Become A Boundaries Badass E-Book

Danu Morrigan

• Herausgeber: WS
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Serie: Daughters Of Narcissistic Mothers
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 259

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Boundaries are your birthright, truly. But as a woman in this world, and even more, if ou are the daughter of a narcissistic mother, you were taught from birth that you are not allowed to have boundaries. Or, at best, limited boundaries. People can treat you as they want and you can’t stop them. You spend your life on their terms: helping where it doesn’t suit you, hosting people you don’t want to host, spending money you don’t want to spend, answering questions you don’t want to answer: the list goes on.
Well, that needs to change, and that will change.

You need to become the Boss of You, and you CAN become the boss of you.

However, if it was possible for you now, you’d be doing it already. So why aren’t you?

The problem is two-fold:

You don’t truly believe that you can set boundaries, that it’s okay for you to do so, and

You don’t know how to set and enforce boundaries in a way that avoids conflict and drama, and actually works.

And, you know how the old saying has it: if you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep getting what you always get.

If you don’t make changes, this is the way it’ll be for the rest of your life: you being a People-Pleasing Passive Pushover. After all, the way things are now suits the toxic ones very well, so they’re hardly going to change, are they?

So, if there are going to be changes, it has to be you making them.

And Become A Boundaries Badass* is exactly how you do that.
(*And if you're triggered by the word 'badass', then you definitely need this book.)
Once you have gone through this book and absorbed the material, you will finally, and forever, be in charge of your own life. People will respect your time, your energy, your decisions. You’ll be doing better in your own life because you’ll be focused on that, not on everyone else’s needs. Not that you will become selfish or uncaring, not one bit. It’s just that you will share and help others in the way you want to, when you want to, for as long as you want to.
Here's just one email I got about Become A Boundaries Badass:
“I was lucky enough to read this book when I was struggling to set boundaries around my plans for the Holidays – overwhelmed with guilt for wanting to put my own wishes first, feeling immense pressure to please others at the expense of my own health, struggling to follow through on anything I really wanted to do. Reading and digesting Danu’s words of wisdom allowed me to say an empowered NO to the comfortable – but ultimately destructive – people-pleasing, and to prioritise my own needs with confidence. A truly life changing book.”
H.P., London, UK

Leseprobe

Contents

Introduction

Who is this book for?

Who Am I?

Why should you listen to me?

The format of this book

What Are Boundaries?

What exactly are boundaries?

Safety First

What boundaries are you allowed to set?

Is setting boundaries just being controlling of others?

So, what boundaries are you allowed to set?

What boundaries would you like to set?

Beliefs Block Boundaries

Beliefs Block Boundaries

How Beliefs Are Created

How To Know What You Believe

How Our Beliefs Talk To Us

How To Boss Your Beliefs

Committee Meetings

Freewriting

Tapping

Freeform Tapping

The Tapping Tree

Combining Tapping & Committee work

Abolishing Boundary Blocks

The burden of avoiding conflict

The burden of people-pleasing

The risk of rejection

The risk of being the bad guy

The burden of guilt

The burden of being nice

The burden of kindness

The burden of politeness

The burden of selfishness

The burden of responsibility

The burden of keeping everyone happy

The burden of avoiding hurting them

The burden of guilt revisited

The burden of people-pleasing revisited

The Art Of Boundaries

Setting Boundaries

Conquering Consequences

Possible reactions and how to manage them

Strategising Well

Apology or no?

How To Manage Requests, Invitations and Offers

The Power Of Integrating

The Power Of Being Big

The Power Of Rehearsal

Practise Dealing With Requests

Practise Dealing With Invitations

Practise Dealing With Offers

Practise Dealing With Inappropriate Questions

Practise Dealing With 'Jokes'

Practise Dealing With Trauma-Dumping

Practise Strategic Silence

Dealing with Inappropriate questions

The Curse of Unwanted Advice

Dealing with 'jokes'

Dealing with trauma-dumping

The Power Of "No"

Strategic Silence

Bringing It Into The Real World

Making the change

Practise Setting Boundaries + Consequences

Respecting others' boundaries

Avoiding toxic 'boundaries'

Test new people using boundaries

Children's boundaries

Curating your relationships

Last words

Notes

Guide

Contents

Start of Content

BECOME

A

Boundaries Badass

Not A Passive Pushover

Danu Morrigan (c) 2024

Notes On Content

AI-FREE ZONE

I confirm that this whole book has been written by me, Danu Morrigan, without one word coming from AI. In this way it is really me, Danu, speaking to you as you go on this journey and not some machine.

NOTE ON SPELLING

As an Irishwoman I use the island version of English: i.e. the English we use in Ireland, Britain, Australia and New Zealand (and sometimes Canada?). So if you come across words like neighbour, favour and labour, that’s why. Likewise words that in the U.S end in ~ize but we spell with an ~ise such as realise. And spellings like centre rather than center. We also say practise when it’s a verb, using practice for nouns only.

None of these are typos.

INTRODUCTION

Who is this book for?

THIS BOOK IS for you if you are forever doing things you don't want to do, spending time with people you don’t want to spend time with, and answering questions that are too private to answer; in other words, if you’re living your life by other people's wishes rather than your own.

This book is for you if you would like to get over all that stops you setting boundaries, for example, guilt, people-pleasing, conflict-avoidance, fear of being unkind, fear of hurting them and so on, and the feeling you’re not allowed to let any of those go.

In short, this book is for you if you are tired of being a Passive Pushover and are ready to Become A Boundaries Badass.

I suspect that this book will be read mostly by women, because unfortunately in our culture it is women who are raised to be Passive Pushovers.

Further, my work has focused on the issue of narcissistic mothers, and it is that work which has brought me to this topic of boundaries, because even more than other women, daughters of narcissistic mothers struggle with boundaries. This makes sense, because narcissists’ sense of entitlement means that they think they’re allowed to do whatever they want, and so they absolutely hate others’ boundaries, and teach their daughters not to have any.

However, while I will be referring to women in general, and giving relevant information to daughters of narcissistic mothers in specific, this book is for anyone who would like to stop being a Passive Pushover, and who is ready to become a Boundaries Badass.

The motto of this book is, Be Strong, and after reading and integrating this material, you will indeed Be Strong. That is my promise to you.

Who Am I?

THIS RESOURCE IS about you rather than me, but I take this opportunity to briefly introduce myself as we embark on this journey together.

My name is Danu Morrigan and since 2008 I have been learning about, and writing about, narcissistic mothers and the fallout that narcissistic mothers inflict on their daughters. I created and run a website on this topic, available at donm.info. And in addition to this one, I have written the following books on that topic:

You’re Not Crazy - It’s Your MotherDear Daughter Of A Narcissistic MotherTo The Unloved DaughterHow To Go No Contact With Your Narcissistic Mother

You can find out more about those books at donm.info/books. There are also many other resources on the website so I invite you to check them out if you are interested. You can also sign up for my regular email newsletter by going to donm.info/guidebook.

Why should you listen to me?

I SUSPECT I am the daughter of a narcissistic mother. This is only my best guess as she was certainly never diagnosed as such. But narcissism does explain everything about her behaviour and its life-long impact on me. And as the survivor of this dynamic, I have an enduring interest in how to recover from this toxic upbringing, and have been learning and studying how to heal all of this for much of my adult lifetime. And given that a core trait of narcissists is that they hate others’ boundaries, this naturally led me to the topic of boundaries, and it is the fruits of this journey that I share with you now.

Your Power

Becoming A Boundaries Badass is about reclaiming your power for you, so definitely don’t give your power to me by uncritically believing me. I will later be making the argument that everything has to be true on its own merits before we believe and accept it, and of course that applies to all that I say too. So don’t believe it just because I say it.

Rather I will make the case for all that I say, and I hope to make it a compelling case. But the power always remains with you. Therefore, read on as sceptically as you like, with as many raised eyebrows as you choose. It is not your job to believe me, but my job to convince you.

I also need to confirm that I am not qualified in anything with regard to psychology. I have been learning and researching all of this stuff since 2008, and I stand over what I share, but I don’t have any bits of paper, and I don’t want to misrepresent myself.

The format of this book

WE WILL FIRST discuss exactly what boundaries are. It’s very easy to have whole conversations about something and only later discover that we had different definitions of the core topic and so our supposed mutual understanding was based on that, and thus confusion arises. For sure, we don’t want to fall into that trap here. So I will define what I mean by boundaries, and explain my thinking about why I see them that way, and hopefully you will be happy to work with this definition.

Secondly we will discuss the reasons why we might have difficulty accepting that we are even allowed to have our boundaries, and then we will share how to resolve those difficulties. Likewise, there will no doubt be pushback from others to your boundaries, and we will explore and resolve that problem too. The result of this section is that you will be calmly confident about your right and ability to have your own boundaries.

And then we explore what I call the Art Of Boundaries: you’ll learn the principles of how to set and enforce boundaries, and also practical steps in how to deal with others’ reactions to those boundaries. This section is theoretical and informational.

And then there’s the section where we take it all from being merely informational into being transformational. This is where you use role-play and rehearsal to integrate these skills so they are available to you instantly and automatically.

And then, finally, we talk about bringing it all into the real world, and how it’ll work in practice. This section deals with topics such as how to respect others’ boundaries, how to teach children about boundaries and so on, and finishes with an essential section on curating your relationships going forward.

In addition to this book, I do offer extra resources: some free and some paid. You can find out more by going to donm.info/babb-resourses. Be very clear that this book contains all that is necessary in order to become a Boundaries Badass. You do not need the extra resources; they are just to help if you decide you’d like that. I’ll mention those extra resources where relevant as we go through this book.

So now, as promised, we will now discuss the definition of boundaries.

WHAT ARE BOUNDARIES?

Safety First

NOW ONE THING we need to state very clearly, before we go any further, is that the rule safety first applies. There may well be occasions and relationships in which it is just too dangerous for you to set any boundaries. It could be that the people or circumstances in question mean that any boundaries you try to set will be met with violence, financial abuse, or other abuse of various flavours.

In this case it is essential that you do not go ahead with Becoming A Boundaries Badass because that would guarantee to backfire on you and cause you more pain and trauma.

What you need to do, in this case, is to make your plans to leave that person or to remove yourself from that situation. And I am clear in being able to say this, because any situation in which you cannot advocate for yourself is a bad situation, and any person with whom you cannot set boundaries is a toxic and even dangerous person.

It is such a basic right to be able to set boundaries for ourselves with our bodies, our time, our information, and all of those things that are unquestionably ours, that if you are in a situation where you cannot apply that right, it is a toxic situation. So I hope if this is your experience and you are reading my words now, that you will take this very seriously and look at changing your circumstances.

In this case, it wasn’t a waste getting this book and reading this far, because now you know clearly that you are in a toxic situation. The fact that it is not safe to set boundaries — which again we repeat is just another word for consent — is really good information for you about the situation you are in. This is your ultimate red flag. This is your shouted warning, a siren blaring, that this is not a good circumstance. You don't have to second-guess yourself in any way, any longer, about how bad this is.

I urge you to contact your local domestic violence unit, or whatever authorities exist in your country, or whatever friends and family you can depend on, to help you remove yourself from this bad situation.

And then come back to this book, as the information in it, and the skills you will learn from it, will stand you in good stead with other people and other situations in the rest of your life. You will absolutely need this information as once you are free you will have to learn the boundaries skills from the ground up, and this book will teach you that.

Exercise: Make a list of the people in your life who you would like to set boundaries with, and consider if they are safe to do this with. If they’re just bullies who might rant and rave and create verbal conflict, that is still safe because by the time you’re finished this book you’ll be able to manage them. If they are likely to turn to violence such as physical or financial, then they are not safe.

What boundaries are you allowed to set?

I CHOSE THE title of this chapter quite deliberately, as it’s a question Passive Pushovers often ask themselves, whether they realise it or not.

Actually, we all do this, all the time, and it’s how society works as well as it does: we refer to our internal list of rules, and let those guide our behaviour. Most of the time this process is so natural and efficient that we don’t even know we’re doing it.

However, I suggest, and hope to make the argument, that a lot of our internal rules are wrong, and therefore steer us in the wrong direction.

I invite you to consider that every time you ask the question, “Am I allowed …?”, you could take the question one step further and ask yourself what is the authority who decides what is allowed and what is forbidden.

The question, “Am I allowed …?” assumes that there is some higher authority who can decide what you are allowed and not allowed to do.

Now, of course, sometimes there is. We’re not allowed to drive through red lights. We’re not allowed to assault people. In these examples the government is the higher authority in question.

Cultural rules

However, there is another authority which controls our understanding of what we’re allowed, and not allowed, to do. And that authority is our society/culture — we can use those words interchangeably here — and the rules it creates.

Society’s rules are not laws. They’re not official, and are not enforceable by fine or prison as government laws are. We will discuss shortly how exactly cultural rules are enforced.

Now, I say society/culture as if there is only one, but in fact each of us is a member of many overlapping cultures. Your country is one for sure, and this is why we call it culture-shock when you are abroad and the rules are different from what you are used to.

Your race is also its own culture. Your religion another. Your politics a third. Your sports team yet another. And each family has its own culture as well. And lastly, but extremely importantly, we could say that you, yourself, are your own micro-culture. In addition to absorbing the rules and beliefs from your various cultures, you will have created your own as we shall share shortly.

All these cultures with all their rules: it’s a lot to handle, and the need to navigate all of these rules is why we are constantly asking subconscious questions about what we are allowed to do in any specific situation.

Another difference between government laws and society’s rules is that government laws are written down very clearly, whereas society’s rules are often more implicitly understood than explicitly stated. Because these rules are so subtle and implicit, we learn them subliminally, without even realising that we’re doing it, and without us being able to consciously and deliberately evaluate the rules to see if they are reasonable or useful or good for us.

In other words, these rules seem so self-evident that we don’t even question them — or, in many cases, aren’t even consciously aware of them — in the same way that we cannot feel the literal tons of air pressure constantly weighing us down, simply because we have never known anything else and cannot therefore imagine anything different.

To objectively assess something we need a point of reference to compare it to, and without that we are stuck. Consider how difficult it would be to explain colour to someone blind from birth. Or, say you ask an identical twin what that is like for her, she won’t be able to tell you because she doesn’t know any differently. She might well ask you, “Well, what is it like not having a twin?”, and in that question you can realise how impossible it is to explain because being a singleton is all you have ever known.

Some cultural rules are just plain wrong

Now, it is essential to realise that our culture’s rules are not automatically fair and reasonable and appropriate.

In fact, we can be certain that many of them are wrong because if there was only one correct set of culture-rules, those rules would be the same all over the world and all throughout time, and this is patently not the case.

It’s difficult to identify our own cultural beliefs for the reason we said above: that we learn them subliminally and implicitly without consciously identifying them. However, we can clearly see the cultural rules of other times and places. Here are some cultural rules which are separated from us by either geography or time:

Women aren’t competent to voteIt is okay for children to work long hours from a young agePublic hangings are reasonable and essential.

Nowadays we see those cultural rules as abhorrent.

But people at the time genuinely thought these things were fine. In fact, even to say ‘They thought…’ is inaccurate because the point is that they didn’t consciously think about them. Those rules just were, just part of reality, same as gravity and the sun rising each morning.

Likewise, we live unquestioningly by our own cultures’ current rules. I have tried to think of a rule of my own culture that I think future cultures will be shocked by, and of course that’s incredibly difficult because I too am swimming in my own cultural soup. But to give one example, I suspect that future generations will be horrified that we used good precious water to flush toilets. But that I can even consider that possibility shows how that rule is on the edge of being questioned in order for me to be aware of it. The cultural rules that you and I live by, that people in future times and places will consider abhorrent, I cannot even imagine what those might be. Again: cultural soup.

So, when we ask, “Are we allowed to …” we are asking what our various cultures allow us to do regarding a specific topic.

Why am I telling you all this?

I am spending all this time and going into all this detail because I am going to challenge — and invite you to also challenge — some of the rules that our culture lives by. Specifically, given the topic of this book, the cultural rules that trap you into Passive Pushovery. Because, as the saying has it: If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep getting what you always got. And therefore, because you want to get something different, you need to start doing different things. This resource will absolutely help you with that, but first you need to know that you can do things differently. In other words, that you are allowed to.

So, as part of that, I really want to emphasise that no matter how deep, and solid, and real these rules might feel, that they are not necessarily so. Anything is true (or not) on its own merits only, not on whether you — or anyone else — believes it, or how real it feels, or how loudly your culture tells you it’s true.

Therefore, I offer you to consider that we can examine any culture-rule that we are aware of and look at it on its own merits and see if we want to continue to live by that rule or not. That we become the boss of our own rules, and not the unwitting slaves to them.

How our culture punishes us for breaking the rules

Unlike with government laws, our cultures cannot imprison us or fine us for breaking their rules. So, how does our culture enforce their rules in this case?

The punishment for breaking those rules is disapproval at a minimum, and rejection and perhaps even banishment for serious infringements. Another way of saying this is peer pressure.

There is a very deep reason why we find it so difficult to go against our cultural rules and hence risk rejection, and to understand why, I invite you to look at this diagram:

The American psychologist Abraham Maslow created this model of the hierarchy of human needs. It starts at the bottom and works its way up.

At its base are our physical needs: food, water, clothing, shelter. If we don’t have those things, then nothing else matters until and unless we can get them, and getting them becomes our only focus.

Once we have achieved those necessities, we move up to the stage above it, and start being concerned about our safety. That has to come second to our physical needs as we will risk our safety to achieve our basic physical needs, e.g. risking injury when hunting for food. But our safety is second only to that, and as soon as we can, we start thinking of meeting that need.

Once both our physical needs and our safety needs are met, we climb to the next level and start thinking of belonging to our tribe. We evolved with literal tribes, and nowadays we have metaphorical tribes, but the same applies: we need to fit in and belong to our peer group (as soon as we are not competing with them for the lower /more important needs of food and shelter).

And then we move up to more intangible needs such as self-esteem needs and self-actualisation needs. Becoming a Boundaries Badass is a self-esteem need because it’s about feeling good about ourselves, and a self-actualisation need because it’s about you living the life you want the way you want to live it. And so, it is higher up the Hierarchy of Needs, and therefore the other needs take precedence.

The bottom two steps — physical needs and safety needs — are clearly about personal survival.

I argue, however, that the Love/Belonging need is equally about personal survival. Back in the day we had to be in good standing in our tribe in order to survive. We humans — small, weak, slow, with no claws or sharp teeth to speak of — needed our tribe in order to literally survive. Safety in numbers; strength in community.

This doesn’t apply so much nowadays, as society is more complex and there are laws and government services and commercial resources to help us survive even without personal connection. But this is a relatively new phenomenon in our evolution, and our reaction to being shunned or excluded is still immediate and profound. Think how bad you feel if someone isn’t talking to you, or if your group doesn’t include you. This is very deep and very visceral.

So, we have a huge motivation to agree with our culture’s rules and to live by them, as it feels literally dangerous to do otherwise. And to the extent that Becoming A Boundaries Badass threatens our Love/Belonging status, we will naturally prioritise the Love/Belonging need, thereby abandoning the self-esteem and self-actualisation needs that Boundaries Badassery would bring.

Or, at least, that is how it happens automatically, until you know differently, which is what we are working through here.

Is setting boundaries just being controlling of others?

YOU MAY WELL hear this accusation from people who have a vested interest in you remaining as a Passive Pushover. And/or you may worry about this yourself.

And you know, in a way it is controlling. It certainly involves setting limits on others’ behaviour. But if your boundaries are reasonable and appropriate, then the limits are, well, also reasonable and appropriate, and we don’t have to apologise for them. It might be controlling, but it’s not toxically controlling. We all have limits on us in the interests of communal living, such as our previous example of not being allowed to drive through red lights so the people on the other road can have their turn crossing the junction.

How do we guarantee that our boundaries are not toxically controlling?

The way you know your boundary is non-toxic is when it fulfills two essential conditions:

The boundary says what the person cannot do, not what they must do, andIt must be about actions that would be done directly to you.

As an example, say you told your mother she was not to bad-mouth your brother Gerry to you. That is not a toxic boundary. You’re not telling her what she can or cannot say to others about Gerry. You are just saying that she cannot badmouth Gerry to you. You are also not telling her that she must speak to you in a complimentary way about Gerry.

So you can absolutely know that if you are setting true boundaries, you are not being toxically controlling.

So, what boundaries are you allowed to set?

SO, HAVING HOPEFULLY resolved a few questions, let’s go back to the original question: what boundaries are you allowed to set?

Absolutely any you want!

I know this is radical, but I’m serious.

Any boundary you like, no matter how silly or arbitrary, once it fits into the boundary rules of a) what they’re not allowed to do rather than what they must do, b) specifically to you.

Now, of course I do not suggest that you actually set silly and arbitrary boundaries because that would be impractical, and could backfire on you — see below for more on that. I just want you to know that you can. That you are allowed to. That it is your right to do so.

So, let’s think of an example of a silly boundary.

Say you decided that people could only phone you between the hours of 2.00 and 2.30 in the afternoon. That is a valid boundary.

What you are saying, in effect, is: “You may not phone me outside those hours.”

Now, you are not telling them they must phone you at that time. That would be toxically controlling.

Rather, what you are saying is, “If you phone me it can only be at that time.” In other words, it cannot be outside those times, to keep to the ‘You must not…’ boundary-setting format rather than the ‘You must …’ controlling statement.

Now, people are of course perfectly entitled to decide that this doesn’t suit them, and decide not to ring you at all, and you will have to accept their right to make that decision. (This is how an absurd boundary could backfire on you.) However, the one thing they should not do is to ignore your boundary and phone you at the wrong time.