Boundaries Don't Work - Here's Why

today we're going to talk about why setting healthy boundaries is idiotic and oftentimes does not work [Music] now I know this sounds kind of crazy because everyone out there is like set healthy boundaries man like you got to learn how to set your boundaries you got to keep your boundaries and like people like you have to you have to hold the line and then people will respect you and I used to believe that too right as a psychiatrist I've been taught how to set healthy boundaries with my patients and then I would teach my patients

how to set healthy boundaries with people in their life and that worked some of the time but some of the time it really doesn't work and I'd almost say that for the majority of people like that's not an effective strategy because at the end of the day setting healthy boundaries only works if you have power if you can impose consequences on someone else for violating your boundary then you can set a boundary but there's a ton of people that I worked with that are like teenagers with abusive parents or siblings that have older siblings that

are like stronger than them or financially dependent on like other people or people in romantic relationships where there's like one partner who has all the power or in work situations where someone's like you you can't set a healthy boundary with your boss when they can fire your ass or write you up right so this is like a basic problem that a lot of us professionals like medical professionals and psychiatrists and therapists we all like drink this Kool-Aid of setting healthy boundaries but there's a fundamental problem like I'm a model minority man with a medical degree

which means that I can set boundaries on [ __ ] like right and left and it's gonna work because I have a lot of inherent power but a lot of the people that I work with don't have power so when they try to use the strategy that I use it's kind of like you know if you're a nuclear power with the largest military in the world and you develop a foreign policy you can't be some like tiny ass country that adopts the same foreign policy and it works there's a completely different strategy if you are

weak and today we're going to talk about that we're going to teach you all a little bit about narcissists because a lot of this boundary violating crap comes from narcissists we're going to teach y'all how to manage your own emotions and we're going to teach y'all what to do how to kind of get what you want and effectively do the same thing as setting healthy boundaries without setting healthy boundaries right we're going to teach y'all almost like how to manipulate narcissists into leaving you alone and to help you kind of do what you want okay

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try to be strong so if there's a power Dynamic where your parents are like you know they've got all the power and you're like a teenager living at home and you're like I'm gonna be strong and I'mma set boundaries and if you try to be strong with a narcissist if you've got some kind of conflict let's say with someone who's narcissistic and you're gonna strongly represent your Viewpoint right and you're like hey buddy you are treating me in a bad way and you're gonna like you're gonna like you know you're gonna and then what do

they do they get pissed off right so if they're narcissists what they're gonna do is like if you tell them that they are doing something wrong that is gonna activate their narcissistic defense mechanisms they're gonna get pissed off at you and they're gonna hit back hard and the problem with people who are like narcissistic is they're really good at pushing your emotional buttons right so like you're trying to be strong but internally you're like uh don't attack me like you've been the victim of bullying like that's what happened with me like I used to try

to stand up to my bullies and what would my bullies do they would love it when I stood up to them right because they're gonna put my ass who's one year younger and like smaller they are they're gonna put me in my place and then furthermore what I'm doing when I try to be strong and I get manipulated or physically like pushed into the corner or whatever is I'm actually giving this this narcissist this bully an emotional reinforcement right why are they narcissistic because their value as a human being is depends on their superiority to

other human beings so if you approach them with strength and you don't have the power to back it up you are actually going to positively reinforce the negative behavior you're going to criticize them they're going to get pissed off their narcissism Rises their bullying Tendencies rise and they're going to put you in their place and when they put you in your place they're gonna feel really good which in turn is going to reinforce what kind of behavior they're going to want to wake up tomorrow and put you in their place now they've got one punching

bag that can consistently help them feel better about themselves they struggle with low self-esteem but hey I can go beat up on Olive and if I beat up on Olive I'll feel better about myself the first thing I know it sounds kind of weird first thing you've got to do is stop being strong I want you all to think a little bit about like you know games that you play right when do you want to really own someone one 1v1 mid when someone like talks smack to you like that's when you really want to put

them in their place it doesn't have anything to do with narcissism it's just like basic human ideas of like okay like I feel really good about myself when someone stands up to me and I get to crush them this is why if you look at like games right and who is it fun to play a game with it's not fun to play chess against like a two-year-old monkey that doesn't understand the rules there's no satisfaction in overcoming them so one of the trickiest things that we fall into is that in an attempt to be strong

we actually engage that narcissistic defense mechanism we'll criticize them we'll put them in their place we'll set a healthy boundary and it kind of like causes the sleeping Dragon to wake up and then they're gonna emotionally manipulate us we'll get to that in a second and then they'll end up crushing you anyway which is gonna feel very very good for them so we really want to do is be like the crappiest loot box in the universe we want to be a loot box that every time they interact with us they don't get anything right they

don't get any sense of self-esteem they don't get any enjoyment they don't get any of that crap we want to take away their rewards so they leave us alone so how do we do that we pretend to be weak while internally being strong so I'll give you all an example let's say you've got family conflict with someone and you're like hey mom or dad like the way that you talk to me is like really cruel and you're very abusive and they're like screw you I'm not abusive I'll tell you what's abusive when you did this

and when you did this and for years I gave up my modeling career and I gave up my acting career I can't believe that you're so ungrateful for me for all the sacrifices I put a roof over your head I do this and like that's what happens right you criticize them and you have woken the sleeping Dragon so if you try to set a healthy boundary with them they're gonna like blow things up and unless you have the power to back up that boundary unless you're financially independent unless you're in a loving relationship unless you've

got the rest of your life kind of sorted out then by all means go set healthy boundaries with whoever the [ __ ] you want but if you don't have that stuff it doesn't work and in fact what it actually does is it reinforces their narcissism because here you are attacking them and they are putting you in their place and if I rebuff an attack on me then I can start to believe oh you see this person was criticizing me but it turns out they're wrong and I'm not a bad person I'm a good person

and this person is ungrateful and and nothing is like more addictive to someone who's a toxic [ __ ] than feeling like any kind of criticism is actually wrong right they can prove you wrong and then they can feel better about themselves so instead what we're going to do is we're going to be weak now what does this look like it you can still set a boundary with someone but the reason that you're setting the boundary is not because they're doing anything wrong it's because I am so weak so let's say that your parents are

toxic and so you're trying to settle in with them you're like hey stop being toxic to me like you know it's damaging to me instead of what you can say is hey Mom Dad I understand that you all really care about me and I understand that you really love me but when you talk to me in this way like it puts my head in a bad headspace and stupid little me once I get in a bad headspace you know how weak I am so I'm just not going to be be able to I'm going to

hang up the phone anytime you put me in a bad headspace I apologize not your fault I'm so weak click hang up and now something really weird happens with the narcissist so when you set a boundary but you don't blame them for it like they can't get traction on that right because it's like okay well like we both know you're wrong so they kind of don't know what to do they don't get that emotional reinforcement that they're really looking for they don't get to like really feel too Superior because you're saying yeah you're like you're

Superior right so I'm I'm a screw-up sorry about that I'm hanging up now and so you figure out whatever that boundary is but you don't blame them for it right in fact you actually blame yourself and you can say hey I'm really working on this I apologize you know I hope I'll be able to do better in the future and then it's almost like this weird like principle from like Tai Chi or Aikido or Jiu Jitsu where like you know you have to roll with that resistance you kind of want to be like water where

like if they push at you hard like you just wanna you know you're not you're not gonna fight and as long as you kind of don't fight but you can still set that limit but as long as you don't evoke the narcissistic defense mechanism people will actually respect that limit this is what I've seen as a psychiatrist is like teaching my patients these principles actually helps them more because you're not triggering that whole complex that allows the narcissists to feel better about themselves you're kind of saying yeah you're better and over time what's going to

happen is if you hold the boundary but you don't blame them for it you'll start extinguishing the behavior people don't buy crappy loot boxes right people buy loot boxes that give them the stuff that they want and so what you want to become is a crappy loot box where you're not going to give them the satisfaction of feeling Superior you're just going to own it yourself and then you're going to step away second thing that you've really got to learn how to do is separate your emotions from your actions so if we're talking about toxic

relationships how do these people function they function by engaging in manipulating Behavior now let's talk about how to resist manipulation so what does it mean to have manipulating Behavior what are they actually manipulating what does it mean to be manipulated so literally what manipulation is is I'm going to do or say something that is then going to lead to an emotional reaction that automatically induces the behavior on your end I'm not going to ask you for a favor I'm not just going to straight up come up to you and say hey can you do this

for me I'm not going to ask for the favor or try to do be like you know I'm not just going to induce the behavior directly the whole reason it's manipulative is I'm going to make you feel a certain way and then that feeling is going to induce the behavior automatically so it's like let me put it this way if I ask you for a favor okay and then you say yes and then like the favor is completed we did what I asked you to do and now I'm in your debt right you did me

a solid I'm in your debt you're a good person I'm in your debt if I'm like a narcissistic [ __ ] I do not like that situation so instead what I'm going to do is I'm gonna get you to do that thing but I'm not going to be indebted to you I'm going to trick you or manipulate you into doing it anyway but like it's not going to cost me anything so what I'm going to do is I'm going to say hey like oh like I did all this stuff for you what are you going

to do are you going to help me out too and then even if you say yes and you are helping me out since I've evoked your emotions it doesn't feel like I'm in your debt at the end of that right like are you gonna help me too I'm gonna guilt trip you into helping me and if I guilt-trip you into helping me I'm not in your debt and so this is the problem is if you do me a solid but I don't owe you anything then what I can do is like I don't have to

pay that back and in fact I can get you to do it again I can manipulate you again and I can manipulate you again and I can manipulate you again but if I'm not actually racking up any debt I can do that all day and so this is what happens with emotional manipulation is that people will induce an emotion and then that emotion will make the manipulated person automatically engage in a behavior and instead of asking for a favor or any kind of fair exchange of like respect or services or whatever I'm manipulating you into

doing something so how do we resist that we resist that by separating out emotions and actions so this is really important if you are vulnerable to manipulation what that literally means is that your emotions will induce your actions so some human beings go through life thinking that the way to solve emotional problems is through action if my significant other is mad at me I need to buy them a gift the way to resolve that emotion is by paying some price or inducing a behavior and if I get them the gift then the emotion goes away

I feel better about myself because thank God they're not mad at me anymore but think about that right what's happening now what you've done is you've reinforced this idea that the way that I'm going to fix my emotions is by engaging in some kind of behavior and so now something subtle has happened right so let's say I'm use the example of my wife she's not like this but you know if she makes me feel bad or makes me feel guilty then I'm gonna buy or something and so now she's got a really interesting ATM card

right she's got a really interesting debit card all she she has to do is get pissed at me to get me to buy her stuff and like that's like literally how it works what what I've done is I've positively reinforced with like a thousand dollars her making me feel like [ __ ] and what do you think that's gonna do in the relationship she's like well [ __ ] I need a thousand Grand let's make Olive feel like [ __ ] today she doesn't actually do that she's awesome that way but you know and so

I want y'all to really realize that your ability to be manipulated is tied entirely to emotions and actions being tied in your mind and we also know that from like research on trauma for example there is a survival mechanism in the brain called dissociation and what does dissociation do it divorces our emotions from our actions and our feelings and like our thoughts and all kinds of stuff so we literally want to start doing is divorcing our emotions from our actions now how do you do that let's start with something like guilt okay so this is

a very very common emotion that we see in in manipulative relationship perhaps guilt is the number one reason why it's like hard to set boundaries with people and when we're talking about this power Dynamic by the way it doesn't necessarily have to be like Financial dependence it can be like an emotional power Dynamic okay so something weird about guilt which is that we tend to think that I feel guilty because I made a mistake but that is factually incorrect you do not feel guilty because you made a mistake since you feel guilty you believe you

made a mistake the guilt comes first I know it's kind of bizarre but if you literally look at the brain the fastest part of the brain to activate is our limbic system or our negative emotional circuitry and once our negative emotional circuitry activates it then goes to our cerebral cortex where we have our higher order thinking and reasoning and it manipulates that part of our brain into providing logical support for our emotions logic doesn't create an emotion emotion actually creates logic so let me give you all an example of this if I get pissed at

someone if I feel hurt and angry at someone what kind of logic does my mind produce does my mind take a step back and be like hmm you know even though I'm pissed at them maybe I'm the one that's at fault right I should really think about their perspective and like maybe I'm the one who's screwing up here of course not when you get pissed at someone or more importantly when someone gets pissed at you what happens to their rational thinking it justifies whatever the emotion is right when I get angry at someone they did

this wrong and they're strong and this wrong and if anyone tries to argue with me I'm gonna be like screw you you're wrong right because why are you wrong because I'm angry and that flip side if you've been on the receiving on this my heart goes out to you when someone's mad at you they'll come up with a thousand reasons to prove their point this is simply how all emotions work right we also see this in like the honeymoon period of marriage we're in the honeymoon period of marriage it's a positive motion we just got

married I'm so in love with this person and when I'm so in love with this person what do I do to all the red flags they keep waving around oh that's red flag number one let me snap it in half and throw it away I'm feeling so good I'm so in love you're so great oh my God there's a red flag oh I'm gonna snap it through it in half here's another red flag snap it through it in half right I'm gonna ignore all these red flags because I'm so in love and they wouldn't do

that to me your rational mind gets [ __ ] hijacked by your emotions and this is what happens in emotional relationships or manipulative relationships is that P when you try to set a boundary with someone they're going to evoke guilt and guilt is like the the nuclear missile of like emotional manipulation because it makes it your fault right and what does the narcissist want to do they want to absolve themselves of our all guilt and they're going to make it your fault and if your fault when you try to set a boundary if you're doing

something wrong and I can convince you that you're guilty you're gonna cave your own boundary and then you're gonna come like crawling on your hands and knees to me to make me like happy right that's like just think about the psychological crap that goes on in your head when you try to tell someone that they are doing something hurtful and somehow they do this [ __ ] Jiu Jitsu where it's your fault and you feel bad right and then you like you originally criticized them but now you're like making it up to them like what

the hell is going on there it's because it comes down to guilt they're going to make you feel guilty right so they'll say and this is what will happen with narcissists is they will figure out what buttons to push over time and so they will figure out how to make you feel guilty right because if you think about like a toxic parent they will fling all kinds of insults I know that y'all don't think about this but you know if you if you're like 20 years old and you have a toxic parent they've they've been

flinging insults at you for 20 years and why do they keep hammering on the same crap right they don't insult your hair and then insult your toenails and then insult your intelligence and then it's like make you feel guilty because they made so many sacrifices they don't randomly pick what they say to you they say the same damn crap over and over and over again once they figure out okay here's how I flip the guilt switch they flip that switch and once you feel guilty then what does your mind do your mind then reverse Engineers

that this is your fault it assumes that the mistake is on you because you feel guilty but emotion comes before logic so if we look at something like psychotherapy what do we do in Psychotherapy we literally sit down with people and we help them understand that if you are emotional if you guilt if you're guilty it doesn't necessarily mean that it's your fault we're going to decompress that emotion and we're going to look at the situation logically and when we do that we help people understand oh actually I was at fault for this 25 of

it but 75 percent of it is not my fault and once someone is able to realize that then they're not like playing that game anymore because they're not accepting responsibility for a hundred percent of crap when they didn't do anything wrong so what y'all need to do if you're in a toxic relationship in a manipulative relationship where you try to set boundaries and it does not work this person will use power over you whether it's Financial power you know reporting power they you report to them they're your boss or they're using emotional power over you

there are certain things that you can do to change this Dynamic and it has to do with understanding this narcissistic relationship doesn't always have to be narcissistic they're not I'm not saying they have like narcissistic personality disorder but this is usually what happens in these kinds of relationships right your bully is looking for particular things they're actually looking for you to try to be strong and then they want to crack you like an egg that is what is the most satisfying right so if you try to criticize them oh man you've woken the sleeping dragon

and they're gonna come down on you hard and since they know how to emotionally manipulate you they're gonna win every single time so how do we manage that first thing that we do is be like water be weak say hey I'm going to set this limit but I'm setting this limit because I'm weak I'm sorry I can't handle this right now click then they're gonna get really really pissed they're going to come back and she's like I can't believe you hung up on me do you know everything I've done for you and you're like yeah

I'm so sorry oh my God I really am just like I didn't realize that it's so hard I'm sorry it's just so hard for me click and they're like oh my God this like I can't believe you're gonna yell at the you've come home and they start yeah you've hung up on me twice how dare you you're like yeah I'm so sorry sorry I'm so sorry and then you [ __ ] walk out the door and eventually they're gonna stop right because you're not actually like you're not giving them the reward that they're looking for

and if you're not giving them the reward you will extinguish the behavior second thing you've got to work a lot on is understand that this whole business of guilt emotions and actions the whole point of manipulation is they're not gonna ask you for anything they're going to induce emotions that makes you do it anyway and so you're not doing them a favor there's no space for gratitude there's no space for recognition there's no space for appreciation it's always fixing problems so what you really need to learn how to do is separate out emotions from actions

right and that's a whole other thing we've got videos on alexithymia which you should watch you can check out Dr K's guide you can meditate whatever just recognize the emotion within you and recognize that this emotion makes me conclude these things and then makes me want to engage in a particular Behavior so all you really need to do is go through that process right and say like okay what does it feel like to not engage in the behavior what would happen if I just ride this emotion out and then your mind is going to tell

you no no you need to do it you need to do because it's your fault your fault and hold on a second what the most important thing is if you feel like you need to do something the one thing that I would recommend is that you do it with a clear head so wait until you are of completely clear head and then tell your mind we can do this thing no problem we can absolutely do it I'm just going to wait till I'm calm wait till tomorrow take a deep breath wake up fresh in the

morning go for a walk and then decide what you need to do you will be amazed at how that changes your behavior so just delay delay giving into the emotion okay now I know that today we talked about all kinds of random stuff we're kind of all over the place and that's because there's this fundamental idea of like boundary setting which just doesn't work and especially when you've got these narcissistic kind of personalities that are very emotionally manipulative or have power over you setting how healthy boundaries just doesn't work and so instead what we need

to do is we need to be smart right we can't we can't outplay them on on straight like you know aggression but we can absolutely like outplay them through like thievery and special ops and like this kind of stuff and so that starts with really understanding yourself and understanding what am I reinforcing when I engage in this behavior and if you stick with the stuff over time this is literally what what has helped me help patients who are in abusive relationships help teenagers who are with parents who are very very emotionally manipulative and like I'm

thinking about a person who's like really really religious like right so there's like just a lot of guilt dumped on this person and as long as you're like owning that guilt and you're letting it control you you're never gonna Escape so good luck with this and I really hope it works so it's going to be hard to do but I really want you all to give it a shot and the better you get at it the better your relationships are going to become hey y'all I want to take a moment to thank the sponsor of

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