MMS_BoundariesAsConfidence_AUDIO
===
[00:00:00] Dr. Julia Bowlin: When someone says they're struggling with their boundaries, what they're actually describing isn't a communication problem. It's a self-trust problem.
[00:00:14] Hi there. I'm Dr. Julia Bowlin, and this is Mindset Medicine. Confidence isn't something you either have or you don't have. It's something that you practice, you reinforce and embody over time. And this month we're talking about what confidence actually looks like in real life. Today's episode fits right into that theme by looking at confidence where it actually shows up in boundaries.
[00:00:38] Not the dramatic ones, not confrontational ones, but the quiet power of clear limits and what they reveal about self-trust in motion. Before getting into boundaries specifically, it's important to anchor this episode back into the larger February theme. Confidence in Practice. This is something I was really wanting [00:01:00] to work and show how boundaries as self-trust in motion is a process in how this entire month we're gonna be looking at different aspects.
[00:01:09] So this month isn't about talking ourselves into being confident or psyching ourselves up. It's about moving confidence out of the head and into lived experiences, such as decisions follow through, how we stay present when pressure is involved. Boundaries sit right in the middle of all of that because boundaries aren't about being bold or assertive most of the time.
[00:01:36] They're about whether someone trusts themselves enough to act on something that they already know. A boundary exists before it's ever spoken. It exists. The moment a person recognizes, this doesn't work for me anymore, or I'm not available for this, or something here, needs to change that internal moment.
[00:01:59] [00:02:00] That's the real work. That's the conversation that goes on in our head, and the action comes later. When someone says they're struggling with their boundaries, what they're actually describing isn't a communication problem. It's a self-trust problem. They know what they want, they know what feels off, but they don't trust themselves enough to let the knowing guide their behavior.
[00:02:24] So they overwrite it, they accommodate, or they tolerate or they delay. And every time that happens, confidence takes a small hit. Those tolerations can erode our confidence slowly. Every time we do that. That's why boundaries are such a clean confidence practice. Every time someone honors a limit, internally or externally, they can reinforce the message.
[00:02:54] I can rely on myself. I believe I'll do that, and every time they don't, [00:03:00] the opposite message gets reinforced. This is why boundaries often feel so heavy at first, not because they're aggressive or unkind, but because they require self loyalty. This is a biggie. Everybody and self loyalty can feel unfamiliar for people who were rewarded for being flexible or being helpful, or being agreeable or endlessly available to everybody in anything.
[00:03:30] Confidence isn't built by grand gestures. It's built by ordinary moments of alignment of being an integrity for yourself, and a boundary doesn't need to be dramatic or even powerful. In fact, most integrated boundaries are often very quiet. They don't come with speeches or a huge emotional charge. They come with a decision that's already made, and when the internal [00:04:00] decision is solid, the external expression becomes just simpler, cleaner, well, less performative.
[00:04:09] That's what we're practicing in this episode. Not how to say boundaries better, but how to root them in self trust first. So confidence isn't something you try to sound like it's something you practice and you live. So let's talk about overexplaining. So many times when we're not confident or we feel uncomfortable, we get this verbal diarrhea thing going on and and Overexplaining can erode confidence, erodes our confidence in ourselves, and it can erode confidence helps people see us.
[00:04:45] So one of the fastest ways. That confidence leaks out is through that overexplaining process, and most people don't even realize they do it. I do it. I've caught myself doing it. Overexplaining often sounds like courtesy or [00:05:00] clarity on the surface, like I'm just trying to work this out in my head. It feels like being thoughtful maybe, but underneath, it's usually a sign that the decision itself hasn't fully settled internally.
[00:05:13] And when someone trusts their decision, the explanation gets shorter, and when they don't, the explanation expands and sometimes it's very belabored. This matters within the context of this February's theme this year, because confidence is practice. It's not theory. Overexplaining is what happens when confidence stays in the head and instead of the body, the decision exists, but it hasn't been embodied yet.
[00:05:45] So the person keeps talking. They add context, they add reassurance, they add qualifiers. They add emotional padding, not because the boundary isn't valid, but because they're still trying to convince themselves. [00:06:00] Have you ever heard somebody just keeps going and going? This showed up for me recently in a very ordinary way while I was learning how to make fire cider.
[00:06:09] If you've never made it before, it's one of those processes that looks kind of chaotic on the outside. It's a lot of chopping. It's a lot of pouring. It's a lot of adjusting, and really, honestly, there isn't a single perfect recipe out there. I looked, but Fire Ider is a bit intuitive. You're paying attention to the smell, the texture, the heat, what feels right.
[00:06:32] And what I noticed was this, there was no part of the process where it made sense to narrate or justify what I was doing. I wasn't explaining it to anyone. I wasn't defending the steps that I was doing. I wasn't trying to get it right in a way that would hold up if somebody was watching me under scrutiny.
[00:06:52] I was just doing it. And because of that, the process stayed grounded. It was very calm, efficient, [00:07:00] maybe enjoyable, and that's what confidence feels like when it's practice, right? I didn't know how to make fire cider before. I've never done it, but I was confident in just playing around and being in that feeling of unknown.
[00:07:14] Now, imagine though, if at every step I felt the need to explain why I was choosing this ingredient or that ingredient, why I was thinking about that ratio or that timing. Especially to someone who wasn't even in the kitchen. The process would become tense, disruptive, overloaded, and maybe I would just stop.
[00:07:36] That's exactly what happens with boundaries. Overexplaining interrupts regulation. It pulls the nervous system out of the body and into performance. Instead of staying anchored in, this is my decision, the energy shifts to will this be acceptable? The moment, confidence depends on [00:08:00] acceptability. It starts to erode over explaining, also quietly invites negotiation, gives wiggle room.
[00:08:11] Therefore, the boundary is vague and gray. The more someone explains, the more room there is for the other person to push back to reinterpret or to attempt to manage the outcome, not because the other person is wrong. Because explanation sounds like uncertainty. Confidence doesn't require a consensus, and boundaries don't need footnotes.
[00:08:35] A settled boundary often sounds boring, and boring is a very good sign. This is where confidence becomes a practice instead of a personality trait. Every time someone resists the urge to Overexplain, self-trust strengthens every time the boundary stands Without defending it, [00:09:00] confidence deepens. And every time someone says regulated stays regulated instead of persuasive.
[00:09:07] Instead of having to pursue somebody about their boundary, the system learns safety. I'm gonna say that one more time. It definitely deserves to be repeated. This is where confidence is a practice, right? Every time you resist the urge to overexplain, self-trust strengthens every time the boundary stands without you having to defend it.
[00:09:34] Confidence deepens and every time someone stays regulated instead of trying to persuade somebody. Your system learns safety in the nervous system, just like that fire cider. I didn't build confidence by talking about the process. I stayed, built it and developed confidence in that process. Alright, next I [00:10:00] wanna move on to limits and holding limits.
[00:10:03] Without anger, guilt, or performance, because most boundaries don't fall apart because we just don't know what to say. They fall apart because the moment gets awkward and our nervous system starts to react, and we get uncomfortable. Someone looks disappointed, someone sigh, someone goes quiet. And suddenly inside of us, there's this internal scrambling that goes on.
[00:10:29] You might get start to squirm and you start thinking, oh, should I be firm? Should I be softer? Should I explain more? Do I need to pretend I didn't mean it? Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. This is usually where people think they failed at boundaries, but really this is the moment when boundaries stopped being conceptual.
[00:10:50] Start being lived. In other words, they stop being in your head and you start practicing the boundary. I learned this in an unexpected way by [00:11:00] figuring out how to bathe my six foot two husband. I'm four foot nine folks, and he's a lot bigger than me outside of the bathroom while managing his beard. At the same time.
[00:11:10] This was not elegant. At all. There was water where there shouldn't be towels everywhere. And the moment where I had to pause and think, we're not gonna do this the way we used to. This is not gonna be perfect and we're just gonna have to find our way through it. There's no way we're gonna be able to do this like we used to.
[00:11:32] There was no room for performance or perfection. I couldn't be irritated because the poor guy is weak and he's got cancer and he's in pain, and it had to be efficient, but it didn't have to be perfect that, you know, being irritated wouldn't help. I couldn't be overly apologetic. That wouldn't help either because we needed to be efficient 'cause he needed to lay down fast and I couldn't power through pretending everything was fine either.
[00:11:59] So what [00:12:00] worked was adjusting in real time. Slowing down where I could, making small decisions about what was important at the time, and saying things like, we're stopping here. This is enough for today. We can do the rest later. No speeches, no emotional theatrics, just calm, practical limits, held without drama.
[00:12:22] That's what regulated boundaries actually look like. They're not rigid, they're not cold, and they're not perfect. They're responsive without being reactive. Next, I wanna talk about what quiet confidence actually looks like. Quiet confidence rarely looks impressive. It doesn't announce itself. It doesn't come from this huge dramatic speech, and it doesn't look like someone finally nailing boundaries and then feeling amazing about it every time because it just doesn't happen that way.
[00:12:56] Most of the time, quiet confidence looks practical. It looks like [00:13:00] fewer words, slower responses, thinking before speaking and not rushing to fix the awkward moment. Just letting quiet settle for a moment. It looks like making gluten-free bagels at home for the first time and thinking this can go either way, and I'm gonna do it anyway.
[00:13:19] I didn't need to have it. Perfect. Then I was really genuinely surprised when they were actually good. I did that. I've never made gluten-free bagels before in my life. I don't eat bread, but man, were they good? And here's the thing, sometimes we just don't have to prove anything when we're trying something the first time, because our system is just gonna have to learn.
[00:13:44] We're gonna have to learn to trust ourselves to try something new and be okay with a less than perfect outcome. It looks like making fire cider without narrating every step and justifying every choice, not [00:14:00] performing to be competent, practicing to be competent. There's a big difference there. So, so many of us stop doing things or don't try new things because we don't feel competent and therefore we don't.
[00:14:15] We want to perform perfectly. After not even ever doing it before in gymnastics. Goodness gracious. I had to do things a hundred times to get it. If I stopped after the third time saying, oh, well this isn't good enough. I can't do this, then I would never have done what I did. So here's the thing, we're just gonna do the thing.
[00:14:35] It might look unglamorous. Okay? It might be less than perfect, but no situation is really ideal. If we show up calmly and adjust and pivot as we go and not turn it into a referendum on who we are as a person. Those experiences don't reflect us as who we are. They were just [00:15:00] action oriented things that we were doing in practice, and that's the part that so many people miss.
[00:15:06] Confidence doesn't mean we feel certain all the time. It means we don't abandon ourselves when things are uncertain. Quiet. Confidence doesn't rush. It doesn't overcorrect, and it doesn't need applause. We don't need to be acknowledged. Sometimes it just shows up letting someone else be disappointed and not making it our job to rescue their mood.
[00:15:35] Maybe we just need to step back and realize we can't own another human's reaction. That's confidence in action folks. Sometimes it shows up as stopping when we're done without explaining why we are allowed to stop doing something. In other words, just stop, right? Sometimes we just need to stop explaining what we're [00:16:00] thinking and why we're doing it, and sometimes it just shows up later quietly.
[00:16:05] That was confidence. This episode fits exactly where it belongs in February. This month isn't about being more confident version of yourself. It's about noticing where confidence is already being practiced in your kitchen, in quiet decisions, in small limits held without fuss. Confidence integration doesn't look shiny.
[00:16:29] It looks steady. And if that feels overwhelming, you're probably doing it right. So before we wrap up, I wanna slow down for a moment. Think about one small boundary that you've held recently. Not a dramatic one, not a confrontational one, just an ordinary one. Maybe you just stopped explaining yourself and you just said no and didn't follow it with three paragraphs as to why you said no.
[00:16:55] Because no is a complete sentence. I've said that before. We do not have to explain [00:17:00] ourselves when we hold a no boundary. Maybe you paused instead of pushing through, maybe you adjusted how something was done because the old way just wasn't working anymore. If it didn't feel powerful or impressive at the time, it's okay.
[00:17:19] It can be a small, confident moment. That's how confidence shows up in real life. So here's the question I want you to sit in after this episode. Ask yourself this. Where am I already practicing confidence. I don't have to call it out. Just ask yourself, where are you practicing confidence without somebody having to acknowledge you.
[00:17:41] Is it making coffee? Is it setting your alarm? Is it cooking dinner? Is it getting your kids out the door? Okay, now, don't think about where you should be. Better, not where you plan to be. Someday. That's what this episode is not about. Just acknowledge where it's already happening [00:18:00] quietly. Practicing confidence because confidence isn't built in declarations.
[00:18:08] It's built in follow through. This month is about confidence integration, not hype, not mindset. Gymnastics not trying to feel fearless. It's about how confidence looks when it's lived. Clear limits, fewer words. Steady your energy when you're under stress. That folks is confidence in motion. And before I close, I also wanna place this episode back into the larger February arc.
[00:18:40] I started this month by talking about confidence as something that's built through action today. We looked how confidence shows up in boundaries and in the quiet moments where you trust yourself enough to stop over explaining and fricking hold the limit. Next week, we're gonna take this a step further and [00:19:00] talk about what happens when confidence is tested, when you're being seen, when you're being visible, when being seen, creates pressure to perform, pressure to adjust, or to feel like you need to disappear.
[00:19:13] If this episode resonated, stay with me for the rest of February. Each conversation this month is designed to build on the last layering confidence as something you live from. Not something you wait to feel. Thank you for spending this time with me. Until next time, may you be happy. Be healthy and be fulfilled.
[00:19:41] Outro: Thank you for listening to Mindset Medicine with your host, Dr. Julia Bowlin. To learn more about mindset medicine, go to www.juliabowlinmd.com and connect with Dr. Julia to find out how our team can help you today. Join us again next week for more expert tips, tools, and [00:20:00] strategies to become healthier, wealthier, and wiser in your personal and professional life.
