Why Saying No Feels So Hard: Barb Nangle on Codependency, Shame & Boundaries

Saying “no” should not feel like you are committing a crime, but for many professional women, boundaries bring up guilt, fear, shame, and second-guessing.

In this powerful conversation, Julie Fairhurst sits down with boundaries coach, speaker, and podcaster Barb Nangle to discuss codependency, people-pleasing, family dysfunction, and the deep inner work required to stop overgiving at the expense of your own peace.

Barb shares the raw story of what she calls her “codependent bottom” and how 12-step recovery helped her completely rewire the way she relates to others and to herself. We explore what codependency looks like in everyday life: rescuing, managing other people’s emotions, staying constantly available, and using approval to feel safe.

This episode also dives into Al-Anon, CODA, ACA, Overeaters Anonymous, shame, guilt, nervous system safety, and why boundary setting is not just about saying the right words. It is about learning to stay with yourself when discomfort shows up.

Barb offers powerful language for women who are tired of being the dependable one while quietly losing themselves. Her reminder that “discomfort does not mean danger” may be the mindset shift that helps you stop backpedaling and start choosing yourself.

In this episode, we talk about:

• What codependency really looks like in daily life
• Why professional women struggle to say no
• The difference between guilt and shame
• How family dysfunction shapes people-pleasing patterns
• Why boundaries are nervous system work
• The role of 12-step recovery in healing codependency
• How overgiving turns into resentment
• Barb’s two powerful questions: “What’s my motive?” and “Does this align with my highest good?”
• How to create internal safety and stop abandoning yourself

If you have ever felt guilty about having needs, afraid of disappointing people, or exhausted from being the one everyone counts on, this conversation will meet you right where you are.

Subscribe for more honest conversations with women who are healing, leading, writing, growing, and telling the truth.

Reach out to Barb:
Free 30-minute "Say No without Guilt" call: http://barbchat.net/
podcast: https://higherpowercc.com/podcast
https://higherpowercc.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/barb-nangle 
https://www.youtube.com/@higherpowercoaching
Internal Safety Course: "Boundaries That Hold: How to Stop Overriding Yourself In Real Time." https://higherpowercc.com/boundariesthathold/

Hosted by Julie Fairhurst
Women Like Me Stories & Business

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Transcript

Welcome And What We Are Tackling

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of Women Like Me Stories in Business. I'm your host, Julie Farrers, and today I'm here with a very interesting lady. She's got quite a quite a story that she's going to be sharing with us. Now, I did not check with her about her last name. So I'm going to give it a try. And if I bungle it, she's going to correct me. Barb Nagle. Nangle. Nangle. Nangle. Nangle. Got it. Usually I question everybody because my thing.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Okay, everybody messes it up. Everybody feel okay.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

So Barb is a boundaries coach. She's a speaker, a podcaster, and a founder of higher power coaching and consulting. Barb helps overwhelmed women, professional women, build inner safety so that they can say no without feeling guilt, stop overriding themselves and finally put themselves first. We're falling apart over what everyone else thinks. I love that. I want to, I want to hear about how to how to say no without guilt is a big one for us. So today we're going to talk about codependency, guilt, shame, people pleasing, internal safety, and the beautiful,

The Moment Codependency Hit Bottom

SPEAKER_01 1:20

brave work of learning to say no without abandoning yourself. Barb, welcome to the podcast and thank you so much for being here.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Yeah, thank you. I'm really excited for this conversation. It's just about my favorite thing to talk about.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Yay! Perfect. Okay, well, let's start with your story. So you described hitting a codependent bottom. So what happened and how did that moment wake you up?

SPEAKER_00 1:47

Okay, so in the fall of 2014, I volunteered to co-lead a project at my church serving homeless people. And around that time, a homeless guy named Dan started coming to my church as a parishioner. And he and I became very friendly. And I remember thinking it was like, oh, like God had brought me this homeless person so that I could understand the plight of homeless people from the perspective of homeless people. And instead of like serving, quote, the homeless, I was serving homeless people. And he actually was incredibly helpful in that regard. Well, I don't know, two, three months into our friendship, we had a really bad snowstorm here in New Haven, Connecticut. And Dan never stayed in homeless shelters. He hated him, I'm sure most people do, but you cannot stay outside in a snowstorm. So I invited him to stay in my home. And I now know, not normal to invite a homeless person to stay in your home. And of course, he said yes. So then I invited him another time and another time. And within a few weeks, he was practically living with me. And I soon felt trapped in my own home. He was an admitted alcoholic and drug addict. I now think on reflection, he maybe had a personality disorder because this guy fucked with my head in a way I had never experienced. He made me feel like I was a bad person, like I was crazy, like just all this just questioned everything about myself. So one day I'm in therapy, which by the way, I had been in for 37 years. I started when I was 15. So I was 52 when this happened. And it wasn't continuous, but it was damn close. I mean, there was probably not a total of five years in total that I wasn't in therapy. So I'm in therapy, I'm in the middle of a sentence. I'm talking about Dan. And I go, I stop in mid-sentence and I go, Do you think I need to go to Al-Anon? And my therapist is like, yes. So just in case people aren't familiar with Al-Anon, it's a 12-step recovery program for the loved ones of alcoholics. And in case they're not familiar with 12-step recovery, Alcoholics Anonymous, or AA, was created in the 1930s in the US. It was the first time in the history of humans that droves and droves and droves of alcoholics got and stayed sober and documented it and created this 12-step recovery program. Well, the second 12-step recovery program created, and now there's like 200 and something, was Al-Anon for the loved ones of alcoholics. And so most people are like, wait, why do the loved ones of alcoholics need a program of recovery? And here's why: because alcoholism is a family disease. So we tend to think of the drinking behavior of the alcoholic person as being the problem. But it's absolutely the tip of the iceberg of the problems of alcoholic families. And so what happens with the loved ones is they sort of naturally start trying to control the alcoholic's behavior to get them to stop drinking, to go to rehab, to go to meetings, to go to detox. And they start being really controlling and then they build up resentment against the alcoholic because of all the things they're doing with their alcoholism, because I'm putting all this effort in and you're not doing it and you're not listening to me. And then the alcoholic starts to feel controlled for some reason. And then they get resentful of the loved ones, and then they use that resentment as an excuse to drink. And what's happening for the loved ones is they begin to completely neglect themselves. They ignore themselves, they focus entirely the alcoholic. And so that's why they need a program of recovery because some of the things like when you start out doing it, it seems normal, but then it's a slippery slope and you start like completely neglecting and ignoring yourself. So I went home from that therapy session, and whatever I typed into Google looking for Al-Anon, the word codependent came up. And even though I had been in therapy for 37 years, I started reading self-help books when I was like 22. I still read them voraciously. I did workshops and spiritual groups and retreats, like you name it. Never heard this word codependent. And I was like, wait, what? And so I now understand a codependent person is essentially someone who does what I was just describing. They are so out of outer focused. What does he need? What does she need? What do they

Al-Anon And How Families Get Pulled In

SPEAKER_00 6:10

need? What does the situation need? What does the organization need? And they neglect, sometimes even abuse themselves because and they pay no attention to what's going on internally. So a classic codependent is in a relationship with an addict or an alcoholic, but that doesn't have to be the case. So I was like, whoa, how is it possible? I don't know about this. So I started going to Codependence Anonymous, another 12-step recovery program. And I started feeling a scent of relief pretty quickly, Julie. And I think it was, you know, knowing there's this thing that describes me, there's a recovery program. I'm not the only one. Recovery is possible. And within, I don't know, two, three, four weeks, I remember saying to somebody as I was learning what I was learning in Coda, which is the nickname for codependence anonymous. I remember saying to somebody, I think I need to be reparented, but I don't know where I got that terminology from. I think I thought I'd made it up. I don't know. But six weeks into my CODA journey, I went away to go visit friends, one of whom had been in AA for over 10 years and had raved about how utterly transformed her life was as a result. And I was like, You're gonna love this. I'm going to code penance anymore. And she was like, This is great. Let's see if we can find a COHODA meeting here while you're here and we'll go together. Well, she couldn't, but she found an ACA meeting, which I knew of as ACOA, Adult Children of Alcoholics. Yes. It never occurred to me that I qualified for that program. Never occurred to me why adult children of alcoholics would need a program of recovery, but now I know that I understand it's a family disease. And I've since learned it's actually called adult children of alcoholics and dysfunctional families. Now that I qualify for. So I walk into the meeting with my friend Heidi, and in the opening readings, among other things, they said we reparent ourselves. And I was like, wait, what? I'm listening. And then they read the list of the 14 traits of an adult child, which is what members of ACA call themselves. And it's affectionately called the laundry list. And Heidi tells me I sobbed the whole meeting. I don't remember that, but I bought the literature. I came home to New Haven, Connecticut. I started also going to ACA within a few weeks. A women's ACA meeting started in New Haven. I started going to that. In fact, I'm going to that meeting in less than two hours because it's still going on 11 years later. And then a few weeks later, I got into a small group with three other women where we worked through the ACA 12-step workbook together. And I just, when I was reading the literature, I'm like, oh my God, this is what happened. This is what happened. This is what happened. Except for that I didn't know something, quote, happened to me. But when I was reading the literature, it was describing what I now know as intergenerational family dysfunction and childhood trauma. I didn't know any of this stuff. So, Barb, can I ask you? Because so, so were your parents alcoholics then? No, my mother was extremely codependent. My dad, I would call him a heavy drinker. Okay. Um, he was, but he wasn't an alcoholic. And even now, I'm like, it doesn't really matter if he was actually alcoholic, even though he was a heavy drinker. It was a lot of the other like controlling behaviors, not allowed to have feelings. You know, you want me to give you a reason to cry, gaslighting from parents. If for me, it was primarily emotional abandonment, you know, being like my parents not knowing how to handle their own emotions, never mind three children's emotions and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 9:48

So when you so when that gentleman came and stayed with you, the homeless gentleman, that just was the trigger.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

It so it pushed me over the edge. When I look back now, I can see every single relationship I've ever had in my entire life has been so dependent. It was worse, it was the worst in all my romantic relationships. And at first, when I first got in, I was like, oh, that's where it's happening. But then as I got to know myself better and did the steps, you know, got deeper into the step work, I'm like, oh, it's literally all my friendships, all my colleague relationships, all of the at that point, 13 different places I had volunteered for nonprofit organizations. So this was a pattern I had. I brought it everywhere with me and I enacted it in every conceivable relationship because it was my like my blueprint for how to have relationships.

SPEAKER_01 10:42

So it's interesting that there was so there was dysfunction in your family, even though you know you whether your father was an alcoholic or just a heavy drinker, it was it wasn't necessarily his drinking, it was the it was the dysfunction that was happening in your family.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

Yeah, like pretending stuff is not happening, and and like my

Finding ACA And Learning To Reparent

SPEAKER_00 11:05

grandfather was an alcoholic. I didn't even realize that until I was an adult. So when you're a grandchild of an alcoholic, you automatically qualify for ACA. Even if your parents never drank, yeah, it's the behavior that's the problem. The drinking is just a symptom, it's just a very, very bad symptom. Yes, you know. So I I my so my first year, I went to Coda, but I only went to meetings. I didn't do anything with that recovery program outside. Whereas ACA, I was going to multiple meetings doing this work, going to workshops. And about a year into that journey, I decided to let go of Coda because it felt like maybe a 75% fit, and ACA was 100% fit. And that turned out to be a higher powered moment for me because one of the women that I was doing the 12 steps with had started sharing with us about her relationship with food. And I remember being like, oh my God. And it wasn't, oh my God, at what she was doing. It was that she was talking about it. And she started going to Overeaters Anonymous, and she was kind of like gently trying to go with get me to go with her. So I went to a workshop with her one day. I really didn't, I thought it was going to like a weekly support group meeting. I didn't understand it was like a workshop with speakers. And the first speaker started talking, and he said, I'm down 185 pounds for over 30 years, and I've been quote abstinent. So abstinent in a food recovery program is equivalent to sober in an alcohol recovery program. I see. So I was like, you've got my attention because I was over 100 pounds heavier than I am now at the time. I had worked for Weight Watchers for years and many years prior. And the statistics at Weight Watchers, at least at that time, were 95% of people gain their weight back. So for someone to be abstinent for 30 years and to be down 185 pounds and keep it off, I'd never heard of anything like this. The only people at that point in time that I had ever met that had lost over 100 pounds, all of them had had surgery, and nine of the 10 of them had gained all their weight back. So I knew there's something here. And I left there going, oh my God, I'm a compulsive overeater. And what's funny is, and this to me, this is the higher power thing, is I used to go to Coda on Mondays. Well, when I was at this OA workshop, they handed me a meeting list. This is pre-pandemic when everything was in person and they handed you paper. There was a downtown New Haven Monday night OA meeting. So my Monday night just became free. So I started going to that meeting. So I've been in ACA for 11 years and OA for 12 years. I've been abstinent for, excuse me, 10 years. I've been abstinent for 10 years. I've been at my goal weight for over eight years. And wow really, so I learned to build boundaries pretty much vicariously through the 12 steps of recovery. It's not like someone sat me down and was like, okay, Barb, we're gonna teach you how to build boundaries. And I think, you know, my core wound is trauma. That's where everything stems from. But for me, the worst manifestation of my trauma was the codependence. And boundaries are essentially the antidote to codependence. So when I learned how to build boundaries, it was like, what is this? Like, I know who I am, I know what's okay and not okay, I know where I end and other people begin. I didn't know any of that stuff. And so as I got a handle, I'd say like a couple years into my recovery, I got a handle on the boundaries. I started reading about boundaries. Yeah. And I started when I would take notes, I would draw visual depictions because I'm a pretty visual person. And it was really just for me to help me understand better, like what the hell happened to me, such that I didn't develop boundaries, and then how did I build them?

unknown 14:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

And you know, I I'd like to I'd like to ask you because I think that there might be some confusion. And so maybe you could clarify. So what did boundaries mean before your recovery and after the recovery?

SPEAKER_00 15:07

They it wasn't even in my vocabulary. The I don't it was just not the it wasn't no, it wasn't the thing. And when I started learning to build boundaries, I thought that it was being mean if I didn't leap in to help somebody that needed that, in my opinion, needed help. Didn't even they didn't necessarily believe they needed help, but I thought they needed help and they needed my help very specifically. And so I I there's a lot of mindset stuff. It's a huge amount of it's emotional work. The biggest thing that stops people from either setting boundaries or causes them to cave when they set boundaries is the feelings that come up. And that's where, and I know we'll talk about this, that's where the internal safety that I'm that I you know talk about comes in. But I, you know, I started doing these drawings. Well, those drawings turned into handouts, which ultimately turned into a workbook, which is the backbone of my boundaries coaching program. I didn't know any of that was going to happen. I was working full-time at Yale when I got into recovery. I was there, my first two and a half years, I was still at Yale. And if you had ever told me that I would one day be a boundaries coach, I would have laughed in your face. I what? But when I got laid off, I found my way into the world of startups and innovation and entrepreneurship in New Haven and at Yale, and eventually decided to start my own coaching and consulting business. I started my podcast pretty quickly. And I really, to me, it was nothing to do with my business. It was about taking all of this enormous amount of wisdom that I was learning in recovery, none of which I had learned in the 37 years of personal development and therapy. And I wanted to get that wisdom out into the world. So my podcast is called Fragmented to Whole Life Lessons from 12-step recovery. Oh, so I share, they're all short, like 10 to 20 minute episodes, and I share like what I've learned. And apparently, there's something about the way that I share that's meaningful to people. I'm like, I'm just talking, I don't know. And then I started coaching, but I didn't, I knew nothing. So then eventually, as I learned more things, I realized, oh, I need a niche. And it just made sense for me to be a boundaries coach because they had such an enormous impact on me. I knew that I was really good at helping people build healthy boundaries, and I had learned so much, and I knew like this is the thing that helps with so many other behaviors because boundaries

Food Recovery And A New Kind Of Abstinence

SPEAKER_00 17:40

permeate every area of your life and every relationship, especially your relationship with yourself. So I think one of the things that people love to hear about me in terms of boundaries is that I never had I had literally dozens of romantic relationships before recovery, and all of them were dysfunctional. And when I did my relationship inventory, I could literally see the codependence get worse and worse and worse over time, which I think is why what happened with Dan, even though it wasn't a romantic relationship, there was something about him that I felt compelled to rescue him. And I am now in the first and only healthy romantic relationship of my life. We've been together for seven and a half years. I was 55 and he was 60 when we met. So it's never too late. And I attribute my ability to be in a healthy relationship primarily to my boundaries because I know what's okay and not okay. I know what's mine and what's not mine, not in his business, not trying to control him. If something bothers me, I let him know. I don't pretend things are okay with me. I don't pretend that I like things that I don't. I mean, I spent my entire life doing that with everybody, but especially in romantic relationships, to be a good girlfriend. Yes, yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:07

What is internal safety and why is it so important?

SPEAKER_00 19:12

So internal safety is essentially not abandoning yourself, staying with yourself regardless of what's going on around you. So if let's say that I set a boundary with you, Julie, and you push back in the past, I would be like, oh my God, she thinks I'm a bad person. And I would backpedal and just do whatever I had to do to take it back. So that's me abandoning myself because whatever boundary I set with you was for me, not against you, but for me. Right. But I've abandoned that. Or let's say you are totally okay with the boundary, but I still feel guilty because you know, I've always been a giver and I'm a helpful person. So I have this guilt. So internal safety is I don't use your upsetness or my guilt as a reason to abandon myself. I tell myself, these are just feelings. I'm not a bad person. I also, this is nervous system level work here. So what I often do for me, my go-to nervous system first thing is hand on chest. Like I've got me, you know, I'm not a bad person. So what happens is when the feelings come up, it's typically because when we were growing up, we probably most people grow up with some level of dysfunction, but we got the message, like I got the message, don't have needs and cater to other people and meet their needs. So that became my identity. And the other thing that happened was this, you know, this abandonment, this emotional abandonment. And so the way I think of the emotional abandonment when you're a child, it's not one time, it's like the drip, drip, drip of emotional invalidation, all that sort of thing. But it what it does is it's uh like metaphorically creates like an earthquake inside of you, inside your nervous system. So, like an earthquake has all these fault lines. Yes, then when you're in your you know, contemporary times as an adult and you're in an office and somebody says something that makes you think that they disapprove of you, it's like they've nicked your fault line and it reverberates through your whole fault line system, but you respond as if it's the original earthquake. So you're not in a cave with a saber-toothed tiger attacking you. You are not six years old with the bully, the playground, you are not being humiliated by all the kids in the neighborhood, by your parent that raked you over the coals in front of everybody. You know, it's not that that's happening, but your system feels like it. So, what I have realized over Time is that building healthy boundaries is all about building internal safety. So it's not something that you just snap your fingers and have. It's not you make a decision. It's something that happens over time. But it doesn't necessarily that you always feel calm. It doesn't mean that you never have conflict. You will feel calm way, way, way more often, eventually. I will tell you, Julie, things that used to just decimate me and probably would have taken me two to three years to get over. Sometimes it's like a trickle to me now. Like I because I'm I so clearly know who I am, what's okay and not okay with me. And the other way I think of it is I'm grounded in me. I'm situated in me. And so this is a little bit about like the name of my podcast, fragmented to whole. I felt before like I was a bunch of fragmented pieces floating around in the space, and then other and I was had space between the fragments. And so other people's shit could leak into my territory between those fragments. And the process of recovery, especially building boundaries, was

Boundaries As The Antidote To Overgiving

SPEAKER_00 23:10

me integrating all of those fragments into one coherent whole and also getting rid of the illegitimate and inauthentic fragments of me because I did a lot of pretending and faking and acting like things were okay. And so now I can be rocked by things that happened to me, but I can't be shattered by them the way that I used to because I'm whole. And that wholeness is what I'm talking about in terms of internal safety. I know who I am. So I had this client who, when she stopped, when she finished working with me, she had made massive strides. She ended divorcing her active alcoholic husband of seven years. They had a four-year-old son. He was just not, she called their parenting parallel parenting because they were not co-parenting. And I said to her, What's your go-to now? And she said, I always, when something comes up that has anything to do with boundaries, I ask myself, is this mine? And I said, That's amazing. But you know what? I don't even have to ask that anymore because I know, because I have integrated my boundaries into me. So one another way to express that, Julie, is to say, I don't set boundaries anymore. I have them. So I used to set, yeah, but I've integrated, I know where I end and where other people begin. I know what's mine and not mine. Now it takes work to do that. So internal safety is stopping abandoning yourself. So you don't use a feeling of guilt as if it's an instruction. Barb, you've done something wrong. So now you have to pick it. It's like, oh, this is a guilt feeling that is way out of proportion to what's going on right now because it's connected to something that earthquake from the past.

SPEAKER_01 24:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:57

Or Julie's upset with me. I I in the past would use that. Oh, someone's upset with me. I've done something wrong. It's my fault that they're upset, and it's my responsibility to get them to be un upset. And I now understand that's not what that is. So so let's say, Julie, that you and I have been friends for a long time, and I have been bending over backwards and accommodating you all over the place. And I have realized I don't like that. It actually doesn't feel good to me. It doesn't feel like we have a mutuality in our friendship. And I stop overgiving with you. Well, if you get upset, it makes total sense that you would be upset because it's upsetting when your life was way easier and now it's not. So it makes sense. And not only that, your upsetness, those are your feelings, and you get to manage them. I can't, they're not my property. It's not mine. My feelings are mine, and I'm in charge of mine. So I'm separate from you, and I now understand that because I continue to have my own back and realize your upsetness is not my fault and it's not my responsibility. And so what another way to describe this, Julie, is to say that discomfort doesn't mean danger. So we get uncomfortable when other people are upset with us. We get uncomfortable when we have feelings of guilt and we act like this is a danger signal. It's actually not a danger signal, it's based on the past, not on the present. So discomfort doesn't mean danger. But what we do when we take it to mean danger is we're like, what do I do out there to manage them or the situation to get rid of my discomfort? But the reality is my discomfort is in that moment, it's this comfort of growth. So we have discomfort from dysfunction, which is basically we don't know how to operate in a healthy manner in relationships with humans or in life. And so it's really uncomfortable for us. And if we don't really change our ways, the discomfort's going to get worse and the dysfunction is going to get worse and it's never going to end.

SPEAKER_01 27:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:24

Then we have the discomfort of growth and change. So the reason growth and change discomfort is there is because it's completely foreign to us. We don't know what's on the other side. When we have the discomfort of dysfunction, we at least know what that looks like. We're familiar with that. But when we have the discomfort of dysfunction, we don't know what's going to happen. We think I'm going to die. I know I literally would

Internal Safety And Discomfort Vs Danger

SPEAKER_00 27:50

feel like when I would think of setting a boundary, I would feel like I'm going to die.

SPEAKER_01 27:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:53

But what happens when we continue to practice the new change behavior, the this comfort of growth and change, starts to become familiar and therefore not uncomfortable, therefore more comfortable. And what's on the other side of it is healing and growth and healthy relationships and peace and serenity. So you've got your choice. Are you going to pick the long-standing, never-ending, getting worse all the time, discomfort of dysfunction? Or are you going to pick the discomfort of growth and change, which is finite and has healing on the other side? Yeah. Yeah. So, like, pick your discomfort. You're going to be uncomfortable, but one of them's going to end and it's going to lead to so much peace and serenity.

SPEAKER_01 28:38

And so I'd like to ask you if you don't mind. I'd like to ask you about the connection between shame and people pleasing. Because I think that's a real big problem that a lot of women have.

SPEAKER_00 28:50

Yeah. Yeah. So I said guilt. I would say guilt and shame are kind of tied with the main reasons that people don't set boundaries or they cave on them. And you know, the way that I've heard the distinction between guilt and shame is guilt is I've done something wrong, and shame is I am something wrong. Oh so guilt is about behavior and shame is about beingness.

SPEAKER_01 29:11

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 29:11

Right. And I think for me personally, shame is the worst. I'd rather be terrified than shamed.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 29:18

Honestly, I would and to me, humiliation is public shame.

SPEAKER_01 29:22

You know, I never ever thought of shame like that, explained like that, but that is spot on. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:29

Yeah. And you know, I I wanna, as I as I'm answering your question, I want to reference my ACA program because I mentioned it's about intergenerational family dysfunction.

SPEAKER_01 29:38

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 29:39

So what I've come to understand is that our parents were not taught how to manage their own feelings. So how could they possibly not manage their own feelings and then teach young children how to manage theirs? No. Yeah. So it's almost as if our parents have all this guilt and shame of the generations that came before them. Yes. And they almost like pour it into us because they're like, I don't want this guilt and shame. I'm gonna give it to you. That's why, that's another reason why when we have feelings of guilt and shame, they are way out of proportion to what's happening. I know, like, I didn't even understand until I got in recovery that that flood feeling that I had was shame, that I had so many times in so many arenas in my life. And I want to give you a really concrete example. I was born with a birthmark on my head here. It's really a collection of oil glands and no hair grew there. And every time my entire life, when I would go to get a haircut, I would be like, oh and I now know that I felt shame because sometimes they would say something and sometimes they and I and I had this feeling like I just slaughtered a school full of children when I have a bald spot on my head. Like, what? And I didn't even realize until I was a I don't even know how long into recovery, probably three, four, five years. I came out of the salon and I'm like, that thing didn't happen. What what? And I'm like, oh my God, that was shame all those years. But I didn't have that feeling. I'm just like, whatever, I got a ball to my head, like you know, and it's just like it's become benign. But I now understand the reason that I felt such deep shame about that is because it's not just my shame, it's the shame of the generations that came before me.

SPEAKER_01 31:30

So would that have come from a family member or something just even saying something nonchalantly about it?

SPEAKER_00 31:38

And you just so much about the human body that is that people get shame about. Like I have my smallest toes, the toenail is really tiny and almost grows like up rather than straight. And I know that kids made fun of me when I was a kid and I hated my feet for years, and I would try to wear sandals that covered up that lap. So it's like there's so much body stuff. And then my mom also tells me that like I didn't grow hair, a full head of hair, until I was over a year old. So everybody saw this birthmark. Yes, and my guess is they made comments about it. And I, you know, who knows? Yes, you know, I don't, I really don't know. And but there's just so many things that we don't do a good job in our society about, especially anything that has to do with bodily development and hormones and you know, teenage years when you're you know, all the changes are happening and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 32:40

So there's a yeah, good. I would like to, I would because we we only have about 10, 15 minutes left. And and first of all, I want everyone to know that I'm gonna have all of Barb's information in the show notes. So if you want to reach out to her, you want to find out more information, you need to, you want to get some assistance, you will be able to contact her. So all of her, all of her information will be there. But I would love to know, what do you do to help women over 50? So I know you have a coaching program. So what is it that you're doing? So someone I come to you, someone comes to you. And so what does that look like? What does that program look like?

SPEAKER_00 33:18

Yeah, so my flagship program is called Unshakable You. And it's based on like what I've come up with over time is I have a 12 module curriculum, and I have something that I call my inner safety skill building system. So I help you through all of the curriculum that I have and the individual coaching that we have really build a sense of internal safety. So every week we do a different module. The vast majority of our calls are me and you talking about your situations, your issues, your relationships, et cetera. And I help you kind of troubleshoot what's going on. A lot of it is me shifting you because what happens for a lot of people is one, they are trying to prevent future problems by trying to control other people when those problems haven't even happened yet. Two, they're trying to control other people places and things that they don't have control over. And three, they're not controlling the things within their control, which is their own thinking and behavior. And and a lot of it is also mindset shifts. I mean, I think, you know, really understanding like this isn't my responsibility. Like, and you there's some things you you have to grasp them intellectually, even though there's a lot of feelings work here, you know, you can still have feelings about something and still act in a way that your intellect is telling you this isn't mine. And then the other thing I do that's really super valuable that not I I I don't know how many coaches do it, but I I communicate via the Telegram Messenger app with my clients. So they can voice memo me or text

Shame, People Pleasing, And Generational Patterns

SPEAKER_00 35:10

me at any time. And so I can help them on the spot. And that is often where the big transformations happen for people because it's when they feel like they're gonna die, or somebody just send me this test message and I don't know how to respond. So they're they're going through, I give them a PowerPoint presentation, so there's a lot of visual stuff. Then I have podcast episodes, so there's audio. Um, I also have articles, so there's reading, and then I have a workbook, which is both visual and reading. And so what they do is, you know, I introduce them to the topic with the PowerPoint presentation, and then they go and listen to the podcast episodes and do the readings, and then they go to the workbook, which has integration exercises. So they're applying all of the things that they're learning to their life, their situations, their issues, and their relationships, so that it's literally integrating this knowledge into them and their relationships. And then, of course, we talk about that, the insights that they had, any questions they have, misunderstandings. But the bulk of the time is them telling me this is what's going on, and me pointing out to them, here's what you're doing. That you and sometimes a lot of times they know what they're doing, but they don't know how to stop. And that's the thing is I get people like all I think I've had one client ever that had never been to therapy or done any self-help. Most people that come to me have done it all. Yeah. And they're like, I know what I need to do, I just can't fucking do it. And it's the internal safety piece. It's this idea that they're they're like waiting for other people to change, is essentially what they're doing. And it's like, actually, you're the one that's gonna change. And you know, Julie, I've always felt like a powerful woman of agency. I always thought that I liked myself and had high self-esteem. I was shocked to learn that I ruminated about the past, I catastrophized about the future, I blamed, I complained, you know, had all this negativity going on. Yeah. And I also realized that on some level, I had been waiting my entire life for someone to come along and rescue me. And if and I'm like also lot, lifelong feminist, intellectual, like I was like, what? Yeah, what? And I realized, oh, you know who's gonna rescue me?

SPEAKER_01 37:39

Yes, yes, exactly, exactly, yeah. Right, the woman's coming along. You're the one who's coming, no, yeah. So, what do you wish more professional women understood about stress, resentment, and always being available? That it's not nice, you know.

SPEAKER_00 37:58

I I literally remember saying to one someone, to one someone one time, like, I'm nice, that's why I help people all the time. Now it makes me want to gag that I said that, but I didn't understand until I got into recovery that I was doing all of the rescuing, fixing, saving, helping, overgiving because I was an approval seeker. Because I felt if I have your approval, I'm safe. What I now understand is if I have my approval, I'm safe. Yes. So when I when I was early in recovery, I remember specifically going to a woman in Coda and saying to her, you know, I see that there's like this continuum of helpfulness, whereby on one end, we've got kindly, helpful, functional, healthy, helping behavior. On the other hand, we've got this dysfunctional, unhealthy, rescuing, fixing, saving, enabling behavior. I feel like I'm starting to get the difference between those. I hadn't even understood that at all. I thought it was all helping behavior. But I said to her, you know, it's it's in the middle where I'm confused. How do you flip over from being just regular helping helpful to being rescuing? And she goes, Well, you know, it really depends, Barb. Why are you doing it? Are you helping them because you really want to be helpful? Or are you doing it because you want them to like you? And I'm like, I'm totally doing it because I want to be helpful. But let me tell you something, Julie. That question percolated in my mind, and I started to be like, oh shit, I want their approval. It wasn't so much I want them to like me, but I want them to think I'm helpful, I'm reliable, I'm dependable. Like I wanted them to think good things of me.

SPEAKER_01 39:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:39

And that

Coaching Program, Motives, And Closing

SPEAKER_00 39:40

really changed things for me. So then I started asking myself, what's my motive? When I want to make a decision about what's a healthy behavior for me, or when I want to decide what's the healthy boundary for me, I asked myself first, what's my motive? Why am I doing this? Am I helping them because it's in alignment with what's important to me? Because I have the capacity and the interest to do it, or am I doing it because of what I think they'll think of me? And then the second question I ask is Does this bring me an alignment with my highest good? Like, does it bring me an alignment with my values? Does it help me be the person that I want to be? And am I am I lying and saying yes to something I don't want to do? Am I acting like something is okay when I don't, when when it's not okay? And I don't do that anymore. So I used to basically throw my integrity out of the window so that people would like me. And frankly, I was more invested in them thinking that I was helpful than I was in being helpful. And I will tell you that is very humbling. I can I can say that with no shame at all right now because I didn't know that was going on. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:56

I think that uh this conversation has been quite amazing because so much of what you have said is about what I mean, all people, but we're focusing more on women here is what women feel and maybe feel in silence. And they don't want to say, you know, oh, I committed to go. I don't really want to go. I'm not really crazy about those people, but oh my goodness, how can I not go? Because I already said I was gonna go. And so that whole turmoil that plays in their minds, and then they end up going and doing something that they that they don't want to do and not being fair and honest to themselves. Right. I think so much of it is in silence. And I think that by having these conversations, by listening to someone like you who've has been through it, overcome it, and now helping others to overcome it, we can get it out of the closet. Yes, yes, absolutely. Yeah. Well, Barb, I appreciate you doing this so much. It was it was very good. I've got a few boundary issues myself over here. I got to get straightened around. So it's um it was uh very enlightening. So thank you so much for doing this. You're so welcome. Oh, thank you. So remember, everyone, you can find all the information on how to reach out to Barb in the show notes. So make sure you go there, check it out. And if you're feeling a little drawn, you want to learn more, then definitely reach out to her. Okay, everybody. Well, that is it for another episode of Women Like Me Stories in Business. Thank you all for being here. I appreciate your support so much. And Barb, thank you for being here once again. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 42:39

Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 42:40

Okay, bye bye, everyone.