Ep 9: Mental self-care and redefining “setting boundaries” with Irene Oyang
Can "setting boundaries" with other people be yet another form of finger-pointing rather than turning the mirror back to ourselves?
How do we know whether we are trying to avoid a healing opportunity (which can be messy and painful) by "setting boundaries?"
Listen in to this week's {potentially} controversial topic with my very dear sister Irene as my guest.
We speak about:
How we can miss out on healing opportunities and bypass deeper self-work when we are too quick to set boundaries with people who trigger us
Recognizing good stress, and balancing stress with rest for better personal growth, healing, and development
The need for everyone to reinvestigate our old emotional wounds rather than never ripping off the Band-aids
Irene Oyang is a mental performance coach, empowering world class athletes with tools to find and perform their best. She also loves diving into the world of inner work and transformation, after a mental health crisis in 2015 that catalyzed her healing journey. Her journey has led her to exploring inner landscapes so that she may guide others to do the same.
Connect with Irene:
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My sister Irene and I weren't always very close growing up.
In a way, I'd say we resented each other for something we lacked in ourselves but saw in each other, and our personalities seemed to be the sources of trigger for one another.
When I left home for college, we drifted further apart, and didn't speak much to each other for a few years.
It wasn't until about 6 years ago when certain life events brought us back into each other's presence once again. We realized then how much more alike in our thoughts, beliefs, and transformations we were to each other than we ever had been. It turns out, we found ourselves on our independent healing journeys that have been running parallel to one another.
Material-wise, we had everything and more in our household growing up. Yet what was deeply lacking were spoken words and physical actions of affection while punishment and shaming were abundant.
So, it wasn't until in recent years where our relationship is deeper, stronger, and more bonded than ever through healing our shared experiences of what we needed but lacked in our childhood.
I'm super excited to share with you this conversation with Irene on how our healing journeys converged on their own, and though we work in different fields, how our approach to personal growth and transformation align with one another's beliefs.
Topics discussed in this episode
1:51 - Elaine and Irene’s healing journey ran independently of one another, yet parallel to each other
7:10 - How can principles of sports psychology be applied to daily life
09:19 - Putting on band-aids over our emotional wounds as a way to survive in that present moment, but true healing requires us to circle back and investigate to release the repressed emotions
14:58 - Elaine’s experience with yoga therapy as somatic release of repressed emotions, and how emotions and trauma can be stored in the body
17:20 - Working with trauma and repressed emotions require multi-faceted approaches
18:14 - When to know to rest vs push through when faced against physical and/or emotional pain and discomforts
19:50 - Noticing when stress is a good thing, and balancing stress with rest for positive growth, healing, and development
23:36 - Our tendency to tie our self-worth with our busyness and productivity
29:11 - Taking daily pauses to realign and reconnect with yourself, with your inner and outer worlds, so that you understand how to nurture yourself moment to moment
31:01 - Realigning with yourself helps to set healthy boundaries with yourself and others
34:10 - Setting boundaries require self-reflection, and when feeling triggered, see it as an opportunity to dive deeper into self-healing
39:30 - Irene’s personal experience on learning about healthy boundaries; resentment as a sign of not setting healthy boundaries
44:55 - Lack of boundaries as a symptom of lack of self-worth
50:16 - How to connect with Irene
Episode Transcript
Elaine: Welcome to the podcast, Irene.
Irene: Thank you. I'm super excited to be here.
Elaine: Yeah, when I started this podcast, knew I would love to interview my sister because I know you and I both have gone through our own healing journey, kind of on a separate track, but then we kind of land back towards similar approaches in terms of how we have navigated our healing journey with you being a mental performance coach and me being a yoga therapist. There are some differing approaches in how we work with our clients, but then, after talking with you on multiple occasion, it seems like in the end, our approaches are ultimately rooted in mindfulness, rooted in working with our inner self and spirituality, rather than clinically or scientifically.
Irene: I will say, when I initially started doing my work as a mental performance coach, I did come from a very evidence based, science backed background in academia, and I still do. That is still a very integral part of my work that I continue to educate myself in that realm. But right around 2015, as you mentioned, I have that mental health crisis and kind of took me on a my own personal journey. It took me on this personal journey of just trying to heal myself, trying to feel more whole as a human. Because at that point I was very broken. And in doing so, it's kind of led me to reexamine, because my whole work is about helping humans find human potential or defining what's possible for humans. And as I've done more work over the years, perhaps my personal definition of human potential has expanded a little bit more towards, maybe including some spirituality aspects, like self-actualization, nd connecting a little bit with what people might say the higher versions of ourselves. And it's also really cool to see that you have as well. I know for several years we kind of just were on our own journeys without really recognizing that we were almost running in parallel to each other in very similar paths. So that was really cool.
Elaine: Yeah, absolutely. And when you mentioned 2015, that actually was kind of around the time that I really jumpstarted on my own healing journey, even though I have been doing yoga since 2006. I don't think it was really until 2015 when I dove more into the philosophy and the spirituality aspect of yoga, like the prior nine years, was more about the physical aspect of yoga, like perfecting the poses and things like that, not that I didn't study some of the philosophy and spirituality aspect. But it wasn't until maybe 2015, 2016, actually, when I started my yoga therapy training program that I realized there was so much stuff that are still suppressed under the surface, and a lot of things in the gutters that I needed to to clean out. So yeah, in a way, timeline wise, it seemed like we kind of synced up on the same place, and then now we're kind of converging towards each other in terms of how our healing journey is shaping out. I mean, it's it's still a continuous progress.
Irene: I will say you have been a huge part of, and our family in general, has been a huge part of my healing journey the last couple of years especially. And for that I'm very grateful are thank you.
Elaine: Likewise, because I feel like every time we talk about this, we exchange ideas that are similar, but at the same time, because our perspectives are a little different, I see certain things, even though if it's a similar topic, I see that similar topic in a different light.
Irene: Totally. So I really appreciate that too. And plus you probably have seen me grow up and know me better than most. And so you can point out all the tendencies that I have as a kid and still do have some times when my inner child comes out with a tantrum and you're the probably the first one to see it.
Elaine: Well, we're all growing. We're all still on this journey. So as a mental performance coach, you apply principles of sports psychology with your clients, who are all extreme athletes, and I feel like there are many principles and methods that you use that can be applied to daily life to us non-athletes too.
Irene: Yeah. So sports psychology is the study of how to use psychological skills to optimize athlete performance. But my approach to sports psychology has always been helping athletes build self- awareness of their own mental model And their own mental framework. I think that's just really what's most powerful is you can give them all the tools and skills, but if they really don't have an understanding of how they're operating, those tools and skills will only take them so far. It's like Band- Aid fixes, right? There's a time and place where they need Band-Aid fixes, like the if they're going into one of the most important competitions of their life, the last thing you want to do is to is to be lifting the tarp and showing them everything underneath that they need to fix. Sometimes you need the Band-Aid fixes just for the temporary stuff. But I find that helping athletes build self- awareness has the more long term benefits, and it leads them to be to feel more empowered in their self- understanding and to actually know how to apply the tools in a way, rather than just being like, well, I have all these tools in my tool boxes and I have no idea what this tool is actually for.
Elaine: Right. It's like helping them realize their potential.
Irene: Totally. Yeah. And the tools can be applied to the everyday person. There are tools around coping skills and stress management. There are tools around goal setting. So how to use goal setting to really channel your focus. There are tools around visualization, which is a big one, and I'm sure a lot of people have heard of it. But how do you utilize visualization for not just like motor learning and what the athletes do, but also how to build self- confidence, how to build motivation and things like that. So definitely very applicable to everyday people as well.
Elaine: Yeah, one thing that really stood out to me was that sometimes you have to cover up with a band aid. If they were kind of panicking or freaking out right before the competition, just put on the Band-Aid, and then afterwards you can investigate what's going on underneath. So I feel like that's very applicable because a lot of us, whether childhood or everyday life, we've always had moments where we need to just put on the band-aid. It's literally a survival mechanism, right? Say you’re undergoing through a lot of stress or there's some traumatic event happening at that moment. We just think about surviving. Our body just goes into this mode just like, okay, just survive, let's get through this and then we'll see what happens. But the problem is a lot of people, they put on the band aid, but they don't go back to investigate what's going on. So they just keep laying on band-aid after band-aid after band-aid, and they're hurting without knowing why they're hurting.
Irene: Exactly. I have two metaphors for it. The first one being, imagine if you know an athlete broke a bone or got some kind of injury that requires surgical intervention, and instead of getting the surgical intervention, they just kept popping painkillers and popping more painkillers, because they didn't want to deal with the deeper healing there. And so I think that in a way like you said, is like the Band-Aids, right? Instead of really getting to the root of the problem and having a real honest look at it, and just trying to mask the symptoms, mask the pain with the painkillers. That's one of the analogies that I have utilized in the past. And another one is, imagine if you got a glass shard stuck in your leg. Well, now, if you're trying to apply Band-Aid overs just so you don't see it, the glass shards still there, it's not going to go away. And if you keep applying some of these skills and tools, it's just trying to cover up that glass shard. But ultimately, what's going to really actually help it heal is to take off the Band-Aids and pull the glass shard out so that it can properly heal.
Elaine: That's so funny because I literally wrote a blog post about that very experience I had from many years ago. I got a little glass shard in my heel. I thought it had been taken out, or I thought there wasn't any glass shard, it was just there was a wound, and that was why I was hurting after like 3 or 4 days. It was still kind of feeling weird and I could see the wound appeared healed from the outside, but the inside didn’t feel like it's healed. And so I was like, there must be a glass shard in there. And then I recruited Dimitri to do the “operation” on me. He was like, yep, there's still a piece of glass in there. I was like, ah. I mean, it was kind of scary because the skin had healed over, so literally we had to peel it open again and then excavate it. We did our own home operation of sterilizing a needle with a fire. And then he was digging and and finally we did get it out. It healed within like a day. But admitting that or acknowledging that it was still there was kind of scary because I had to reopen a wound, even though it was like a really tiny wound. It was still scary. So that being said, the blog post was all about these glass shards that are still embedded, but we don't pay attention to that or we try to forget about them and they're still there and they're still causing pain. And the more we accrue, the more pain, more painful it will get, especially when it comes time to excavate them.
Irene: Totally. Yeah. Like you said, maybe. Maybe you've ignored it to the point where there's a whole layer of skin has already grown on top of it. But that doesn't mean the glass shard isn't there anymore. And now you're at a point of, instead of just putting Band-Aids on, you have to reopen the whole skin. It's like opening up a can of worms again. And that's what happens when we repress these things for too long.
Elaine: Yeah, yeah. And I'm sure you have experienced many moments in the last nine years, since 2015 where you've had to reopen wounds and excavate, and as have I. And they're not pleasant at all. But when you come out on the other side, you do feel better.
Irene: You do feel better. The thing with inner work is that you'll always feel worse before you feel better.
Elaine: Yes, exactly.
Irene: It'll always get worse before it gets better. And I think that's what people have to understand about that journey. And that's what they have to kind of accept and embrace that. You know, when you're going to go to battle with your demons the the floodgates are going to open and the demons will come out.
Elaine: Yeah. Another story is when I was going through my yoga therapy training, a lot of these wounds were opening back up and calling to be healed. For those two years in my training, I was an emotional mess. Every time I came back from training, I'd be crying and Dmitri would be like, what happened during training? Are you sure this is the right thing to do? And I'll be like, this is a process. This is a process.
Irene: I'm curious, was it was part of it like somatic release in a sense, like where you're doing the physical movements, but maybe there is some emotions that were stored in the body that was being released through yoga.
Elaine: Yes, yes. So it was released by somatic based practices. And I mean, I had been doing physical asanas, physical poses of yoga, for many, many years at that point when when I started my yoga therapy training. But it was always more kind of athletic, driven, more fast paced, and more focused on moving the body. When I started yoga therapy training, it was much slower. A lot of the poses was restorative, almost meditative. And that was when a lot of the things started to come up.
Irene: That's super, super interesting to hear. Obviously there’s so much more information out there now and more research and science pointing to how emotions and trauma can be stored in the body. It's really cool to kind of hear a little bit more about how yoga therapy can help target that and give you more of a somatic release Nothing against counseling, psychology or clinical psychology. I think there's they're awesome and they can everyone can benefit from them. But that is working more on an emotional and mental level. And then sometimes the emotions are stored in the body as well. And we need to we need to have that deep somatic release with that. It needs to work on all levels. It has to be the physical, the mental, the emotional, maybe the spiritual as well.
Elaine: For sure. Yeah. There's no just one way of processing all these stored emotions. Different people might resonate more with different approaches. Just like me, I resonate more from a somatic based approach rather than counseling, which I have been to. But I have always gone back to more somatic based approaches because it feels more tangible to me.
Irene: Yeah, absolutely. I think everybody's different and everybody will hopefully find their own modality of healing, whether it's somatic, whether it's more cognitive, emotional, spiritual. But there is, I believe, a path for everyone out there.
Elaine: So another thing I'm curious about is. How do you know when to push through something or when to slow down and take care of yourself? Whether you work with athletes or everyday people. My listeners and my clients tend to be the perfectionist type, very used to pushing through to achieve something, very ambitious, very driven. How do you balance pushing through and resting? I feel like that's a very fine line in our everyday life.
Irene: That's a really tough question. I think that question requires an immense amount of self-awareness to start and a lot of honesty with yourself, because in modern day society, there's a ton of people who are chronically fatigued that don't even know that they're chronically fatigued. And they're like, oh, yeah, I function just fine with 4 to 5 hours of sleep, which there are genuinely some people, you know, a small percentage of the population that can. However, I think the majority of the people are actually just chronically fatigued, and it's been the norm, the status quo for so long that they they're just not even aware. And like you said, whether it's with athletes or with just a general population, everyone is stressed. When I say stress, I don't mean by the the stress that people are thinking of. I just mean by anything that brings your body out of homeostasis as stress. Stress isn't necessarily a bad thing, right? Because we need stress in order to grow and adapt, we need some level of stress. Just like if you go do strength training, you're stressing the muscles like the weight you put, the weight that you're training with. You stress the muscles, there are micro tears. And then with the amount of recovery through fueling, through sleep, through hydration, all that, the muscle rebuilds and it becomes stronger. So stress can create positive adaptations. Now, the part that a lot of people are missing is that it's not the stress alone that creates the growth. It's, and I want to accredit this to a book that I read, I think it's by Steve Magnus and Brad Stolberg, it's called Peak Performance. But they have this thing called the growth equation, which is stress plus rest equals growth.
Elaine: Oh, I love that — stress plus rest equals growth.
Irene: Yeah. So the stress itself helps start the adaptation. But it's not until you are given or you need to match that level of stress with the appropriate amount of adequate rest. And that's when adaptation occurs. Now if you're always stressed, if you're chronically stressed and you're not getting the recovery for your body, and I'm talking about from a physical sense enters a catabolic process, which means it's in deterioration instead of building up. So it's mal-adaptation. So. I think it requires a lot of honesty with yourself and checking in with yourself. Like you said, like this whole podcast is called: Sacred Listening. So really listening to your body to understand, okay, is this a time for me to push? Is this a time for me? Or rest would actually benefit me? Because if I'm trying to get the growth that I want, we need both. And recognizing that we do need both in order to actually have growth. It's not just the stress itself. It's not just always pushing that leads to the growth that we want or the progress that we want.
Elaine: Oh, that was that was so poignant. Thank you. Stress plus rest equals growth. I feel like that's very relevant to many people. And in particular because, for many years, I worked with people with chronic pain. And that's always the question is. They need to move. They need to move their body. But at which point is it wise and safe for them? And at which point do they need to rest? And it does require a lot of self-awareness, which many people, not just people with chronic pain, but many people in general, don't have. They kind of push through using stimulants, like caffeine. So it takes us out of our bodies and we don't know whether we're tired or not because we're just constantly in this hypervigilant state. And then especially with chronic pain, it's particularly hard because movement can cause stress and pain to the body. But knowing whether the movement they're doing is safe definitely takes another level of self-awareness that comes with practice and listening into the body and being with yourself.
Irene: Yeah, being totally present with it. I want to add to that too. I listened to one of your earlier podcasts and I completely agree. Like there's this societal expectation and the societal norm to wear productivity and hustle like a badge of honor, and like the more burnt out you are, the more you're applauded for it. So in a way, I think it's almost this whole idea of needing to push ourselves and people pushing themselves past the point of where it's actually creating that positive adaptation and growth. This more systemic problem, at least in the West, I don't know about the eastern, but at least in the Western society, more is always better. So in a way, we have to be productive for us to even feel like we're somehow valuable to society and we have some sort of self-worth within ourselves.
Elaine: That just hit hit me to the core because, if you remember, I went on a one year sabbatical starting in 2022. And I remember having this conversation with you that I was afraid of going on sabbatical, even though I know physically and mentally and emotionally I needed it. But I was afraid because. I feared that without my business, without seeing clients, without running my private practice, I would feel worthless. I would feel like I have no value and no input to the society.
Irene: Yeah, I remember that. But I celebrate you for listening to your own needs at that time. I know it's incredibly hard to break out of that conditioning, and to break out of that thought process of like, I need to be doing something, I need to be contributing to society for me to feel some kind of value and self-worth within myself. And you did it. And I'm curious to hear, like, how your journey was through deconstructing that societal conditioning that you had around
Elaine: It was precisely because my sense of self-worth was so tied up with my work and my career that I knew I needed to break out of it. Otherwise, it's just going to be a constant cycle of hustle and burning out. And taking a step out of that cycle outside of this systemic conditioning, and our family conditioning, definitely was very scary. I wasn't sure if it was the right thing to do. However. Being a year into that sabbatical. It definitely helped me slow down my life and we organize my perspective on what does my work being a yoga therapist mean to me. What does success look like to me? What does success mean to me? Because I feel like in many cultures, success equals the amount of money that you earn that you bring in. And definitely there are a level of income that you need to support yourself and family and all that stuff. But beyond that, I feel like even when people reach a certain level of income, they're still not satisfied. And I feel like I was on that trajectory as well. Like, I would set a goal, reach it and instead of celebrating, feel like I haven't reached it because I have moved my target again to something a little higher, to the next mountain. So it was a constantly moving target for me. So I was like. I will never feel satisfied doing what I'm doing right now. So I need to take a step back. And in taking a step back and slowing down, I was able to redefine what I want my business to look like in the future, where it's more sustainable, where I could be content and have a better balance rather than trying to hustle because people expect me to. feel like that's a lot to do with having definitely a self-awareness. Knowing how my mind runs and my patterns, but also setting up my own boundaries to myself. It's like, yes, I set boundaries with other people, but I need to set boundaries with myself.
Irene: Well, I feel like you cultivated the self-awareness and got off that treadmill a lot sooner than most people. Most people stay on that treadmill for possibly the rest of their lives. And so for you to have that self-awareness and the courage to follow through with that and hit pause on your business was something that really, really inspired me, just watching your growth as your little sister.
Elaine: I do feel like it's a privilege to to be able to do what I did because a lot of people are trapped in this system. It definitely is a socio economic issue too, which is a whole nother topic on another day. But I feel like the majority don't have the privilege to take a sabbatical like I did. But even then, I feel like there are everyday things you can do to take a break, a respite from, so that you can reset yourself and re-evaluate whether you're living life on someone else's agenda, or are you trying to take control of your life as much as possible, as much as you can possibly do under their circumstances?
Irene: I completely agree with you in that there are times throughout the day where you can just kind of check in with yourself, and if you're present enough, you can find a lot of those moments. Because all that, all there's that's all the present moment is, right is just connecting one moment to the next moment and staying in the present with it and not living in the past, not living in the future. And so every moment is an opportunity for you to really check back in with yourself. And I think people can always check back in to see if there is essentially like this alignment between their inner and outer worlds.
Elaine: That’s very aligned with what this whole podcast is about, about self nurture and having these little moments to check in and realign, like you said, all these little moments on a daily basis where you can check in with yourself and realign yourself to your values are very important. And it does take a level of of self-awareness which I had to work on a lot throughout these last multiple years, and I'm still continuing to work on. Like I said, it requires a lot of self boundaries on top of having boundaries with others, because a lot of people are used to me or expect me to perform or do stuff a certain way. And when I had to set up these boundaries to protect my energy for myself and from other people, it could be a little shocking to others, like “Oh you used to be able to do all these things,” or expand your energy this way, and all of a sudden you can't. What's up with that? I feel like that could be difficult to navigate sometimes as well, in terms of not wanting to disappoint others.
Irene: Absolutely. That whole thing that you said about whether it's setting boundaries with yourself and others, and others might get shocked because every relationship is a dynamic. It's an interaction of two people. Right. It's a two way street. So if one person changes, the other person's going to feel like, wow, this whole dynamic has changed and they're going to be resistant to that because they've known you a certain way for however long they're used to operate like they're used to having this implicit social contract with you and how your friendship or relationship with them is. And when that changes, it's a little disorienting to people. While we're on the topic of boundaries, I really want to do a little bit of a deep dive into this, because I know now with modern day, this has become almost like a buzzword of like, people setting boundaries, which is absolutely healthy. I completely and wholly believe everybody needs boundaries, and everybody needs to learn how to set healthy boundaries with themselves, with others, and uphold them because it's so crucial in life. But I do think there has been, as with anything that goes into mainstream culture and becomes a buzzword, sometimes it can be a little distorted. So I would I would love to do a deep dive with you on what boundaries actually look like and how they actually help us with our mental self-care.
Elaine: Sure, let's do it. So boundaries are essentially these limits and rules that people set within, whether for themselves or in relationships, to help them feel safe. It's to kind of delineate this is what's acceptable for me. And when done correctly, boundaries do provide us a sense of safety, and within that safety we are allowed to have more emotional freedom. However, I think that the flip side of boundaries is that they actually do require self-reflection and self-awareness at the same time. What I'm seeing happen now is that a lot of people may be misconstrue what a boundary actually is, and they do set boundaries, which is awesome. But now there's a piece of that self-reflection and introspection lacking. For instance, let's just say when somebody says something offensive to us and our ego gets triggered, you can absolutely and should absolutely set a boundary and say like, hey, I don't tolerate people speaking to me like that. And that's totally, totally valid. And also at the same time, if you find yourself being very, very triggered by the comment, that's an opportunity for self-reflection of like, what part of me is actually being triggered? What part of me is being bothered right now? Is this actually an opportunity? Not saying that the whatever comment was acceptable behavior, but is this actually an opportunity for me to go into deeper healing with myself?
Elaine: I see that in myself too. And this happened in particular with people you have the closest relationships with. I feel like at least in my personal circumstances. And once again, it brings me back to during my yoga therapy training. I was very easily triggered by a lot of things. And at first I thought I needed to distance myself from those people who are triggering me. But upon further and deeper reflection, I asked myself what is it within me that's triggered? And how can I investigate further what's really happening there on the deeper level? Upon further investigation, yes, there is deeper healing work to to do and understand. What is it about this person or their actions or their comments that was triggering? How can I work on my healing journey. And with that, as I am healing myself, being able to communicate with that person, what was it that they said or did that hurt me? Because obviously, unless that person is definitely a complete jerk and very close minded, I find that most people who do care deeply for you, they are open to this communication.
Irene: Absolutely. And most of the time what they say isn't what they intended to communicate or how it was received by us isn't what they intended to communicate to us. And sometimes we receive it that way because, like you said, there's that deeper healing, right? Maybe our ego or some past wounds or coloring our perception of how a certain comment is received. And we take it as an attack on our character in some way. Of something that perhaps we're insecure about. And until we do that deeper reflection, um, we don't really realize why certain comments rub us the wrong way, or certain comments hurt us, even if they're not intended to.
Elaine: Exactly. Yeah, and I feel like if you don't do that deeper work and just completely distance yourself, let's say, like, I'm going to set boundaries with this person and not talk to this person anymore. I mean, you you can miss an opportunity for deeper healing. It's almost like a spiritual bypassing in a way. Again, not to say that there aren't people in your circle that needs to be shut out. But I feel like it's less black and white and more of a gray zone where definitely it needs further reflection, a lot more self-awareness, and a lot more transparency and communication with the other person, because maybe they are triggered in a certain way too. And both of you are in reactive mode rather than responsive mode and open and compassionate mode. So who knows, it could become healing for both parties.
Irene: Absolutely, I completely agree. My mentor calls that chemical warfare because you know how emotions are all chemicals in our bodies, right? It's like a different cocktail of chemicals.create different emotions. A certain a certain cocktail creates anger, certain cocktail creates sadness, all that it is hormones and chemicals in our bodies and neurochemicals in our brain. And so when both parties, are being reactive towards each other and saying things that are intended to trigger the other person, he calls that chemical warfare, shooting different hormonal reactions.
Elaine: Exactly. Like people will say a comment that they don't actually mean because they're feeling hurt and they want the other person to feel that pain that they're feeling.
Irene: It was such a funny term, but yeah, on the topic of boundary twoo, I want to like kind of share to one of my biggest lessons around it was, I didn't know how to set boundaries, because one of my coping mechanisms was to always give to people because I was so afraid of abandonment. So my whole coping mechanism was like, well, if I give, give, give to people, they can't leave me. Because why would you leave somebody who is always giving to you? And then I could never receive, right? I was like, I don't want to receive because if I received them, then there's a little more balance in their relationship. And maybe when the relationship feels balanced, the person won't see the value that I'm giving and they won't stick around. So that was how my relationship with my best friend actually was. For many years. We just played into each other's patterns. I was always giving. And she loved receiving. And she felt validated in her worth by receiving. And I felt validated or I felt more secure in relationships when I was giving. It got to a point where I had built up so much resentment. By the way, that's that's kind of one of the byproducts. If you don't set healthy boundaries over long term, if you keep giving to others and keep bending over backwards because you're afraid of people leaving, you want people to like you, your people pleasing. The byproduct of that ends up with a lot of resentment, anger, frustration, and mostly will not be self-directed. But upon further introspection, you'll actually realize that a lot of the frustration is actually directed towards yourself because you're not standing up for yourself. But to circle back to my story with my best friend, I was always giving. She would always call me when she had a problem. I would always hold space. I would pick up the phone no matter what. I remember at one point she was going through something pretty catastrophic in her life. And I was picking up the phone three, four times a day. Even if I was in the middle of studying, in the middle of class, I would step outside and just take her call just to make sure she was okay. And then when the roles reversed, where I was facing something catastrophic and I tried calling her, she didn't pick up my calls. And I lost it. I completely lost it. And I almost ended our 20 plus years of friendship right there. Yeah, because I had so much resentment built up. But it wasn't her fault because I never communicated my needs. I never asserted my needs. I never communicated that to her. I never communicated that the relationship had been feeling imbalance for so long. I never told her, I wish you would show up more for me. I wish you would pick up the phone when I needed you. I never even gave her the chance to hold space for me, because I never wanted to be receiving from other people. And so I was so mad that. I almost ended the relationship and then I went to talk to my mentor. And obviously a lot of it during that time with all the anger was all finger pointing of like, she's so selfish, she wouldn't show it for me. She didn't do this. She didn't do that. I do everything for her. And he's like, well, you don't communicate it. How do you expect her to know? He said, you don't you don't ever communicate and assert your needs and. He actually pointed that out because when I met up with him, I had just come off of witnessing something pretty traumatic happen to one of my athletes. And I was like, in shock, like I was very clearly traumatized, in shock and all that. And when he asked me, how are you? I said, good. And he pointed that out. He's like, I can see that you're in shock. And even at this point, you refuse to communicate your needs to another person. Wow. And so he pointed out that pattern to me and bam, like my entire perspective changed, right? It was so much externalizing the problem because I didn't want to take a good, hard look at myself of how low I felt in my self-worth, that I felt like I had to keep giving to other people and never ask for anything in return. I didn't want to look at that part of myself, and so it was easier to just point the finger at my best friend and say, you're selfish. You take too much from me. You create the imbalance in this relationship. When I never had, I was never able to have that difficult conversation with her and say, hey, I need, I need a little more because I was too afraid to ask.
Elaine: Wow. Thank you for sharing that story. It's very profound. And. I mean, I, I hear myself, I see myself in that story as well. And I'm sure many people do as well in that. We are so quick at blaming others when we haven't even looked at ourselves yet, and see if there's anything that we should have done or could have done to communicate and to also, in a way, protect ourselves, but not in a way to shun out other people, but protect ourselves in a way so that it's a more balanced relationship rather than a give and take.
Irene: Absolutely. Yeah. And the tricky thing about people that don't have boundaries, they have to keep giving to other people from a place of lack of self-worth. If I give, then I feel more worthy and I feel like people like me more and hang around me. It's one of the tricky thing about that is because of this modern day society, we label selflessness as a good quality, right? And so it can easily be disguised under this label of like, oh, this person is just selfless and generous. But true selflessness, I think, comes from a place of wholeness, not a place of lack. True selflessness. When you feel whole within yourself, it kind of overflows to other people. You want to serve others in overflows, but when you give from a place of lack, it's like you're scraping the bottom of the barrel, being like, here's the last little piece of me, please take it. Please stay with me. Please don't leave.
Elaine: Please love me.
Irene: Yeah. And so that’s where people have to reflect is like, okay, am I -— and be very honest with yourself, am I giving to other people from a place of lack because I'm afraid they're going to leave me, they're not going to like me, whatever it is, or I'm trying to get validation somehow. Or am I really giving from a place of wholeness? Which is what I think true selflessness is.
Elaine: Yes, I totally agree with you on that. And it's very similar to a lot of the yoga philosophy and principles that you serve others from a place of wholeness and abundance, rather than from a place of lack. Because when you are feeling whole and abundant, you just want to serve, like you said, just overflowing. It's such a natural thing for you to do, rather than serving others driven by a sense of insecurity. I feel like also now that I am a mother, I have to also recalibrate and reevaluate how I'm filling my own cup. Because obviously with a tiny human, I can't ask her. I mean, she gives me a lot of sense of joy and oxytocin and feel good hormones as well. But in the end, it's still me giving, giving, giving way more. And it has to come from a place of selflessness. As with all people who mother others, whether it's plant or animal fur baby or human baby or whatever. It can be mothering a business. For me, now, it's all about re-evaluating where I can reinstall the sense of abundance. Maybe it's delegating tasks to others or asking for help, and allowing myself to receive, because I have the same problem too. I always feel guilty about receiving. I'll have to learn how to receive more, especially. In this time of motherhood.
Irene: Yeah, I think that's such an interesting perspective, is like when you bring in your tiny human into the picture, right? It's like, yeah, like she gives you oxytocin and she has the cutest laugh in the world. And it just floods us with this chemical warfare just flooding you with happy hormones, positive chemical warfare. But the other outside of that, she is so wholly dependent on you and Dimitri for her survival. Like you said, for the most part you are in the giver role right now. You're entirely, almost entirely in there giving to your tiny human and having to refill your own cup and making sure you're prioritizing yourself in a way so that you can continue to give to your tiny human, and be fully present as a mother.
Elaine: Wow. I feel like we could just keep going on and on about setting mental boundaries, about giving and receiving from others. But I feel like there's so much for everyone here to digest from our conversation today. I mean, certainly I have a lot to digest as well, and I will be re-listening to this conversation and probably pulling in more insights and self-reflection from this conversation as well for myself.
Irene: Likewise. Yeah. I think this conversation has been very thought provoking for me as well. Just thinking back to both of our stories, both of our trajectories and also this whole topic around mental boundaries as self-care. I will definitely be pondering this for a while as well. So I appreciate you having me as a guest. And it's been it's been fun.
Elaine: Yeah, it's been fun. Maybe I'll have you back for round two.
Irene: Yeah I would love that. Well in the meantime, is there anywhere that people can find you or connect with you?
Irene: I'm not too in the public sphere. I mean, people can find me on Instagram. I will say it's more of a personal Instagram, but I do post a lot things that inspire me. My own self reflections. Less so related to sports psychology and more of my professional life and a lot more of my personal ponderings. I like to ponder a lot on the human condition, so if you are the same, you can find me on Instagram and read some of my stuff. I will shortly hopefully be starting a YouTube channel with some content, so when that that gets off the ground, I will definitely let you know.
Elaine: Yes, definitely let us know. I do enjoy reading all your Instagram content. Very high quality, very insightful and as always, makes me think and reflect further. So what's the what's your Instagram handle again?
Irene: It's just my name, it's @ireneoyang.
Elaine: I'll put that in the show notes as well so you can find it there. But thank you again for being here with me today Irene. And we'll see, maybe we'll come back for round two. And for our listeners here today, we will continue to listen in to our body's wisdom.
About
Elaine Oyang is an IAYT-certified yoga therapist and a self-nurture advocate. Throughout her 12+ year of teaching yoga in studios and private practice, she works to help others restore balance in their bodies from their over-busy lives. She's worked many years in private practice to help clients through their journeys of chronic pain, chronic illness, anxiety, insomnia, and loss of sense of self. With her podcast, Sacred Listening, Elaine shares with a wider audience on her personal experience, and that of her clients', on how to reclaim self-care and self-love.
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This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Information contained in this episode is not to be replaced with medical advice.