FINAL_EPISODE_3_burned-at-the-stake_boundaries_melissa-k6eegnp22_2022-feb-27-1550pm-utc-riverside

I'm a wild, wild woman, Mother Mary with a bowl and a tea I'm a wild, wild woman, go ahead and try You cannot blame me, dressed in red so I feel free I wear thick blue heels so everybody can see I'm a wild, wild woman, Mother Mary with a bowl and a tea I'm a wild, wild woman, go ahead and try You cannot blame me, dressed in red so I feel free I wear thick blue heels so everybody can see I'm a wild, wild woman We need to talk about boundaries, right? After our nice little discussion on burnout we're going to delve into maybe some boundary setting today We did, yeah, that's what I think we're going to talk about today is boundaries, and boundaries around the workplace Yes, yes, and you know, it'll spill over hopefully into home life and all the things That's because we're spillage, like a toxic sludge spillage That's why it just goes everywhere Beautiful, you sound like you had a good week, Mel So my weekend, I'm going to totally paraphrase it I'm going to let all our listeners know that when we decided to do this this morning to fit our time in, I texted Nicole and said I'm letting you know I'm cranky AF, cranky as fuck because I didn't sleep last night, yet again And this whole little not sleeping thing of perimenopause is bullshit I know, and so when you said you hadn't slept, I'm like, oh, well, lovely We're both without sleep So we're both without sleep, and we're cranky as fuck which means that we're going to be completely honest with everything that's going on today, right? Yeah, absolutely I know that you and I already talked about this before but I'm still stuck on that article that I told you about before on the Korean phenomenon that happens I'm in school for my post-master's, right? I'm doing my psych mental health and I'm still ruminating on that whole syndrome that happens in South Korean women middle-aged women who get hit with these bouts of anger and it's called hwa-jung or hwa-bung, I'm not sure how to pronounce it Okay, when you say hwa-bung, I think of an asshole I'm just letting you know I have no idea If anybody speaks Korean, please rescue me from my poor pronunciation but it's spelled H-W-A-V-Y-U-N-G and it's called the anger syndrome or fire illness so it translates into fire illness and it is in South Korean women aged, I think it's 40 to 60 so right there in middle age and these women get physical symptoms they get emotional symptoms physical symptoms are like tightness, breathlessness numbness, headache, anxiety-based symptoms and then the psychological is like hate, resentment, grief and I'm sitting here with depression, regret and I'm like, right, they're freaking middle-aged women who have woken up and are angry they're angry as fuck about life think about what they've sacrificed how they've spent their whole world taking care of everyone else that whole caregiver syndrome and now they're just pissed off, angry and depressed about it and it's a big deal in the Korean society because women, traditionally are supposed to keep it all together we're not supposed to experience emotion we're supposed to be the ones that keep everyone happy smile and nod and so I just found it so interesting this whole idea of this as a syndrome that women need to be treated for versus society needs to fix this is a cultural society and I get that the Korean society and the culture is remarkably different than our Western society but is it really? but I'm reading, yeah, exactly is it really? I see myself in this I see myself in this and it's like I wanted to reach out to these women and be like, yes yes, us too I resonate with that because I feel like some mornings I wake up in a state of anger you look at me funny it's just, it was just so as I read this there was one piece, I'm trying to look through this study now that really, really resonated as the women's role within society and then how the syndrome plays out and how it's experienced by the people around them just so aggravating but it really is the phenomenon that has to be treated to get her back to that box that she was in listen, baby needs to be put back in that cage we can't handle her when she's got wings and she's trying to come out the human giver syndrome, right? that's what that woman has that's what she calls it so, you know, over in the Asian culture it's called the wayang or please, like we said, somebody correct us and then here, I think it's just it's that human giver syndrome we don't want to do that anymore we don't want to play that role given our life to people and it comes about when the children are grown and they've left the nest and before they've reached because in the eastern, more eastern cultures when you've gotten to a certain age you kind of settle into a place of wisdom and a place of respect and the elders are elevated to a point and so these women are kind of in that in-between world there's no longer that role for them available and they haven't quite achieved the next level of elder and they're in this free fall and they're looking around at everything they've sacrificed and all the happiness that they didn't achieve for themselves so that everybody else could be happy and they suddenly wake up pissed off yeah, right they're depressed they're angry, they're anxious they're having physical manifestations of that it made so much sense to me but the whole discussion was on the level of course we're in a psych mental health program and so it was on the theoretical components and the treatment components and I'm sitting there in the discussion group going but wait, hold on isn't anybody else upset about this? this is a cultural why do I have to treat this? the issue stems from the society that we've been put the box we've been placed in the moment we're born and we were labeled a female and that's the role we played that is the true core and obviously adding in the whole paternalistic and the misogyny and everything else that our society likes to do and it was just it was so interesting to me it's so it's the same but different and within a whole different culture the same things are being expressed about the same points in life when we as women look around and realize that our value has never been truly acknowledged and that we're just supposed to keep doing what we're doing and then if we make noise about it it's like shh don't do that that gets us back into Glennon Doyle and her book we want everybody to be a cheetah yeah I do like how you said they call it the fire season or what did you say? fire illness fire illness I don't like the fire so I'm going to call it fire season because it's a season middle life is a season for us women and I think that's interesting because I know I'm experiencing some hot flashes right now I haven't for about a year so that's interesting that's a fire yin yang thing so anyway I just wanted to bring that up thank you I love that you are in this program and going to bring all this fun stuff and studies maybe we can link it in show notes or link yes absolutely we'll provide a link to the study there's some really good information in there yeah I encourage everybody to we will link all our books and things that we reference but we're not getting paid to do any of this stuff I have a Nicole I have like she said the other day she goes I wish I had time to read like you and I said I read a paragraph at night before I go to sleep so it really took me to read three pages it was like a week and I have a stack of books twelve deep yeah my bedside table forget it forget it so much I want to read right okay so here let's acknowledge this I think this will sit well sit with a lot of us we'll sit here and we can hear this in ourselves if I take time to sit in my cozy little chair that I bought in my little nook to read for me in my glorious sunshine I feel guilty I feel guilty because I think of all the other things that I could be doing for other people like laundry and cleaning and writing a stupid policy or you know or going outside and shoveling you know I mean like I think of all these other things that I could be doing and I should be doing struggle with that which is ridiculous because it's reading a book it's not like I'm on TikTok for three hours right which I do I will confess once I get on TikTok it could be three hours oh my god the reason I will not put it on my phone I get enough of it through the stuff that my daughter sends me and that my husband sends me that's plenty and again that goes back to our topic for today that's actually the segue about boundaries and how difficult it is for us as women to set boundaries and enforce them so thank you for that because that just segues us right into the conversation I tried for that you did it very well so yeah boundaries are the kind of thing we want to talk about today and how difficult it is to set them what do boundaries good boundaries look like how to live with the discomfort I think that is the hardest part is once we set a boundary people respond to them and they don't usually like it usually not in a good way yeah it's not and especially women with other women I feel like we're used to the response of the men in our lives when we set boundaries of how they whine and they cry and they mope you know yeah and they have their little tantrums about boundaries and so we anticipate that and I think we account for that when we try and set them still it can be hard but in our mind we know it's coming but when women respond to other women's boundaries it can get ugly yeah and I think what I react most to that is that in social media you see this all those little memes those little posts you know other women straighten other women's crowns until you set a boundary yeah again other women support other women and build them up until you set a boundary I'm gonna rip your ass back down right yeah and so you say no not me no that's not okay no I'm not comfortable with that that's not something I can do right now I'm not comfortable and then or just no yeah full sentence right no is a full sentence and then you see people get really uncomfortable and people seem to feel like they are entitled to yes they're entitled to your answer and your explanation which they're not no they are not you don't have to explain your boundaries I think that's something that women have a really hard time wanting other people to accept their boundaries and so they feel like if they can get you on board with that boundary that it'll feel so much better yes it'll feel so much better for me to set this boundary if I can get you to accept my boundary and that's right and that's about not how boundaries work it's not because that's about you wanting to be accepted by somebody else right and if you're starting your boundary off with oh I'm sorry but no yeah no doesn't belong there it's really uncomfortable to drop the pretense from it I have to say it's a struggle and it takes practice and even when you start doing it you start to feel that empowerment there's still going to be situations where it feels uncomfortable to not provide explanation or apologize or get background like it's it's hard it's not something that's a one and done it's hard and it takes work every day every day super important though for protecting you that's the foundation of your protection from burnout protection from mental health anxiety depression boundary yep boundary it's the foundation of what you need to build off of for your health yeah it is I mean that's a really important foundation yeah it really is and it's probably one of the hardest things for us as women like you said the human givers we are labeled that and we do it right from the get go and I think it's interesting like what age do we lose or we've never been allowed to be able to set our own boundaries well think about like little girls you know we start training them from the get go to to lose their boundaries that's nice I can remember distinctly as a little child you know let's see we had moved back up here so I was probably 5 or 6 years old and my mother saying to me that I had to hug other people and I didn't like that yeah right I'd never I'm better now in my 40s about hugging other people like I'm more comfortable with it now but I was not a cuddly kid was not a cuddly baby was not I was a tomboy like I was just not and so and to be told and it felt so wrong to me inside like why are you telling me it's okay like this is my body but then on the other hand that you lose that boundary right you're being told by an adult that that boundary that you feel inside is right that you're knowing that you is wrong and you're being told that by your parent by your adult right so it's like this dismantling constantly of a female yes and as we get older it's just it's like a you know a snowflake rolling down a mountainside it just gets bigger and and heavier as you get older so we finally get to this place and we get to this career where so much is required of us just on the face of it right even if you are 100% perfect at setting boundaries this career is very very intense and most of us suck about setting boundaries so right so you combine that intensity of our career intensity of the work that we do with our difficulty of setting boundaries with each other with patients with our clients yeah with our family that feeling of wanting to be the one to be there for people because only you can do it it leads to burnout and that martyrdom that comes into play I hope we'll find the time to have a full conversation just on martyrdom but you can see how that whole idea of sacrificing yourself and has like no boundaries to it at all it's just not healthy it's not ideal but it's sometimes the standard by which we seem to measure ourselves as midwives I agree I think we've set ourselves up for that and so I think that so many of us come into this helping profession as nurses as midwives you know because not all of us are midwives so we all have varied backgrounds we come into this with that human giver syndrome that helper syndrome we have to help everybody right and there's so much you know for me personally I mean there's trauma in my life you know and so I can feel and empathize so much with what my patients are bringing to me and sharing and trust that they're placing in me when they're in my room with me but it also because you can recognize it you know and so I think it's it's it's it's it's it's it's 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