Coffee Chat w/ Dr. D Setting Boundaries With Family…Why Is It So Hard?

Hey, Cadre, what's up? It's doctor d here, ready for my next coffee chat. I hope y'all got your coffee. This is actually my first cup of the day because I decided to sleep in, and I do not regret that. It's been a beautiful day. It's really windy where I'm at today for some reason, but I have enjoyed just kind of taking slow mornings, waking up when I'm ready, not waking up, because I feel forced to do that, and just kind of taking my day to, you know, just enjoy being alive, taking a deep breath, and first thing I always need is coffee.

But today I didn't get it right away, so I'm enjoying my first cup with you guys. So I've been talking to a few of my clients and friends. Hello, everyone. And everyone has been talking about boundaries being crossed, and I think it's come up mostly because we just had Mother's day. You know, we've had graduations. For some people, we have Father's day coming up, so there's some important holidays that are impacting our boundaries with family. And I come from, I would say, a pretty small family.

So just my immediate family has just been me and my mother growing up. And I have half siblings, but I didn't really spend time with them, didn't really know them well, but even with my mother's family, my grandparents lived hours away from me, so I didn't spend a lot of time with them. My, hey, Luke. My uncles all live in different states as well. And so when we would get together, typically around this time of year, we would get together for Memorial Day and at least for, like, thanksgiving or Christmas.

I just remembered that feeling of, I have to do this because my family expects this of me. You know, there were times when I didn't want to go see my family, not because, you know, it wasn't that I didn't like them, I didn't want to spend time with them. I just didn't feel like traveling. I wanted to stay home and enjoy my time by myself. But there is this expectation if I didn't show up that I was going to be hurting someone's feelings or they were going to think differently of me, or maybe I made them feel like they didn't matter to me.

And so I always forced myself to do what was uncomfortable for me, just to make someone else comfortable. And I think sometimes that's when our boundaries get crossed or we even cross our own boundaries with family. And I've been thinking about this lately. Why is it so hard to set boundaries with family when we can easily do it or maybe more easily do it with someone who's not related to us. So, for example, we might have very clear boundaries with a coworker or with someone we just recently met, and we are very comfortable with saying what our boundaries are.

But when it comes to family, we don't always speak up about those boundaries. And I think there's just the expectation that if it's family, you do whatever is expected of you because it's family, and that's it. There's nothing more to it. And so I started thinking about, what are some of those, the main boundaries that get crossed or the ones that we cross with our family members? And the first one that came to mind is time. We are often called upon by family members to do certain things, like come to this event, it's a birthday, someone's graduating, and we are expected to show up even when we don't want to or even when we have something else going on in our personal schedule, and we have to make arrangements to be there for our family.

Not to say that family is not important and you shouldn't do those things, but sometimes that's a boundary that gets crossed, because maybe we just don't want to do it, but we fall into that trap because it's family. Right. Or maybe the time boundary is crossed when you have something going on with your immediate family, and then extended family members kind of barge in and they have a crisis, and they're always calling you and they're taking up your time, and you don't say anything because it's family.

And that leads me into the second boundary that I think often gets crossed with families is physical. So I don't know. This is just like a joke, maybe in the black community, but we always have that crazy uncle, or there's always that one family member that's always wanting to hug on you. And especially as a child, we are kind of expected to hug them back. And we don't speak up that we're uncomfortable, and we don't teach our kids that you should speak up if you're uncomfortable. And you don't have to hug someone just because they're expecting a hug from you.

I think that's an important lesson to talk to kids about. Junk food junkie. What'd you say? It's tough to set boundaries when it's family because you always will feel obligated to be with them or help them. Absolutely. So with that physical boundary, you know, we are expected to pat someone on the back or when we greet each other, we're expected to hug each other, and that might be a cultural thing, but what if you're that person that you don't like to be touched? You know, maybe something's happened in your life and that's uncomfortable, or maybe you're just not a people person.

You just need your space. You know, you might try to dab someone up and they're like, come on, bring it in close. Right? And so that physical boundary often gets crossed with our family members, and it's one boundary that we don't feel comfortable speaking up about. The next boundary is emotional. So think about times when your family has brought something up about your past and that's a trigger for you, and so they're crossing your emotional boundary. You know, I can remember times like I've evolved.

I think we all evolve over our lives. And our family knows us in and out, right? They know us from when we were babies up to today. And so sometimes our family will bring up moments that we're not necessarily proud of or a memory we don't want to have, and so they'll bring it up. Remember that one time when you. Right, and you're like, please don't talk about that anymore. But to them, it's a meaningful memory. Or maybe it's funny to them, or it just helps them remember you in a different way. Like when you were real little and you used to do this, and maybe it's still embarrassing for you or it's just uncomfortable, but we don't say, please stop talking about that.

Or if you talk about that again, this is what I'm going to do. We don't set those boundaries. Why? Because it's family, right? We don't want to hurt our family. We are taught that family is everything. Family is so important, and so we don't speak up because there's an expectation, an obligation to our family. So take some time and think about what? About the obligation and respect for yourself. And why is it that family can't fall in line with that? Why is it that family, people that are supposed to love us and care about us and evolve with us, not take the moments to respect what our boundaries are?

So I want to challenge you. If you're struggling with your family members, especially with holidays coming up with the summertime, you know, you might be expected to travel and like, oh, you've got a break from work, come see me. Maybe you don't want to go see them. Maybe you just want to do something for yourself. Don't be afraid to speak up about what your boundary is, the reason for your boundary, what's going to happen if they cross that boundary. But also be mindful if you're feeling this tug on your heart to cross your own boundary.

So I'll give an example. I do this all the time with my mom. Okay. So my mom, she doesn't live far from me, about 15 minutes drive. And anytime my mom calls, there's this expectation with mothers. Right. If your mom calls, you better answer that phone no matter what's going on. And my mom knows I have a very busy schedule. You know, I have clients back to back. I might have five minutes in between clients. So I try to text her, or I'll try to call her and say, hey, I only have five minutes to talk.

What is it? Right? And she'll just keep talking and talking and talking. It's like, mom, I have to go. I have a client at the door. Okay, I'm gonna call you back. But she keeps talking, and so I allow her to cross my boundary with my time. Right. But at the same time, I'm doing it to myself because I knew she was gonna do that, and I called her anyway. So I have to hold myself accountable to my own boundaries. So if that's something you've been struggling with, you know, keep that in mind. How are you crossing your own boundaries with your family?

And is there a boundary specifically with, you know, different family members that you need to communicate and communicate how you want to fix that? So I hope you guys are having a wonderful day. Thank you for tuning in, and I'll see y'all next week. Bye.