You just told your partner that you need space for yourself after you get home from work, before doing a daily debrief. Or you just told your new coworker that you prefer for them to ask you before they use your paperclips, your stapler on your desk. And then your heart starts racing. Like, holy shit, you just stated a boundary. You should feel empowered, but instead you feel anxious. Your palms are sweaty. Your face, your jaw are tense. You’re thinking, were you clear? Were you too bitchy? Were you too blunt? And then you start explaining, right? I need space because of this. And you know, last year this happened. And when I was a kid, this used to happen. Or I prefer that you ask before using my supplies because of this thing that happened. And then my parents used to do this to me, and then you just sort of word vomit for a bit. Or you bolt, you shut yourself in the bathroom, you run the shower, you just stand there in front of the mirror, looking at yourself frozen. Or you say you have an errand to run and you leave the office to go sit in your car for an hour. Or you don’t bolt, you apologize because you’ve been fighting the urge to take it back, and you say something like, you know what, I’m having a rough day, you’re fine, I’m fine, everything’s fine. Sound familiar? Have you ever set a boundary and then felt badly about it or guilty or scared? Have you ever set a boundary, knew you said all the right words, you know, used that I statement, made it about you, not them, but then felt like crawling under the table afterward. The thing about boundaries is that the practice of boundaries is not actually about setting boundaries. It’s about maintaining them. Those are two very different things. Now, my question for you is not can you set boundaries, but do you feel safe maintaining them? Do you feel regulated maintaining them? Are you and your worth maintaining them? Welcome to the Simple Source, a paradigm-shifting space where self-love, healing, spirituality, and personal growth are redefined. Have you been told healing takes years, that abundance must be attracted, or that transformation requires struggle? You haven’t been told the truth. I’m Linda Villines, a certified, trauma-informed holistic coach, author, and spiritual guide. After healing myself from chronic conditions, complex trauma, and lack, not by following traditional frameworks, but by creating my own, I’m now teaching you to love, heal, and free yourself, mind, body, and soul, so you can reclaim your highest health, happiness, and potential with joy and ease. Each week, we go beyond surface-level self-help and into the real mechanics of transformation. If the traditional paths to healing and spirituality haven’t produced the changes you want in the life you desire, you’re in the right place. You are never meant to struggle or wait for what is already yours. Let’s get started with today’s episode. Boundaries have become such a trendy personal growth flex that we all know boundaries are important by now. But not very many people talk about what happens after you set the boundary, whether or not those boundaries stick, if you take them back, if you edit them, if you make yourself smaller for them, and how you feel after the fact. What if the real test of a boundary is not whether you can say it, but whether your body can actually stay with the boundary afterward? So in today’s episode, we’re unpacking why you can state a boundary perfectly, why you can state your needs with clarity, but then you spend the next two hours wondering if you’ve ruined everything. Boundaries aren’t just psychological preferences, they’re largely processed somatically, meaning in your body. Research shows that relationship conflict activates the same stress response in your body that’s triggered by a fear of your survival. That’s why when someone comes into your personal space, meaning close to your body, without your consent, you automatically pull away to create distance. Boundaries are not like mental preferences, they affect your physical body, your nervous system immediately and deeply. And that’s why you’re so attuned to how other people respond after you set that boundary. While you’re checking their facial expression, while you’re trying to read and manage their reaction, you’re wired to be that sensitive in relationships because your body is involved in your boundaries. For example, telling your parents to not talk to you like a child is one thing. Enforcing a shift in your relational dynamic with them so that that boundary is honored is another thing. And in today’s episode, we’re talking about the latter. Because for many people, boundaries are really fucking stressful. They seem empowering in theory, but in practice they bring up anxiety, guilt, shame, anger, resentment, and fear. Boundaries are loaded. They’re really not as straightforward as a lot of coaches and practitioners make them out to be. Meaning, setting a boundary is not the same thing as maintaining that boundary. And that’s the important part, which is feeling genuinely good while maintaining that boundary. Many people set a boundary and then when they encounter that person or that situation again, they just feel anxiety. Dread arises, right? Fear comes up. You start questioning are they gonna remember what I said? Are they gonna remember my boundary? Are they gonna respect it? Do I need to repeat myself? Do I need to explain myself? Maybe I should let it go. Maybe I need to look at that script again and that self-help book again. Maybe I’m being too demanding. And that insecurity around that boundary is a very real thing for many people. On the surface, the insecurity comes from a history of your boundaries not being respected, right? Your needs not being met. And you remember how boundaries have failed you in the past. But what’s really happening under the surface is not about boundaries at all. It’s about your ability to love yourself and honor your self-worth in relationships. That’s why the consequence of you setting that boundary feels so severe, like consciously or unconsciously. The fear is not, will my boundary be respected? The fear is, will I be alone? Will I be rejected, abandoned, shamed, or hurt or in pain in some way after I set this boundary? That’s why you fold so easily, why you end up making that boundary softer or smaller, or you why you just let the whole thing drop. That’s also why you overexplain yourself, why you apologize, while you check in with the other person to see if they’re okay. That’s why you try to make light of it and then convince yourself that you were being too demanding when the boundary doesn’t actually hold up. Many people think that their boundaries don’t hold because they didn’t use the right script, like they didn’t say the right thing at the right time. But what’s actually going on is your body is treating you setting boundaries as a threat to your survival because of what that boundary might cost you according to your past that you have yet to heal. And your body feels that fear because it doesn’t yet know how to hold self-worth in the company and in the judgment of others. It doesn’t yet know what unconditional self-love feels like in the company and judgment of others. And no boundary is going to tell your body I can hold this boundary with my full worth and 100% love for myself, regardless of what happens next. That’s not a boundary thing. That’s a self-love and a self-worth thing. So attachment research reveals that when you get scared or stressed in relationship for whatever reason and your survival response gets activated, your whole perception of what is going on, your physiology, and your behavior all change before your conscious mind registers that change and before your conscious mind can override that change. So if in childhood, in your early relationships, you learned that being love required you to abandon yourself or to diminish or suppress your wants and your needs, then as an adult, a boundary does not mean I’m respecting myself. It actually registers as a threat to being loved and being connected. Your body doesn’t distinguish between I said no to my partner when he told me to push our dinner plans back, and and I am risking the thing that keeps me feeling safe and loved. It’s the same survival response, activating, it’s the same old conditioning. That’s just how a nervous system operates when it grew up without healthy boundaries, with with conditional love and without self-love and self-worth. So that means you’re not only setting a boundary with the other person, but you’re also setting a boundary with the past version of you that learned that being loved required you to abandon yourself. That’s the real boundary, friend. And that’s the root of the tension you feel when you set boundaries and you try to maintain them. Why, as an adult, you can consciously understand that you’re allowed to have needs, but your body, your nervous system aren’t comfortable enforcing those needs. And meanwhile, your highest self is like, home slice, you better show up as your whole authentic self, even if it makes other people uncomfortable. You’re attuned to that. You feel that, you know your worth on some level, and yet your body is braced. It’s sweating, your breathing is all shallow, your jaw is just perma clenched. And maintaining boundaries requires your body to no longer be operating from a fear-based state of self-compromise, self-erasure, and self-abandonment as bids for love, for belonging, for connection, where your nervous system no longer believes that being easy-going and low maintenance and chill is what keeps you safe. And many people set boundaries from that state and they try to maintain boundaries from that state, which is a state of low self-worth, lack of self-love, and they think that the boundaries are gonna make them more mature or healed or empowered, even though their body is still stuck in a state where it’s still living from the memory of the pain of being difficult, of being called needy, inconvenient, selfish, dramatic, sensitive. And that somatic memory was reinforced in your childhood and then reinforced in school systems, then reinforced in your workplace, by society, by culture, over and over and over. And that’s why boundaries are and have always been a thing for so many people. I did not grow up with healthy boundaries. Most of the people that I know did not grow up with healthy boundaries. And now boundaries are largely taught without the somatic inclusion. And that’s why people know what to say when they want to set a boundary, but then they just flounder to maintain it. And then they suppress the shame and the guilt and the anger and the resentment that follows. Your body doesn’t feel safe in forcing boundaries because your body doesn’t understand that your self-worth and self-love can be prioritized in a relationship. And again, that’s the real boundary that’s being set. The boundary between the version of you that shrinks for the comfort and for the sake of other people to maintain love and connection, and the version of you that is embodied in the fact that you shrink for no one. That’s why I believe, and that’s why I teach in my source membership program that boundaries are self-love and self-worth in practice. Sure, yes, boundaries are you respecting yourself. They are you taking care of yourself, absolutely. But all of that falls under how your self-worth and self-love show up in your day-to-day life, beyond just concepts in your head. So let’s talk about self-worth in regard to boundaries. You can intellectually understand that you have worth, that you have value, meaning you have pure, unconditional, valuable love to give. If that doesn’t make sense to you, I recommend listening to my episode called The Misunderstood Truth About Self-Worth, because I define self-worth differently and correctly, to be honest. But you can mentally believe that you have worth. But then when you’re in a relationship of any kind, romantic, familial, professional, doesn’t matter, that concept falters, especially when you try to maintain boundaries. Because your worth is not in your body. It’s not a condition of your nervous system, it’s an affirmation, it’s a conscious belief. It’s a conscious belief that isn’t coherent with your subconscious conditioning. And so when you state that boundary, when you try to uphold it, that worth, that love for yourself is not in your body as a primary and safe and stable state. Fear is the primary state. That’s why the boundary is aggressive or porous, soft. Why you feel tense or defensive or overexplained, while you feel dependent on the other person approving of your boundary, those are symptoms and conditions of fear-based boundaries. They come from surface-level self-worth, not coherent embodied self-worth and unconditional self-love. When you set boundaries from coherent embodied self-worth and real unconditional self-love, not conditional self-love, because there’s a big difference, those boundaries are also unconditional. Now, that doesn’t mean that the boundaries are cruel or demanding or diminishing for the other person. It means that they are not sourced from fear of others and rather sourced from true and radical love for yourself. If you’ve been doing the work but still feel stuck, like no matter how much healing, manifesting, or personal growth you invest in, or spiritual practices you try, something just isn’t clicking. You’re not alone and you’re not failing. The truth is, most teachings and approaches are outdated and only scratch the surface. My book, Unconditional, You Are Perfect As You Are, helps you understand exactly why things haven’t been clicking and how to resolve the root of why you’re struggling. Unconditional self-love isn’t just a nice idea if you truly want to be free. It’s the missing piece and the foundation for everything you desire. And you don’t have to do or figure everything out on your own. You deserve clear, comprehensive, and empowering step-by-step guidance in self-love, self-healing, and spiritual growth. The Source membership gives you daily support and transformative tools to actually start living your healthiest and happiest life today and every day. 100% of members who follow the program improve their mental, emotional, and physical health by over 50% in one year alone. Real mind, body, soul transformation is possible, and you can achieve it with joy and ease instead of stress and struggle. So, as a thank you for being a listener, you can get 75% off your first month of membership with the code podcast promo. Your links are in the show notes. Now, let’s get back to the episode. Those types of boundaries are not only clear, direct, and simple, but they’re uncompromising. There’s no shame afterward, there’s no negotiating with your needs and wants. There’s no apologizing for the boundary. No making it harsher or smaller, no warping it to be anything other than what it is. And that may make some of you cringe a little, hearing that a boundary can be uncompromising. But that is what a healthy boundary is. Healthy boundaries come from high self-worth because they demonstrate your deservingness and your self-love in action, in practice, in your day-to-day life. And so if on a subconscious level, not the level of your positive affirmations, but the level of your deepest and strongest programming, if you don’t believe that your time, your energy, your body, your belongings, your voice, your needs, your truth deserve respect, protection, and love, then of course a boundary is going to feel like pretending. It’s going to feel like a threat in some way. It’s going to feel emotionally heavy or costly. And it’s going to cause you to brace, to punish yourself afterward, to apologize, to shrink. And if you’re not setting boundaries and maintaining boundaries from genuine self-worth and self-love, there is always going to be a part of you that feels badly or guilty or ashamed about that boundary or entitled to it in some hyperdefensive way. Both are trauma responses to a pattern of your worth not being recognized and valued. Both are you trying to assert value you subconsciously do not believe you have. So the boundary, quote unquote, fails, or it dissolves, or it leaves you feeling icky. Because real self-worth and self-love were not a part of the boundary. Fear was, resentment was, anger was, shame was. So you weren’t really being assertive, you were being codependent. Because that boundary was sourced from a place where your worth was dependent on the other person hearing you, respecting you, or acknowledging you. So there’s an interesting finding in research about assertiveness training that says when people practice assertive behavior, both anxiety decreases and self-acceptance increases. Not just self-confidence, self-acceptance. Because the body learns through repetition that it can survive the discomfort of holding a line. And that survival rewires your internal relationship with yourself. And then studies on self-compassion reveal what I have been saying all along, which is your relationship with yourself directly influences how you show up in your closest relationships. So self-worth and self-love are not the reward for maintaining a boundary. That’s the misconception. Self-worth and self-love are what allow you to maintain that boundary in the first place. This is why I teach self-love at the very start, unconditional self-love. Let me correct myself, because there is a massive fucking difference. That’s why I teach unconditional self-love at the very start of my program, The Source Membership. It is foundational to everything, to how you show up for yourself, how you show up in a relationship. And people think, well, when I set a boundary, I’m going to eventually learn to love myself. But a healthy boundary comes from love for yourself. An unhealthy boundary is a device for loving yourself. When the motivation is not love, it is scarcity, which is a form of fear. So when your boundaries are driven by fear, they’re not going to hold in a healthy way that doesn’t cost you something. And when you treat a boundary as a request for someone to agree that you matter, you’re never going to release that codependent cycle. You’re never going to stop needing someone to confirm your worth and whether you are lovable. But when you treat a boundary as you expressing and embodying the fact that you already matter and you are already lovable, that shows up so differently with the other person because you’re not asking them to validate you. You have shown up already validated and letting your needs be expressed with love and your value already in place. That means you show up whole. And when you show up whole with your self-worth, loving your whole self, maintaining boundaries simply becomes an extension of personal hygiene. Like really, you don’t have to think about showering every day, you just do it. You don’t have to think about washing your clothes, you just do it. You don’t think about feeding yourself, you just you do it. Yes, boundaries can become reconditioned to be as autonomous as brushing your teeth. And on some level, they really are fundamentally like the same. You brush your teeth to protect your teeth. You maintain boundaries to protect yourself. And when that clicks for you, it’s gonna stop being a practice. You have to keep thinking about. It will simply start to become a natural means of you taking care of yourself. That means maintaining boundaries becomes seamlessly woven into your every moment because you have stopped separating your well-being and your safety and your needs and your peace from your identity. Meaning you begin to operate from the state where your well-being, your safety, your needs, your peace are non-negotiable, second nature aspects of your existence. I don’t think about boundaries. I do not. That is not a thing that occupies my mental energy, my self-worth and my self-love are at a place where if something harms me, it doesn’t belong in my life. If something depletes me, I remove myself from the thing. If I’m being asked to do something that I don’t want to do or diminishes me in some way, the answer is no. If you’re being disrespectful, I will either tell you or peace the fuck out. If something or someone is not meeting my needs, I either meet them for myself or I say, hey, I need this. I don’t think about boundaries. I think about my well-being. Does that mean my community is smaller? Yes. Does that mean my community is solely comprised of people who don’t bullshit me and respect my well-being? Also, yes. People think maintaining boundaries will mean that they will lose people. And I’m like, Sayanara, bye bye. Why are you keeping people in your life who are in opposition to your well-being, who don’t acknowledge, meet, or respect your needs, your peace, your mind, your body, your soul. When those people are not taking up space in your life, you’re gonna find that you’re gonna need way fewer boundaries. That’s the reward, actually, if there is one. Less energy on protecting your own well-being and more energy just to simply enjoy it, to do what you love, to rest, to be fully met whole. Some people deem boundaries as selfish. They are. They primarily serve you and no one else. That is their purpose, to protect you, to keep your mind, your body, your soul, your authentic self safe. They maintain your identity, your truth, your well-being. They preserve your innate right to take up space, to use your voice, and to own your unique snowflake, brilliant, beautiful beingness. They prevent other people from disrespecting your precious time and energy and your belongings from others taking advantage of you, of diminishing you. So fucking be selfish. Stop putting other people’s comfort and happiness and preferences and feelings and opinions and needs above your own. Give yourself permission to make yourself a priority. You deserve to feel safe, friend, to feel secure and healthy and happy and peaceful and free and at home in your own body, in your own home, in your community, as your whole authentic self. At every single moment of your life, not like a third of the time, a hundred percent of the time, that’s what you deserve. Those are innate rights you have by virtue of being alive that only you can enact. No one else is responsible for protecting your well-being, your mind, your body, your soul. Even though normalized codependency will have you believing otherwise, but that incredible and joyful responsibility is yours. Because when you set and you maintain boundaries from self-worth and self-love, it is a joyful act. Sure, maybe you might have to navigate someone else’s response or hold space for their feelings. But their well-being is their responsibility. It’s not your responsibility. Your well-being is your responsibility. And when you cherish your well-being, not fear for your well-being, and then you protect what you love and what matters to you because your body is secure in its own worth. That shit is enjoyable as fuck. Because loving yourself feels good. Showing up in your worth for yourself, not for someone else, feels good. Be selfish, friend. Feel good, be at peace, preserve your well-being and give your body that experience of protecting what matters, which is you from a place of love, not fear. This is the whole premise of what I teach in my boundaries workshop in the Source membership. I not only teach the six different types of boundaries, but I teach why those boundaries are only healthy when you show up healthy. And you know, your reality is just a projection of you. That means your relationships are a reflection of you. The needs that are not met by others are the needs that you are not meeting for yourself. And so boundaries bridge the you and them, right? And the you you, if that makes sense. And that bridge gets smaller and smaller when you know your worth and you love all of yourself. So here is your action step for the week. I want you to think of one boundary that you have difficulty maintaining, one boundary that you’ve spoken, you’ve expressed, but then you’ve felt badly about it afterward, or you feel insecure about it in some way, and you just struggle to uphold that boundary. Maybe it’s a boundary with your parent or your partner or a friend or a coworker, a your child, uh, a client, whoever. So just choose the boundary that makes you feel tense afterward, right? The one where you start explaining, you start making it smaller, apologizing, right? Checking for the other person’s reaction, convincing yourself that it’s not really a big deal, that boundary. And instead of asking yourself, how should I say this boundary better? I want you to ask yourself a deeper question, which is what am I afraid this boundary is gonna cost me? Like, is it gonna cost me approval or feeling loved or being liked? Is it gonna cost me being seen as someone who’s easygoing and chill? Is it gonna cost me feeling safe? Because the answer to that is the actual wound underneath the boundary. For example, if the fear is they’re not gonna like me anymore, then the wound is not your communication style. The wound is the part of you that learned that being liked required you to abandon yourself. Make sense? Another example. If the fear is they’re gonna think that I’m difficult or too needy or too much, then the wound again is not the boundary. The wound is the part of you that learned that having needs made you inconvenient for other people. Also, if the fear is they’re gonna leave me, I’m gonna be alone, then the wound, again, isn’t that you need a better boundary script. The wound is the part of you that learned that being in connection means that you need to make yourself smaller than you truly are. And that’s the part of you that needs your love, that needs to understand your worth. The lack of the boundary or the instability of the boundary is the surface symptom of the deeper wound, which is there’s a part of you that needs to be validated and loved by you, not your parent, not your partner, by you. And your body needs the felt experience of you choosing yourself and still being safe in your own worth, regardless of what happens externally. So give that part of yourself love. See them, validate their needs, validate their hurt, nurture them, nurture their needs, and validate their worth. And hold yourself while you do it so your body feels that love. That’s important too. People think a boundary is a wall that you build after you’ve been violated in some way, or it’s a wall that you put up for your own defenses because you’ve been hurt or you’ve been disrespected too many times. Like it comes after the fact. But a boundary is actually the way that your well-being becomes non-negotiable before your needs and your health and your joy are disrespected or violated. And that’s what sovereign well-being really is. It’s the state where your body knows your peace belongs to you, that your needs belong to you. Your life force belongs to you, your wholeness belongs to you. And no relationship gets to decide whether you are allowed to protect what is already yours. Boundaries stop being a source of stress and tension and conflict when your well-being stops feeling like something you have to justify. That’s what happens when you operate from self-worth and self-love. You become wholly unavailable for self-abandonment. Thank you so much for being here today. I hope this episode awakened you, inspired you, and reminded you of what’s possible when you love, heal, and free yourself, and reclaim your highest truth and power. If this show has transformed or enlightened your self-love, growth, and healing journey, please like, save, and share this episode and leave a positive review on Apple or Spotify. And subscribe to be reminded of new episodes. Your support is deeply appreciated and truly helps this show so much. And if today’s episode resonated with you, don’t stop here. Go deeper. My book, Unconditional, You Are Perfect As You Are, expands on these teachings and gives you the missing framework about self-love that no one is talking about. So get your copy today to start reading and loving yourself more. And if you’re ready for the ultimate healing journey with daily instruction and guidance from me, I’d love to see you inside the Source membership. The only holistic and comprehensive step by step self healing program that is proven to work. Remember, you were never meant to struggle or wait for what is already yours. It’s time to claim everything you want and more. All the links are in the show notes. I’ll see you next time.