On the go? Listen to The Stress Less Show as a Podcast!
Read the blog post version of this episode here!
Carlee
Do you tend to put others before yourself? Hi, I'm Carlee Myers, Your friendly, stress management expert, and this month we are exploring mental health. Now, I've brought on Mary Mary Brown, who is a life coach and the founder of Intentional Life Coaching to help us out today. So Mary actually specializes in helping women build confidence, set boundaries and practice self care. So I couldn't think of a better guest to bring on the show. Welcome, Mary.
Mary
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Carlee
Absolutely. So I'm curious. Well, I always say this. I'm always curious how you got into this line of work. I know we talked about it preshow a little bit, but how did how did you end up here in the place where you like you're the founder of Intentional Life Coaching. Amazing.
Mary
Yes. So I used to be a social worker for about 12 or 13 years. I was a social worker and social work manager. And so I saw a lot of people who struggle with mental health and addictions and trauma and patterns of abuse and neglect. There's not much I didn't see when when I was serving people as a social worker. And I wrote lots and lots of treatment plans for people who were identified clients, right? I facilitated their family meetings for people who were identified, clients where we would bring together their family members and their support network and try to help them to help the struggling person. And so my heart was just drawn to those family members that were around the identified client. So they were like sisters of someone with a mental health disorder or mothers of teenage or adult children who were struggling or partners of someone who had like a pornography problem. And they were they were the survivors of abuse and neglect. And they were just so heartbroken. They were disappointed. They felt burnt out. And these people needed self-confidence. They needed boundaries. They needed self care. And I wanted to help those women, the women like me, who were the helpers, the caregivers, and not necessarily the identified clients. So I became a life coach so that I could help those women to build confidence and set boundaries and practice self care. And I love it. I totally love it. I just see coaching as a vehicles, kind of like Cinderella's Stagecoach, where wherever you're at, it's totally fine. I just come in and kind of encourage you and lift you up and then we move together to where you want to be. And it's just beautiful. It's really my honor and my joy to be able to witness the transformation of amazing women that I get to work with. And I, of course, have my own story about how I learned to build confidence and to set boundaries and to practice self care. I grew up in this really big family with we had nine kids, so there were five boys and four.
Carlee
Oh My goodness.
Mary
I know so many right to parents. Five boys, four girls and zero boundaries. And so
Carlee
I love that.
Mary
So I had to learn kind of how to show up with love for myself and the people around me. And, you know, that kind of was in three parts. So first, I just had to learn self-awareness. Like, I really just needed to understand, like what was OK for me and what was not OK for me. What did I actually think or feel or what? And then I had to learn how to communicate that, because at first my boundaries sounded something like, hey, it's not OK for you to do this, right.
Carlee
Stop That, you know,
Mary
do that again, and that's it. Right. And so communicating about her boundaries is a learned skill. And so I really had to practice that. And I practiced a lot on my first husband and I
Carlee
love it.
Mary
And and then I had to really learn how to practice self care and not. I mean, initially it was like I would try things like eating chocolate and junk food or, you know, playing poker or going out and those kinds of things didn't really serve me. And so I had to learn more about, like, real self care, connecting to my spirit, connecting to my creativity, connecting to my body, connecting to people that I love in a meaningful way, connecting to the nature, connecting to a higher power. All of those things really helped me to have self care that was sustainable.
Carlee
And I love I love so much about that. And I'm I'm probably going to feel that I only have one sibling, but I'm going to be like I had one sister and zero boundaries. And this one's for you, Candice No, no. You know, I really love the work that you're doing. And the reason I wanted to bring you on the show is because, you know, there's so much focus on, I believe, what you called the identified client, but there's not so much focus on everybody around that person, right? And I think that a lot of the people in my community, my people are that they are those those are the people that are we care so much and we give so much. And oftentimes it can be really difficult to have those boundaries and say no. So what do you recommend around setting those boundaries or implementing that self care when we are in a situation like that?
Mary
Yeah. So. Boundary setting. In order for it to be effective and for it to feel good to us. I teach that it needs to be done from a place of love. That we do it from the mindset of I love me and I love you. And or at least I respect myself and I love you, I respect you. And starting with that mindset piece of like we're doing this from a place of love and then really practicing how to communicate what's OK for me and then requesting something different from the other person. And then the hard part is the very end. We have to be able to say, you know, if this continues to happen, then I will do. And I can do and I will do something to follow up, to take care of myself. And that's where the self care piece of boundaries really comes in. So if something's happening that I feel disrespected, then what I need to do for self care is what's going to help me to feel respected again.
Carlee
Yep.
Mary
And. It really is effective. It really works when it's done in a loving and a logical way. And when it's done, when we're thinking in, you know, the forefront of our brain. So I actually encourage people, you know, to plan out what you want you're what you want your boundaries to be before the moment comes where you need to say it like that. Yeah,
Carlee
Yeah, I, I am right there with you on that one hundred percent. And it's funny what you're saying is reminding me of us of an incident in my life like probably 10 years ago now being in a really crappy relationship. And I remember it would be always about that. It was a little things. But I would be like the dishes or something ridiculous. And I'd be like, if you don't do the dishes, then I'm leaving. And then, of course, he wouldn't do the dishes and then I would not leave. And it was you know, that is an extreme example of not first of all, not thinking ahead of time about what my real boundary was. And also, if that really was it, let's say it was my real boundary. I was never following through on it. So there was no real self care. And when I finally got the courage to leave that relationship, I was I was flying high because I was like, oh, I did look at me like I was so free for the first time.
Mary
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. That's true. And unfortunately, when we say when we try to set a boundary and we don't follow through, it actually decreases our confidence. And so that's why I help women to build confidence, to set in. And commitments and follow through.
Carlee
I love that.
Mary
So I should just give a couple of quick tips.
Carlee
Yeah, I would love that.
Mary
Okay. So a few tips. First, setting boundaries. The first one is to just know your self-worth. I believe that we're all born valuable. And because we are human beings, you don't have to earn your worth. That never changes. And second is that you get to decide what's OK for you and what's not OK for you. So boundaries are not about controlling other people. They're about valuing yourself. And I give you permission right now, today, that you can decide what's OK for you, what's not OK for you. And then the last the third one is that self care really is about connection, that self care connects us to ourselves, connects us to people we love. And either a higher power, a higher purpose. So that includes all the kinds of connecting, connecting to our bodies our creativity our feeling people nature and belonging something bigger than ourselves.
Carlee
I love that so much. So for those of you who are listening at home, we want to know, what are you doing for that self care that those boundaries. Right, because it's all about love for you. So what are you doing for yourself? And we also want to let you know that we have a brand new offering for you guys. It's called the Virtual Stress Less Space. It is a self care accountability group. And in order to find more information about that, you're going to go to stressless co, dot com slash virtual stressless space. This concludes this episode of The Stress Less show. We want to thank Mary Brown for coming on the show. This was so good.
Mary
Thank you.
Carlee
Absolutely. And if you enjoyed this week's episode, let us know by giving us a big old thumbs up or hitting that follow and subscribe button. Thanks for listening. And we'll see you next week.