How To Set Boundaries: Stop People Pleasing w/ Dana Skaggs
When you understand boundaries clearly, you simply are very clear about what you own and what you're responsible for and what you are not.
You want to train people that your words have power and then what you say you are going to do, you are going to do.
Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast. I am your host Roberta Ndlela. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning in to.
Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development. And by the end of this episode, please log on to Apple and Spotify and leave us a rating and a review. Now let's get communicating.
Today with a sassy psychotherapist who is a keynote speaker, a fellow podcaster and has been in private practice for 17 years.
Dana Skaggs is here to help us with people pleasing, how to deal with trauma, anxiety, and she's going to talk about all the things that we would like to say but are afraid to. Before I go any further, please help me welcome her to the show.
Hi, Dana.
Hi Roberta. Thank you so much for that introduction. We're going to have a great time today.
I'm looking forward to it as well.
My absolute pleasure. Welcome to the show. Please introduce yourself as well.
Well, like you said, I'm in private practice.
I've had a private practice about 17 years. I'm in psychotherapy, have my own podcast, Phoenix and Flame, pushing through and transforming on the wings of boundaries.
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I'm known as the Queen of Boundaries for a couple of reasons.
One of them is personal, which we can kind of get into later if you want to, and also professional because I started noticing as more and more of my patients would tell me what was wrong, what they were struggling with, why they were wanting to come
to therapy. My brain started thinking, okay, the first thing we have to do is figure out how much of what they're saying belongs to them, where they have agency to do something about, and how much of what they're talking about is someone else's
issue. And so frequently people get those reversed. Instead of realizing the agency that they do have, they're too focused on other people's issues that they don't have any control over.
And so once I started helping them to see that, their lives did 180s. It was a total game changer and it was such a beauty, such a privilege to watch, that I just started looking for that more and more. And I started being called the Queen.
She's the Queen of Boundaries. She's the Queen of Boundaries. I'm like, well, there's a good reason for that.
And I developed a keynote based on helping us banish burnout with boundaries by being the CEO of your own mental boardroom.
Because I have such a heart to teach people how to use boundaries so they can live wonderful lives at home and at work, have that wonderful work-life balance, and also something that can reach different generations.
Before we unpack all of that, what is that quotation that says, help me to know things I cannot control on those I can and to know the difference?
Serenity prayer.
Yes, that's what you just described. What you do with your client is when you know things that you cannot control, which is other people's actions, and you know what you can control your own agency, then you know what to focus on.
Yes. Yes, because when you mentioned people pleasing earlier, they get it backwards.
Instead of realizing the agency that they do have in terms of their own thoughts, their own feelings and their own actions, they get very much focused, and there's good reasons for that, and we can get into that later.
But they're very uber focused on what someone else is thinking about them. They are so concerned and worried, this person is not going to like me, this person is not going to approve of me.
If I speak my mind, this person is going to be angry with me, and I can't handle that. So we end up doing what I call the eggshell dance, the tap dance of trying to please, please, please.
And when we do that, we are emptying ourselves out of our own authenticity. We don't even know who we are anymore, because we are trying to be a chameleon to please all those around us.
And technically, I have to put in here, that we cannot please anyone, because their sense of pleasure, their sense of being pleased, is technically in their own brain.
We cannot make anybody else feel anything, because their sense of feeling is in their brain. And likewise, no one else can make us feel anything. No one else can make us feel mad or happy or sad.
We, in our own brain, we receive, we perceive what's going on around us, and then we decide how we're going to respond to that. That's what makes us feel a certain way. Same way with someone else.
They were taking responsibility. If we say something respectfully, and someone else gets in some kind of way about it, they get upset. We think, oh my gosh, I made them mad.
I upset them. No, we did not. They responded in an angry way.
They chose to respond that way out of their own brain. We are only responsible for our own actions. If we had gone into that interaction very hatefully, spewing profanity, being disrespectful, that's on us.
That's our behavior. But if we did not do that and they responded in an angry way, that's not comfortable, let's be honest, but that anger belongs to them.
And that's a lot of what I teach and how that helps with communication, because when we are not taking responsibility for someone else's emotions, then we can create space for our own opinions.
And we can communicate our own opinions very respectfully and calmly, because other people are not charged with reading our mind.
We can communicate when we're owning our own space, honoring our own space, and also not owning someone else's reaction to it. It's a game changer.
It definitely is. Now, when you have clients who discover that they're people pleasers, just in general, what's usually the reason behind that habit?
Fear of Abandonment
Fear of abandonment.
Once you peel away all the layers, once you start asking the questions, well, I'm afraid if I don't please them, they're not going to like me. I say, okay, I lean into it.
I go, okay, and well, if they don't like me, they probably are going to reject me, and they're not going to include me. I said, that sounds uncomfortable.
And once you keep peeling back the layers, almost all of these, once the core of it is fear of abandonment. People are terrified of being alone, of being abandoned.
And so many of us will do about anything, include emptying ourselves out of who we are as a person, abandoning our own authenticity to make sure that someone else doesn't reject us or leave us. That fear of abandonment is at the core of a lot.
Do we ever ask ourselves, okay, I'm going to betray myself and do something I don't want to do, to please Dana so that she doesn't abandon me? But if she acts that way, do I want to be in Dana's space? Because I'm trying to keep her.
I'm trying to make sure she doesn't abandon me and leave. But if she's that type of person, and I have to go that extra mile of pleasing her, even if I don't want to do this, why am I chasing Dana to keep her in my life?
Right?
Shouldn't I bring somebody who's much kinder to me? Why do we have to ask that question?
That's it. I mean, why are we pursuing that? And when we are creating space and honoring our own authentic selves, we are the ones that are charged with the responsibility of doing that.
It's not somebody else's job to do that. It's ours. And there's all different kinds of reasons why we get to a space where we're not honoring ourselves.
We are the ones that are charged with honoring our authentic selves.
And then when we go out into the world and we are honoring of ourselves, we present ourselves that way, then other people will either honor, come in line with who we are, or they will peel away because they don't agree with us, they don't like who we
are, there's no synchronicity. And that happens sometimes. I don't know if you've had some guests on your podcast, because I know that I have that talk about frequency and energy levels.
Yes.
And we have different frequencies. And so people that function on higher frequencies that are tend to be more positive, more grateful, more energetic, more solution focused, they function on higher frequencies.
People that are on much lower frequency, that are more cynical, negative, depressed, they're much lower. Those types of frequencies don't generally jive very well together.
So if you honor who you are as a person and your authentic self, and you go out into the world, there are going to be some people that just veer away because they don't align.
And that's okay, because it's much better than doing what you suggested earlier, is trying to align ourselves with someone that they don't respect, who we are authentically.
Yeah, in this quest to not make them leave. Yeah. Now, when you talk about the past, you say, why do we struggle to keep the past in the past?
Why do we keep dragging this baggage along? Especially in relationships. I think that, you know, when they say with relationships, which as you can see in this day and age, we struggle with the most unless you're married, of course.
But we have this baggage and they say relationships are the biggest mirror for each one of us to show that, hey, wait a minute, this is me, emotionally naked. So why do we keep dragging this baggage and not live it back 10 years ago?
Mental Boardroom
Okay, this kind of gets back to what I present in my keynote a little bit, and because I do it with my patients all the time and I do it with myself.
It's based on internal family systems, but it's my analogy, my interpretation of that. And it's the mental boardroom, and we all have a mental boardroom.
And if I could take a minute and kind of set it up for you, and then answer your question, would that be okay?
Yes, please.
So if you can imagine like a boardroom, like pull that image, I have your listeners, you know, pull that image to the mind, where you have that long, shiny table with all the cushiony chairs around.
And the person sitting at the head of the boardroom table is typically who? Who sits at the head of the table?
The boss, the CEO.
That's it. The boss, the CEO is at the head of the table. Well, we have a mental boardroom.
Now, imagine for a moment that if you were witnessing a typical company boardroom meeting and all of the VPs that kind of line in the sides of the boardroom table, all the department heads that are coming in with their data, their information from
Right.
What if the VPs, the department heads presented information that was 20 years old?
It's not going to work now.
It's not going to work.
We're not going to create any idea, new marketing campaign on 20 years old information.
It's not going to take that business long to fail.
For sure.
All those numbers, that data is 20 years old.
That is not going to work. But we do this all the time in our own head. We have younger parts of ourself that went through different things growing up.
It could be something we experienced when we were five, or seven, or nine, or 10, different experiences that we had that were impactful to us. These parts of us are sitting in that boardroom. We are supposed to be the CEO.
So if we have parts in there, here's what happens when we're in a relationship that you mentioned earlier, and something about that person activates a younger part of us.
Something about the person, maybe it's the smell of their cologne, maybe it's the way they pronounce a certain word, maybe it's the way they walk or the clothes they wear or phrasing that they use, brings back a very strong memory to a younger
version of ourself. What happens is that younger version of ourself that's in that boardroom, bull rushes the CEO chair, shoves us out of the chair, our butt hits the carpet. The younger self takes over the CEO chair and is running the show.
These are emotional parts and they are encapsulated in their own time bubble. So these younger parts do not understand it's 2025 and they think they're trying to help.
You might have an eight-year-old that went through something that never really got healed and is still kind of holding on to it. Well, that eight-year-old thinks, Oh my gosh, it's getting ready to happen again.
So that eight-year-old might rush up, shove us out of the CEO chair, take over the boardroom, but that eight-year-old thinks it's helping. It thinks it's protecting us by doing whatever, but it's an eight-year-old's response.
So I don't know if you've ever been involved with an interaction with someone before where you are looking at a person who appears to be an adult, but the way they're acting is not.
The way they're speaking to us, the way they're interacting with us emotionally does not appear like an adult. If you really step back and look at it objectively, emotionally they are behaving much more like a child.
That's what you see when someone else's boardroom has been taken over by a younger part. We all have these, just because we're not aware of it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It does exist.
It's in there. And so that's what happens when we're interacting with people and something takes over. That's why relationships, that's why the issues from the past are in the present.
Right.
Because we still have parts of ourselves that maybe don't trust.
Maybe we went through some things with some people when we were younger, and it was pretty powerful. Let's say hypothetically, somebody learned that they can't trust men, right? That is one part of them.
A younger part of them, because of that younger part's experience, learned that men weren't trustworthy in that particular situation.
But we catastrophize it, we generalize it to everything, and if we get triggered in a relationship by someone who's acting shockingly like someone did before, then that younger part is going to come up and say, no, no, no, yeah, we ain't doing this
again, ain't going to do that, we're not going to do this again, no. And see, if you don't know what's going on in your mental boardroom, if you don't know how to manage those parts, then you keep rehashing, and sometimes it's called self-fulfilling
prophecy. You end up sometimes creating the very thing that you're most scared of, because you're expecting someone, you don't trust them, right? You're like, you're going into it like, I don't believe you, I think you're lying.
I may not know about it right now, but sooner or later, I'm going to find out you're lying. I know. I know I'm going to find it out.
And so when we go into a relationship with that attitude, then even if they're not lying, we're kind of going into it from a negative standpoint.
And so sometimes we end up creating the very loss and rejection that we were afraid of from the beginning. That's how the past impacts us today.
What do they say? Life always proves you right. Then you find the evidence and you go, see, I told you, you can't be trusted.
That's it.
Exactly right, Roberta. That's exactly what we're saying. I told you.
Yep.
That's exactly what happens.
Right.
So if you do unpack that and you realize, wait a minute, this is the eight-year-old in me taking over. But now, I'm working with Dana as my therapist, and I want to communicate to this person instead of throwing a tantrum or whatever.
But I want to communicate to this person that this is something I struggle with. Do you ask the next person for some patience, for some understanding? Is there a way to do that?
Or do you think I'll only come back to that person once I'm done with my therapy and healing sessions?
Two-fold answer to that. I think you absolutely can do what you're suggesting as long as you are currently working on it. Because I've run into some people that they realize they have a problem.
But for whatever reason, I don't judge. There's different reasons why people don't go into therapy. They don't actively address these things.
Sometimes the memories are pretty painful and they don't really want to face them. There's all different kinds of reasons why people don't really want to do that. Because good therapy can be difficult.
It's hard work. It's wonderful. But it can be very hard work.
I've run into some people that they know they have an issue, but they don't really want to do the work of it. So basically, what they do is they walk around to people and say, I'm just this way. So you're just going to have to get over it.
Let's embrace the label.
This is me. Take it or leave it.
Yeah, this is what I'm doing. So just get over it. If you don't like it, it's your problem.
It's like, no, not really. Because when I talk about boundaries, I talk about yards. In our yard, because when you think about a yard, there's a property line.
I know some people live in apartments, but for people that have yards, you go out into your yard and there's grass or whatever, there's a property line where your property stops and your neighbor's property begins.
And so in your yard are your thoughts, your feelings and your actions that you have agency over and you have a responsibility for, you have accountability for. Your neighbor's thoughts, feelings and actions are their responsibility, not yours.
But when people do, well, like what you're talking about, when they say, oh, well, I'm just going to do this and you can just suck it up and just get over it, that is them not taking ownership over their own actions.
They are the ones that are behaving in a dysfunctional way. And they're basically telling you, I'm going to behave in a dysfunctional way and I'm not going to change it. So people can do that and then our responsibility is to say, okay, I hear you.
I'm going to choose not to be in a dysfunctional relationship with you. So if you're choosing not to change, that's your choice. That's in your yard.
If you're choosing not to change, then I'm going to choose not to be in a relationship with you because I'm not going to engage. I'm not going to expend my mental energy, my emotional and physical energy in a dysfunction dance with you.
I'm not going to do it. I appreciate you. I love you as a human being.
If you choose that you want to work on your stuff that's in your yard, then you know where I am. I'll be around. But that's their responsibility.
It's in their yard. But they tend to sometimes blame other people or say, well, I've just got this big crap pile in my yard and oh well, okay, that's fine, but I'm not going to come in your yard with that.
Get your house in order before I can enter that space.
Family Boundaries
So as the Queen of Boundaries, here's the thing. I think sometimes we may be able to reach a level where when it comes to what we call outside people, we can establish boundaries.
But I think sometimes the challenge is establishing boundaries with family members. Because with outside people, you can go, ah, that means that friendship is over, that relationship is over, that work relationship.
But when it comes to family, you can't just say the relationship with them is over. That's the difference. How do you help your clients if they have challenges when it comes to boundaries with family members?
Okay, this answer is multi-layered.
First of all, I want to say that just because someone is biologically related to you does not mean that you cannot walk away. I'm just putting that out there.
Please repeat that.
Just because someone is biologically related to you does not mean that you cannot walk away if you need to.
As a matter of fact, you have a responsibility at times to yourself to walk away if this individual who happens to be biologically related to you continues to engage you in a very abusive and dysfunctional way.
I know exactly what I'm speaking about because I walked that walk with my own mother.
So I know when I talk about boundaries, it's not just a professional being able to see hundreds of patients go through this wonderful gateway of establishing healthy boundaries in their lives and the privilege of being able to witness that.
It's not just that with me, it's also knowing what it feels like to have your face shoved right straight in it for years and years and years. It's one of the reasons why I ended up leaning into boundaries to begin with.
You are correct in that our family members are the hardest people to try to set boundaries with because they frequently will like the boundaries that we set. And they try to bully and demean and criticize the boundaries.
You have the setting of a boundary, but then you have the defending of it. Those are two different things.
And when you're dealing with family members, let's say you have a yard and you go to put a fence line up, and your family member over there just shoves the fence down.
And every morning you're walking out with your cup of coffee and your fences shoved down the grass, and you have to walk over there and push it back up again. And then later in the day they shove it back down on the grass.
And you have to just walk out and just push it back up again. When you're dealing with family members, there's various levels. Mine went all the way to the wall.
Okay, and I can tell you more about that if you want to know about that later. But most situations aren't as extreme as mine.
Most situations, once you begin to set healthy boundaries with a family member and you refuse to be pulled in to the manipulation. Like, let me give you one example.
I will have someone that will say, well, my mother calls me all the time, does not respect that I'm at work. She doesn't care. She's calling me, wanting to me to answer this question, wanting to tell me this.
And I tell her I'm at work. I can have these phone conversations. And she just keeps calling anyway, anyway, anyway.
She doesn't care. She just keeps calling. And she just keeps bringing up stuff I told her I don't want to talk about that.
She just keeps bringing it up anyway. So here's the thing. A boundary statement that's very helpful is to say, okay, if you fill in the blank, then I fill in the blank.
Because we cannot control other people's behavior. We cannot stop someone from calling us. We cannot stop someone from bringing up a topic that we've said we don't want to talk about.
We can't stop that. Our agencies and how we respond. So what I recommend to my clients is if they have someone that keeps pushing into their space more often than they think is okay and bringing up topics that they don't want to talk about.
Number one, they can say, if you bring up, say, you know, the topic of Aunt Jo, right? If you talk about Aunt Jo to me, I am going to hang up the phone, just letting you know. See, when you understand boundaries clearly, you're very calm.
There's no reason to raise your voice. You're not repeating yourself. There's no reason to be critical or upset or negative.
You simply are very clear about what you own and what you're responsible for and what you are not. And so you can say, I've told you that I am not going to talk about Aunt Jo. However, you keep bringing her up.
So the next time you bring her up, I'm letting you know, I'm going to hang up the phone. Now, Roberta, I'm telling you right now, if you say that, you darn well better do it.
Don't ever, ever say you're going to do something and then not do it, because then you're training them to ignore you that your words are meaningless. You do not want to train someone that your words are meaningless. This is not a good lesson.
And we train people how to treat us. You want to train people that your words have power, and then what you say you are going to do, you are going to do. This person, this family member, they are going to call again.
They are going to bring up Aunt Jo again. They are. And when they do, you hang up the phone.
Can I ask a question?
You absolutely can.
Should I create that boundary when I'm confident enough that I'll make the follow through of hanging up the phone?
Because I think sometimes when we set the boundary and you say, if you bring up Aunt Jo, I'm going to hang up the phone. And then that happens. If you still have that fear within you, should you announce that you will do that?
Because then if you don't have the confidence to just hang up the phone on your mother, then like you said, nobody's going to take your word because you don't follow through.
Should you wait until you are confident enough in following through and say, let the consequences follow, but I'm done with this?
You can do either. I noticed she used the word fear earlier. What if I'm afraid to hang up?
Yeah.
And so it's good to take some space like individually, personally and say, what exactly am I afraid of?
That's what anxiety is about. Fear is the father of anxiety. I call anxieties our little fear babies.
Okay. If we're afraid of something, it's very helpful to us to say, what exactly am I afraid of? What is it that I think is going to happen that I'm so afraid of?
Because then when we can lean into it, then we can face the fear and then we can begin to develop that sense of agency and we can let go of something that doesn't belong to us. Are we afraid the other person is going to feel some kind of way?
They might, but their feelings are in their yard. Now, an answer to your question, I think in general, it's a good idea to explain to the person ahead of time what you're going to do so that when you do it, you can say, I said, remember? I told you.
So you gave them a warning. You don't have to, but when you tell them, say, I told you, if you brought Aunt Jo up again, I was going to hang up. Now you have chosen to bring her up again, even though I told you I was going to hang up.
So now I'm going to hang up. And I usually use these two phrases. If they start going, I don't buy that, which they will you go, I'm sorry.
You feel that way. I hope you have a nice day. And I hang up the phone.
I use those two phrases. I'm sorry. You feel that way.
I hope you have a nice day. Click. So you're not being ugly.
You're not being disrespectful. You've told them ahead of time what you were going to do. And you have a right to decide what you want to hear about and what you don't.
Just because someone else wants to talk about it, doesn't obligate you to listen.
And so when you're dealing with family members, sometimes simply doing something like what I'm describing to you and being consistent with it, like a metronome, like a metronome that the musicians use, you do it every single time.
Next time she brings up Aunt Jo, okay, I'm sorry you feel that way. I hope you have a nice day. Click.
It's a basic behavior modification. They know you're going to hang up, so then they'll stop bringing her up. And they might feel some kind of way about it, but those are their feelings.
Those feelings don't belong to you.
They're in their yard.
Managing Time
And speaking of the phone, it's also not on my agenda to speak to you right now. You gave the example of your client whose mom calls even when she's at work.
Even though I'm not at work, and most of my family know that I'm free most of the time during the day, sometimes I just don't want to talk. I don't want to talk to them every day.
Because sometimes the next time you pick up, they would say, I've been calling you all day, you're not doing anything right now. Why aren't you picking up my call? On my agenda, I didn't have it to speak to you today.
I don't want to talk to anybody. Is that something that is valid? Because sometimes I feel that family has this thing of your time is theirs just because, oh, no, she's not doing anything right now.
Like that entitlement to your time, if that makes sense.
It's your time. It's not their time. I love the example that you gave because, well, you're at home all day.
How come you're not answering? I've been trying to call you all day long. How come you're not answering my phone call?
That is a question about your time that you don't even have to answer. You can ignore it. You don't have to justify why you're not picking up the phone.
It's your time. So again, just because they want to know something doesn't obligate you to answer. You can say, what would you like to talk about?
I have about 10 minutes.
Okay.
You frame it in what you will do. Because some people, their knickers in a twist, as one of my English clients said one time, British Britain, my knickers in a twist.
They get their knickers in a twist when we say, they think about boundaries like, no, no, no, no running around screaming no at everybody. This is not the case. You just understand what your property is and what your property is not.
And so you can frame it in terms of what you will do. So just because they're asking you a question, you don't have to answer the question. You can say, is there something you would like to talk about?
I'm on the phone with you now. I have about 10 minutes. How can I help you?
So see, you're being proactive. And this is very helpful in work scenarios as well. When someone wants it there, they're setting a boundary at work.
Let's say they have a coworker that is abusing their time, is taking advantage of them. They can say, maybe piling work on them that doesn't belong to them. And they're getting overwhelmed.
They're getting burned out. You know, they're trying to be a team player, right? They don't want to say, I'm not going to help you.
So they can say, you know what? I'm happy to help you for the next 20 minutes. What can I do to help for the next 20 minutes?
So see, you're willing to be a team, but it's on your terms. Nothing's being pulled out of you that you're not agreeing to. And it's your terms.
You're saying, I see you have a need. How can I help you with that? For the next 20 minutes, I'm happy.
Happy to sit down and give you my 100% focus for the next 20 minutes.
So you see how, what a wonderful thing that is when you understand boundaries and you become so much more helpful at home and at work and with your family because you're very positive, but you're also saying, here's the line.
Now, I will tell you though, Roberta, when you're talking to people, whether it's at work or at home, but especially with family members, your 10 minutes comes up and guess who's still going to be talking?
Back to what I said earlier though, Dana, that when I promised them that I was going to hang up, when they bring up, I should really follow up and hang up.
You watch your watch because I guarantee you they're going to talk past 10 minutes. I guarantee it. So you have to look at your watch and when your 10 minutes comes up, you say, You gotta go.
You know what? This has been great. I'll be happy to talk to you whenever, like Thursday, Saturday.
I've got some time on Saturday. I can give you a call. I have to go right now.
I hope you have a great rest of your day. Click. You have commandeered that conversation.
You've taken control of that conversation in a very pleasant way. You've told them that you will get back to them at another time of your choosing and you hang up the phone. You don't wait for their permission.
You say what you're going to do. You're nice and you hang up the phone. And if they call back in the next 10 seconds, which they probably will, you do not pick it up.
No, don't.
Just switch it off and go to something else. I mean, I'm almost 50. I didn't grow up with cell phones.
I'm not on my phone all the time. Yeah, that entitlement of, oh, no, because she's home. I can just call her whenever I want.
No, that's not how that works.
Well, they're going to think that. And again, I would not even recommend getting, because once you get pulled into that conversation, that's wasting your mental bandwidth. You can say, can I help you with something?
There's no need for you to answer the question about why you didn't answer the phone call. There's no need for you to justify what you've been doing all day. You could have been sitting, eating bonbons with your feet up.
I don't care what you were doing all day long. It's not their damn business, excuse me. You can just say, what can I help you with?
I have about 10 minutes. You just ignore their question. You are not obligated to justify your time.
Yeah, because we do get sucked into that, don't we?
When they start and then you think, I got to defend, I got to justify. Yeah.
Nope. That gives them power and it takes your mental bandwidth. You need your mental bandwidth for other things in your life.
For that mental boardroom too, so that you stay not making an eight-year-old takeover the boardroom seat at the top of the table.
Yes.
Yeah.
I really love that analogy. Then one last thing, Dana, please share with us your podcast details and then your website before we wrap up.
Website and Resources
Podcast is Phoenix and Flame.
That is basically pushing through and transforming on the wings of boundaries. I love having guests on it that are very transparent, and I love hearing my guests talk about three things with regard to Phoenix.
Number one, the fire that they felt burnt them down to the ground. What in their life felt like a consuming fire that just burnt them to ash?
Number two, what did it feel like to sit in that ash pile, not knowing if they were ever going to get out of it? What did that feel like? And number three, what helped them to transform into the Phoenix, to pull and fly out of that pile of ash?
Those are three things that I like to hear from my guests when they're talking about their life journey, because my listeners, they might be in a burning pit right now, or they might be sitting in a pile of ash, not knowing how to become a Phoenix,
how to pull out of it. And so I really like to hear those things from my guests, and also asking them along the way in their life's journey, how did boundaries help them, or how did the lack of boundaries obstruct them as they try to walk on their
life's journey. I love to hear that at some point during the episode. So that's Phoenix and Flame. Love doing that.
And if somebody wants to know more about me, they can just go to danaskaggs.com.
There's a lot of tabs, a lot of the explanations about my keynote, to my workshops and all kinds of ways that I'm trying to serve and support my community and other people, businesses and with summits and organizations and associations to help people
not get burned out. Because it's costing companies millions, millions because people are quitting. They get burnt out and they just they quit. And then the company has to rehire and retrain.
Somebody like me can come in and teach the employees how to use boundaries to not get burnt out. And then they don't end up quitting. And they're better at home, they're better at work.
And because being a clinician and have had private practice for 18 years, I've talked to these people. I have hundreds of stories in my head of knowing how this works with people.
And so it's such a blessing and a privilege to be able to go into groups of people and try to help support them in this way.
Because when you have no boundaries, it's so emotionally draining. That's why people get burned out.
Yes. And they don't understand how boundaries work. They don't know what to do.
And how to communicate them.
Thank you so much for teaching us that today. Phoenix and Flame is the podcast. danaskaggs.com is the website from the sassy psychotherapist and Queen of Boundaries, Dana Skaggs.
Thank you so much for teaching us what you did today.
Thank you, Roberta. Thank you for having me.
My absolute pleasure. Don't forget to subscribe, liberating and a review on Apple and Spotify. Stay tuned for more episodes to come.
