Alanna Kaivalya, Ph.D. 0:00
PH, we've talked a lot about the power of holding boundaries as a feminine woman on this podcast, and how it really is these boundaries that ensures we are sovereign and that we're never giving our energy away unless we absolutely want to. But what happens when you decide to draw boundaries and the world around you protests, because they will, especially if you've had a long habit of over giving and overdoing everything, this is going to cause a shake up. So stay tuned while I cover exactly how to handle the protests. Welcome to the satisfied woman podcast. I'm your host. Alanna Kaivalya, this podcast is dedicated to helping women lean into their femininity and rediscover the power of their feminine gifts. We take a look at what it means to be a modern woman and how we can live a satisfied life on our own terms. Visit the [email protected] and make sure when you head over to thesatisfiedwoman.com that you get your free three part feminine reset series. This is going to help you kick off what it means to live your life as a satisfied woman. Start to regulate your nervous system and really get more connected to your intuition. From there, I would love to have you join my rooted membership where we explore this and really live it and own it every day. So make sure you head to the satisfiedwoman.com and join me and my community for our embodiment of the way of the satisfied woman. Okay, so part of what makes satisfied women satisfied is creating really strong boundaries around our energy, our bodies, our decisions, our sovereignty. And it's these boundaries that create the feminine vessel, the feminine container that allows you to receive everything that you absolutely deserve in this life, you see, femininity is receptive. It draws in. It magnetizes. It receives support, love, help. It receives all of the good things, like money, joy and pleasure. So we want to create solid boundaries around our feminine vessel in order to create this receptivity. If we don't do that, if our vessel isn't solid, if our boundaries are sketchy or non existent, then this vessel isn't able to contain any of these good things that we seek, creativity, joy, pleasure, connection, relationships, and our energy leaks out. Our energy is drained. And a woman who is drained of her sacred feminine energy is overwhelmed, she's burnt out, and she's likely developing resentments in her relationships. Now I'm covering this quickly, because we have definitely talked about this before, so if you haven't really heard me talk about boundaries, number one, I'm surprised. And number two, you haven't been tuning in, so make sure that you go back and listen to previous episodes so that you can catch up on what it really means to be a fully boundaried woman. Of course, if you are unclear of what your boundaries are, it starts with you being connected to your intuition and your emotional depth that's at the heart of how you'll understand what boundaries help you to stay safe, secure and sovereign and allow you to be fully cherished as a feminine woman. All right, so that's our tiny and very brief recap of boundaries and why they are important? Oh, the other thing is that boundaries are for you. They're not for the people around you. I spoke with a client recently, because, as you know, I do a lot of one on one work with women, where I help them individually with the things they're struggling most with their lives. So that tends to be relationships, challenging relationships, toxic relationships, relationships. They'd like to end relationships. They'd like to attract and career goals, whether it be starting a new career because they've been lost in a relationship for 20 years, whether it's transitioning a career or whether it's really starting to earn their full capacity on what they deserve in a career, those are kind of the two camps that women tend to come to me for support in and when I talk about boundaries with them, because most women have been enculturated to not have boundaries, or to not know what their boundaries are, and certainly not to speak up about them, not to. Call them out or feel like they're important, we often ride over our own boundaries and transgress our own desires and needs because it's inconvenient for someone else, because we don't see our own boundaries and needs as important, or because we've been told for our entire lives that they're not so whatever of these conditions might be true for you, starting to actually create your own boundaries around your feminine vessel causes, usually some upheaval in your life. Now, for us personally, it can be a source of discomfort and anxiety. Because here's what's true for those of us who haven't had strong boundaries in our lives, our nervous systems are dysregulated around that. We are constantly overthinking. We're diminishing ourselves. We're dismissing our intuition, which is stressful, we often have anxiety or thoughts that just run amok. That is a dysregulated nervous system. But if that's how we've been operating, that actually feels normal, so to come back to a regulated state where we are utilizing our own internal masculine energy to help protect our boundaries, even though that is a more regulated state that's going to feel like a panic mode, because we're not used to it when we start to finally pull the reins in on our energy and make sure that we preserve it for ourselves. Because I teach the women that I work with in my rooted membership or in my one on one coaching practice that we should never be below about 80% of our energy so if your energy levels start to drop below 80% you got to turn the red flags on, stop the presses and do whatever it is that you do to truly recharge and re Energize. Most women operate at zero 5% if you're lucky, if that's you sister, even the deepest and loudest forms of self care are going to feel both radical and like self rescue. And if you're really at that drained point, even the most incredible forms of self care in your world are not going to be enough to truly restore you. Okay, we don't want to get to that point. I don't want you to get to that point. So I really encourage and give so much permission to the women that I work with to make sure that they're protective of their energy. We need to be full. We need to be nourished. We need to be energized and charged with our feminine energy, because that is truly how we are, the most creative, the most joyful, the most receptive to pleasure, the most abundant and the most supported. Okay, so drawing these boundaries is critical, and they're for you to enforce. If you decide that you are not available for another after school pickup, then that is your boundary to enforce. That doesn't mean our boundaries force other people to act. It might inspire other people to act. They may rise to the challenge. And this is where we're going to feel the protest. So first off, the protest happens inside of us. We panic because we're so used to over giving and overdoing that when we pull back, create boundaries around our own energy, if we start to see the things that we used to just do and take over not getting done and overtaken, panic arises. The old narrative crops up, and we often fall back into our own patterns we need to stop. It's time to put the world on notice that we are not available for over giving and giving ourselves away anymore, once we recover from our own panic, our own regulated dysregulation, once we realize that being in a regulated nervous system is a readjustment, and once we feel the energetic lift from protecting our own boundaries, it'll be much easier to hold them now I had a conversation recently with a client of mine who said I drew a boundary that I need this person in my life to participate in some kind of event. Now that's not how boundaries work.

Alanna Kaivalya, Ph.D. 9:51
The boundaries to control others behavior. You can say my boundary is that I need those around me to participate in. Hmm, self care, deeper work, therapy, and if they don't do those things, your job is to walk away. Your job is to keep that boundary clear and limit your participation with these people. I don't know if that's your boundary or not, but whatever it is, maybe your boundary is to make sure that you always live in a clean space. That doesn't mean that everyone around you has to pick up, but if they don't, then it's your job to do to correct it in whatever way you can. I'll give you an example. So I have that boundary I love living in a very clean and tidy space that is super important to me. I feel like any external clutter simply clutters my brain and I can't do my best work. Now, many years ago, I was living with a man who's, let's just say, his version of clean was very different from my own, and so I got after him. I said, Look, I need a clean space that was my boundary. I need you to pick up. I need you to put things away. I need you to make sure that things are tidy. The toilet seat is down, the kitchen is clean. I was spending two hours every morning, even before I began working on my own, because I work from home, just trying to tend to my space. And it was wasting my time and stressing me out, he was not changing. Now, this was a person who was never going to change. I gave him many invitations to rise up into that level of cleanliness that really I need to do my best work. Now, instead of continuing to nag him or continuing to issue the invitation, which created more tension and resentment between us because he simply was not that guy, I realized that in order to enforce this boundary and preserve my space in the way that was really important to me, I invited him, he didn't show up. He didn't participate for that particular request. And so what I did was take care of myself, and I hired a house cleaner three days a week. Now I understand, dear listener, that that may sound incredibly pedantic to you and like overkill, and I also understand that many people don't have the ability to hire a house cleaner three days a week. I give this example because it was overkill, because at that time, my need for cleanliness and to not spend the additional two hours in the morning was so critical. I was building my first business, I was the only person at the helm. It was really a moment of do or die in our lives. We were behind on so many things, and it was really my business that needed to get into gear in order for us to move forward. So I prioritized what allowed me to tend to my business building at that time, and it was this cleanliness the two hours in the morning, it just wasn't going to work out. He wasn't going to do it, and rather than again, continue to expect that he would, I found a different solution to the problem. Now that is one example, and that might not be the best solution to whatever problem you're contending with at the time, if your boundary is that you need your partner to attend, let's say classes or therapy or something like that. If you create the invite and they don't, then you get to decide whether that's something you can live with, or whether that's something that needs to shift right. Boundaries are for you to enforce, not to try and force someone else's behavior. We create the invitation, and then we see if people rise and some will and some won't. Now the most important part of this, and the reason why I really wanted to speak on this in this episode, is because here's what I need you to do, right? I'm talking directly to you, and I mean that, if you can imagine me looking into your eyes right now, I'm giving you full permission, and I'm giving you almost a kind of script to do your best around creating these boundaries and holding them when the shakeup occurs. Because if you decide that you are no longer available for extra time, giving yourself away, additional pickups, doing the laundry over time that's unpaid, being spoken to this way. Whatever it is that you're tired of, it needs to stop. And so here's what you do if the boundary requires a request of someone else, and very likely it will okay. Now, if you got trouble holding your own boundaries, sister, make sure that you are with me in this rooted membership, because that's where I help to hold you and all the. Women here and each other myself as well, accountable to the things that we have been over trained throughout our lives to let slide. This is where me and all the women here get to support you in really living this life as a satisfied woman, because it does take practice, and it's just content and me talking until you learn to live it right here inside the rooted membership with me. Okay, so if you say I'm no longer going to offer overtime for free at my place of work, then that means you're clocking out at five, and there's just no exceptions, and that's a boundary you get to enforce for yourself. And when the request is made of you to stay longer, because you simply always have and now they expect it, here's what I invite you to say, are you ready? Okay, get your pen and paper. No, that's it. No, no, I'm not available for that without additional over explanation. Now, if some context would be helpful to preserve the relationship, because it's truly one you care about. So for example, if the request is, hey, you know what, we usually go for a nice, long walk every Saturday. I'd love to go with you this Saturday. Are you around? And this is a person you love, adore. Maybe it's a friend, you can say, I'm not available this Saturday. You don't have to say why, but I'd love to keep the option open for the following Saturday, if that's true for you. Okay, so softening with a little bit of context to preserve a relationship, because it is a relationship you adore. Fine. You do not need to excuse yourself. You do not need to over explain. And Sister, let me tell you, no is a complete sentence. And hell no is a fucking paragraph. The world is an ode your explanation and what happens when you over explain is you are likely feeling feminine guilt. Feminine guilt is guilt for behaviors we haven't even committed yet, but that we try to over explain away or go ahead and do, because we're terrified of someone else's disappointment or not meeting their expectations. Their disappointment and their expectations are not your responsibility. So when the world protests as you hold your boundary, you simply make the request, and then you hold the line, no over, explaining, no excuse making you say, you know, I would really feel cherished and loved if you would clean the house. And then you stop talking. When making a request in terms of boundaries, start with how it would make you feel, name the specific behavior and then silence. You know, I would feel really safe if you could drive a little more slowly, particularly if you're making this request to a masculine counterpart, stating how it will make you feel, and naming a specific behavior is really powerful for them. And if this masculine counterpart is one who cherishes you, is one who loves you, whether it's a friendship, a colleague, partnership, intimate relationship that will activate the healthy masculine, if it is present in them, and call them to rise into supporting you in the way that you're requesting. If the healthy masculine isn't available for them, then even the most extraordinarily PUT request will not make them rise. It is pointless to request over and over and over again, because unfortunately, that turns into nagging, and that's not sexy on anyone. So here's the deal,

Alanna Kaivalya, Ph.D. 19:35
when you set your boundaries, when you decide what you need to maintain your energetic clarity. You hold those boundaries when the world doesn't meet them, you get to decide what you can live with and what you can live without. Now, as always for me. More support around holding your boundaries, because this is earth shattering stuff, world shaking stuff, for more support. Make sure you join me in the rooted membership, and I can't wait to hear what's going on with you and how I can help support you create a more sovereign, satisfied life.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai