Episode 33: Boundaries and Expectations
HANNAH: Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Friends Missing Friends. Today I talked to Dr. Jessica Metcalfe. Her book on burnout and imposter syndrome “Speak Kindly, You’re Listening,” came out in November 2022. That book is all about how we speak to ourselves, and the importance of the words we use. During this conversation, she talked about her experience grieving a friend, and at one point I mentioned how I hate the phrase “moving on” and prefer “moving forward” when it comes to grieving, and then I said “But why does it matter? They’re just words!!” And she stopped me, and reminded me that saying “they’re just words,” is discounting my feelings, and words actually DO matter; they allow us to embrace and process our emotions, in every situation, including with grief.
I was fascinated by our conversation; I hope you get something out of it too.
JESSICA: So he was my high school friend; so I went to a different high school from my elementary school friends. And so when we all hung out together, he was he was one of the guys who ended up hanging out with them. So that's how I ended up getting to know the extension of their friends from their high school. And one of my good friends at the time, she had her Debut, which is when you turn 18 in the Filipino culture; it's kind of like a Quinceañera and he had hosted us at his house for like the after party. And like, not long afterwards.
HANNAH: And you said it was it later that day, was it days later?
JESSICA: It was like a couple of weeks later. When it happened. I’m trying to remember the specifics. It was he was leaving a friend's house like early in the morning after, like a party. And what they had said was he potentially reached down, like something had fallen like a CD or something, and he went to go pick it up in the passenger side and went off the road.
HANNAH: Oh my gosh. So sad. How did you as a friend group, find out?
JESSICA: So his parents ended up calling my friends and then it just moved through the friend group where describing what ended up happening. And that was…I remember when I got the news. And again, you just think, you're like, I just saw you like a couple of weeks ago. Right? And so it's one of those moments where you then start playing scenes out. And then you start thinking about the people who were so close to him and like one of my friends who had a crush on him and it's really fascinating to watch people around you and see their response, and not necessarily know at 18 what those heavy emotions are.
Now growing up in my family, because my extended family is quite large to begin with, death to me was very familiar. So going to funerals and stuff and my parents never shied away from not taking us, so we were always there. So and part of our family is like open caskets and all of that stuff. And so going to the actual funeral itself was just kind of a part of the norm for me. It was one of those where, okay, you go you pay your respect. This is what you do. Like I had gotten so used to things just being very robotic when it comes to funerals, and it wasn't until a couple years later when my cousin passed away that funerals started to change for me.
So in that moment, like the thoughts that go through my mind are okay, what do we need to do? What do we need to wear? How do we pay respect to you, like you're just going through that specific process, and you're not actually grieving necessarily in the moment, especially for me where I feel uncomfortable grieving with others. And so it's easier for me to just come home and manage those emotions and then process what just went down.
HANNAH: Oh, interesting. Yeah. curious to hear more about that. Like how you don't like to grieve around other people. Is it just too vulnerable or it feels strange?
JESSICA: Yeah, yeah. So growing up that was something that, emotions were not something that we shared very openly and this comes from both sides of my family. And so it's fascinating when I even experience my own emotions at times I have to give myself permission to be like, it's okay to cry and it's okay to be angry and it's okay to feel all the feels as one should, because it's all a part of the human experience. And so from a grieving perspective, it's very challenging for me to open that door, trust someone enough to be that vulnerable to me; that's actually me being at my most vulnerable is when I can open up and shed tears in front of people.
HANNAH: Did you and your friend group grieve together in any way or did it kind of bring you apart or closer together?
JESSICA: So reflecting back there was moments in time when we had gotten together afterwards where we were in disbelief. And, even months later, sitting on the outside, having processed it from my perspective. And so witnessing how my friends were processing it you would see it still come up. And I don't think it pushed us apart. I don't think we necessarily talked about it as much. And now knowing how much of a sensitive person I am, being that highly sensitive person and not realizing that that's what I was for a very long time. I don't think we just talked about it in society, whatever that meant. So I was always the person where I felt like I needed to suck it up. And so being in front of friends, and when they were sharing, I felt like I could be that person to them, which is probably one of the reasons why I ended up getting into coaching now too, is because I want to be that safe space for people to share what's going on in their life, because they feel too vulnerable to share with others.
And so being that person in sitting with my friends and trying to figure out, okay how do we navigate these heavy emotions as 18-year-olds, navigating what life actually means at that age, because I feel like—and this even holds true for when I was in undergrad—you end up feeling invincible or that you have so much time left in your life. And then there's certain glimpses that come into fruition where you're just like, oh man, life is short, and I need to really pay attention to it, or what does this mean for me? And those are some really big questions that at times I don't think we allow ourselves to answer.
HANNAH: I think you're right. I think sometimes it takes a really shocking horrible tragedy for us to stop and sometimes even say, Wait, do I even like the life I'm living? That's one of the many, many things that come from tragedy. I think it kind of just like reassesses and sometimes it can make your life take a really sharp turn, because of that kind of sudden realization. So yeah, I absolutely agree with that. Are you still in touch with this group of friends?
JESSICA: It's interesting. Just in the past year and a half, COVID actually had us drift apart a little bit. And so no, we're not in touch with them anymore. But we had remained friends up until COVID. And way long after the passing of that individual and it's interesting to look back, I don't remember the last time that it was. And I don't know if it's just because, again, those weren't the spaces that people felt comfortable enough as we got older to bring up what had happened.
Because I know for me, the way that death tends to affect me in general, is I'll still have those glimpses and reminders every once in a while and feel this like full body sadness. And when you're trying to navigate those emotions, you have to give yourself the opportunity to process them. And they can just come up randomly, like, even death of whether it's family members or a relative at a distance or you hear something through someone. Like I even remember when Paul Walker passed away and how that affected me because I remember one of my first dates in like grade 10 that I had gone on was going to watch Fast and Furious with this person. Paul Walker was like a huge part of my teenage years. And so like, there's just those connections at times that you don't realize how they're going to affect you. Because there's a seed that was planted at some point in time and you've created a value associated with it. And so, navigating those emotions, we have to make sure we give ourselves the permission to be able to accept them for what they are when they come up. Even years and decades later.
HANNAH: Yeah, yeah. Because sometimes those feelings can kind of sit for, like you said, decades and it's not that you forget about the person but it's like sometimes even new or deeper feelings can come up later. It's so interesting. Was there any support whether it was individual or group that you wish you had gotten after this happened?
JESSICA: I wish that we had felt more comfortable talking about it more, whatever that looked like. Like sometimes and I know again, everyone grieves very differently, but I'm the type of person who needs to process it and not stew in my thoughts at the same time. And so the way that I prefer to process is speaking out loud with some people, but sometimes I need to process more than once because those emotions feel so heavy. And I think that because I've really stepped into embracing the sensitive person that I am and all the emotions, the array of emotions that come with it. I don't know how other people will react at times. And so going back I think as that late teenage woman, I didn't know how to ask for what I needed at that point in time for fear of judgment.
HANNAH: Yeah. That hits hard. that is so hard to do. I also didn't know how to do that. In my around, I guess sort of around the same age, early 20s. I think I'm still learning how, I feel like it was even recently that I learned that that was even a thing. I was like, people aren't just supposed to give me the right kind of support right away without me asking?
JESSICA: You're supposed to know, how do you not!
HANNAH: How can you not read my mind?
JESSICA: It's like how do you not know that this is how I want you to ask me those questions or hug me or whatever it is, but you really do have to share with people how you want to be nurtured.
HANNAH: Yeah, and it makes me so sad that you all weren't able to talk as much as you wished you did. And I don't know, I just feel like that's really sadly common. That sometimes it's just so hard to talk about it that people just don't, and I feel like that kind of makes it fester more. I mean, I think there's something to be said for really opening up and talking about it. Even though it can be hard to know what to say, like what do you even say, you know, but even saying like “I am so shocked,” like “my just like my world is upside down,” like even saying that? Yeah, it's like maybe people's instinct is to carry on as normal as possible. I don't know.
JESSICA: I think that's a huge part of it. Because I think that just like we need to ask how we want to be nurtured, the same holds true for other people, too. So for other people, their coping mechanism might be that, “No, I can't talk about it. I need to manage my own emotions on my own.” And so that's where it's giving everyone the permission to figure out, okay, how do you need to manage those emotions and how do you communicate with someone that this is what you need versus this is what they need? And that's really hard if a friend group doesn't create that safe space, or there's never been a reason to necessarily talk about those things in the past because no one's been affected on a common level like that. And so, I think that you pick certain friend groups to be able to share certain aspects of your life with and it may not be that every friend group is the right friend group to ask for what you need.
HANNAH: Yeah, it's like sometimes also you have to search elsewhere for the support, which can be so hard because it's like, you want to get the support from the mutual friends and family, or at least I do, I don't know. I want the support and the nurturing from people who knew her or knew him, the person who passed. But sometimes you also got to look elsewhere and like, find it with strangers or other friends who didn't know this person at all. And sometimes that can be frustrating because you're like, I just want you to be like, “yeah, he was so funny,” right? And just share a shared memory, but you can't and then it kind of feels a little disconnected.What are your feelings on that?
JESSICA: Yeah, it depends on who you trust with those emotions. Because sometimes it's a commonality where that's what you need. And you get to share stories about this person with those individuals. But then sometimes it's, and let me clarify this, when I need someone else who's “stronger than me” in that moment—and not that having emotions are being weak. It's just I feel like I need someone else's strength. Whether that's mental or physical and emotional in that moment in time. So let me clarify that again: emotions are not weak. But in that moment, I feel like I need someone else to be able to take the reins and comfort me, and so in asking for what I need from whomever it is at that point, whether it's a loved one, a partner, close friend, the friend group itself. I have to know that I'm going to be able to walk away from that not being destroyed even more so than what I am right now. Otherwise, then that's when I just retreat and I'm like, Okay, well, I can figure this out on my own. And that I find it makes a huge difference for me and then I know, I can then offer that to someone else as well when they're in their deepest, darkest hole, because I don't think anyone's meant to grieve on their own. We all grieve in very different ways, at different times, even sometimes years later, but it's giving ourselves the permission to know that okay, when it does come up, I can ask for what I do need.
HANNAH: Man I love that so much. And I feel like I might even start asking friends and family even like a pre-emptive question where I'm like, one day I’m gonna tell you what I need, is that okay? So that later when I have something I need they won’t be like surprised.
JESSICA: Yeah, yeah, it's so fascinating. So this is totally a tangent, but my mom and I's relationship is I've been a parent for a good portion of my life to my mom. But there was a moment in time where, this was years ago, had to have been like five, six years ago at this point in time. And I was having the shittiest day and week and the people who I usually would go to were busy, but I could not shake this like really deep, heavy emotion. So my mom is not someone that I go to for that but just because of our relationship in general and that dynamic. But in that moment in time, I remember getting to the kitchen table, sitting in front of her and saying, “Hey, I need you to put on the mom hat. And this is what I need from you.” And I saw her facial expression change and she was like, “okay,” and I shared what I was feeling at that point in time. And that's when I started to realize that I can't expect, again going back to like, people just assuming they know how to take care of you or what you need. You have to be direct and you have to ask for what you need. And what you want in that moment in time as support.
So sometimes you try, and so for instance, if my mom's reaction didn't change the way that she did, and I didn't feel like I got what I needed, then that's when I would put it on pause and then go and find the next person who I trust with that matter. And so it's giving yourself the opportunity to recognize not everyone's going to be a great listener, and not everyone's gonna be the right listener for what you're bringing to them.
HANNAH: So true, and I'm not gonna lie, this is something I've learned very recently. Not everyone has to do everything. And I would get frustrated if a friend or family member were maybe good at giving advice, but really bad at listening, for example.
Maybe people have different love languages. People have different ways of supporting and I just kind of navigate around that and be like, okay, this person is really good at listening. This person is really good at giving advice, this person is really good at whatever, because I sure as hell don't do everything either. Right.
JESSICA: It's funny, I had come across, I think I heard it from Brooke Castillo first. She owns the Life Coach School. And she had we write manuals for other people in our lives. So like we have a manual for our best friend. We have a manual for our sister. We have a manual for our parents. We have manual for our partner—but we don't actually give them the manual. So our expectations are that, well, you should already have a copy of it and you should have read it and these are my expectations of you and this is how I want you to show up. But if we don't tell them what we are looking for, how are they supposed to know?
And Brené Brown talks about this in her most recent book where she was talking about her and her partner. And initially, her birthday was a huge thing that they celebrated within her family, but when she was with her partner he didn't know that that's what they did. And so he just did something that was like really small, because he didn't know anything otherwise, that's the way that he had celebrated birthdays his entire life. So how was he supposed to know, right? And so it's fascinating when we think back to the expectations that we not just put on ourselves, but that we put on others but we don't communicate them to them.
HANNAH: Yep. Boundaries. Oh, yeah. If you have a boundary you gotta set that boundary. You can't like draw the line in your mind and it'd be like, How dare you…
JESSICA: Right. And those are two key aspects. When it comes to taking care of yourself, as well as how you want others to show up or how you get to show up with others are setting expectations and setting boundaries. And they're going to be different and they're going to be challenging, so it really comes down to, and I realized I simplified it, like you wouldn't believe to two words: boundaries and expectations. But that's exactly what it is, it's how do we choose to grieve loss and the expectation and pressure that we put on ourselves? How do we expect someone to respond when we're grieving? And then the boundary that goes into place being like, “hey, I need my alone time” or “No, I need you here for me.” Right? Like those are the complex aspects of it, but it all comes down to expectations and boundaries.
HANNAH: Absolutely, yeah. And I think I'm going to be more aware too of other people and maybe even ask them if they didn't put it forth, “what do you need from me right now??
JESSICA: Exactly. Exactly.
HANNAH: Because it's also nice to take that burden off them to have to set that.
JESSICA: 100%. I wrote a blog post on this, on how to be a good listener. And it was exactly on that where you are the person who needs to share with someone else and you need to vent it's asking that person if they have the capacity to be able to listen, but the same holds true when someone comes to you. If you're the type of person, because I know me, I'm the type person where I'm always looking for, okay, this person is looking for a solution and how do we find that and how do we work, but not everyone wants the solution. Some people just want to be able to share what they're experiencing in those emotions. So you as the listener, if you're starting to feel overwhelmed because you're trying to search for a solution, but you don't know what this person wants, you get to also step into that conversation and say, “Hey, how can I help you in this situation? How can I be the best support for you? Do you want me to try to find a solution or an answer to what you're thinking about? Or do you want me to listen?” And when you offer that the first couple of times that you do that it may feel a little bit awkward, but it sets a precedent of, okay, now I get to take the pressure off looking for solution, because my friend who's sitting in front of me right now just wants me to hear them.
HANNAH: Yeah, I just thinking back to 23-year-old me and the state of mind I was in shortly after the loss and remembering how incredibly overwhelming that was. And the tricky thing is that I was so overwhelmed, I didn't even know what I needed or wanted. And it was such a shock. I've never dealt with anything like that before that I didn't have prior experience to know either. And so I just remember my mom and my sister called a couple times a day, every day for several days to check in on me. And part of me was kind of frustrated because I couldn't even really talk. I was so distraught. I would answer the phone and we’d just sit on the phone. I'm like, “I can't say anything right now.” And then when they stopped calling, I was like, “What do you just assume I'm okay now?” Like, “why would you stop calling?” So both felt frustrating. And I kind of convinced myself “oh, it must be because nothing can be done.” And so that particular situation made me feel very helpless like, “oh no, one can do anything to make me feel better.” Like everything will feel lacking in some way. So I guess I just want to presence that that's sometimes the case too, especially if you're in the tornado of it.
JESSICA: Oh, yeah. You don't know what you need at that point. And that's where you can totally get cynical and irritable towards people who are reaching out to you. And that's when again, you can communicate that to them saying, “Hey, I don't know what I need. I don't know what I'm feeling right now.” It's using words like being in a tornado. I use the word molasses, because that's what I find my sadness feels like, it's like moving through molasses. And that's okay.
HANNAH: It's so important to hear that because these are things I think a lot of people don't know. And I certainly didn't know them. It's not something we really teach people.
JESSICA: No, definitely not. This is why I teach self-intelligence now.
HANNAH: I learned about hieroglyphics in second grade. You know all these things, but we did not learn about self-intelligence.
JESSICA: Right? Which I think is something that's massive because it's like, we've diminished what we're supposed to be experiencing and I know again, coming from part of my family growing up where we just don't express their emotions and just like, put that down. Just keep going. Like that's it. I can understand that that serves a purpose in certain times or at certain moments, but those emotions when they're strong, and when you feel them strong, you got to give them an outlet, otherwise, them just being bottled up, whether that's excitement, or grief, or sadness or anger, you have to give yourself the opportunity to embrace them. So then they don't get stuck inside your body.
HANNAH: They literally do get stuck inside the body, the Body Keeps the Score.
JESSICA: Body Keeps the Score. Funny that you say that…[holds up the book]
HANNAH: Oh my god you have it right next to you? What? That’s crazy!
JESSICA: So funny, so funny.
HANNAH: Are you reading it right now or something?
JESSICA: So actually I use it as going back and looking at textbooks. Textbook are great, but some of like the most amazing people have written novels with like science literature on understanding what's going on. So that is one in particular that I reference when it comes to connecting your mindset to your bodyset and understanding how stress and anxiousness comes up and then embracing it, so then again, it doesn't stay stuck. Same thing, I've got another one that honestly you don't want to see my desk right now. But then like another one that talks about like that connection between mind and body. And same thing with intergenerational traumas that have now been linked to certain RNAs. So they're being passed down genetically and if we don't give ourselves the opportunity to understand how that shows up, then how are we going to communicate to others what we do in fact need? So until we know and start to explore ourselves and ask us what we need to take care of ourselves, how are you going to communicate that to somebody, can't put that expectation that someone else is supposed to know what you need?
HANNAH: Yeah, I’m just thinking about how I’m still working through this.
JESSICA: But I think that's the beauty of it, is we're supposed to work through it consistently as new people come into your life.
In general, when we look at timelines, it's like this expectation that we need to process certain ways. And when we're navigating those heavy emotions, they can come up when we least expect it, whether it's a year or two years later, and it's giving yourself that compassion and kindness in those moments, recognizing that it's okay to grieve years after a funeral.
And I think that for me, and no one told me this, I don't think I really learned this from everyone. It was just an expectation that I put on myself where I had made the assumption that I should be over this. And I think that that's what we do at times is when we get far enough past events that have occurred in our lives. It's the expectation that it's like, oh, well, you should be over that already. And that's not necessarily the case because we don't know what necessarily triggers or activates an emotion. Could be a smell of someone. Right? It could be seeing a certain color or shirt that reminds you of that person and all of a sudden those emotions of loss or absence can come up.
HANNAH: Yeah, what does “over it” even mean? That's one thing I've been thinking a lot about too. Yeah, and it reminds me of the phrase “move on.” And it's funny because I thought that I came up with what I'm about to say, which is it should be “move forward,” not “move on.” And then I found out of that that's like a whole thing a lot of people are saying, and I'm like, that's so weird that I came to that conclusion in my brain, and then it ends up it's already a thing all over social media and everything. But there's something about just that one change of word that feels better. Even though you know it's just words, you know—
JESSICA: No, don't even, you're talking to someone who's all about words! Words mean a lot; like even look at what you just did. There's a reframe there, and just that reframe gives you the opportunity to accept the emotions. One word, all you did was change was one word, and it gave you the opportunity to give you a different perspective. And so it does. It does matter how we choose to accept our emotions, embrace our emotions, how we allow ourselves to process them so they don't get stuck in stuck inside of us. And then, like you said, “What does move on actually mean?” Because if we've interpreted it as that we're supposed to feel better or get over the situation, or I know for me when I hear the word “move on,” the way that I choose to interpret it—and this is why I feel like I can't use the word “move on” either—is because then the assumption is that that person didn't matter anymore. And I don't like that, because that person's life mattered. That person was someone to many people. And moving forward is giving us the permission to accept what happened. But knowing that you can still keep on living.
HANNAH: Yeah, and sometimes it doesn't involve acceptance. Or, it just means that you're continuing forward. The emotions and the feelings and that person will matter. Forever. They’ll always matter.
JESSICA: Yeah. Oh, that was really good, Hannah. Because sometimes it's not acceptance, right. Sometimes it's not, sometimes it's just like, “well, that's really freaking shitty. And I don't accept that, but I do have to keep moving forward.”
HANNAH: Yeah, because I'm also like, what does “acceptance” even mean?
JESSICA: Ooh I love this.
HANNAH: Sure, I “accept” that it happened in that like, I know that it happened. And I'm not like, Oh, that was a different lifetime. I know that it happened, in that way, yes, I accept it. But I in no other way “accept it”, because I am against it with every fiber of my being, like if I could turn back time or go into another multiverse, I would. So I don't even really relate to the word “acceptance” except for the fact that like, “Yes, it happened.”
JESSICA: This goes back to choosing words, that and what that means to you. And when you assign a value to a specific word, your perspective ends up changing. And it might be that that's just not the right word for you, just like you mentally processing and recognizing that “move on” wasn't the word for you either, and it was “move forward.” So now it's giving you the opportunity to expand that vocabulary so your emotions don't become so heavy that you feel like you're drowning in them.
HANNAH: Yeah, I need to come up with a different word. And also the Stages of Grief are not real.
JESSICA: No, they're not.
HANNAH: They're not linear and even the person who invented them regrets it. When I found out I was like Oh, my God. We’re so obsessed with these freaking stages, why?
JESSICA: Okay, so let me give you my opinion on that. Why are people so obsessed with the that, I think it's the seven stages. I think that's what they came up with, the seven stages of grief, or five, whatever it is. I think one of the reasons why people are so obsessed with it is because it gives them the opportunity to understand what they're feeling. Because as a society, we don't again, talk about self-intelligence. We don't understand some of those heavy emotions and we may have gone through life not realizing that that's what those emotions are until we're in some of the deepest darkest heaviest emotions and we're trying to process.
But when she came up with those grief stages, they were actually of the patients. It was the acceptance towards death. It wasn't family members grieving loss after their loved ones death. It was what the patient was going through. And when we feel like we don't have control and some of our emotions can make us feel like we don't have control because we don't like to feel uncomfortable, as humans we want more certainty with it. And so we become obsessed with this because if we know that there's only five emotion stages that we have to go through, we then think, okay, there's going to be an end, I'm not going to feel shitty anymore. But that then puts a significant pressure on what someone is experiencing. And it's different for each one of us. So I think one of the reasons why people become so obsessive because it gives them an opportunity to make sense of what they're experiencing.
HANNAH: And I also want to add too that, for some people, the stages might be really comforting and if that's the case, I don't want to take it away from them. But I think if it pigeonholes you or makes you feel like you're doing it wrong, then I say, throw it out the window. Yeah, come up with different words that feel good, or no words at all.
JESSICA: Or no words at all. Yeah. Oh, I love that and I think that that needs repeating is that if you feel like you're doing it wrong, then throw it out the window, because there is no right or wrong way to grieve to process those emotions.
So I think when someone is in that deepest, darkest hole, I want them to realize that the dark isn't necessarily something bad. Because I think that that's what we made it and we've interpreted it to be someplace bad. But the dark can also be a place where we heal, because the dark is where we rest. Where we sleep, where we get to dream. And that's not so scary. So it's recognizing that even though you may feel like you're in that deep, dark hole, that you can still find hope there.