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00:08 Jackie Strohm: Welcome to PA Centered, a podcast designed to help listeners be a part of the solution to end sexual harassment, abuse and assault. Each episode, we will take on a topic or current event to help spark conversation and break down barriers to building communities free from sexual violence.

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00:32 JS: Hi, I'm Jackie Strohm, the Prevention & Resource Coordinator at the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape. I'll be your host today as we're joined by Alexa Livelsberger to talk about boundaries. Lexi is the Outreach and Education Coordinator at Highmark Caring Place, a center for grieving children, adolescents and their families. Lexi has spent her career supporting families through traumatic events.

00:56 Alexa Livelsberger: Hi Jackie, I'm so happy to be able to join you today.

01:00 JS: I'm excited too, and I think this is the perfect time for us to be talking about how stressful boundaries can be, especially because we have the holidays coming up. So before we dive into how setting boundaries can be an act of self-care, let's make sure we're all on the same page. So Lexi, can you first tell us what are boundaries and why are they important? 

01:24 AL: That's a really great, great question. So put very simply, boundaries are a person's right to choose what is comfortable for them. But we know that there are sort of additional nuances about boundaries that make them just a little more complicated than that. When we say the word boundaries, it feels a little heavier than just that very simple definition. So often when we think about boundaries, we think about physical boundaries or the physical space that we need around our bodies. Well, this is absolutely true, there are also emotional boundaries, so this could be like what information or feelings you feel comfortable sharing, maybe I feel like comfortable sharing personal and private things about myself or maybe I don't, and that's a different boundary from one person to another.

02:09 AL: Boundaries, additionally, there are boundaries around what you think and believe, boundaries around the amount of information you choose to consume like news and media, and that's so relevant right now, as some folks might feel like they want to be sort of in the know and hearing things on news and media channels. And some folks might say, "I'm setting a boundary around that, I'm not gonna consume media today or this week, or maybe even for this hour, because that feels like too, just the boundary for me, I'm consuming too much and it's kind of information overload." There also are boundaries around digital consent, whether you want your photo posted on social media or not, and so that can be a way that you set that boundary for yourself, saying, "No, thanks, that's not for me," and other folks might be okay with that.

02:57 JS: Absolutely, so setting and respecting boundaries is always important, but 2020 has been a wild year, especially with the pandemic, and so I think we've really had to navigate boundaries in a new way and with more frequency. And so I guess I'm wondering if you could speak to how people can set boundaries to care for themselves.

03:22 AL: You couldn't be more right, Jackie. Boundaries have always been something for us to sort of all navigate, but 2020 has definitely brought some additional challenges around boundaries. So the work that I do presently is work around grief and loss, and I think something that's really important for people to understand is that we're all experiencing grief and loss right now during the pandemic. You might be experiencing the loss of everyday routine, we're doing something different every day than we were in the spring of 2020. You might be experiencing the loss of a sense of safety now feeling maybe it's unsafe to go out in the world and do things that you wouldn't have thought twice about before, maybe the loss of control or the loss of sense of self. If you're working remotely and have children who are also learning remotely, so any sort of caregivers out there or adults who might be caring for children, you know very well the difficulty navigating boundaries, right? Instead of distinct roles, like employees, sort of 9:00-5:00 or some hours like that during the day, and then parenting in the evening, now you're navigating both of those roles all day long, it can be hard to sort of have boundaries around those things.

04:34 AL: Because we're all experiencing grief and loss right now, we are also likely experiencing the feelings that go along with that, right? So often when we think about grief and loss, we only think about it in terms of the death of someone, but I'm talking about grief and loss in that just sort of overarching way, again, that loss of the way life used to be. Loss of things that felt more within our control, so even though while it's not the death of someone, although people could certainly be experiencing that right now as well, it still can come with those same feelings that we have, even when someone has died. So you could be feeling, I'm gonna list some things, and some of these things might resonate with you, you might be feeling overwhelmed, you could be feeling exhausted, even if you feel like you're sleeping well at night, you could still wake up in the morning, tired.

05:24 AL: You could be feeling like you're having difficulty concentrating, so maybe you feel like you were maybe more organized kind of prior to the start of the pandemic, and now it's hard to concentrate and be productive and keep things nice and organized. It does feel like right now though, even though those are the feelings we're having, and I think a lot of people are experiencing those, all of those feelings and kind of overwhelm, but it doesn't in other ways, feel like the world expects us to be more productive, it expects us to adapt or change more quickly, kind of get over our difficult feelings. Grief and loss is truly an individual experience, so that just means that each of our journeys are unique, right, we could be having any of those feelings I named, or maybe none of them, just depends on the person. So it's actually really important to give ourselves permission to set our own individual boundaries, so to really not pay attention to what the world is saying right now about, "Move on, get over it. Adjust."But to really think more about, what do I need? Me as a person, what do I need? What feels comfortable to me? Because people are really having lots of those unique experiences right now, and so we need to really focus on ourselves and what do we need and what feels comfortable to us.

06:44 JS: I love that you made that connection, I think it's absolutely true, and I hadn't really thought about it before. So there is more to boundaries than just setting them, and we also need to respect other people's boundaries, right? 

06:58 AL: Absolutely. So often we're really good at asking permission out of politeness, right? So even when we teach our kids, make sure to ask, and sometimes that kind of comes in terms of being polite, but we don't always listen to the answer, so it's just as important to listen to the answer as it is to ask, because the person might answer in a way that we're not expecting, so we can just assume that we know what their answer might be. This is especially true for our interactions with children, so we sometimes actually just discount their answers if we even listen to them at all, so they might say, "I'm hungry," and even if we listen to that response or that answer of hungry, we might say, "You're not hungry, you just ate an hour ago. You can't possibly be hungry." I think this is another area where we must remember that our boundaries are individual, like I just talked about, in the same way that self-care is so personal to each one of us. They're actually...

07:55 AL: When we think about, again, the world we live in right now, there are so many difficult decisions that are being made right now, and again, things that... When I think about the everyday things that I give a lot of thought to now, I didn't think twice about them in sort of early 2020 or definitely in 2019, on things like invitation to a wedding, invitation to a funeral, or even a holiday meal with your family, now requires considering your boundaries around physical and emotional safety in new and different ways. And even for my own family, my grandparents just the other day, said, "I don't know if we're gonna be able to do Thanksgiving like we always do." We just have always done it the same way every year, and so that would have been a kind of a no-brainer, so to speak, that we're just doing it that way, but now it's really having to be thought about in a different way. There might honestly be no solution that feels good right now, it's kind of like choosing the lesser of two evils, so to speak. If you have a boundary about not attending large gatherings due to safety precautions, you might have to decline that invitation to a wedding or even to that holiday meal. I might have to say to my family, "Even if you all are getting together, I'm not sure if that feels safe to me."

09:09 AL: So if we would have to decline or feel like we're having to set a boundary around that and decline that invitation to anything, it might then cause us to feel guilt or regret, it might even actually have people kind of judging us, "Why aren't they coming? Why don't they feel like it's safe to attend this event?" And this is why we started to talk about boundaries as a form of self-care, this is why, there's that real connection between boundaries and self-care. If we discount our own boundaries or ignore what feels comfortable to us, then we're really ignoring not only our physical safety, but our need to take care of our emotional health and well-being. So if I said, "I'm gonna go to that family dinner, even if it doesn't feel safe to me," I might have a pit in my stomach all night, I would probably have just all sorts of feelings around that, I might just feel uncomfortable generally because I'm not doing what's sort of true to myself or what I need to feel emotionally and physically safe. This is why it's so important to respect and honor the boundaries of others, so what's comfortable for one person might not be comfortable for another.

10:21 JS: I'm really glad that you reminded us of this fact that we need to remember that we all are different, like you talked about with our feelings and our boundaries, and so I know for myself, sometimes it can feel selfish to wanna prioritize my own self-care, or I feel like I shouldn't be the one that has to... Like it shouldn't be my priority that I should care more about the other people around me, and I know for folks who have kids in their lives, I know you want what's best for them, right? But one of the ways that we can set those priorities and make sure that we're doing what's best for ourselves and our kids is modeling those behaviors that show what it looks like to set and respect boundaries.

11:08 AL: Yeah. I think this is often just a mistaken belief, and sometimes I think it's rooted in the way that our society view self-care. So we think about it as an afterthought. We don't think about it as a priority, even if we sort of dive into the stigma that we have in our society around mental healthcare. Sometimes they're just really negative things associated with seeking that care for yourself. Even if we take a step back and think about what it's like to take a sick day, I think generally that can be discouraged. Are you sick enough to stay home? Or aren't you able to come? And I think maybe in a way, 2020 is shifting that a little bit, it's really having people being more mindful of if you are not physically feeling well, I'm not sure we've gotten there quite yet with sort of emotional and mental health, but having people think about, if you're physically not well, you shouldn't be attending events versus, I think prior to this year, it really was, maybe we thought about it in a negative way, like, "Why aren't you here?"

12:16 AL: So the underlying message there, if we think about those couple of things is that we're internalizing is that self-care is not a priority, is that other people are important, we need to do our jobs, we need to be productive, we need to care for others, care for our children. Not care for ourselves. Yeah, we truly can't care for others, care for our children, if we don't care for ourselves first, so I imagine that lots of folks maybe who are listening today have heard the analogy of putting on your own oxygen mask before you can help anyone else, or sometimes even in the work that I do now, we'll talk about an analogy of, you can't sort of give cookies if you don't have a full jar of cookies, so you have to sort of feed your own soul, take care of yourself before you can truly care for other people. So that message is really just that we have to start with ourselves, which is counter, I think, to the message that we largely get in our society.

13:12 AL: So one of the very best ways that we can teach our children is by modeling healthy behaviors, and this really includes setting and respecting boundaries. A simple act like asking your child or any child in your life, "Is it okay if I say beside you?" Or, "Can I hold your hand?" So those seem, I think, really insignificant to people like, "Well, my goodness, that's no big deal, to ask," but really at the core of that, it communicates the ability for the child to choose to say yes or no, and then have that choice respected, so they couldn't say, "No, thanks, I'm fine to sit here by myself." Or, "No, thanks, I don't wanna hold hands." Moments like this happened every day, and I think that's really important because it doesn't have to be a planned event, it can be just something happens on the fly. Every day with a child. And it also then increases the opportunities that you have from modeling or sometimes we call these teachable moments, so it's those everyday interactions that happen that we can respond to and then set that tone for you have the right to set your own boundaries, even you as a child, absolutely. And then have those boundaries respected.

14:29 JS: So as we've been talking about, the world definitely looks different than it did a couple of months ago, and I think the way that we set and respect boundaries right now looks different too. Especially because of the pandemic. So I'm wondering if you have any tips or suggestions to help people navigate how they can be respectful of other people's boundaries right now, or help set their own boundaries, even though it can... Like we talked about before, can sometimes make us have all different kinds of feelings.

15:01 AL: Yeah, I think part of what's been so interesting about this time and boundaries is that our boundaries are changing, and so the boundaries, again, that I had sort of early 2020 or even last year might... They do look different than presently, and I know that's true for a lot of people in my own life, and I imagine folks that are listening, it looks same way. As you were asking that question, I was thinking of... I just saw a college friend over the weekend, and so we've been friends for 20 years, probably at this point. Gosh, I don't even wanna count, 'cause that dates myself, but of course, we have sort of... We know each other's boundaries because we lived together, because we spent so much time together in our younger years, and so our interactions are, I guess, sort of seamless, if you will, because we already have had those conversations, have spent lots of time together and understood what each one of us was comfortable with around like, giving hugs, hello or goodbye, how much information we would share with each other, things like that.

16:08 AL: And so in this present time, the way that I know that her boundaries are different and my boundaries are different, quite honestly, is communicating with her, and I think that's ultimately sort of the best, best advice I could give when it comes to whether it's a college friend or a family member, or a colleague at work or... Oh my gosh, anyone at the grocery store at this point is really just communicating those, communicating both your boundaries to the best of your ability, and communicating so that you understand their boundaries. And so, again, even this weekend, I had checked in with her ahead of time so that I was really clear about what was gonna be comfortable for her or not. So even just things about, "How do you feel about sharing food?" And so then I knew what to expect going into it, and it didn't have to sort of hurt feelings or make anyone feel guilty or regretful when we were together, 'cause we had talked about those boundaries ahead of time, which I think is really helpful. No, I think in that example, that all went pretty easily, because I think we're both open to understanding those boundaries, and I know for when we're talking about holidays and families it can just be a little messier sometimes.

17:25 AL: And so I think the very best thing we can do is again, to communicate our own boundaries so that we know we're just being clear but in a kind way, of course, allow our kids to communicate their boundaries and help them to affirm those boundaries, and to then again, do that modeling behavior and respect another person's boundaries, whether we agree with them or not, because, at the end of day, it's not about do we agree with someone's boundaries, it's about do we respect them. So whatever, a family member might communicate to us, whether we think that's a good idea or not, we can respect that, that's their decision, that's their boundary for keeping themselves physically and emotionally safe, and we can model that respectful behaviour to our children.

18:10 JS: That's a really great example. I feel like I didn't even realize that I was doing some of that with the few friends and family members that I've tried to see over the last few months of making sure like, "Hey, do you wanna only go out to eat outside or do you wanna get take out or what does it look like? How much time do you wanna spend together and do we not wanna hug like we normally do, and so... " Yeah, I think that's a great example. And heading into some of these holiday activities with family members, we probably have very different boundaries than we ever had with them before, and I think it's really important, especially talking about this piece around self-care, that we are doing what's best for us and what's best for other people, so that we're putting people's boundaries at the forefront of whatever we're choosing to do. So we just talked about a lot of stuff, and some of it might be new for folks, and so I'm wondering, for some people who maybe haven't thought about these things before, how can we start incorporating these things into our own lives on a daily basis? 

19:23 AL: Yeah, so I would say, first and foremost, it's never too late to start, and we always... When we're talking about talking with children or I'm setting boundaries with kids and respecting their boundaries, it's truly never too late to start, so today is a great day to start. And also don't feel bad if it's not something that you've been practicing, I think it's... Yeah, today is always a good day. So setting and respecting our own boundaries and modeling that for our kids, doesn't have to be hard and it doesn't have to be a big thing, and sometimes I think it seems kind of big and scary, but it truly doesn't have to be that way. We can start by giving our kids, any kids in our life, just choices, choices about all kinds of things, and again, in our everyday lives there are... I should count some day how many choices we make in one day, choices could be, What pajamas do they wanna wear? Put out a couple of choices, do you wanna wear this pair of pajamas or this pair of pajamas? Spider-Man or Hulk? 

20:23 AL: What color spoon do they wanna use? Do you wanna the blue spoon or the pink spoon? Whether they want help opening their snack or not, "Do you need help with that? Or can you do it yourself?" That's just setting that tone that, "I bet you can do it, but I'm here to help I'm here, but as your back up, right? If you need me." If you're looking for some direction or even some language to get you started, because certainly, I think for you and I, Jackie, this language because we do this in our work all day comes a little more naturally to us, but for other folks listening it may make feel a little bit outside of their comfort zone. There are some excellent examples on the safe, secure kids website, that actually give you the language to use almost as a script. If you wanted to kinda start there until you felt more comfortable, I'm trying it out yourself. So one example on the website goes like this, imagine you're leaving a family event, so this is great for the holiday times you've been talking about. Imagine you're leaving a family event and grandma is asking your child for a hug goodbye. Happens all the time. Your child is avoiding grandma. And maybe kind of hiding behind you, hiding behind your legs, kind of avoiding this physical interaction.

21:36 AL: In order to reinforce boundaries and choice, you might say something like this to Grandma, whether this is your mom or someone else's mother, "It looks like someone doesn't feel like giving hugs today." So you're kind of just saying out loud what you're seeing, "It looks like someone doesn't feel like giving hugs today. Some days we like hugs and other days we don't, and that's okay." So again, you're just talking out loud about what you're seeing to bring it to the forefront, if you will. "We never have to give hugs to anyone." So right there by saying that very simple phrase, you are set really communicating to both grandma and the child that hug doesn't have to happen. The child looks uncomfortable, grandma is unaware. For whatever reason, no one has to give hugs if they don't want to, so you're modeling that behavior that it's always a choice. You might also... So for some people, the talking out loud feels more comfortable, I'm kind of one of those people sometimes that maybe doesn't like confrontation or doesn't like to speak directly to another grown-up, that can be hard. That's something that I think takes some practice.

22:48 AL: But if you were a someone who maybe feels a little more comfortable interacting with that other adult, you could say something directly to grandma, or you could say something maybe privately to the child who's hiding behind your legs. You could say something like, "We all show our respect and love in different ways. How would you like to say goodbye to grandma today?" So there's the choice, right? How would you like to say goodbye? You can even offer some choices, you could say maybe a high five, maybe a wave, maybe just words, so that then the child gets to choose how is it that they wanna say goodbye to grandma. And what's important there is that a lot of times people will just sort of argue if you will, or should bring the point that it's maybe disrespectful not to say goodbye to, especially an older person in our family. And so I think that the respect piece comes in the acknowledging the goodbye, whether that's a hello or goodbye, a wave, a high five, whatever that looks like. It's important to give choices to kids that are not always physical choices or choices that involve their body.

23:58 AL: So if your kid just doesn't want touches that day, they can wave, and that doesn't have to involve some physical affection with someone else. So that's, I think, a pretty simple way, a way that we're probably gonna encounter that here coming up in the next few months, a scenario like that, but it's just the way that we can reinforce our child's boundaries, 'cause we see that they don't wanna give a hug. We can communicate that openly to the other adults in the room, and then also give the child choices about what they would like to do.

24:31 JS: Those are really great tips for, especially for kids and helping adults to navigate how to have those conversations. I've seen this exact scenario play out at many different events and gatherings that I've gone to, and I think it's also a good tip for adults too. Right, I think even... Especially right now, we never really thought about it before. But asking that question of, "How do you wanna say goodbye?" It might sound silly, but there might be some people who are like, "I'd love to give you a hug if you're okay with that." And so then if we're also okay with giving a hug, we could make sure that we've checked in that we both have that same boundary, that we're okay with that, rather than assuming and just going in for the hug when that person right now especially is like, "Nope, that's not a thing." And of course, there are people who regardless of a pandemic, don't wanna give hugs in general either, right. They're not comfortable with physical touch, and so I really like the point that you've been making that boundaries are different for everyone, and we need to ultimately be respecting other people's boundaries, even if they're not the same as ours.

25:46 JS: So Lexi, thank you so much for joining us to talk about boundaries today. That is all the time we have, but I wanna thank everyone for listening to this episode of PA Centered. For more information about boundaries, you can visit resources on safesecurekids.org, and for more information about grief and loss, you can visit highmarkcaringplace.com. Thanks again, Lexi.

26:10 AL: Thanks, Jackie.

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26:19 JS: If you or a loved one needs help, a local Sexual Assault Center is available 24-7. Call 1888-772-7227 for more information or find your local Center online at pcar.org. Together, we can end sexual violence. Any of user's opinions expressed on PA centered by staff or their guests are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of PCAR or PCAR's funders.