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A podcast on Native American resilience through and beyond trauma… exploring concepts, science, history, culture, stories and practices that we are working with as we seek to shape a future for our children and our grandchildren that is defined not by what we have suffered, but what we have overcome. This podcast explores NEAR Science, Historical Trauma, and ways Indigenous communities and individuals in Minnesota are creating and Remembering Resilience.
In season 1, podcast series hosts David Cournoyer, Susan Beaulieu and Linsey McMurrin share stories of this project and of ways community members and others are “Remembering Resilience.”
In season 2, podcast series hosts Susan Beaulieu, Briana Matrious and Linsey McMurrin continue to explore stories of collective and individual healing and how our communities continue on their journeys of “Remembering Resilience.”
Now that you’ve listened to us, we want to hear from you. Please fill out our brief survey by going to surveymonkey.com/r/podcastRR.
Susan Beaulieu:
Welcome to Season 3, Episode 2 of Remembering Resilience.
Boozhoo, Niigaani-Binesii ikwe nindizhinikaaz. Miigizii nindoodem. Miskwaagamiwizaaga’igan nindoonjibaa.
(Hello, my name is Leading Thunderbird Woman. My clan is the Eagle. I’m from Red Lake.)
My name is Susan Beaulieu and I'm a citizen of the Red Lake Nation in Northern Minnesota. I'm a mother of four and live in central Minnesota with my family. I'm currently the Healing Justice Director at NDN Collective, an indigenous-led organization dedicated to building indigenous power to create sustainable solutions on indigenous terms. I'm really grateful to continue supporting the Remembering Resilience podcast this season and look forward to having this conversation today with my co-host, Briana Matrious. Through this work, we aim to lift up the importance of our traditional ways of knowing and being, the invaluable wisdom that comes from us both individually and collectively as indigenous community members.
Briana Matrious: 00:01:27
Boozhoo, Naawaah comigookwe indizhinikaaz. Name indoodem. Aazhoomoog indoonjibaa.
Hello, everyone. My name is Briana Matrious and I'm an enrolled member of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. I'm a part of the American Indian Resource and Resiliency Team with the University of Minnesota Extension and work as a tribal community facilitator. I currently reside in the urban area, but I'm still very much a part of my hometown, which is located in Pine County. I'm passionate about helping people to understand the impacts of trauma in our communities and how to bring awareness to healing individually and collectively. Today's topic: boundaries.
Susan Beaulieu:
So I really want to preface this conversation that we're going to have, Briana, with letting folks know that we are in no way, shape or form experts in boundaries. This is very much something that's newer to us in our own healing journeys that's been coming up a lot more in the last year or two for both of us. And in this process we're learning what are boundaries? How do you set and maintain healthy boundaries? And I think as we've begun experimenting with some of that, we've begun to understand the importance of it. So we wanted to bring that up and talk about that topic today.
The other thing that I want to mention is that this topic of boundaries really connects to the first episode that we did on attachment and when Gabor Maté, who we referenced, talking about that tension as children between attachment and authenticity. And, as children, how we always end up choosing attachment as a survival mechanism and therefore pushing down or repressing our authenticity. And boundaries are very much connected to our authenticity, which we'll talk about more and explore in this episode today. Let's kick off this conversation with a question. So, Briana, I'm wondering, as you've begun to explore boundaries, tell us a bit about what they are and when did you first begin to realize setting boundaries was important for creating healthy relationships?
Briana Matrious:
Thank you, Susan. Yeah, I think for me, boundaries are sort of like the rules and limits we set forth for ourselves. I think it's about being able to say no to things based on our thoughts and feelings and what we allow in our lives and what we don't want in our lives. All of that can be really difficult to do when we don't understand what healthy boundaries are. I started to learn about boundaries and what they actually mean to me during the pandemic. And I think a lot of people were also experiencing a major shift. But one of the things that I was going through during the pandemic was the loss of a 16-year relationship, right before lockdown hit. And just like with any major shifts in our life, we get to a point where we realize some really, really important things. And for me, I was realizing all the ways I sort of betrayed myself and lost myself within that relationship.
And so one of the things I knew I needed to do was to get really clear about what this next chapter of my life was going to be about and really try to create some healthy boundaries because I knew that I never wanted to go back to the way I was within that relationship. I lost myself. And I really appreciated the disclaimer in the very beginning, Susan, because, you know, we aren't experts in boundaries and we aren't professionals in boundary-making or anything like that, which is why we wanted to talk about this. When we don't have boundaries in place, we can do a lot of people-pleasing. And, looking back on that relationship, I was realizing how exhausting that is. I think the world does a great job at making sure that we're not doing enough in our life, making us feel that we should always be doing things for others.
And I know that's a part of who we are as indigenous people, but there's not enough emphasis on making sure that we're being taken care of and that it's okay to rest at times and it's okay to slow down and it's okay to take care of ourselves. And that was a big realization for me was that I wasn't taking care of myself, and then all of my energy went into other people to ensure that they were okay in their life. And I now have a different perspective on that. That major shift in my life has allowed me to learn some beautiful lessons.
Susan Beaulieu:
I think collectively, as indigenous people, setting boundaries is especially hard because we've sort of been taught to always give, to be generous with our time, with our resources, to help family out. Right? And one of the things that really began to shift for me out of that mindset of just give, give, give and don't ask questions was starting to understand that sometimes the ways that I was giving actually caused more harm. I wasn't helping. I was enabling. I was keeping people from like stepping into their own power or, you know, when we do things for others that they can do for themselves, that creates a dependency. Right? And so I think we don't intend to do that when we give, give, give, give, but when we don't set those boundaries and we don't check in with ourselves and say, "Do I actually have the energy right now to do this for this person or to give in this way? And if I don't have the energy, what is the cost of that? Both to myself, my own physical, mental, emotional health and wellbeing, but also the cost to the relationship, the resentment that might build up because I'm saying yes to things that I don't have the energy for. And so I'm moving from a place of deficit." I feel like in our communities in particular, this idea of martyring yourself and just giving to the point of nothing is, in a lot of ways, held up on a pedestal. But when we do that, especially when those around us are not healthy and well, we can actually end up completely depleting ourselves to the point where we actually aren't giving anything that promotes the wellbeing of others or ourselves.
Briana Matrious:
I also think of boundaries as energy and really being able to think about who has access to my energy and who doesn't and who I don't want to have access to my energy. What are the energies that I want to allow in my life and what don't I? And I think about all of the energies that are out there and how challenging they can be to navigate around and really allowing ourselves to make decisions about what comes into our life. What are those things you need to protect yourself from? What boundaries do you need to have in place in order to keep your mind, your body, and your spirit safe? And when we can honor those boundaries, there can definitely be a beautiful sense of safety there.
Susan Beaulieu:
Definitely. I think you touched on a really important piece, which is that boundaries help us to create a sense of safety in the relationship, and ultimately, all of that helps to create a deeper connection. So I think one of the myths of setting boundaries is that it can be damaging to others and to the relationship, but actually, healthy boundaries helps us to create deeper connection, and it also helps to keep us in a space of honoring ourselves and what we need. So I think that's really important.
Briana Matrious:
So let me ask you, Susan, what are standards and why are they important?
Susan Beaulieu:
I feel like standards are very much connected to boundaries. So what are my expectations? Like you were talking about, what do I think is important? What do I value? And those standards then help us to know what the boundary is without understanding what's important to us? What do we value? What are our expectations in a relationship? How are we going to do conflict because conflict's inevitable. It's going to happen. How do I want to be supported? All of that. Without knowing that, we're just setting up an arbitrary boundary to try to keep others out. It really doesn't have anything to do with who we are or what we want. It's just to keep others out.
So, to me, I see that as more like a trauma response versus when we can really tune back into ourselves, what do our bodies need? What do our hearts need? What do our minds need? What do our spirits need? How can relationships help support that? Because we were built and designed to be in relationship with each other. So when we can understand that and then articulate it to others, then we're moving from that greater place of authenticity. So we're shifting out of those childhood defaults of attachment over authenticity, and we're stepping back into our authentic self to say, "Who am I? What's important to me? And then based on who I am, who and how do I want to be in connection with people?" Rather than, "I'll take connection any way I can get it."
And as children, again, we need to do that for survival, but as adults, as you mentioned, we have the ability to be more intentional with that. “Who do I want to allow into my space? When I spend time with somebody and they leave, do I feel refreshed and energized, or do I feel depleted and exhausted and resentful or whatever it might be?” So beginning to tune into how we feel after we have interactions with people and is there a pattern there? If there's a pattern of always feeling exhausted or resentful or whatever, that's probably a good indication that a standard isn't being met and that a boundary needs to be in place if that relationship is one that you want to continue and continue in a healthy way. So I think that standards are really, really essential because without them, we can't set authentic, healthy boundaries.
In this podcast, we talk a lot about the impacts of trauma. And so I'm wondering, Briana, what do you see as the impacts of trauma on our ability to set boundaries and articulate our standards?
Briana Matrious:
Well, we know that trauma disconnects us from ourselves. And when we don't have the skills to connect back into ourselves, unfortunately we remain disconnected. And it's hard to know what we want or what we need when we're disconnected. And then of course, to be able to communicate what our needs are and what we want in our life can be very challenging and almost impossible. And it's our responsibility to find ways to connect back into ourself. And when we can do that, we can connect back into others, into the environment, into spirit, into many things. I think about the disconnection that this entire world is experiencing and how it does such a great job at disconnecting us from the things that are really important.
As indigenous people, it's really, really important for us not to only connect back into ourselves, but also to connect into spirit and connect into the land and to connect into our food, et cetera. But the one big part, of course, is ourself, really being able to allow us to feel and to connect back into our bodies. And when we can allow that to happen, everything gets to be a little bit more clear for us.
Susan Beaulieu:
I think one of the challenges is that a lot of times our trauma responses have created patterned coping mechanisms for dealing with conflict or difficult people or a lack of a felt sense of safety. So when we think about some of those stress responses that we might have, fight or flight or those coping mechanisms we might have adopted, like fawning or people-pleasing, you had mentioned that earlier, I think it's really important to pause and recognize when boundaries are really hard for us to set, to get curious. “Why is that? What's underneath that? What belief makes it hard for us to take care of ourselves, to believe that we are worth being in healthy relationships, that our needs are worth saying and being heard and that we're worth being seen by another person, truly seen?”
And so sometimes with people who have more of a fight or a flight response, they might go the opposite way where they maybe set up too many boundaries, and they're super-rigid in their boundaries, and it really is about keeping other people out. Like, "Well, forget that person." You just write them off. You set up a boundary, be like, "I'm done with them," Those aren't the kind of boundaries that we're talking about. You can have the same outcome, which would be setting boundaries, but the way that you get there, the energy with which you do that, set that boundary, matters. So, if I set the boundary when I am from a place of anger or resentment or fear, that boundary then becomes a wall.
Briana Matrious:
When I think about rigidity and the feeling of rigidity, I think about the constriction and what it does to our bodies. Where do we feel that rigidity or that constriction throughout our bodies? And I think about, when that happens, we armor up, we close ourself off to the world. And when we do that, we also close off to the connection that is good, the connection that we all need, that we're all wanting. And so nothing can come in and nothing can go out when we're so rigid and when we're so constricted. It's really difficult to be flexible in that way. So when I think about new teachings, new learnings, new perspectives, new ways of thinking, all of that can't come in. And then when we go to communicate and articulate and say the things that we need, it's really difficult. So we become rigid.
Susan Beaulieu:
Dr. Dan Siegel is someone that I've talked a lot about, and his work is really fantastic, and he talks a lot about that, how rigidity comes from that place of trauma. It's this or that, black or white. And how that sense of constriction and being closed off is very much a protection mechanism, a trauma response. And so flexibility is the opposite of that, that ability to be open, to be able to expand, to stay curious, and that takes practice and work when our patterning and conditioning has been self-preservation and protection. So having boundaries that are too rigid is the other extreme of it where we don't allow ourselves to just continue to tune in. In a relationship or over time, what's changed? What's shifted? Because this is the other thing I think sometimes that can get tricky with boundaries is that people change. Boundaries are something that requires a continual tuning in. And does this still hold? Is this still important? Has something changed or shifted?
And so this is something too, that I'm not an expert in, but I've been thinking a lot more about is often it's hard for us to distinguish between if there's actual safety or not, because the default mode, the unconscious default is there's not safety. And so there's that dance between the two. And this is the thing is not everybody is safe to be authentic and vulnerable with. Is safety there or not? If it's not, then it's good to have a boundary up. Again, not a wall to necessarily keep others out, but rather a boundary up. And so that's where, again, that coming into the present moment, being really tuned into and attuned to the other, which we talked some about in the first episode, the power of attunement, being able to connect in and notice what's happening with another and doing that in the present moment rather than relying on the prediction brain, which is going from past experiences, past relationships, and that can get us into a lot of trouble.
And so that ability to get present, to tune in, to notice, “Is there safety here in this relationship or not? And if there is, can we allow ourselves to speak our truth, to express our needs, to be a little more open and vulnerable?” I know I've talked about this in other episodes, but my relationship with you is the first relationship that I had where I really felt a holistic sense of safety. It was like, "Oh my gosh, this is what physical, mental, emotional, spiritual safety feels like?" I hadn't had that before.
Briana Matrious:
Well, Susan, I really appreciate you saying that, and I want you to know that I appreciate our friendship and our relationship. We have really created safety within our friendship that has allowed for a secure attachment to happen between us, which then of course, allows for both of us to truly have authenticity to be true to our authentic selves. And I just want to share that because it really is priceless, and honestly, I didn't even think that was possible. So I appreciate and I thank you for saying that.
I think that just because we have boundaries doesn't mean that it's going to keep us safe forever, that we truly are going to be free and clear of pain, and that if we put enough walls up, that we're good. As human beings, we are all wired for connection, and sometimes we really have to examine our boundaries and those walls that we put up. Are these boundaries that we have in place, are they helping or hurting us? Boundaries are necessary, and yet, if we put too many up, they can actually be harmful to us as well. We still want to be connected with others, whether we know it or not.
Susan Beaulieu:
I think it goes back to the balance of and the importance of attachment and authenticity that, really, both of those are deep needs that we have. It makes me think about the deep desire we all have to be truly seen as we are without masks, without pretense, without all of this stuff that comes along with all of the experiences that we've had and the ways we've had to cope or adjust ourselves or whatever it is just to truly be seen. My understanding of healing and my journey of healing has been that reconnection and that reintroduction to myself, to who I am without all the coping mechanisms, without all of the beliefs that were put on me by family or society or whatever. It was the ways that my young child self made sense of what was happening. So without all of those things, healing is about reconnecting to that core, that essence of who we are, and healthy boundaries require that we tune back into that.
So boundaries are very much a part of the healing journey and of honoring ourselves and honoring others. I wish I could remember the quote exactly, but the essence of it was we teach people how to treat us. And when I think about even being in relationship or being a mother, we can either unconsciously perpetuate unhealthy relationships and patterns, or we can consciously and intentionally decide how we want to show up in relationships and how we want to be treated within relationships. And, to me, I'm really excited about continuing to explore connecting to my authentic self, figuring out what I want relationships to look like, how I want conflict to happen, how I want to talk about difficult things, and to be able to create and model these healthier patterns, these healthier ways of being in relationship that really stem from when we're connected to our authentic self.
Briana Matrious:
What I love about these podcasts is that it brings more awareness to some of the things that really isn't talked a whole lot about within our communities, within our families, and maybe even in our relationships. As you were talking, Susan, it's a good reminder for me as well to really sit back and to think about my own boundaries again, and going back and reflecting on my own stuff and making sure that I'm doing the right things that I need to do in order to reinforce these boundaries, to really check in with myself. “Is there anything that I need to adjust? Do I need to enforce more boundaries? Are these boundaries benefiting me or are they hurting me or are they helping me?” So I really appreciate this topic because it's allowing me to reflect on my own stuff. Boundaries are definitely one topic I will continue to work on probably for the rest of my life.
Susan Beaulieu:
This journey of healing and setting boundaries is not an easy one, but the more that we do it, the more powerfully we're able to show up in this world and model things like healthy relationships and actually be in healthy relationships, which I know many of us crave because we were wired for connection.
Briana Matrious:
I think just that, my last comments would be to say that for many years I wasn't clear about who I was. I wasn't clear about the partners I wanted in my life. I wasn't clear about my values. I wasn't clear about how I truly wanted to show up in this world, and it feels really good to be at a point in my life where if somebody asks me, "What do you want in this life? What do you want in your next relationship? How do I want to show up in this world? How do I want to show up for others? What are my values?” It feels really good to be able to have answers for that now. And I think that, when we can get quiet enough and when we can look at ourselves in the mirror and have those hard conversations with ourselves, we can get those answers. And, when we can get really clear, we can start manifesting all the good things that we want to have in our life. So I think silence and getting quiet is really helpful for us to understand ourselves.
And so with that being said, I want to thank you, Susan, for always allowing your wisdom and your knowledge to come through with these conversations. I appreciate working together on this podcast. I appreciate our friendship and more to come.
Chi Miigwetch
This has been Season Three, Episode Two of Remembering Resilience, a podcast on Native resilience through and beyond trauma. Today's episode was hosted by Susan Beaulieu and myself, Briana Matrious. Season 3 of Remembering Resilience was created and led by Susan Beaulieu, Lindsey McMurrin, Deanna Drift, and myself, Briana Matrious. You can find the full Remembering Resilience podcast series at rememberingresilience.home.blog. You can also listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Audible and elsewhere. This podcast is developed through a Health POWER project at FamilyWise Services with support from the University of Minnesota Extension and the Center for Prevention at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota. Sound design for Season 3 was done by Kalen Keir, and Sadie Luetmer contributed additional producing.
Kalen Keir:
A big thanks to all of the artists who've contributed music to Remembering Resilience. This episode features tracks by Wade Fernandez, Leah Lemm and Molecular Machine, and additional compositions by Kalen Keir. Season Three’s intro theme features “The Calling” by Corey Medina.