now stuck, stagnant, or moving backwards,
Alecia St. Germain 09:21
and it looks like I mean it's quitting jobs without having a backup plan or having found another job. I often see boundaries set in a way where you try to control other people's behavior. Whereas if I say to someone like, "Hey, in order for us to continue this conversation, I need it to be respectful and calm and not yelling. And when we can engage in that way, then we can continue this conversation. Then I will continue this conversation with you. Versus my boundary is you have to stop yelling at me. Like you don't have to. I don't have to make anybody do anything. I'm just not going to engage until exactly
Alecia St. Germain 10:06
the behavior is where it needs to be. And I think so many times people want to control or change how other people behave and call it a boundary, and then because that person is feeling controlled, like it just creates so much more conflict, and then we end up with people like not talking at all. And I think personally, like boundaries are are great when they're used in that way because you can come through a really hard moment and actually be better And closer,
Jonathan Dugger 10:41
it helps you expand your capacity to seek out understanding,
Alecia St. Germain 10:48
yeah, to
Jonathan Dugger 10:48
be compassionate and empathetic. Whereas avoidance behavior, cutting something off, shuts everything down. It shuts processing down from both sides. And in a relationship, that's a relationship killer. When you avoid any sort of conflict, when you avoid any sort of dialog that could lead to conflict, it's like I'm not going to rock the boat. I'm just going to avoid that because the potential is that we're going to get into an argument. The potential is we're not going to see this the same way. So, whereas boundaries, like you said, I think that's a really good example. It's like my value system is about there's a very strong need for respect on both sides of an equation. So a boundary, stating a clear boundary of, in order for to be respectful to you and for you to be respectful to me, I hope that we can keep this conversation civil and at a tone that's civil. Something like that. That's stating a boundary. That's stating something. That's setting a standard. That's laying a foundation to work from, and something you can always track back to. Whereas avoidance just steps completely out of a situation because you're uncomfortable. That first thing you said about I'm protecting my peace, you hear that phrase a lot. So I just I wrote down were you saying that just again to kind of compare and contrast. So avoidance that we're calling a boundary would say I'm protecting my peace, so I'm going to ghost this person instead of addressing the disagreement, so I'm just going to avoid them. A true healthy boundary would be actually stating, "I value our friendship, but I can't discuss this while we're both so heated. Let's talk about it tomorrow when we're calm, or let's set a time that we can sit down and calmly talk about this. The effect in the moment actually accomplishes the same thing. You don't want to have that conversation, but it's the why of that, and then what's it going to do for you in terms of the outcome? If you completely shut something down, the outcome is you're done with that. There's no growth. There's no educating. There's no understanding perspective. There's no empathy. But if you tie it to a boundary and still have the same outcome in the moment, the future outcome is progress, the potential for progress, the potential for learning, the potential for increasing the depth of the relationship.
Alecia St. Germain 13:17
Yeah, and I think the no talking thing, the shutting down of communication, the avoidance of it. It also, for the other person, creates a lot of emotion. It can create a lot of emotion and anxiety, and story like making that story, not knowing the not knowing, the uncertainty. You have taken a position of power. If the it can, the kind of the way experiences you can take a powerful position, and if that person then has a lot of emotion that ends up built up, and that feeling like of powerlessness, no one can take your power from you. But there's a whole process that someone else on the other side of that goes through purely because of the unknowns, and it just makes the situation so much worse for both parties because of what our brains do to us. So I think I hate the ghosting more than anything, and it really it stems from someone's. I see it. This is my opinion that it stems from someone's inability to like. They're afraid of maybe like it's a little bit of people pleasing. Like I'm just going to avoid. I'm going to avoid it. I'm going to not say anything about it. I don't want to deal with it, and it's not pleasing. But it's like that. I see a lot of people pleasers do it when they don't want to say no, when they don't want to
Jonathan Dugger 14:48
exactly,
Alecia St. Germain 14:49
and so they just leave that person to not know. Whereas if you could just say, you know what, that's not for me right now, or no, I don't. Want that, and it happens in sales too. Like, like, oh, I don't want to tell this person no. Now, I want to be really clear because here's where my brain is going. Okay, what about the person who's repeatedly been very good about setting boundaries, telling people their expectations, and it keeps being violated over and over again, and then they make the decision, like, okay, really, this is not the friendship for me. This is not the employee. We need to let them go. This is not like really, truly, we need to cut off this relationship, or we need to cut off this situation, or stop doing this thing. It doesn't have to be a person. I tend to use boundaries a lot around people, but it could be I need to stop doing this thing because it doesn't work out well for me.
Jonathan Dugger 15:48
Yeah, I think that is where it's you step into a place of being able to tap into a much healthier way of living when with boundaries, true boundaries versus avoidance, because then you can track back that if you have been doing that from a value-driven place and a capacity, your own resources-driven place of setting clear boundaries, and you have some history of that. Now you have something to track back to and say, "Here are the things that I've tried; these aren't working, and I'm out of options. So then, that's when you can say, "I feel like this is a time for me to cut ties, or this is time for me to not do this anymore, or leave this job. Or, and you have good evidence, you have good solid evidence that you've done some healthy things to get to that point of decision. Whereas, if you're living that in a place of avoidance, again, even when avoidance comes out of initial self-protection, maybe from some trauma situation or something like that, when you lead with avoidance, you don't build a history to be able to track back to. You can't say I've tried these things because you haven't tried anything, or what you've done is run the other direction, or you've created a system where you've told yourself these stories that just aren't true. So, what happens in those situations a lot when people finally get to a place of acknowledgement of like, what have I done? And they start being honest with themselves, they really beat themselves up, and it gets very self recriminating. And it's it's the opposite of where you want to go, so this is where mindful self compassion becomes so important, because it is important to remind ourselves that sometimes, I mean, we're all guilty, or we all have moments of avoidant behavior. I mean, I just did it this morning. I avoided a phone call. I saw the number pop up on my screen, and I avoided the phone call because it was a self protection mechanism. I knew I was going to be recording today. I have a meeting after this meeting, and unlike Alecia, people drain me. So I have a people budget every day. I have a a social engagement budget. So yeah, I guess you could say that's somewhat boundaries. But I also had a moment when I hit that go to voicemail button or whatever it is on your phone. I had a moment of self recrimination. It's like I could have given them five minutes of my time. That probably would have just taken five minutes, or I could have made it less five minutes. But self compassion comes in when we can say, "I did this. I know why I did it, and I'm going to try and stay curious about that and figure out how to do better next time or do different next time. But don't put it into a place of judgment of making myself a bad person because I did that. Now, if you have a pattern of that over and over, which avoidance behavior does become a habit, it is hard to unwind that. But it can start from a place of self-compassion, of okay, I'm ready to make a difference now. So that may mean figuring out how, in small doses, I can start changing this and tapping into, and then really discover where that comes. Maybe it does come from a boundary. It initially came from a place to feel safe, and you haven't felt safe because, but you're asking questions from curiosity instead of beating yourself up for being a bad person because you didn't do something that you think you should have done.
Alecia St. Germain 19:10
Well, and I think the difference also is so in having tried several times, let's say to set a boundary or do make some adjustments, or communicate what your needs were, and so you've tried all of those things. Whereas if you use avoidance as the boundary, like I'm not engaging in that, I'm not available for that, I'm not available for that, and then you keep saying like next, or you cut it off, or stop talking to this person, and then everybody who reminds you of this person, you start cutting all those people off, and so it becomes this pattern.
Jonathan Dugger 19:48
Yeah,
Alecia St. Germain 19:49
and I think when it becomes the pattern, that's when it's really problematic because that's it. So I look at that as like that's. A big assumption. That's something where it feels too like there must be something you believe bad is going to happen if you stay in a certain situation or in a relationship with someone. Or and when I say use the word relationship, I mean, like a human interaction with another person. I don't necessarily mean like romantic or, but a human interaction, whatever that looks like for you. But if I actually stand up for myself, or if I say this, then something bad will happen, and so I just keep removing myself from ever having to do the hard thing, and so then you end up really stuck. And I, I think that's what we're experiencing in today's world. With, I think the comment is made often like kids today they don't want to work, or that they are lazy, or that they don't maybe have the same values as previous generations, and I think more of it is that don't know what to do with their emotions and how to work through hard things because they've been so supported and so like I don't want to you say the word coddled, but every time something uncomfortable happens, like losing, okay, we remove the bad feeling of losing. We removed the bad feeling, like the amount of times I see someone hand a kid a snack, or at least it may not be the thing now, but when I was around a lot of children, it was like hand them a snack every time they're crying. Every time a baby cries, like you give them a goldfish,
Jonathan Dugger 21:44
yeah, or put a screen in front of them, or you put
Alecia St. Germain 21:46
a screen in front of them for a long car ride. But it's happening to adults too. Like you are sitting in a restaurant and your friend goes to the bathroom and you pull out a screen, versus just sitting in the boredom. And our society and what is available to us is not helping it or training us to be dopamine seeking and training us to like cure those uncomfortable feelings immediately.
Jonathan Dugger 22:12
Well, in behavioral psychology, there's this pattern like they've done all these animal studies, but human studies too, but where your brain generalizes the perception of threat over time, if you're always avoiding any discomfort, so it becomes any sort of non-threatening discomfort becomes seen as bad and needing to be avoided. So we do that with parents want to protect their kids, and I think often that comes out of a healthy place, and I've seen this in in academic settings too, where it's like you're trying to not diminish self esteem, you're trying to keep build self confidence, but you've done that by gentle feedback or no feedback. It's like I know they'll do better next time, so I'm just not going to encourage them in a way that's actually giving them a lesson, helping them learn a lesson, helping them learn a skill, helping them see a direction. So I see it a lot, and it there's a lot of folks right now that are floundering because they haven't learned resilience over time, they haven't learned adaptability over time because adaptability often comes out of trial and error. And if if your trial never led to an error, or no one gave you that insight that you're screwing up and you need to do something different, they're coming up against these things that often I don't know. From I'm trying to say this in a in a way that doesn't sound judgy, but where my mind is like that's a simple thing. That's a simple thing to overcome, but to them it feels insurmountable, and you can't place blame in that situation. But it is important to start looking for ways to intervene and actually provide help in the context that they can digest it at the time, but yeah, I mean, I see it a lot. I saw a person a few weeks ago at the gas pump, and she couldn't get her card to work, and she had a full blown meltdown at the gas pump. Now I don't have context to what else had gone on in her day, but I saw her try one thing, like she tried one thing, just tapping her card, and the tap didn't work. And I'm sure the screen was saying, "Insert your card, or go see an attendant. Or, but the default from that failure was a a meltdown, and I didn't say anything to her because I didn't know what. You know, I could have offered assistance. I could have said, but it stuck with me as this is a common in our society right now where it's not solution oriented. It's I'm going to go to this default mechanism of avoidance or in her.
Alecia St. Germain 25:00
Defense. I did go to the gas station a couple weeks ago. We stopped talking about me. I didn't have a meltdown, but I was a little irritated because I left the house with the expired Costco card and left the other one sitting on my desk. So, like right behind me. Like I said,
Jonathan Dugger 25:16
I didn't know the context. You know, maybe she forgot
Alecia St. Germain 25:19
to get her new card and it wouldn't go through. It's a very Alecia thing to do, right? Like forget that something's expired. That's a pattern for me.
Jonathan Dugger 25:30
With talking through this too, though, it occurs to me that we can use mindfulness as because some of you may be listening to this. It's like, okay, it seems like that sometimes it's a fine line. It's a fine line between what is avoidant behavior and can have some detrimental. If continued, will have detrimental effects, or is it boundary, boundary driven, value driven? So, a very simple thing to get habit of doing. This is part of the mindful discussions we've had many times. Is paying attention to your body avoidance. There's good research behind that. Avoidance almost always is trying to flip a switch off of something that makes you feel anxious or uncomfortable, and you're trying to do it. Take an immediate action that senses relief. Whereas boundaries, if you're bringing in a boundary, you start feeling a sense of satisfaction and insight, and it brings up things that feel core to you when you are engaging a boundary. And some of you can probably track back to that, where you feel like you had an honest moment where you said, "I'm not doing this because either to yourself or to someone else. It is there is a sense of empowerment, maybe too strong way to describe it, but where you're stepping into something that feels useful and helpful and in alignment. Whereas avoidance behavior almost always has this sense of ick to it. Like you may have immediate relief of "Oh God, I'm escaping, but there's almost always a follow up of why is my heart racing? Why am I sweating? Why do I feel sick to my stomach? You don't get that when you tap into a value driven boundary or capacity driven boundary.
Alecia St. Germain 27:14
Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. What I would also equate it to hearing is if it's avoidance, it's coming from a dysregulated place.
Jonathan Dugger 27:26
Yes,
Alecia St. Germain 27:27
and if it is a boundary, it's coming from a regulated place.
Jonathan Dugger 27:31
Yes,
Alecia St. Germain 27:32
and so you feel a sense of calm in your body. It may be for someone who's never set boundaries, and they're communicating that to another person, especially if you have a big assumption that says if I set a boundary, if I tell someone what I need, then I'll be seen as selfish, just as something to make up. There, you can have some physical, like heart pounding things because it feels unsafe to do it. But on debrief and on, and this is what happens when you're unraveling a big assumption. It takes your brain several tries at something to learn that what it's doing, what the behavior change that you're doing, is actually safe and okay, and nothing bad is going to happen. Or we find out you're okay with the bad thing happening. Like if the person loses their stuff, you're like, "Well, this is exactly why I'm setting a boundary because I don't want to go through this bull crap. And so,
Jonathan Dugger 28:33
good save,
Alecia St. Germain 28:34
right? And so, initially, sometimes the body will still have a sensation that this isn't right, but it's because it just doesn't know it yet. You're choosing consciously to teach your brain something different, and it's going to take repetition to actually teach that for people who truly have a hard time setting boundaries. And so, what happens sometimes, though, is someone will be in the process of learning to set those boundaries, they'll have the body reaction to it, and then they'll go into avoidance because oh, I must be doing something wrong because this feels like my body doesn't
Jonathan Dugger 29:12
feel like it's supposed to. This
Alecia St. Germain 29:13
doesn't feel like it's supposed to, and this is when I would say like sometimes doing the right thing doesn't always feel good.
Jonathan Dugger 29:21
Yeah,
Alecia St. Germain 29:21
but we know it's good for ourselves. Like we know we're doing this from a a healthy, regulated place.
Jonathan Dugger 29:29
And so that I would say that then is the sort of step two. The so the pause and sense what's going on in your body. The step two is more of a cognitive process of what's the motivator? Like, what what motivates me to do this or that? You know, is and if the motivation is come from is you can be honest with yourself and it's like I was trying to escape that situation because it was uncomfortable, or I felt myself getting angry and I don't ever want to get angry in front of that person. That. You that it was coming from more from a place of avoidance, which again, as we said earlier, that happens. We all avoid things sometimes, but it's that pattern piece. And then, if you can acknowledge that you did that, but you did better, like I stayed in this longer, I stayed engaged longer, or I thought about how I was going to respond. That's growth, and that's from a place of self-compassion. You need to acknowledge that. You need to acknowledge and be curious about how you can do things differently next time, or what things went right this time and what things didn't. Those places keeps us out of judgment and keeps us out of self-recrimination. That keeps us from moving forward. Keeps us from growing.
Alecia St. Germain 30:43
Yeah, I like what you said too about being compassionate with yourself. If you are someone who has avoided and used boundaries as a way of avoiding, and maybe not really set true boundaries, but more just ghosted or just avoided the situation, is you just didn't have the capacity to handle that, you didn't have the wherewithal emotionally. You didn't have the energy maybe to put into it. And I think that if you're about to set a boundary from a dysregulated place, it's probably not going to go well, anyways. So sometimes removing yourself to get into a regulated space where you can plan how you're going to handle that. I think that's reasonable to give yourself also the space to do it from a planned place. I look at regulation as like I planned ahead, like I, and that's what so many people really don't take the time to do is think about how they will handle the situation going forward. It's something you and I do naturally. Certain populations of people do is like we think through the 20 different ways that things that could happen.
Jonathan Dugger 31:49
Yep, and how we're going to respond. Worst case scenario, and then yeah, and how we're going to
Alecia St. Germain 31:56
respond, and we do waste a lot-not waste, or we plant a lot of mental energy into
Jonathan Dugger 32:00
it. Utilize a lot of mineral energy up,
Alecia St. Germain 32:02
but it is a strategy in coaching yourself to plan ahead for how you're going to handle someone that you know is likely going to cause you to want to cut off that communication or avoid that situation, or just not go. And I think where it's problematic is when you have a vision of what you want things to be like. And so I could think of like you have a vision that your family is in connection with each other, like extended family. You have a vision that your business is doing certain things. You have a vision for what you want your life to be like, and if you don't have those things because you have avoided hard things, then that's not really peace. That's living small.
Jonathan Dugger 33:01
Just it's the opposite of because you're constantly in a state of flux, in a state of seeking. No, absolutely.
Alecia St. Germain 33:09
Now you can do a bunch and then decide. You know what? I don't really want that thing.
Jonathan Dugger 33:14
Yeah,
Alecia St. Germain 33:15
and that's fine. But at least you're choosing it, and you're saying, yeah. I mean, there was a time like we're all young, right? And we have these big, audacious dreams, and then we realize what it might take to get to that. And we're like, "Yeah, that's actually not in alignment with my values or what I want to do or how I want to show up in the world. I don't really want that because I don't want to put myself through that. Like, I don't want to jump out of a plane. I don't have any need to experience that.
Jonathan Dugger 33:45
Yeah, exactly. So, well, and there again, it's like kind of tracking back to what we talked about of when you operate are working toward operating from a place of value and capacity, and being honest with yourself, and then subsequently with others, you lay a foundation that you can track back to when you do make a decision. It's like I'm done with this, I'm not doing this, or I've changed my mind about this. Then you have evidence as opposed to none because you've avoided any sort of interface with being uncomfortable about that situation
Alecia St. Germain 34:19
because it didn't feel good. It wasn't meant for me. It
Jonathan Dugger 34:23
wasn't
Alecia St. Germain 34:23
spiritually aligned. It's not what God wants for me because it was hard.
Jonathan Dugger 34:28
Yeah, exactly. So I think that's the other piece. So I didn't have three points, but now I have three points. So the third point, in addition, so you got the pause and sense internally. Check your motive. Where is it coming from? And the last one would be communicate. So stepping in the right direction, out of avoidance into boundary setting, is communicating that. And initially, that's probably going to be mostly internal. But even if you end up in that place of leaving the situation, so tracking back to avoidant. If you can say, "I'm leaving this situation now because I just don't have the bandwidth. I'm not in the headspace to be able to actually talk of it. That is a stating. That is communicating internally at the point. But then you get to the place where you can say that to someone else. You can say, "Listen, we need to have this conversation. I can't have it right now, and that's absolutely fine. In fact, that's so empowering. In fact, just me saying that, I had a somatic response. I felt like saying those words felt powerful. That felt like I'm owning something, and I'm being honest about it. And I think that if we can all start working on that in the situations where we do are uncomfortable. Those situations that we tend to avoid because it's easier to do something different.
Alecia St. Germain 35:51
Yeah, and I love what you said.
Jonathan Dugger 35:53
No, I just I think you're going to feel those moments of empowerment that will hopefully motivate you to keep digging in and doing more of that.
Alecia St. Germain 36:03
Even if I think of you saying this is an important conversation, we need to have it. I just can't have it right now. I can, like you said, I have to have a somatic response of like relax. But if you were to just say I can't have this conversation, I don't have the capacity. Yeah, you're literally leaving the conversation in overwhelm.
Jonathan Dugger 36:19
Yeah, absolutely, and on both sides of the equation,
Alecia St. Germain 36:22
right?
Jonathan Dugger 36:23
You just stabbed a danger in somebody else too, as well as into your own heart when you do that. And I think of language like "I can't talk to you right now. I just can't talk to you right now, and or the other one, "I can't even look at you right now. And that's there's probably truth to that, but when you do that from a place again, tacking back to motive, when you're doing that from a place because you just want to get out of an uncomfortable situation, well, you've thrown gasoline on the fire, in my opinion, by using that kind of language. So even changing the way we say things internally and then conveying that message too has such a powerful effect of the outcome.
Alecia St. Germain 37:05
Yep, I think it's really that the intentionality. Like, what's the intention? Is the intention to not have a relationship? Is the intention to not have whatever it is, or be around, or do whatever? It's usually not people's intention. It's just a emotional reaction, and so when we can remember that maybe we are on the same side, or that there's a common goal, or whatever it is, and then come from that place to give yourself space, I think that works a lot better than the emotional, like just cutting off.
Jonathan Dugger 37:46
And it's also this is a just a good reminder. I think a way to cap this off. It is absolutely okay and actually very healthy when you do screw up and you have say something like I can't even look at you right now, or get out of my face, or whatever it is, and you say it in that way. After you do come back to a place of clarity, after you've had some time to process, tell that other person. Try them in some fences from a standpoint of I didn't mean that the way it sounded. That's just how it came out. What I meant was, and then be clear when you get clarity, relay that clarity, because that is a way to open conversation in a completely different energetic space from a completely different place of heart and compassion than leaving it where this person feels like, however, some negative place that they that it left the whole situation. So,
Alecia St. Germain 38:46
yeah, and just because someone's mad or upset or having a one of those less less liked emotions, I think sometimes what people say from those places, we put a little bit too much stock in them,
Jonathan Dugger 39:03
yeah.
Alecia St. Germain 39:03
And maybe there's some elements of truth, but they usually aren't the most well said. And they are oftentimes coming from self protection. They're coming from other places, and I think it's really important to recognize that the emotion itself is not the bad thing. People can't help how they feel. Like a person cannot help how they feel. It is not a chosen thing when it's reactionary to something you've said, to something that's happening, to something that's they cannot help it. I don't think maybe you, as the psychologist, would say something different, but we can choose how we respond to the emotion that we have. Some people are more practiced at, oh, I feel this way. I'm going to choose not to punch my fist through the wall, or I could choose this, and I'm going to choose not to run away, and I'm going to choose to stay in this discomfort, or just it's perfect. Normal for someone to feel angry in this position because you betray my trust or because something happened, but it doesn't mean on the underlying piece that like maybe you don't want the relationship or maybe that it's just a hard moment in that context in that thing that's happening. It doesn't mean it's the end of the world. That's where I get into the people who like have a fight and break up, have a fight and break up. It's like it's not
Jonathan Dugger 40:30
really a thing. Like you're just mad at each other, and you could just be mad at each other and still be in a relationship. That's okay. Yeah, exactly. So, and it's change is difficult, and even unhealthy patterns are something. When it's been years in the making, there's a familiarity to that. That's why people stay in bad relationships and bad jobs, and so we have to embrace the discomfort in those situations if we want to affect positive change,
Alecia St. Germain 41:04
can people help how they feel in a moment, like in a reactionary moment?
Jonathan Dugger 41:08
I think initial emotion is a biological response, so it's biochemical neurological response. So, no, what I can say is that you can adjust your physiology over time so that your reactionary response is different. So loud noises has always caused an excessive startle response, which caused anxiety. And then, but learning to called habituation, learning to habituate to that loud noise, so that you don't go into fight or flight immediately. There's ways to do that neurologically over time, but in the moment, the practicing of the response and responding instead of reacting is where the power is. Because what we usually remember in terms of emotion is not actually the initial panic. Whatever we remember the emotion that came up after the response. That's what sticks with us. So when we start telling ourselves we're a bad person, it's not because we had an initial. Oh, this is horrible. It's how we felt after we responded that we remember and that sticks with us, and that we judge ourselves on, and those kind of things, and other people judge us on.
Alecia St. Germain 42:20
So it's the big assumptions that we don't know about unconsciously that drive the initial emotion that we didn't even realize was there. Exactly. Yeah, and then we have to decide. So it's then it's taking control of the brain.
Jonathan Dugger 42:34
Yep. Yep. And deciding what we're going to do with
Alecia St. Germain 42:37
instead of letting the brain control you.
Jonathan Dugger 42:39
Yep. Exactly.
Alecia St. Germain 42:41
Cool. Well, I hope today was helpful for you. And if something resonated with you, you want to explore further what big assumptions you might be making that are causing you to avoid those types of situations. I absolutely welcome you to book a call with me at consciousedge.com forward slash call. We can explore what you might be avoiding that's keeping you stuck, and what big assumptions you might be making, and share with you how we can help you to move forward. So, all of that being said, sending you so much love.
Jonathan Dugger 43:16
Be well, everybody.
Alecia St. Germain 43:19
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