Episode 388: How to Set Boundaries Without Feeling Guilty

We usually talk about trust issues as if the answer is to trust more. But trust isn’t something you have more or less of. It’s a judgment about a specific person, in a specific area of life, made over time. The tricky part about trust is learning to tell who you can trust and who you cannot. In this episode I talk about: Why trust isn’t either/or: it’s situational and graded (and why I trust our mechanic without knowing anything else about him) Trusting too little, trusting too much, and why many of us do both Why you can’t know if you can trust someone without taking small steps of trust What to look for in a trustworthy person, and why repair may be the strongest signal Why every relationship needs a foundation of safety, and how safety grows into security and trust How trust breaks when the people we’re attached to end up in our threat system, drawing on Michelle Mays’ The Betrayal Bind Rebuilding trust: safety first, telling human imperfection from threat, and why trust, forgiveness and reconciliation are three different things Self-trust, and how a calmer nervous system helps us notice what’s really happening Get my monthly newsletter: https://api.leadconnectorhq.com/widget/form/4hLeezhMquaMxP7U9MIp Read the blog: https://healingpathsrecovery.com/category/blog Work with a Healing Paths therapist: https://healingpathsrecovery.com All links: linktr.ee/packjackie  Have a question or something you’d like me to talk about in a future episode? You can call the show and leave a voicemail or send me an email — I love hearing from you, and your feedback helps shape these conversations.  https://thanksforsharingpodcast.my.canva.site/thanks-for-sharing-links

Has your partner’s bad mood ever become your problem? In Part 2 of our boundaries series, we look at emotional fusion: what happens when one person’s feelings and another’s get so tangled that neither of you can tell whose are whose. We walk through a kitchen conversation many couples know, the four boundaries at work in every heated moment, and the difference between clarifying and invalidating. We cover Pia Mellody’s idea of carried feelings, the bigger cycle of closeness, conflict, distance, and repair, and what it looks like when all four boundaries hold. Get my monthly newsletter: https://api.leadconnectorhq.com/widget/form/4hLeezhMquaMxP7U9MIp Work with a Healing Paths therapist: https://healingpathsrecovery.com  Have a question or something you’d like me to talk about in a future episode? You can call the show and leave a voicemail or send me an email — I love hearing from you, and your feedback helps shape these conversations.  https://thanksforsharingpodcast.my.canva.site/thanks-for-sharing-links

Why does saying no feel so hard, even when your body already knows the answer? In this episode of Thanks for Sharing, therapist Jackie Pack explains what boundaries really are, drawing on Pia Mellody's model: not walls, not ultimatums, but the place where you end and another person begins. Through stories from her own family and marriage, Jackie shows what it takes to feel a boundary, speak it, and hold it when it's tested. In this episode: • The two jobs of a boundary:  • Protecting you and containing you  • Physical, sexual, emotional, and talking/listening boundaries • Walls vs. boundaries, and why many of us swing between the two  • Why boundaries feel selfish, mean, or risky, and what guilt is really telling you  • The difference between a request and a boundary  • Feel it, speak it, act on it: holding a boundary when it's tested    Have a question or something you’d like me to talk about in a future episode? You can call the show and leave a voicemail or send me an email — I love hearing from you, and your feedback helps shape these conversations.  https://thanksforsharingpodcast.my.canva.site/thanks-for-sharing-links

What if some of the things you do to feel safe are actually keeping you from the connection you want? Avoiding difficult conversations. Staying in control. Not asking for help. Keeping people at a distance. These behaviors can feel completely reasonable when they're built on beliefs you've carried for years. But what if those beliefs were formed at a time when you had fewer choices, less experience, and a very different understanding of the world? Something can feel familiar without being safe. And something can feel uncomfortable without being dangerous. In this episode of Thanks for Sharing, I'm exploring the difference between safety and protection, how our experiences shape what we believe, and why understanding our patterns is only part of changing them. Because sometimes growth isn't about learning to protect ourselves better. It's about discovering that we have more options than we once believed.  Have a question or something you’d like me to talk about in a future episode? You can call the show and leave a voicemail or send me an email — I love hearing from you, and your feedback helps shape these conversations.  https://thanksforsharingpodcast.my.canva.site/thanks-for-sharing-links   #ThanksForSharingPodcast #RelationshipPatterns #EmotionalSafety #SelfAwareness #HealingAndGrowth

The Questions Underneath Our Relationships: Someone can tell you they love you, and you can still wonder whether you matter to them. Underneath many of our reactions in relationships are questions we may never say out loud: Are you there for me? Can I reach you? Will you respond when I need you? Do I matter to you? We begin learning the answers in childhood. But those questions keep getting answered in our adult relationships, in the moments when we struggle, reach for someone, or let ourselves be seen. In this episode of Thanks for Sharing, I share two very different experiences with my dad and my husband, Jeff, and explore why words can mean so much less without a pattern of showing up behind them. We also talk about what happens to these questions after betrayal, why reassurance may not feel reassuring, and how everyday moments of honesty, responsiveness, and repair can begin to rebuild security. Mattering goes deeper than being useful, competent, or the person who holds everything together. It includes being cared for when you don’t have it all together.   What’s an ordinary moment that helped you feel you mattered to someone?  Have a question or something you’d like me to talk about in a future episode? You can call the show and leave a voicemail or send me an email — I love hearing from you, and your feedback helps shape these conversations.  https://thanksforsharingpodcast.my.canva.site/thanks-for-sharing-links   #ThanksForSharingPodcast #Attachment #EmotionalIntimacy #BetrayalTrauma #CouplesRepair  

For this episode, Rachel and I tried something different. We borrowed the format—and the questions—from NPR's Wild Card with Rachel Martin: choose a card without knowing the question, answer it, and see where the conversation goes. Full credit to Rachel Martin and the NPR team for creating a format I love. And it took us places neither of us would have planned. We talked about the first time Rachel remembers being struck by beauty. The ways we get in our own way. Self-doubt, shame, and my own realization that self-blame can keep showing up at deeper levels—even after years of knowing it's there. We talked about getting older, perimenopause, the strange realization that you can reach an age you once thought sounded old and still feel very much like yourself. And eventually, a card asked: How often do you think about death? That took us into grief, changing beliefs, legacy, and Rachel's reflection that she doesn't want the possibility of another life—or an afterlife—to become a reason not to fully live this one. We weren't trying to teach a lesson or make a point. We just let the questions take us somewhere. And maybe that's part of what makes a good question so powerful: sometimes the questions we wouldn't think to ask give us access to parts of ourselves—and each other—that don't come up in our usual conversations.  Have a question or something you’d like me to talk about in a future episode? You can call the show and leave a voicemail or send me an email — I love hearing from you, and your feedback helps shape these conversations.  https://thanksforsharingpodcast.my.canva.site/thanks-for-sharing-links

A client said that to me a few weeks ago — she was leaving a job she had chosen to leave, and she couldn't stop rehearsing every grievance, every frustration, every way the place had failed her. She wasn't actually angry. She was trying to make the grief feel like certainty, because certainty is more comfortable than grief. This episode is about what happens in transitions — even the ones we chose, even the ones we wanted. Why we fight at airports. Why couples who just returned from a vacation they saved for find themselves arguing about laundry and boarding passes. Why someone might make an ending messier than it needed to be. Why the flight home can be one of the most predictable vulnerability points in a recovery plan. The concept at the center of all of it: liminal space. The threshold. The in-between. The period where the old structure has loosened and the new one hasn't yet taken hold. It's not empty. It's one of the most psychologically active places we can be. And when we don't know how to tolerate it, we tend to do things in it that we later have to account for. New episode out now. Link in bio. Have a question or something you’d like me to talk about in a future episode? You can call the show and leave a voicemail or send me an email — I love hearing from you, and your feedback helps shape these conversations.  https://thanksforsharingpodcast.my.canva.site/thanks-for-sharing-links #therapy #psychologypodcast #transitions #lifechange #liminalspace #mentalhealth #selfawareness #relationships #emotionalhealth #solopodcast  

A Conversation With Rupture Ever After:  here are things we can understand for years before they actually change us. We can know where a pattern came from. We can explain our childhood. We can recognize our attachment strategies. We can even know that something that happened to us wasn’t our fault. And still respond as though the old story is true. One of the things I love about therapy is watching the moment when something moves from “I understand this” to “I know this differently now.” That’s part of why I enjoyed this conversation with Monte and Mechelle of Rupture Ever After. We’ve spent years together in the therapy room, which means this wasn’t simply an interview about my ideas as a therapist. They could talk about what it was actually like to be on the receiving end of the work—and sometimes what they experienced wasn’t exactly what I remembered. I think there’s something important in that, too. Therapy happens in relationship. So does healing. This week I’m sharing our conversation here on Thanks for Sharing as Rupture Ever After begins its second season. Give it a listen—and then go subscribe to Rupture Ever After. I think many of you will appreciate the conversations they’re willing to have.    Have a question or something you’d like me to talk about in a future episode? You can call the show and leave a voicemail or send me an email — I love hearing from you, and your feedback helps shape these conversations.  https://thanksforsharingpodcast.my.canva.site/thanks-for-sharing-links

How well can we really know ourselves if we’re only willing to rely on our own perspective? We all have blind spots—not because we lack self-awareness, but because there are things we simply can’t see from where we’re standing. And sometimes the people who know us well can see patterns we’ve normalized, adapted to, or never recognized in ourselves. In this episode of Thanks for Sharing, I revisit the Johari Window and connect it to validation, accepting influence, family roles, the adaptive self, and why feedback can hurt without necessarily being wrong. Because accepting influence isn’t saying, “You’re right about me.” It’s saying, “You may have information I don’t have. I’m willing to look.” For a deeper introduction to the Johari Window itself, go back to Episode 135. Have a question or something you’d like me to talk about in a future episode? You can call the show and leave a voicemail or send me an email — I love hearing from you, and your feedback helps shape these conversations.  https://thanksforsharingpodcast.my.canva.site/thanks-for-sharing-links   #JohariWindow #SelfAwareness #Relationships #AcceptingInfluence #Validation #PersonalGrowth #Therapy #ThanksForSharingPodcast

Some losses don’t come with a funeral. Sometimes we’re grieving what didn’t happen—the nurturing we didn’t receive, the childhood there wasn’t room to have, or the adults who couldn’t be adults. We can build something different now. But healing doesn’t erase the impact of the wound, and making meaning from suffering doesn’t mean the suffering was necessary. Sometimes grief says, That mattered. And sometimes it asks, Can you play now? This week on Thanks for Sharing, we’re talking about living not after grief, but alongside it.    Have a question or something you’d like me to talk about in a future episode? You can call the show and leave a voicemail or send me an email — I love hearing from you, and your feedback helps shape these conversations.  https://thanksforsharingpodcast.my.canva.site/thanks-for-sharing-links #Grief #DisenfranchisedGrief #TraumaRecovery #Attachment #ThanksForSharingPodcast