Why your mom gets worse when you set a boundary

[00:00:00]The dish is still warm against Denice's palms and she's rung the doorbell twice now, but the porch light it hasn't come on and she knows her daughter is home.

[00:00:09]Her car's right there and Tommy's little trike is tipped over on the sidewalk.

[00:00:13]So, she rings it a third time. Two soft tones, the same two notes the door has played for years now, but inside nothing stirs. Three days ago, Claire asked for one thing in that careful new voice she's been using lately, "Mom, can you please just call before you come over?"

[00:00:31]And Denice said, "Yeah, of course, sweetheart. Absolutely." But then Tuesday, she was, well, just driving by and Wednesday, she had a coupon for a place near Claire's and now it's Thursday and she has made chicken and rice, Claire's favorite since she was 6 years old and surely a mom can drop off dinner at her daughter's house. But standing on her daughter's porch with the chicken and rice going cold, something in her chest pulls tight. It's like the whole thing is about to fall out from under her and every cell in her body is telling her the same thing it's told her for 50 years.

[00:01:03]>> [music] >> Just try harder. Do more. You can still fix it if you do [music] more. So, Denice lifts the casserole dish thinking maybe it will catch Claire's glance out of the curtain and she presses the doorbell again. But before we find out if that door actually opens, let me say hi. Hi, I'm Jess. I'm your boundary big sister. I'm also a therapist and for nearly 15 years, I have helped people just like Claire hold boundaries with people that they love without burning down the relationship and I have sat with so many moms just like Denice who feel their whole world crumbling when a door that used to open freely now suddenly stops. In the last video and I'll pin it right here, we talked about why a parent panics the moment you start to grow up or need them less. And today I want to show you what happens when you actually hold your ground and they don't get better. They actually get worse. All right, back to Denice and that third ring of the doorbell. [music] Here's what almost everyone does, including me, for nearly 30 years in a scene exactly like this. You watch Denise on the porch getting louder, pushier, more relentless the more space her daughter asks for, and you probably draw an obvious conclusion. The boundary backfired. Claire said no, her mom got worse, so boundaries just don't work on moms like Denise. Hold off on that thought though, because that is the single most expensive mistake people make when they're trying to set boundaries. Because what Claire can't see right now with her back against the wall, with her phone right up here in her hand, is that the worst this gets, the better the news actually is. Let me show you what I mean. Let's rewind 3 days ago. Claire is 32, she's got a 2-year-old on her hip and running on about 4 hours of sleep, and she loves her mom so much. Denise has always been around with pop-ins, opinions on what Claire is trying to do in her adult life. She rearranges cabinets when Claire just pops out of the room for a second. She's just really helpful. But then the baby came and the pop-ins turned daily, and without any square inch of the day that actually belongs to Claire, she finally said one small fair thing. Mom, I love you, I just need you to call first. For a day, it held, but then came the Tuesday drive-by, the Wednesday coupon, and now the Thursday casserole. [music] And each time for these visits, Denise has a reason, like a warm one. Yet each time she is unknowingly pushing her daughter further [music] and further away. So when the door stays shut on Thursday and the dish goes on the welcome mat, that night the voicemails begin. one from Denise is sweet, the second one definitely has some wobble in it, and by the third Denise is crying. She doesn't know what she's done wrong, she feels like her baby girl is just shutting her out.

[00:03:54]She's losing her and all she ever tries to do is just help. Then Friday, Claire's phone starts showing other names besides her mom, her sister. Hey, mom's a wreck. What is going on with you? Her aunt that she hasn't talked to since Easter. Honey, your mom is heartbroken. Please just stop this. Her mom's best friend of all people wants to just gently let her know that her mom just wants to see the baby. Four calls in a single day and every single one of them had the same message. You're the problem. Stop being so cruel to the sweetest person on Earth. Basically, take back your no. And if you've been here a while, you have probably seen the Thompson story or you've watched Chris and Melissa where Chris's whole family attempted to get Chris to turn on his wife. This part right now that Claire's experiencing, I call it the release of the minion mob. Now, here's the thing to understand about the mob. Denise never had to say, "Go get her. Go drag her back. Go make her open the door for me."

[00:04:56]She never had to say go. She didn't have to call her sister and say, "Go guilt trip my daughter." She doesn't have to.

[00:05:01]All she has to do is tell them her version of the story, the one where she's wounded just trying to be a good mom. Nobody got sent to Claire. They just heard the side from Denise and [music] they came out of the woodwork to try to help. And Claire standing in her kitchen with the baby finally down for a nap, she does the thing almost all of us do at this exact same moment. She picks up her phone, pulls up her mom's number, and she starts typing. Mom, [music] I'm sorry. Just come over whenever you want.

[00:05:34]And as her thumb just kind of hovers over that send button, her heart sinks with defeat. Like if you're Claire right here and so many of us have been in this situation, let's just be honest what's running through our head. You tried to set a boundary the kind way, you explained it clearly, and it held for a few days, but instead of your mom adjusting, she's just gotten bigger, and it seems like she has sent the whole family in after you, and now you're lying awake feeling like you're a monster who made your mom cry. The guilt that you're feeling right now has a voice, and it sounds like every story you grew up on. Good daughters don't shut their mothers out. Family is family. Like, look at everything she has done for you. You scroll back over the 32 years and everything your mom has sacrificed to give you, be there for you, show up for you, and you stack it against the three days of you asking for space, and that scale tips pretty hard.

[00:06:33]So, the math your exhausted brain does in that moment, the afternoon that your baby's finally sleeping, is very simple.

[00:06:39]I set a limit, and everything got worse.

[00:06:41]The problem is the limit, the boundary.

[00:06:44]I'm going to take it back.

[00:06:46][clears throat] I'm going to make the call stop because things were way better before this. And the math feels airtight. I know that. I've done this for years, but in order to see why it's not, we have to talk about what behavior does the moment, like right before that behavior is about to disappear for good.

[00:07:03]Picture a vending machine that's handed you a soda for a couple decades. You put your dollar in, you press the button, and out comes the soda every single time. Now, picture a morning where you press it, and nothing comes out. If you're like me, you're not going to just shrug and walk away, you're going to press it again. You're going to press it harder. Then you're going to press it five more times, smack the side of the machine, you'll jab at the coin return, you'll give the whole thing a big shove, until finally, at last, you accept your money's gone, and there's no soda today.

[00:07:36]People who study behavior, they have a name for that frantic flurry, like right before someone accepts and quits, they call it the extinction burst. When a thing has always worked and it suddenly stops working, the behavior just doesn't fade out quietly. First, it spikes, it gets louder, it gets bigger, it gets more desperate since the only theory the brain has left is maybe I haven't tried hard enough. Now, look back at Denise on that front porch. For years, one move has always paid out. Show up, bring food, press a little harder, and the door opens. She gets to feel needed, useful, and let back in. Well, Claire just unplugged that machine. So, Denise is doing the only thing her body knows when a button goes dead. She's pressing harder. She's doing the drive-bys, bringing the casserole, leaving the crying voicemails. And then there's the army of relatives, but none of that is your mom actually getting worse. The old arrangement is dying and it's dying really loud. So, the dish cooling on the welcome mat, that casserole, you could look at it like it was coin. For years, Denise dropped in the slot and it let her back in. But now, she's on the porch with chicken and rice going cold and the coin isn't working. And some scared, wordless part inside of her is sure that if she just rings the doorbell enough, that machine is going to switch back on.

[00:09:00]And the family piling on is just the same thing, it's just one size bigger.

[00:09:04]You got to know that every family runs on a kind of balance and when that's threatened, every one of them grabs onto the old lever. And they're just trying to shove balance back to where it's supposed to be. The aunt who called isn't cruel, the sister is not out to get her, they're just a system doing what systems do when one person finally stops playing their part. But here's what is so important to know. The extinction burst, it only ends in one of two ways. If the button keeps doing nothing, the behavior finally will burn itself out. The system will recalibrate to a new normal, a much quieter one, where your mom's body learns that the way back in isn't to press harder, it's to respect your no. But, if you cave mid-burst, if you open that door on the fourth ring, you've just taught Denise something awful. The soda was in there the whole time. She just had to hit it 40 times before it comes out. Now, you didn't just lose your boundary, you have taught everyone that the escalation, that's the new tactic that works. So, every time going forward, they're going to skip past the polite ask and they're going to go straight to the casserole army or be in the minion mob, whatever button that they press that paid out, they're going to go to that extreme first, and your life becomes it's awful. And none of this makes Denise manipulative, not at all. Her body learned, probably somewhere back in her childhood, that the loudest, most upset person in the room is the one who gets taken care of, and if you keep pushing harder, that's how you keep people you love from leaving. So, she's doing her best with the only wiring that was ever handed to her. That's the very reason that the kindest thing Claire can do for both of them is to not answer the burst. So, how do you actually hold through it when every nerve in your body, everything is screaming, just open the door? First, name it the second that it starts. When the calls, the guilt, the casseroles, like all start rolling in, that's your cue to say, "Oh, okay.

[00:11:09]So, this is the burst. This is proof that my no has landed." A spike you were expecting is 100 times easier to sit through than one that blindsides you.

[00:11:20]Then, you stay warm and consistent. You don't have to be cold or cruel. All you do is speak to the fear underneath the demand. Mom, I love you. I'm not going anywhere, and I still need you to call first. And then you do nothing different. You just keep being consistent no matter how big the burst gets. Warm voice, feet that don't move.

[00:11:42]And you have to deal with your own body since a guilt trip is never aimed at your logic, it goes straight to your nervous system. Those four calls are built without anyone meaning them to be, they're built to go right to your nervous system to flood you with the exact panic that makes you want to cave to make the feeling stop. But you can't out-think a flooded body, you have to settle your body first. So what I like to do is I like to exhale longer than my inhale. I have my feet on my on the floor. Sometimes I'll use my five senses to remind myself what room I am in.

[00:12:16]Sometimes I'll ask myself how old does this feeling feel and I just let the wave roll by me. My heart rate decreases and all of a sudden when that decreases my frontal lobe where I can actually make good decisions comes back online, which means I can continue holding my line. And as for the mob, don't argue with them. You need to step out of the ring entirely. So I would say, I know you care about mom, I know you're worried about her, but I'm not going to talk about this stuff with you. If she has something to say, she can bring it to me herself. So you do that over and over again and what tends to happen, the burst burns out. The calls thin and all of a sudden you're going to get a call from your mom before she comes over.

[00:13:00]Yeah, maybe it'll be a little stiff, maybe she'll have some attitude with it, whatever. She still did it. She called and then she asked permission to come over. That's the system quietly recalibrating because you held on long enough to make it real. Now the third piece, actually settling down your own body so that you can hold the line, I skipped that for decades and it's the exact reason why many, many many fail right there in the burst. You can know literally every perfect word to say and still fold. Since the moment the guilt lands, our body goes into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Our brain shuts off the frontal lobe, and when that happens, there is not a perfect script that will ever survive that. And that's exactly why I built the boundary breakthrough toolkit. It isn't about more things to say. It has four short audios. It has a 14-day plan that works on the part that panics when your nervous system floods the second that your mom starts to cry.

[00:13:57]By doing this work, when the burst rolls in, your body can stay steady long enough for you to hold a line that you already know you want to hold. I know right now that your head gets it. Like it knows you have every right to have this boundary that it's so reasonable and normal. This is for the part of you that doesn't get it yet, and I put the link right below. All right, one last thing before you go. If you take a single thing from today, let it be this.

[00:14:23]The moment it feels the very worst, like when the calls are the loudest, the guilt feels so heavy you can barely breathe, or when you're certain that you've broken your family and you ought to just take back the whole thing, most people quit right there. A single moment away from making it through the storm.

[00:14:39]Please remember, the worst night is usually the last one. But I have to be honest with you, there are some versions of this where you hold the line perfectly, the mob doesn't back down, family actually picks sides, and you lose something. That happened to a family I'm going to tell you about next, the Thompsons, who set one parenting boundary and watched their entire family turn against them. It's a true story, and I'll be honest with you, when I read their story, I was like, this is so close to what Ryan and I went through with his family, I just got chills. I mean, it just reminded me how similar we all are, like how similar these behavioral patterns are than different and I want to I want to explain it to you. I want to show you what can doesn't happen often, but what can happen in families where they just keep getting bigger and louder and they never come back around. I'll see you there next.