[00:00:34.320]
Welcome to episode 407 of the Non-Anxious Leader Podcast. I'm Jack Shitama. I am back after nearly a month of travel with an all-new episode. And if you are new to this podcast, you can connect with me at jack@christian-leaders.com with your questions, comments, and suggestions for future episodes. And you can get more resources at thenonanxiousleader.com.

[00:00:57.950]
Where you can find out about my coaching practice, books that I've written, speaking engagements, and courses that I offer. You can also subscribe to my Two for Tuesday email newsletter and get your free AI family systems coach at the website or at the links in the show notes. Finally, if you would like to support my work for as little as $5 a month, you can get more information and sign up at the link in the show notes. Thanks in advance for your consideration. And now, without further ado, here is episode 407, 4 Types of Boundaries and How to Manage Them.

[00:01:38.980]
You've probably heard a lot of advice about how to manage your boundaries. Say no, protect your time, don't answer email after a certain hour, don't let other people take advantage of you. All of that can be helpful, but there's a problem. You can get very good at setting boundaries and still be exhausted. Laura Nguyen makes this point in her blog post, The 4 Boundaries Nobody Told You to Build.

[00:02:03.310]
I'll put a link in the show notes. Nguyen argues that most high achievers become pretty good at one kind of boundary while continuing to leak energy in other areas. She identifies 4 kinds of boundaries, structural, temporal, relational, and energetic. I think that's a helpful framework, but from a family systems perspective, I want to take it one step further. The real issue isn't simply whether you have good boundaries.

[00:02:30.810]
The deeper question is whether you can define yourself while staying emotionally connected to other people. That's self-differentiation. And that changes the way you think about boundaries because a boundary isn't primarily something you build to keep other people out. Rather, it's a way of getting clear about what you will and won't do while giving other people the freedom to respond however they want to respond. Not surprisingly, this is simple to understand and hard to do.

[00:03:01.760]
The first category Nguyen identifies is structural boundaries. This is about responsibility— what things are actually yours to do. She describes a familiar pattern. Someone asks you to do something. You agree because it doesn't seem like a big deal.

[00:03:18.050]
Then they ask you again. Eventually, the favor becomes an expectation. At some point, you realize you've taken responsibility for something that was never really yours. From a family systems perspective, this is rarely just a workload problem. It's an emotional process.

[00:03:34.960]
Why did you take it on? Maybe you wanted to be helpful. Maybe you were concerned that it wouldn't get done otherwise. Maybe somebody was disappointed when you hesitated. Or maybe it was simply easier to do it yourself than deal with someone else's frustration.

[00:03:50.920]
Self-differentiation is the ability to take responsibility for yourself without taking responsibility for somebody else. That requires self-definition. What am I responsible for? What am I willing to do and what am I not willing to do? It's getting clear on your goals and values.

[00:04:09.750]
The hard part is remaining connected to somebody who doesn't like your answer. That's where a structural boundary gets tested. You may be able to define your boundary to someone else, but what's difficult is tolerating the emotional response it creates. If somebody is disappointed or may think you're being unhelpful, or it may pressure you to reconsider, the temptation is to relieve the tension by saying, fine, I'll take care of it. The anxiety goes down, at least for the moment, but now you own another responsibility.

[00:04:42.260]
Nguyen gives the following response as a way to hold a structural boundary. I can take that on, or I can keep doing this existing thing. You can fill in the blank. I can't do both at the level you're used to. Which matters more right now?

[00:04:58.060]
Notice the self-definition: I can do this or that, but not both. And the emotional connection. Which matters to you right now? It's involving the other in how to move forward.

[00:05:09.820]
No matter how you do it, if you can set a structural boundary while still showing care and concern for the other, you have a chance of maintaining that boundary. Nguyen's second category is temporal boundaries. This is where most boundary advice tends to focus. When will you work? When are you available?

[00:05:29.300]
When will you answer messages? But there's an important distinction here. You can protect the number of hours you work, without protecting your ability to think. You might decide not to work after 5 o'clock, for example, but if every minute before 5 is filled with meetings, interruptions, texts, emails, and other people's requests, you haven't necessarily protected your most important resource, which is your attention. And again, there's an emotional process underneath this.

[00:05:58.360]
Why do you feel the need to be constantly available? Sometimes it's because other people expect it, but sometimes it's because you expect it of yourself. I learned this lesson myself. I used to be the kind of person that if you emailed me, I responded to you within a few minutes. What I realized is it was getting in the way of my ability to sustain focused work.

[00:06:20.740]
I felt responding quickly was a badge of honor, but in reality, what it was was my discomfort with leaving something unanswered. From a family systems perspective, it's important to pay attention to what happens inside you when you become less available. Are you able to let the phone ring or an email sit for an hour or more? Can you allow someone to want something from you without immediately responding? These are small acts of differentiation.

[00:06:49.920]
You're not cutting yourself off from the other person. You're regulating your own functioning so you can choose your response instead of reacting automatically. That difference matters. Nguyen's suggestion is to let somebody know that you are working on something important. The way she phrases it is, I'm focused on something until 1:00 PM.

[00:07:10.850]
If it's urgent, text me. Otherwise, I'll get back to you this afternoon. The self-definition part of this is pretty clear. I'm focused on something important. The emotional connection part is, you still matter to me, so you can get through to me if it's urgent, but please leave me alone if it's not.

[00:07:29.770]
I believe what you'll find is that most people will respect that request. When I was running the Christian camp, I realized at one point that I was one of the biggest offenders of interrupting other people. I would just go into their office and sit down to have a conversation without even checking to see if they were working on something important. And because I was the boss, they wouldn't tell me if they wanted me to leave. I brought this up at a staff meeting and we ultimately agreed that we would each get a laminated 8.5 by 11 sign that said in big letters, Doing focused work.

[00:08:05.930]
Please come back later. And we each got a suction cup with a hook so we could hang the sign on the window and our office door when we closed it. The important part about temporal boundaries is telling other people when you're going to be available while telling them that if they really need you, they can connect with you. That is self-definition and emotional connection.

[00:08:32.040]
Nguyen's third category is the most obviously connected to family systems theory, relational boundaries. She describes people who bring you problems without doing much thinking about the problem themselves. If you're a leader, you know this experience. Somebody walks into your office and says essentially, here's something making me anxious, would you please become anxious about it too? Well, they probably don't say it that way, but that's often what's happening.

[00:08:58.640]
Anxiety travels through relationship systems. One person feels uncomfortable and passes the problem to another. And if you're a competent, responsible person, you may be particularly vulnerable to this because you can fix things. Somebody brings you a problem, and within 30 seconds you're thinking harder about it than they are. Suddenly their problem has become your problem.

[00:09:21.150]
And as Edwin Friedman said, nobody gets the problem they can handle. If they could handle it, it wouldn't be a problem. In family systems terms, this is over-functioning, and over-functioning is always relational. The more you take responsibility for another person's functioning, the less responsibility they need to take. This can become a reinforcing pattern.

[00:09:43.790]
They have challenges they can't solve, so they become problems. They bring them to you, you solve them, and they bring you more. At some point, you might get frustrated and resentful, but the more useful question is, how might my own functioning be helping to maintain this pattern? Nguyen's suggestion is classic self-differentiation. It's to give the challenge back to the other.

[00:10:08.960]
She writes, before we dig in, what have you tried so far, and what do you think the right call is? Instead of immediately giving someone an answer, you ask them to weigh in. This returns the responsibility to the other. This doesn't mean that you become distant or uncaring. You can remain interested.

[00:10:27.230]
You can listen and offer perspective, but you resist the urge to take over. You stay connected without assuming responsibility for the other person's functioning. That's self-differentiation. Nguyen's 4th category is what she calls energetic boundaries, and I think this one is especially important. For example, a meeting ended 3 hours ago, but it's still happening in your head.

[00:10:53.250]
You replay the conversation thinking, maybe I should have said this or shouldn't have said that. You wonder if other people are upset or if we made the wrong decision. Physically, you've left the room, but emotionally you're still there. In family systems terms, this is taking responsibility for self and not others. Self-differentiation is being able to communicate clearly, to be thoughtful, to tell someone what you believe, to offer your best advice, but you can't control what happens next.

[00:11:25.040]
Other people get a vote, and they may disagree with you, or they may misunderstand you. They might be unhappy with you or even make a decision that you think is a mistake. Being a non-anxious presence means recognizing that their response belongs to them. Your responsibility is your functioning. Their responsibility is theirs.

[00:11:47.520]
And you can do this intellectually, but sometimes emotionally it's hard to let go, which is why self-regulation is so important. When you notice the thinking, the thought, the spiraling, and you notice the urge to replay the conversation or figure out how to change the outcome, it's a sign to take a step back because there's nothing you can do about it after the fact. One helpful technique is to talk to yourself in the third person. You've done what you can do. The rest belongs to them.

[00:12:18.260]
That small amount of psychological distance can help interrupt the automatic emotional process. All that said, I do believe replaying situations is a useful tool. The question is, are you ruminating in a way that isn't helpful, or are you thinking about how you might do better the next time? When you do the latter, you are more likely to differentiate in similar situations in the future. Not always, but it gives you a better chance.

[00:12:48.400]
I think it's important to note too that sometimes the word boundary can mislead you because it can make you imagine a wall. This is my space. That's your space. Stay over there. But as I mentioned, self-differentiation isn't about creating emotional distance.

[00:13:05.260]
In fact, a higher level of differentiation can allow you to stay more connected Precisely because you're clear about where you stand. Here's the difference. One person says, I'm not discussing this anymore, and walks away. That's distancing emotionally, if not cutting off altogether. A non-anxious presence says, I know you disagree with me.

[00:13:27.770]
I understand why this matters to you. This is still the decision I've made. The challenge is to be clear without becoming distant or angry or frustrated and to disagree without trying to convince the other. Another challenge is to allow the other person to be disappointed without making their disappointment your responsibility. You can continue to show care and concern for them even when you aren't willing to do what they want.

[00:13:56.390]
Nguyen suggests doing an exercise of rating yourself on each of the 4 categories and identifying the weakest one, or as she says, the one that is leaking energy. In family systems terms, you can also look at the emotional process that is going on. For example, if your weakest boundary is structural, what happens when you say, that's not something I can take on? Do you feel guilty? Are you saying yes as a way to manage your anxiety?

[00:14:25.870]
Or suppose your problem is temporal. What happens when you don't answer a text or email immediately? Do you become anxious about what the other person is thinking? Or if it's relational, what happens when somebody brings you a problem and you don't solve it? Do you feel irresponsible or that you're letting them down?

[00:14:45.750]
Or if your challenge is keeping energetic boundaries, what happens when somebody makes a decision you disagree with and you have to let them live with it? Do you keep trying to manage the outcome in your head? Understanding how you respond will help you to identify where your real work is because the goal isn't to eliminate anxiety, it's to learn to manage it better. Instead of automatically moving toward relief, you learn to look at your goals and values enough to make a choice based on what you believe rather than what will reduce the anxiety the fastest. The question to ask yourself in any of these situations is, what is mine to do here?

[00:15:29.170]
Not how can I make everyone happy or how can I make this problem go away? Or not even how do I enforce this boundary? Because ultimately the goal isn't about better boundaries, it's to create greater capacity to define yourself while staying connected to the people around you. It's knowing what you believe, what you will do, and what you won't do without needing everyone else to agree. That's self-differentiation, and that's what non-anxious leaders do.

[00:15:57.690]
That's it for episode 407. Remember, you can connect with me at jack@christian-leaders.com. And you can find more resources at thenonanxiousleader.com. And if you found this episode helpful, please share it with someone who would benefit and please leave a review on your podcast platform of choice. Thanks in advance for your help.

[00:16:19.730]
Until next time, go be yourself.