Letting people down doesn't make you... | Georgia Telehealth Therapy

I want you to picture a scenario right now. You are um staring at your phone. We've all been there, right? And there was a text message just sitting there. It's a completely normal request, too. Like maybe an invitation to a dinner you really do not have the energy for or, you know, a colleague asking for a quote unquote quick favor on a Friday afternoon. H the Friday afternoon quick favor. That is the worst. It really is. So, you've taken about 4 hours to reply and suddenly your heart is racing. Your palms are slightly sweaty. Your stomach drops. Yes. You feel this intense, totally disproportionate spike of panic just from the idea of typing the word

no. It is a very specific kind of dread. I mean, it literally physically takes over your body, making a totally mundane text message feel like a life ordeath confrontation. Well, the good news is that spike of panic isn't a personality flaw. It's actually a biological misfire. And today we are looking at clinical data to figure out how to rewire that exact feeling which is so needed. It is. We are digging into an insightful guide called Beyond Compliance: The Clinical Path to Reclaiming Your Boundaries, which was provided by Coping and Healing Counseling or CHC. Our mission in this deep dive is to look past that incredibly unhelpful cliche of just say no. Oh, absolutely. Because if

it were as easy as just saying the word, you would have done it by now. Exactly. We are going to look under the hood at the biological and psychological mechanisms at play here. We really need to examine the nervous systems role in why chronic overaccommodators feel like they are committing a felony when they try to set a basic limit. Okay, let's unpack this because we first have to dismantle a very specific narrative that I suspect you listening probably carry around with you. A lot of us do, right? It's this internal script that says if you disappoint someone, if you let them down, it fundamentally means you are a quote mean person. Right? The assumption is

that setting a boundary is an inherently aggressive act. But the central premise from our source material reframes this entirely. Thank goodness. Letting people down doesn't make you mean. It makes you a person, a human being. Yes, you are a human being with a biological body that gets fatigued. You operate within a finite 24-hour day. And you know your capacity simply fills up at a limit. It has a hard limit. And most importantly, your feelings and your needs are not mathematically less important than anyone else's. What's fascinating here is the clinical reality behind why we ignore those basic facts of our own humanity. The text points out that if saying no feels like an offense, like

something you have to immediately apologize for or overexlain, it is a glaring sign that you are running a survival strategy. A survival strategy sounds a bit dramatic for just declining a coffee date, but that is precisely how your body is experiencing it. Wait, really? Just biologically? Yes, biologically. For a chronic people pleaser, the nervous system has been trained over years, usually starting in early childhood environments, um, to equate the disappointment of others with a literal physical threat. Wow. I kept thinking about this malfunctioning car alarm analogy while reading the notes for today. Oh, that's a great way to look at it. It really clicked for me. Imagine you have a car, right, and its internal

alarm system is just completely out of whack. A single leaf falls on the windshield and suddenly the alarm is just blaring. Wakes the whole neighborhood up. Exactly. The lights are flashing. The horn is honking. That is your brain when you try to say, "I can't make it to dinner." Yeah. Your internal alarm system is screaming that a burglar is breaking in. And your life is in danger. Even though all that happened was a leaf fell. You are perfectly safe. You are safe. But the alarm is real. I think that's what people miss. The physiological flood of cortisol and adrenaline flooding your system in that moment. That is very real. It feels terrible. It does. To

your nervous system. A disappointed boss or a frustrated friend triggers the exact same evolutionary response as a predator in the woods. Because, you know, loss of approval historically meant isolation from the tribe and isolation meant danger. Exactly. And because that physical sensation of the quote unquote alarm is so incredibly uncomfortable, we will do whatever it takes to turn it off. We say yes. We agree to do the project. We go to the dinner. We basically swallow our boundary just to make the dreadful panicked feeling stop, right? We avoid the perceived threat by abandoning ourselves. But the guide tackles the fallout of this head on. Like what actually happens to us and to our relationships when

we constantly swallow those boundaries just to keep the peace? It's not good. No, it's not. When you overaccommodate, you might successfully avoid the immediate anxiety of disappointing someone today, but you are essentially purchasing that temporary relief on credit. Oh, man. And the interest rate is pure resentment. Compound interest. Seriously. The source material hits us with a really powerful assertion here. It says, quote, "Resentment is the price of unsaid nos." It goes on to say that setting limits isn't selfish. It is actually the only way relationships stay real because otherwise you start feeling bitter toward the very people you were supposedly helping. You feel entirely consumed by their demands. You feel like they are taking advantage

of you. Exactly. But the really uncomfortable reality is well you never actually gave them the chance to respect a boundary because you never set one. Ouch. That is Yeah, that's a hard truth. The relationship isn't quote real because it's built on a heavily edited, endlessly compliant version of you. Okay, but wait, I'm struggling with this part. I want to push back on behalf of the listener. Go for it. If setting boundaries is supposedly the only way to keep relationships healthy and real, why do people get so incredibly offended when you finally start setting them? That is the big question, right? Like, shouldn't my friends and family be thrilled that I'm finally showing up authentically? If

boundaries are so good for the relationship, why does setting one usually start a huge fight? The clinical guide addresses this paradox beautifully? The hard truth is the people who get upset when you finally establish boundaries, well, they were actively benefiting from you not having them. Yeah, they were accustomed to a dynamic that required zero compromise on their part. So when you suddenly change the rules of engagement and ask for space or respect, they experience it as a massive loss of convenience. That makes so much sense. It's a loss of convenience for them. Right. And the crucial insight from the text is that their push back is absolutely not a reason for you to apologize. That

push back is simply information. It's data. Exactly. It's data telling you exactly what the foundation of that relationship was actually built on. like was it built on mutual respect or was built on your endless willingness to bend over backward? Once you have that data, you can start making conscious choices about who gets access to your time rather than reactive choices driven by that faulty car alarm in your nervous system. So, if our brain is naturally wired to panic in these situations, we need a new set of default instructions to override it. We do. We have to literally rewire the code. And the guide actually provides a sort of permissions list to help do exactly that.

It's literally giving you permission to do things that probably feel forbidden right now. I love this section. It's so good. For instance, the simple act of declining an invitation. You're allowed to do that. Leaving a text on read until tomorrow, which is so hard for so many people. It feels illegal, but you're allowed to disappoint someone whose disappointment used to feel like a literal threat. And that means acknowledging the past threat, but consciously choosing a completely different action in the present. That is the core of breaking the cycle. The guide also gives you permission to pick yourself even when picking yourself looks like a no to someone else. You are allowed to rest without having

to quote earn it first. That's a big one. Massive. You are allowed to have needs that occasionally inconvenience other people. You're allowed to change your mind. And my favorite, you are allowed to let the silence sit instead of rushing to fill it. The silence is incredibly potent. Sitting in that pregnant pause after you've declined a request. Um, that is where the real rewiring of the brain actually happens. And that brings up a brilliant analogy in the text regarding how we handle that silence. It gives you permission to say that doesn't work for me. Without giving a three paragraph explanation, yes, the overexlaining, right? Here's where it gets really interesting. When chronic overexplainers have to say

no, they draft an entire novel. It's like a lawyer presenting a defensive brief to a judge. Exactly. You frantically type, "I'm so sorry I can't come because my dog is sick and my car is making a weird noise and I have a headache and I promise I'm still a good person." You are basically trying to prove your innocence in the court of people pleasing. You really are. Because the overexlaining is just another manifestation of that survival strategy. You are trying to manage their reaction so perfectly that they won't be disappointed, thereby keeping yourself safe from the threat of rejection. You are handing the judge a mountain of evidence, hoping hoping they will grant you a

pardon for taking a night off. Exactly. A pardon for resting. The permission here is to drop the defense brief entirely. That doesn't work for me. Is a complete sentence. It is. But sitting in that pause after sending a short unvarnished no without rushing to fill it with all those justifications. Yeah, that is going to feel excruciatingly uncomfortable at first. Oh, the car alarm is going to blare loudly. Untangling this deeply ingrained response takes significant practice. It is definitely not a switch you just flipped because you heard a piece of good advice on a deep dive. If only, right? Your nervous system has spent decades operating under the assumption that compliance equals survival. And sheer willpower

usually isn't enough to fix a malfunctioning car alarm. You can't just tell yourself, "Stop panicking and expect the alarm to shut off." It doesn't work that way. The guide gets very specific about how professionals actually help patients rewire this threat response because it's not a character flaw we are dealing with. It is a structural loop. It is. And the source notes that this chronic overaccommodation is highly prevalent among high functioning individuals. Like we see it constantly in people in helping professions, healthcare, education, leadership roles, people who are objectively successful, objectively successful but internally just completely exhausted. The clinical work is explicitly not just learning to say no. Right. The behavior of saying yes is just

the symptom. Exactly. The behavior is downstream of a nervous system that has made a faulty equation. So effective therapy tackles the root cause using specific modalities. First they focus on building tolerance for the somatic meaning the physical discomfort of disappointing others. So this is essentially learning to sit in the driver's seat of the car while the alarm is blaring. You feel your chest tighten. You feel the sweat on your palms. A racing heart. Yeah. But instead of rushing to turn the alarm off by saying yes, you just sit there until your brain realizes the car isn't actually going to explode. Exactly. You literally teach the body that the alarm is a false alarm. Then the

text discusses utilizing internal family systems or IFS. I found this part so fascinating. It's incredible. And this isn't just clinical jargon. It's a profound way of viewing the mind as a system of different quote parts. In this context, a therapist helps you identify your protective parts. The bodyguards, right? The part of you that people pleases isn't weak. It is actually a fiercely loyal bodyguard that developed long ago, usually in childhood, to protect you from the intense pain of rejection or anger. That is incredibly compassionate. It takes all the shame right out of it. You aren't a quote pushover. You just have a bodyguard who is working major overtime. over time for years. And the therapist

helps you negotiate with that bodyguard. They might ask the bodyguard, "What are you afraid will happen if we say no to this favor?" And the bodyguard might answer, "If we say no, they will abandon us and we literally won't survive." Yes. Through IFS, the therapist helps update the bodyguard's understanding, showing it that you are now an adult with agency, not a helpless child who needs constant protection from disapproval. Another modality the guide breaks down is cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT combined with schema therapy. This is where you do the really deep cognitive work on the internalized rules you learned in your early environments because we all operate on hidden scripts or schemas. A really common

one for over accommodators is the rule. I am only lovable if I am useful. That's a heavy one. It's very common. Schema therapy forces you to look at that line of code, recognize that it was installed by an environment that demanded your usefulness and literally rewrite it to something like I have inherent worth even when I am resting. Then you actually practice that new code in the therapy room. The therapeutic relationship itself becomes a sort of safe laboratory. You get to practice setting boundaries with the therapist and experience what it feels like to receive a safe, non-punitive reaction, which is so healing. Having a professional guide you through the sematic panic, negotiate with those protective

parts, and rewrite your internal schemas is often the key to moving past just intellectual understanding into actual behavioral change. Yeah. And what makes this source material from coping and healing counseling so practical is that they actually apply these exact modalities with everyday people. This isn't just like abstract theory. CHC uses this specific clinical architecture, the IFS, the schema work, the sematic tolerance in their actual practice, right? And reducing barriers to this kind of specialized work is crucial because navigating a malfunctioning nervous system is rarely something someone can do successfully in total isolation. Totally. The logistical details in the nose are fantastic for that very reason. CHC operates as a completely high pay compliant teleaalth practice

and they serve all 159 counties in Georgia which is incredible for access. It really is. So no matter where you are in the state, you have access to a diverse culturally competent team of over 15 licensed therapists like LCSWS, LPC's, LMFTs, a whole range of professionals, right? and they work with individuals, couples, families, and teens from age 13 up, covering exactly what we've been discussing today, alongside things like anxiety, trauma, PTSD, grief, relationships, and chronic stress. What really stands out in the guides practical application section is that emphasis on making this deep clinical work accessible. Accessibility is huge here. CHC accepts Medicaid with a $0 copay, which is amazing. It breaks down a massive barrier

to entry. They also take Etna, Sigma, Blue Cross Blue Shield, United Healthcare, and Humanana, which usually means sessions are around $30 to $40. It makes it highly attainable for people wanting to start untangling their survival strategies because getting help shouldn't be another source of stress. Exactly. Listeners in Georgia can reach them directly at 404-8320102 or, you know, through their website at cheats theapy.com or by emailing support theapy.com. If we connect this to the bigger picture, as the guide bluntly puts it to the reader, this work is slow. It is deeply uncomfortable. It's not an overnight fix. No, but the transition from compliance to authenticity is literally the only way to build a life that actually

belongs to you rather than a life that is merely a series of reactions to everyone else's demands. Your peace is worth the temporary discomfort of someone else's disappointment. You do not have to keep abandoning yourself just to keep other people comfortable. Setting the boundary is really just the beginning. Toler reading the reaction to the boundary. That is the actual work. As we wrap up this deep dive, I want to leave you with one final slightly provocative thought to mull over based on everything we've unpacked today. We talked earlier about how people might get angry when you finally set a limit. The push back, right? The push back. I want you to think about the last

time that happened to you. Think about the person who pushed back and got offended. Were they actually mourning a real rift in a deeply connected relationship? Oh, this is a great question. Or if we look closely at the data, were they just mourning the loss of the free services you used to provide? Wow, that question completely changes how you view the fallout of a boundary. It really changes the math, doesn't it? Thank you so much for joining us for this deep dive. Take a deep breath today. Put the defensive lawyer brief away and maybe just maybe try leaving a few texts on Reed tonight. Highly recommend it. We'll catch you next time.