Jeff Corrigan: Welcome to habit masters. I'm Sheldon I'm Jeff. and we are
Sheldon Mills: working on the law of the habit this month and loving it. We just love this one. We have a special guest today. Her name is Lisa Bishop.
She's a neighbor of mine and a therapist. I've heard her talk about, , you know, some youth groups and other things and loved it. And she shared this, this analogy, this metaphor. We talk about the garden. She talks about boundaries and yards, and it's gonna blow your mind. So Lisa Bishop is coming on.
Jeff Corrigan: Before we bring on Lisa, we wanted to mention to you guys, our course, the habit master seven day challenge, which gives you seven fundamental practices that help you create habits in your life to move you in the direction of your dreams.
Is free for the month of September. Yes. We wanna get feedback. So this is our feedback month guys. We just kicked this off free
Sheldon Mills: monetarily, but in exchange, yes, that's a good, honest, brutal feedback.
Jeff Corrigan: Okay. honest and brutal. Yes. Just give us your feedback if you love it. Great. If it's all praises wonderful, but we really want to hear what you're thinking.
If there were issues that you felt like, Hey, this wasn't clear or something like that, let us know, give us your feedback. We will. A million percent appreciative
Sheldon Mills: we think it's pretty good, but we want it to be great.
Jeff Corrigan: Exactly. Okay. So
Sheldon Mills: Lisa Bishop.
lisa is a neighbor of mine and she's one of these people that when she opens your mouth, everybody goes quiet because everybody wants to hear what she's going to say. and she's like laughing and chuckling, like, but this is totally true. And shared , some wonderful ideas with , the youth in our church, and then did a special, resiliency and, and facing the world.
And there's this analogy that I absolutely loved and it fits perfectly with what we're talking about right now about yards and gardens or yard and front yard and backyard and boundaries. And I, absolutely love this idea so much that I asked her, you know, begged her. No, I have to beg her.
She was very kind, but come on and to talk about that. So I'm just gonna pass over to you, Lisa, to kind of like kick that off and, and talk about it.
Lisa Bishop: Right. I love Sheldon. And this is gonna be particularly funny because a lot of my analogy, I used the idea of a cul-de-sac and Sheldon and I live on the same cul-de-sac so the
Sheldon Mills: first time just talking about me, probably.
Yeah,
Lisa Bishop: the first time I told it, I was looking at him out there, I was like, Hmm. I wonder why he's thinking about this if I'm actually talking about him or not. But no, I one of the things that people struggle with often in their families and in their, even their close friendship relationships is this idea of boundaries.
And I mean, when I was younger, You know, pre therapist days. I don't think I really knew what an emotional boundary was. Nobody talked about that, at least in the circles that I walked in. And so the first time I started understanding emotional boundaries, it was a big light bulb for me. Yeah. Going on.
And so you know, fast forward to becoming a therapist and working with a lot of people on their relationships, cuz I am a marriage and family therapist. So often I'm dealing with marriage relationships or parent child relationships, or even interesting. A lot of times I'm working with adults with their siblings or their parents relationships, but I'm not actually seeing all of those people in the therapy room.
I'm just helping them understand how to manage those relationships. Yeah.
Jeff Corrigan: So can I pose a question here? Yeah. So that's always. Seems like a challenge as a therapist where you're always only getting one side of the story. Like, how do you deal with that? I know this is kind of deviating from your philosophy here, but I really want, I wanted to know that what, how you do that.
Lisa Bishop: It's tricky. It's always, I deal if I can actually get another person to join the client in the therapy room and we'll often encourage that to get another person there. But really if you're working with an individual, the story that they're telling me is their story. It is their experience. And even if it is tainted by their past experiences or, you know, other relationships, you can still help them manage that in a healthier way, even if we don't have all the information, but yes, marriage and family therapists are very interested in getting multiple people into the therapy room because of that.
Hm.
Sheldon Mills: Yeah. Like their, that seems valuable. Their perception is their, is not reality, reality, like the full picture, but it's their reality. Yes. And so that's ultimately what you want to work with anyway, so, right.
Jeff Corrigan: Yeah. Yeah. Good. Yeah. Yeah. See, I've heard about that. That's a good
Lisa Bishop: point. yeah. So yeah. So boundaries the thing that is interesting about boundaries is we often don't really know what problems are our own problems and what are somebody else's problems and especially in families.
Okay. They, I say the boundaries get really squishy squashy in, in families for some. Reason. I mean, that's okay. In a lot of ways to have squishy squashy boundaries, because we really want to be connected with our family members. We want to be emotionally close to them.
That's the goal, right. Be close to our spouse, be close to our kids. Boundary crossing, actually sometimes to a lot of us feels like we're close, but it actually creates problems. It creates difficulty for one or the other of the people. Yeah.
Jeff Corrigan: What's an example of that. Cause I, I, I love this concept. I'm just trying to figure out in context, like how does this really happen?
Maybe you're gonna tell us
Lisa Bishop: yeah. Good question. Good question. Yeah. And when I get into the analogy, I think it'll make more sense, but oh, perfect. Yeah. Maybe I'll use parent child ideas right now. My teenage daughter. Is really freaking out. , she's emotionally struggling.
She's having a hard time with her boyfriend, whatever, you know, some relationship thing that's going on for her. She's in pain. If I don't have healthy boundaries, her pain and her struggle becomes my pain and my struggle. And I can't go through my life living a normal life, cuz I'm constantly stressed out and worried about this teenage daughter and I'm getting into her stuff more often than needs to, I probably shouldn't have used the par child relationship right off the bat because there is a need for parents to be checking on their kids emotionally.
There is a reason for us to be taking care of them and tending to them emotionally, to some extent, the place where we run into trouble is when their life kind of becomes our life. Mm. And then the flip flip of that is if the child is expecting the parent to always take care of all of their emotional things and they don't learn how to do it for themselves, mom always comes in and rescues me, moving into adult relationships, though, this will be easier to talk about that parent child relationship in adult relationships, why cousins and wives even there's gonna be lots of times in our life when one or the other spouse is struggling with something and we do wanna be connected with them.
And we do want to help them. We want to be there for them. And at the same time we can't fix it for them. We can't, we can take care of the things that are our responsibility. Like if they need more attention from us, then that's our job. mm-hmm, I, I need to give my spouse more attention. But if they're struggling with something, we need to allow them to have the space, to manage their own inner world and not make it our inner world.
So maybe this would be a good time to jump into the analogy because it helps explain it a lot. And then you can start asking questions to I'm
Jeff Corrigan: clarify this. Yeah. And I'm like, okay, I love where this is going.
Lisa Bishop: Okay. So, so the analogy is families are kind of members of families or close friendships or anybody that we have a relationship are kind of like neighbors on a cul-de-sac mm-hmm
And each of us have our own individual house and yard that we're responsible for. And our, our backyards typically have fences walls or something that really delineate the boundary in our backyards. And those are our relationships that we aren't super close to. We know where the boundary is and , we don't cross it without being invited.
Our closer relationships are more like our front yards and our front yards. We have what I call squishy squashy boundaries there. In our cul-de-sac, you know, the front yards kind of run into each other and the grass kind of grows together. Mm-hmm and you know, things. Not as delineated, the kids run across each other's yards, leave their bikes in my yard.
You know, things like that. Talking about now she's looking at me. I was definitely talking about Sheldon's kids. No, we have an amazing cul-de-sac might I just say FYI with lots of great kids and very respectful kids too. So, but we do know where the boundary of our yard is, cuz we all mow right down that line.
just mow
Jeff Corrigan: hotel. Like we like the Japanese chicken sexers, right? We're like we know that line even if we don't see it
Lisa Bishop: we, we know what it is, but we don't keep, we don't keep tight to that boundary like we do in our backyard. You know where they don't. I mean, the kids are, so they are really polite kids here.
They, if they get a Frisbee or something in my yard, they'll come and knock on the front door. Hey, can we go in your backyard and get our frisbee I'm like, yes, go in. It's fine. You don't have to knock on the door and ask me. But you know, that's a polite way of being so in the front yard boundaries one of the things that happens is sometimes we don't like what a neighbor is doing in accordance, you know, with our yard.
We don't like it. So mm-hmm, for instance, you know, I'm fine. If the kids run across my yard to get to the neighbor's house, that's fine with me. But if it wasn't fine with me, if I didn't like it, or if they were making a pathway through or something then it's my job to tell them, Hey guys, in a nice, polite way, can you just go on the sidewalk?
Okay. Okay. And most people, if they're respectful will try to honor your wishes. You know, let's not think about kids cuz kids forget, but just, you know, adults in relationships. If we ask them something, we say, Hey, I don't really like this plant. That's running into my yard. So I'm just gonna cut it off at the boundary and they'll be like, oh yeah.
Okay. That's fair. And that's a healthy managing of a boundary. Right. We can ask and talk about the kids. You know, they, their bikes end up in my yard sometimes and I don't have to get angry about it. I can just say, Hey guys, get your bikes outta my yard. Or sometimes I just pick it up and throw it in their yard and it's just, okay.
You know, it's not a big deal. And I think families can do that with all kinds of. Relationship things. We can manage those. We can figure them out. Sometimes the kids do cross a boundary, like they're out there with their sidewalk chalk and they draw all over the whole cul-de-sac, which I think is great and cute and all over the sidewalks.
But one time, I don't know if this was Sheldon's kids or not. I don't know if it's kids was they drew let's who it was. yeah. OK. Let's assume it was they, they were making this whole map. I don't know exactly what it was, was very cool and very intricate. And they were drawing the road up the sidewalk up my personal sidewalk to my house and up my steps and onto my front porch with sidewalk chalk with this arrow.
Pointing at my door and it, and they said, McDonald's so like they're making the cul-de-sac into this map. Right. Okay. Well, to me that was like, eh, I don't really like that so much. and so, you know, next time I see kids out there with sidewalk talking, I'm just like, Hey, you guys draw my driveway. All you want.
I don't care, but I don't really want you to draw up on my front porch. OK. And they're good. Right. Right. Okay. So this is kind of laying the groundwork for thinking about the boundaries that we have in our front yards , with families. So we're responsible for tending to our own yard. Mm-hmm and they're responsible for tending to their own yard.
And we get to decide what we want in our yard, and they get to decide what they want in their yard. Someone else may not care at all the kids draw all over their front porch with sidewalk chalk and that's fine. If they're cool with it, they can, they can be okay with that. Yeah. It's my job to tend my yard and make sure that I'm okay.
If I don't tend my yard, if I don't ask the kids to stop doing something, that's irritating me, what's gonna happen to our relationship. Deteriorat I'm, be more, I'm gonna be more frustrated with the kids. They're gonna be more scared of me. Mm-hmm I'm probably gonna say something mean they're probably gonna be like, don't walk by Lisa's house because she's that mean, lady that yells at you and so, you know, taking care of what is in our yard is important and asking people to take care of what's in our yard, the way we want it taking care of is important.
So the next thing that starts to happen with families is, well, Not the next thing this always happens is we feel responsible for each other's yards. We would never do that in our cul-de-sac. Like when, when Sheldon's leaves start falling down from his tree onto the ground, I don't sit over here and think, oh my gosh, I've gotta go get his leaves raked up.
I don't do that. Mm-hmm . I need to worry about my leaves. I have leaves falling down in my yard that I need to get raked up. And that's the place where we get confused in families. Now the leaves can represent anything. It can represent emotional distress. It can represent just other problems. Mm-hmm it can represent things that people have taken on that they have too much going on for them.
It's not a bad thing to help your neighbor rake up their leaves. I'm not saying that. Okay. And it's not a bad thing to help your family members deal with the things that they have going on. I'm not saying that right. What I'm saying is me feeling responsible for it. Mm mm that's my job to rake up those leaves.
Yeah. Now my job is to take care of my yard and if I can't deal with the leaves in my yard, I need to cut the tree down. Right. Or I need to hire someone to help with it or something now. Yeah. Sometimes there are situations, someone jarred floods, you know, we had a situation like this when we lived in Oregon where this really crazy flood came through and it only flooded in our neighborhood one person's basement.
I don't know why it just was, like they said, it was the river bed sort of changed, like went back to its old course or something and it flooded one person's basement. Then of course all the neighbors around are gonna rally and go help them clean out the stuff outta their basement. I'm not saying we don't help, but it was their responsibility.
It was their yard. Yeah. And we help. So, so that's one of the problems that happens is in families, especially we feel responsible for someone else's leaves. And so that's where that question comes, whose leaves are these mm-hmm yeah. Let's say my spouse is having a conflict with a friend or their parents or something, and they're very emotional and distraught about it.
That's an important thing and I can try and help them with it, but it's not my conflict. So I can ask whose leaves are these. And it gives me the opportunity to take a step back and get some space there so that I don't have to get wrapped up in the middle of it. This is my spouse's conflict with their friend.
It's sad. I can try and help them with it. I can, you know, be supportive, but I don't have to get all distraught and emotional and angry at the person or whatever it is. I can take a step back mm-hmm cause they aren't my leaves. They're their leaves.
Sheldon Mills: So I, I like this analogy.
There's, there's just things popping in my head. I'm thinking of this old neighbor who had these like three massive trees that would not only put inches worth of, of leaves in their own yard would also fill all the surrounding neighbor's yards. You know? I mean, and I'm thinking also of like you know, you talk about the differences and spouse, maybe this where the analogy maybe falls apart a little bit.
It's like how inter interconnected to my yard and my, my wife's yard. Does that make sense? Yeah. And how she feels I found has dramatically affected how I feel. right. Mm-hmm and honestly, over the years I've learned to both be more empathetic, but also how I feel, shouldn't it be based off how my wife is feeling, do you know what I mean?
Lisa Bishop: It's yeah, yeah, yeah. And it is where the analogy kind of falls apart because we do want to have a close, emotional relationship with our spouse, but sometimes we do need to set some boundaries with them. We actually the neighbors, trees with all the leaves that fall.
We actually experience that in our backyard. Yeah. We have the neighbor that has beautiful trees all along their back property line and they drop a ton of leaves in our backyard, but I love those trees. We have more shade in our backyard than anybody. Yeah. We have a really great backyard in a new, fairly new development.
We would not have mature trees like that at all. it's way worth it to me to rake those leaves up. Yeah. Right. So sometimes we do have to consider what is the value that I'm getting from this, and maybe it's worth it helping, you know, deal with deal with the, the fallout. Right. Because it's amazing. The shade.
I would plant those trees in my yard if they would grow that big right away, because it's so great. But sometimes it's not great, you know? Yeah. It's, it's not okay. And then we have an important decision to make and that decision is, am I gonna stay, in this house next to this person?
Or am I going to move? And sometimes we do have to move. Sometimes there's no cut and dried way to think about it. I have a bunch of little kids and I'm living in a house next to a. A a pedophile. I'm gonna move. I am going to move. I'm not gonna stay there and try to worry about their leaves.
So, I mean, I think it is important for us to recognize that we don't have to stay in relationship with anyone. It it's sad, but even sometimes we don't even have to stay in relationship with very close family members. Or sometimes we just move across town so that we can come and visit them. But we don't share
Jeff Corrigan: front yards don't share.
Yeah. Don't share
Sheldon Mills: fence metaphorically. It's like this there's more boundaries.
Lisa Bishop: Yeah. Yes. You get a little bit more physical boundaries going on there. So the first part of the boundaries thing is me taking responsibility for someone else's leaves. The other part of it is the opposite. Me expecting someone else to take care of my leaves.
right. And that happens in families all the time, too. And friends, any type of relationships where sometimes we expect people spouses to take care. Mm-hmm mm-hmm yeah. I have an example of this one. I used to have a responsibility at church where I was the person who called around to ask people to take meals into someone and, you know, someone had a baby or someone was sick.
I would call around and say, Hey, can you take a meal into this person? And this is a long time ago before I understood boundaries at all. My way of thinking about it was if I call and ask, they should say yes, they should say. And partly because it was really hard for me to call and ask.
I didn't like to call people on the phone and I definitely didn't like to ask them to do something. Right. So it took a lot of courage. This is in the days before email or texting, I had to call someone on the phone and say, Hey, would you take a meal into this family tomorrow night? I had a really good friend who I thought for sure would just do anything I asked her to do.
And, and she would, you know, she was a really good friend. And so one time I'm setting up meals for someone and I called her and I said, Hey can you take a meal into these people tomorrow night? And she said, no, I'm sorry. I can't do it. And she didn't tell me any reason why she just said, I'm sorry, I can't do it.
And I got angry. Not on the phone. I mean, I'm like, oh, okay. And I hung up and then I felt anger inside of me. I was mad at her. Like, why didn't she say yes, I was being so brave asking her and everybody's supposed to help everybody. And she should have said yes. Luckily she was a good friend. I knew she liked me.
I knew she was my friend. I knew, you know, lots of things about her. And I had to really wrestle with that boundary of that's not her. This is my job. My job is to call people and ask them their job is not to say yes, just because I ask them their job is to look at their yard and notice. I have a lot of leaves that I need to take care of here, and I don't have enough energy or time to go over and help.
So, and so rake up their leaves mm-hmm but someone else will be able to do it. , there's a balance there, but so , there's two things going on there. She held a good boundary. She thought about what was going on for her and said, no, I can't do it. I did not hold a good boundary because I assumed and expected her to rake up my leaves just because I asked.
Yeah.
Jeff Corrigan: Well, and can it go the other way too? Where you expect them to rake up their own leaves. right. Like, yes. I know that that's, that's a harder one. Yes. I think in one, maybe not harder, honestly, maybe it's about the same, but. I feel like that's the one that I fall guilty into a lot more is like, why aren't they raking their leaves?
yes.
Lisa Bishop: Right. Yeah, man. Yeah. It's
Jeff Corrigan: a hard one. Yeah. We have a neighbor in our neighborhood. I'll just point out like there's one house that doesn't tend to the yard, like literally, right. Mm-hmm like using this analogy literally is mm-hmm they just don't tend to their yard at all. Where everyone else, at least to an extent does.
Right. Mm-hmm and so it's just like a really big eyesore for all of us. And so I find myself, I's just call it judging, right? Like, well, what the heck? Why aren't they raking their leaves? Right. But I, and then I check myself with the door and say like, well, I have no idea what's going on with these people.
Right. What, what their situation is, how many leaves they actually have. And here I am expecting them to. To my ranking standard. right. Mm-hmm and I think that's a, that's a, that's something that I'm struggling with right now to like really manage in my life is like, don't expect other people to live up to my standard and I'm, I'm jumping into my philosophy.
But what, what are your thoughts?
Lisa Bishop: Yeah, no, that's for sure. That's a hard one. We do judge humans are wired to judge. I don't know if you've ever had that conversation with anyone before, but our whole nervous system and brain is wired to judge. Yeah. And that's on purpose so that we can see what's safe and what isn't safe.
What's okay. And what's not okay for us. Mm-hmm right. And so well, this, all moms will relate to this. Maybe dads will too, but you know, you tell your kid to go clean up their bedroom and then they go in and they work hard on their bedroom and they leave one crumpled up shirt in the corner.
I walk in as the mom to see how they've done on their bedroom and what's, I scan and I see the shirt crumpled up in the corner, and I say, you didn't throw that shirt in the dirty clothes, you know? And instead of seeing all the positive things they did, they made their bed, they put their shoes away.
They, you know, they empty the trash. We are, we're wired to see the problem. Mm. Yeah. And, and that's, that's important. That's a survival thing. And so we can use our thinking brain though. You know, we aren't just animals. We aren't just living on the survival mode to override that. Mm-hmm and that's what you just did in your little example was you notice you judge, we see it.
Oh, that house that's not taking care of their yard. It's it's out of place. It doesn't fit. But then you used your thinking brain to say, I don't really know what's going on for those people. I don't really know what they have. You know, that they're dealing with a lot of the things that people are dealing with are hidden, you know, we have no idea.
And so I think that's a way that we can use our evolved mind , , to override that, that wiring for judging like an instant reaction yeah. It's hard. Some of us will and try to try to see the analogy or the metaphor in this.
Also some of us will go to great lengths to take care of our yards and we'll plant very delicate plants that we have to go in and nurture a lot. and prune and deal with insects and watering and special things. Mm-hmm and some people, they don't even care if there's just dandy lions in their yard and dirt.
, and they're okay with that. Mm-hmm but we don't really know what the inside of their house looks like. We just drive by and we don't know what's going on inside. Mm-hmm if they're okay with that, as long as they're not breaking any laws, like we have laws that say, you can't let your weeds get certain height or whatever.
Cuz there are fire hazard. Right. But you know, so yes, there are, we do as a society have certain things that are not okay. Yeah, absolutely. But as long as they're not going there to that place, mm-hmm we get to just accept the fact that they get to choose how they want to have their yard. Now part of the problem that starts to happen is they can just stomp around their yard and stomp on the dandelions and the dandelions just grow right back again.
Right. so they don't really have the understanding of what's actually going on in this other yard here mm-hmm and they might come into this yard and stomp around also, and really damage some of those precious plants and cause some problems here. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, and I think I've worked with enough people.
Now I've worked with some people who have some pretty rough backgrounds, meaning they've done some stuff that probably have gotten them into trouble with the law, or definitely big relationship issues. And as I work with them as an individual, the thing I've learned is. They don't usually mean to do something like that.
That's not what they set out to do. Hmm. They're more like the person who's just growing dandelions in their yard and they can stomp around on it and not water it. Mm-hmm and not take care of things. And they come into another yard that's more precious and sensitive and delicate environment. And they do the same things.
They stomp around. They don't water. They don't take care of what's going on over here. They don't know. They don't understand that if I step on that plant, it's gonna die. So move past that though, past this person who stomps on things and to me who has this yard mm-hmm , who is trying to take care of these plants and works pretty hard at trying to make sure everything's okay.
It's my job. To set the boundary to keep my yard safe.
It's really tempting to want to blame the other person for anything that happens for me emotionally. Right. But it's really my job. And if I need to make a bigger wall, I need to make a bigger wall. If I need to put a padlock on the fence, I need to put a padlock on the fence. I need, if I need to move, I need to move.
But if it's my job to take care of this, it takes the focus off of Ugh, that person they're doing this and they're doing that. And they're, you know, instead we focus on this, I think the place people get really confused sometimes when they'll come into sessions with me and, and I do introduce boundaries a lot.
Obviously that's something that people are struggling with and they'll say, oh, I had to set a boundary against. So, and so mm-hmm and I try to get them to change their thought process, to know we don't, we're not setting a boundary against, so, and so we're setting a boundary for me. Mm-hmm ,
Jeff Corrigan: that's an interesting distinction.
I like that
Sheldon Mills: protection. It's always internal, not external. The boundary, the boundary is, yeah, I think it's a fine distinction. It's like, it's the same almost action or behavior, but the motive and the reason is like 180 different
Lisa Bishop: and the other person can feel that. Yeah. The other person knows if you're thinking of it as, as setting a boundary against them, versus setting a boundary for me.
Yeah. To protect me, they still may throw a fit because we're not used to having boundaries in relat. Yeah.
Jeff Corrigan: Don't
Sheldon Mills: even, we don't like use it against you say you're being selfish or do you know what I mean? That's when you have to grounded yourself and know, no, this is yeah.
Lisa Bishop: Yeah. And we have to be aware that no, you know, and like sometimes, you know, even encourage people, this happens a lot in people who are exploring a new relationship, like say a boyfriend, girlfriend type relationship.
And you know, one person is not respecting the yard of the other person in the way that they need them to. I'll say maybe you need to start by just building a little patio or a little, a little gated area to let them come in that far and see if they respect that first before you let them into the full inner world of your yard, because they don't know, but we can train them.
and if they, if they like with the little kids in my cul-de-sac, if I say, Hey guys, don't draw on my porch with your sidewalk chalk and they learn, they've never done it again. That's good. It's okay. People are gonna make mistakes and it's good to train them how we want them to behave. But if you just give 'em the full inner world of your life, there's a lot of things that you gotta train them on.
Yeah. That, you know, this is not okay for me. And so starting with a smaller welcome space and see how do they do there and are they damaging my plants in this little first welcome courtyard? Mm-hmm then I'm gonna train them how to take care of that before I let them into the whole yard.
Yeah. And you know, in the first falling in love. limerence is the word. You know, psychologists, use, limerence, I've never heard
Jeff Corrigan: of
Lisa Bishop: limerence. That's, it's, it's infatuation, falling in love, stage of a relationship. Our, our ego boundaries completely collapse. Yeah. And we, we fall into each other. That's what falling in love feels like is, and we let it all go.
And so people get burned that way a lot. Cuz somebody's coming in, who doesn't have any idea how to tend to your yard. But teaching them and helping them. If you're, if you're working with someone who's willing to learn, that's great. My kids have to set boundaries with me all the time. I have adult kids.
Now my kids are all adults. and it's kind of funny because I'm used to being the mom and kind of having more squishy boundaries with them. Like, I can kind of tell them what to do or, you know, get in their business about things. And most are married and having their own kids. And you know, I'll start to make my little suggestions.
I'm the expert, I'm a therapist, you know? Right. I should be able tell my kids, you know, how to raise our grandkids. We work pretty hard at boundaries in our families. Yeah. But you know, they'll just kind of the way they set boundaries with me is it's just silence. Yeah. And then I get the message eventually like, oh, they don't really wanna hear what I'm saying.
And then I have enough emotional capacity to take a step back and say, oh yeah, that's really not my that's not my jurisdiction. That's their yard.
Jeff Corrigan: Yeah. It's like my, my oldest son, he's very good at just being silent. I'll be. We're like, wait, did you hear me? Yep. yeah. Well, I am still in that jurisdiction, so
Lisa Bishop: yeah.
Yeah. It's, it's different when you are the parents of kids who are still minors, but, you know, so this doesn't the boundaries thing. Doesn't work very well with parents and kids of that age,
Jeff Corrigan: but yeah. Yeah. But it's just that, I think that is a hard challenge though. Just figuring out what those boundaries are for that age of kid.
Right. Mm-hmm it's like, okay. Mm-hmm I, I want them to, like you said, deal with their own emotional stuff, but I also wanna support and be helpful and make sure that it's not getting out of hand that they're feeling distraught about things that, you know, could be helped by an adult. Yeah. See things. And I loved the, you have a quote on your website on your main page that I really liked, and it kind of goes along with a lot of things we've been talking about lately.
So I'm changing directions, just a little on here, but it says, unless we change our direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed. I dunno if that's, is that something you said it doesn't have a quote other than I'm assuming it's your quote .
Lisa Bishop: No, but it, is it not, it doesn't have a I think it's
Jeff Corrigan: a, but it doesn't have a name on it.
So
Lisa Bishop: I think it's a a, oh shoot. You guys I'm so bad at pointing things outta my head, like a Buddhist state, a Buddhist saying, what would you call that? Oh, I think I don't, I don't know. I, I did not make that up. Yeah. Like a Chinese
Jeff Corrigan: proverb or a book.
Lisa Bishop: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Proverb. But it did really resonate with me when I, when I first read that I was like, oh, yep.
Mm-hmm
Jeff Corrigan: well, we have a psychologist friend slash mentor who he just wrote a book called be your future self now. And it's basically the whole book is about this. You have to choose where you want to go and be more intentional about mm-hmm , you know, even further and further into the future. And when you really connect with that individual.
Your decisions now become a whole lot better, right? mm-hmm yeah, because you just start seeing things in that future sense. Okay. I love all this concept. I love the boundaries. , I can see how it would work in my life.
So when you're coaching someone or doing it, maybe you don't coach, maybe therapy is a different kind of mentality, but say you are coaching someone on how to get started in this direction. Like, okay, how do I start setting boundaries? What's something I can do now to get this going in my life.
Lisa Bishop: Yeah. I think the who's leaves are, these is the perfect place to start. If you notice that you're getting distressed in any way, I use the word distressed to describe any kind of an emotional reaction to something I'm upset in some way. I'm either angry, scared, sad. If I'm feeling emotional about something that has to do with another human being, then you can just start by asking yourself the question whose leaves are these.
Hmm. And if they're my leaves or if some are mine and some are theirs, mm-hmm, turn your focus to your leads and take care of what's on your side of the boundary first. So there's a whole piece of this that we haven't really delved into explaining the analogy is that we have a value system. Each of us as human beings have an internal value system.
A lot of people don't know that they have a value system. They haven't thought about it. they haven't, it's not explicit. Yeah, they don't. Yes. But implicitly, we all have a value system. Things that we value. things that are important to us, things that take priority over other things or precedence over other things.
Right. Right. And so being intentional about your value system is how you determine what my yard is going to look like. My internal world, my value system, other people will have very different value systems than we do. I mean, we're seeing that in the world right now. Yeah. In the United States people have different value systems, but what I've learned is they probably have a lot of the same things in their value system.
They just prioritize some differently, some take higher priority than others. Right. And so we get to do that. that's self-determination or, you know, agency would be another word that you would use for that. We get to decide what our value system is, and we get to decide what's more important than something else.
Somebody may put artificial turf in their yard because their value system is I don't wanna spend any time on my yard. Also. It might be, I really wanna conserve water. Yeah. There's nothing wrong with either of those values, if that's what they value. Right. I'm not gonna put artificial turf in my yard because it feels phony to me and I value nature and grass and growing things and that's okay.
Right. So when you have a boundary, when you need to set a boundary, you, you ask yourself the question whose leaves are these and you realize. I've gotta let them do their yard the way they're gonna do it. And I need to come into my yard, then we just need to check our value system. So let me give you, for instance wanna make something up so that it doesn't sound exactly like any client, but lots of clients go with these kinds of things.
A lot of times it's adult adults dealing with their parents. Okay. That's where boundaries get tricky. A lot of times
Jeff Corrigan: my wife's family has a little bit of that going on right now. Yeah. It's really common for the last
Lisa Bishop: decade. It's really common. Okay. Yeah, because I can see it from the grandparent angle, cuz that's where I am.
That's the place where I am in the family system right now. I spent my whole life. I gave every everything of me, including my body. To have these kids, right. All my, everything. And then I'm just supposed to step back and let them manage their own life. right, right. It's hard. And so I can see it from that angle, but I can also see it from the adult children's angle, where they get to decide what their value system is.
And they get to decide what's gonna happen in their yard and in their, in their family. And so what happens is you'll have the grandparent level parent start to try and tell or dictate to the adult children's level, what you should be doing.
You need to do it this way. You need blah, blah, blah, blah. You know? And so it's okay for these. Adult children to set a boundary and say, Hey mom thank you for caring. And I need you to step out of this and we're gonna, whatever it is, whatever decision I'll, just make something that we're gonna homeschool our kids.
And, you know, maybe, maybe grandma was a school teacher like, oh, you can't do that. You know, whatever, , I'm not saying either one of those are good or bad, I'm just saying that could cause conflict. Right, right. Mm-hmm in the family. And so then the adult child needs to look at their value system and just make sure that they're living within their value system.
And one of those things for me, and for a lot of people is I wanna treat everyone with respect mm-hmm . And so I need to figure out if I yell back at my mom and say, get outta this, is this your decision? You can't tell me what to do with my kids. and it causes this big conflict and everyone's crying and everyone's upset, right?
Mm-hmm, , that's what happens in families. Then once we take some time off and everyone can start to cool down, I can look at my value system and I can say in my value system, I don't wanna treat people that way. I don't wanna yell at anyone or call them names. And so I can apologize for that part to get my, get myself clear in here to get myself feeling like, okay, I'm cleaning up my leaves, but she may still be upset over there about worried and freaking out about me, homeschooling my kids.
I need to just keep that boundary and realize those are her leaves. those are her leaves. Mm-hmm and you know, we do passive aggressive things in families where we'll make little comments all the time. Like, well, they wouldn't be having that problem if you weren't homeschooling, you know, things like that.
Um, And that's where, you know, you have to say, Hey mom, I need you to get your bike off my yard. get your bike outta my yard. Kindly, but you know, sometimes moms aren't gonna be as nice about it as little kids in my culdesac like, okay, okay. And they get their bike outta my, sometimes she's gonna keep throwing her bike in my yard.
And then, you know, you're gonna have to have a more serious conversation about it. Like, I appreciate your concerns. I've listened to everything that you've said. I've thought about it. And this is not a topic of conversation that we're gonna have anymore. We're not gonna converse about the decision that I made about my children.
And I mean, I just pulled homeschooling out of the air, but there's 1,000,001 things, you know, that we do with our children, that our parents could be upset about or think they know better. Right. So that's setting a healthy boundary. Like I told you my kids, they just go silent they just kinda go silent on the topic.
I was like, oh yeah. And I learn, I learn, but some parents won't learn. They won't learn that way. Mm-hmm . And so then we're gonna have to set a stronger boundary and a stronger boundary to, to keep us living in our value system. It's a hard thing for parents of adult kids , to let go of. Yeah. So. Setting the boundary for yourself is really important as the adult child.
Jeff Corrigan: That's excellent
Sheldon Mills: show looks like you have a thought yes. Yes. So I need, we wrap up here in just a minute, but I feel like the boundaries, I mean, with, it really comes, how do I put it? Like the, the one with your neighbor, Jeff, in some ways, like it's relatively easy. Right. But it really gets difficult when it's like a spouse who you feel like they should be growing this type of.
Thing in their garden or, Hey, why did you, or why don't you do this? You know what I mean? And with children, like you said, it's like the younger, they're born 100% dependent on you. Right. Mm-hmm and if we've done our job, right, we've taught them how to grow with their garden and. Take care of their yard.
And, but the older they get, the more you have to step back. And, and that is it's your yard. Do you know what I mean, consequences at all? Yeah. I dunno, I've seen a lot. I think that's a pretty natural reaction. Like in every family, you get to the point where it's just like you know, what the, the way to deal with this you know, feels like a parent encroaching.
I'm not to this point yet. And I can see myself having to like, consciously not be but it's like, Hey you know, it's like the relationship and the way things are are going is not how I want. So the easy solution is just put up a fence and we're just not gonna talk. You know
Lisa Bishop: what I mean? Mm-hmm, right.
And that doesn't feel like the way we want it. Yeah. I mean, we're seeing in the world today a lot of serious deviations from the way parents grew their gardens. We're seeing adult kids change politically, like completely change the, from the politics that their parents had.
Mm-hmm, , that's a hard one for parents to deal with religion. We're seeing adult kids leave the religion of their parents all over the place. You know, I think in, in the United States alone, it, the statistics have changed so much for how many adult adults are leaving the religion of their family. Right.
Those are difficult things that is kind of like, oh no, we've grown this yard and this garden this way, and you're trying to do it completely differently. And we don't think you're gonna be successful right with that. That's not gonna work. And, and how can you raise our grandkids in this setting?
Right. When we really strongly believe that this is the best. Yeah. Right. And so it is, it's a lot of conflict and we do need to set the boundaries as best we can. And then always, always, always just default to the relationship. How can we build relationship here? And maybe it is, we need to step away from our yards and go to a park.
where we can just visit and build relationship. And it's hard. I've had situations in my own personal family where I've had to completely give up all the hopes and dreams that I've had for kids that that's not my life. Right. It's their life and go all the way clear back to ground. Zero of do I love this kid?
Yes. I love them intensely. Do I care about the things that are going on for them? Yes. I care about the, anything that they're trying to do, their friends, their work, their hobbies, and I can really engage with them around those things and build the relationship there and re regardless of what other things they have chosen to leave that were really, really important to me.
That doesn't matter. But my relationship with them does, it's the only currency we have with them, really.
Sheldon Mills: If, if you're , if you're too critical, you know, spouse and children of what they're growing, I just see this so much, this metaphor is so strong here. It's like They're gonna up and leave.
They're gonna build a, a, a Fort Knox around there. yes.
Lisa Bishop: And they're never gonna let you in their garden. Oh, they're never gonna let you in you know, they may be building some really beautiful things there that I'm not gonna get to see because they're not gonna let me in. Yeah. There are things that I'm not even aware of.
Yeah. And so, you know, it is, it's a hard thing. I I'm really speaking from, you know, the parent of adult children right now. Cuz that's the place I'm at. Yeah. To let them. Go out and grow their gardens in the way that seems best for them. Yeah.
Sheldon Mills: I guess the, upside of that is the more you're able to, you know, say which, which leaves your mind and like really live by it by the mm-hmm I imagine there are some people are out there.
That's like, they are a master of that and they show out unconditional love and, you know, the, they get into the secret gardens more often than not, you know, the things that people are like, they try and hide this from everybody, but I trust you so much, you know, mm-hmm, the pressure gardens, the whole garden.
Yeah. The things that I try and hide, you know, so
Jeff Corrigan: yeah.
Lisa Bishop: There's power that, and there is a sacredness to that relationship there, you know, people who let you into their precious inner gardens, we want to be very, very careful there. That's a very special and sacred place for them. And they may have some weeds in there.
Right. But I've got weeds in my garden right now, so yeah. But we still get tomatoes. That's true. You know what I mean? Like yeah. We all have stuff in our gardens. Sure. Yeah.
Jeff Corrigan: Yeah. Well, this has been excellent. The biggest takeaway as far as I can tell for me at least has been, there's so much to so much to chew on here, but I feel like it's really just this, you know, whose leaves are these and making that distinction as part of your daily life is really starting to get that in, into the habit of making that distinction will be super useful in all, all of my relationships, it feels like, so this.
Sheldon Mills: Like, I think that's the secret, you know what I mean? It's like, can I really identify which leaves are mine. Right. Which I think honestly is like hard and truly hard. You know what I mean? And, and, and once I think sometimes it's hard to admit that these leaves aren't mine, it's hard to admit.
That's like, I can't how someone views and feels about me is, is their, their yard. mm-hmm , you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's not my problem in a sense, even though you wish you could, right? Yeah.
Lisa Bishop: Yeah. Well, and, and let me give some hope out there to everyone who is struggling with this idea, it might be brand new to some people, or it might just be like, yeah, I've been trying to do that for the past 20 years and I'm still not very good at it is, you know, growth is growth and it, we are just moving incrementally towards.
The, the place that we hope to land someday mm-hmm and it takes a lot to change the way we are. And so struggling with it is good. Enjoy the struggle, recognize that's part of it. Recognize I have a hard time deciding whose leaves or whos, but I'm gonna keep working at it. I'm gonna keep trying. I'm 57 years old now.
So I've been an adult basically for, you know, four decades. If I can look back those four decades, I can see that I am very different than I was when I was 20. Right. And I've learned a lot and it's been a long, slow journey, but man, am I grateful for that journey? because if I didn't have these situations where our yards got really messy, I have some, I have some failed relationships in my past it, I mean, I've worked out all the ones with my , family, but I have some failed friend relationships that really are gone failed because I couldn't understand boundaries.
They couldn't understand boundaries. It's painful. I mean, I don't know if you can hear the emotion of my voice right now, but it makes me wanna cry because if I knew what I know now, then those relationships wouldn't have failed and those people are precious to me, but I have to see that as the stepping stones to get where I am here.
Yeah. And I have hope that someday I'll have the opportunity to renew those relationships. To, to talk to them from a different place and say, man, I am so sorry. I did not have any idea what I was doing here. thank you for walking along on this journey with me during the portion that we walked. Yeah. And I, I always tell my clients and I mean, this will only work for people who have belief in and afterlife, but I always tell my clients when we get to the next life, let's go to lunch together.
Okay. And let's just sit down and let's just hash it all out again. because we're trying our best right now. And we're doing everything we can, but we're gonna have a whole lot more information yeah. Than, and let's just, let's just talk and let's just cry about what we did that wasn't okay. And let's just love each other.
And I think, you know, that's the way it is with some relationships in this life is we're gonna have to take the learning. From the negative and move forward with it, try it a different way.
Jeff Corrigan: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much. This has been amazing and appreciate all of your insight and wisdom and experience from obviously how many years have you been doing.
Therapy.
Lisa Bishop: I'm about Ted now. I, I came to the field late in life. Yeah. Oh, very cool. I was the, I was the armchair therapist. You know, just a personal kind of personal trait. And then yeah, after my kids were mostly grown, then I went back to school and actually became official. Like you get paid for it now.
yeah.
Jeff Corrigan: That's awesome. Yeah. Oh, well, congrats. That's a, that's a big shift and quite, yeah, quite a good example to all of us that, Hey, you can do things whenever, right? You can. It's never too late finish line of like, oh, it's too late now. Well, awesome. And we appreciate you being on with us and sharing all of your knowledge.
Where can we send people to find.
Lisa Bishop: Well, you can find [email protected]. that's our website. I am not on social media right now for very important reason because I can't keep my yard clean and be on social media at the same time.
Jeff Corrigan: That's my boundary. So Lakewood family therapy.com will. Yep. That sounds like plenty people
Lisa Bishop: can be that the only place. Yep. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, it was really nice talking to you guys. This was fun.
Jeff Corrigan: Yeah, we appreciate the time. So great. Yeah, you,
Sheldon Mills: thanks, Lisa.
Jeff Corrigan:
Thank you. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you to Lisa for joining us and sharing all of your wisdom. That was amazing. Wow. Right. Sheldon .
Sheldon Mills: I knew it was gonna be good. So. We were discussing afterwards after the, you know, stop recording. And we were gonna have run again some time because we just kept talking and talking about some other, you know, just amazing ideas.
So look forward to good things.
Jeff Corrigan: Yes. And if you liked this episode, please share it with a friend subscribe. and most of all we want ask you to leave us a review on apple podcast. We're trying to get to a hundred of views. We're not that far in right now. So if you leave us a review and you take a picture of it and send us an email, we will send you a free Kindle copy of one of our favorite books.
Sheldon Mills: You know what I'm gonna, I'm gonna up that anti I'll. I'll send you a physical book. Of be your future self now, not a kindle copy, a physical one for the next
Jeff Corrigan: five people. Next five people, you get a physical book.
, you just need to send us an email. Yeah. You have to share your address
Sheldon Mills: as well. So I know where to send it to, but still we'll send it to you.
Jeff Corrigan: That sounds amazing. And if you don't remember from the first part of our episode, our course right now is free. There's a link in the show notes that takes you directly to access the course for free on our website.
Take advantage of this guys. It's seven days it's normally paid. We're given away for free in exchange for your feedback. That's all.
Sheldon Mills: So for busy people with busy lives who want to move toward your dreams and higher goals, which is all of you. So please go do it.
Jeff Corrigan: Absolutely. So, thanks again for listening and guys, it's time to start living your best life,