When Boundaries Become Emotional Armor

Danielle Ireland with Teresa Sabatine

Cleaned Podcast Transcript

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Danielle:
What if some of the things we call boundaries are actually fear? And what if being low-maintenance, hyper-independent, a real go-getter, and endlessly “fine” isn’t always empowerment? What if sometimes it’s just a really socially rewarded way of abandoning yourself?

And the hardest part? Sometimes the thing that is protecting you could also be the thing quietly shrinking your life.

Welcome back to Don’t Cut Your Own Bangs, the podcast for high-functioning humans with big feelings who are trying to understand themselves more honestly and create lives that actually feel like theirs.

I’m Danielle Ireland — therapist, storyteller, speaker, and someone who’s been having a very uncomfortable realization lately.

I think there have been seasons of my life where self-doubt was actually a form of self-protection. Where playing smaller, wanting less, over-explaining, over-functioning, and over-boundarying wasn’t entirely wisdom. It was fear.

Fear of disappointment. Fear of vulnerability. Fear of needing too much. Fear of taking up too much space. Fear of wanting something deeply and maybe not getting it.

And once I started seeing it, I couldn’t unsee it.

Because I started realizing how many women — especially capable women — are quietly organizing their lives around being lovable, manageable, easy, useful, or emotionally low-maintenance in order to feel safe.

Not because they’re fake. Not because they’re weak.

But because somewhere along the way, the version of themselves that helped them survive an old chapter… helped them belong.

And eventually, the role that protects you can also become the role that confines you.

The person I immediately wanted to unpack this with is today’s guest, Teresa Sabatine.

Teresa has been on the podcast before — this is her third time around. We’re basically creating a five-timers club at this point.

She’s the founder of Love Lizzy Co., leads retreats for women, and has built this beautiful community grounded in life on a farm.

What I admire most about Teresa is not that she has everything figured out. It’s that she’s willing to look honestly at herself. She notices patterns. She asks harder questions. She lets herself evolve.

And in this conversation, we talk about the roles we inherit, the stories we tell ourselves about them, and the compulsive ways we over-function in response to them.

And then what happens when we finally ask ourselves:

“What do I actually want?”

Which sounds like a deceptively simple question until you realize how much life you may have lived without ever answering it honestly.

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Danielle:
Teresa Sabatine, welcome back to Don’t Cut Your Own Bangs.

Teresa:
Hi.

Danielle:
You’ve been through every iteration of this podcast — from the sweet little dream version to this new video version.

And you’ve evolved too. Your business, Love Lizzy Co., continues to grow and evolve, and I love that we get to bounce in and out of each other’s lives and watch the changes while also noticing the core threads that stay the same.

I just appreciate you continuing to bring me along on your journey.

Teresa:
I’ve had such a fun time getting to witness you grow and become more of yourself too.

Danielle:
“Becoming more yourself.”

I think that’s actually the heartbeat of what I want to talk about today.

This idea of boundaries — and specifically asking:

Is my boundary protecting me… or shrinking me?

Is it creating a safe container for my energy? Or is my fear of being hurt keeping me from being seen?

I’ve been listening to Lena Dunham’s memoir Fame Sick, and it’s made me really curious about how much of my life I may have unintentionally organized around avoiding disappointment.

Avoiding disappointing other people.

Or avoiding disappointing myself.

Teresa:
I haven’t listened to the book yet, but I’ve been listening to her press tour.

And I deeply relate to this experience of being either completely boundary-less or having walls all the way up.

For me, a lot of that started with losing my mom.

My mom was sick for ten years before she passed away. Our whole family became organized around caregiving. It just became the family system.

And from a very young age, I got used to being the caretaker.

I was the youngest, which meant I had this sort of 360-degree view of everyone. I became hyper-aware of what everybody needed.

My dad used to say to me, “I just didn’t worry about you.”

And on one hand, that sounds beautiful.

But on the other hand, I was still a little girl grieving the death of her mother without the tools to process any of it.

Then my mom dies when I’m twenty-two.

And shortly after, my dad completely falls apart emotionally. His health starts declining. He has his first triple bypass.

And suddenly my identity becomes wrapped around caregiving.

Not just physically caring for someone, but emotionally carrying their grief, fear, sadness, depression, all of it.

And I think that role — being the emotional caretaker — quietly drove my behavior for almost two decades.

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Danielle:
Hearing you describe that, I can so clearly see the pendulum swing between over-functioning for everyone else and then eventually becoming depleted yourself.

And one of the places I started noticing this dynamic in my own life was actually inside my marriage.

My husband is naturally more extroverted than I am. He volunteers for things, joins committees, says yes to experiences.

And I started noticing this low-level resentment building in me.

The more I burrowed into work and motherhood and routines, the smaller my world started becoming.

And I didn’t even fully realize I was participating in making it smaller.

I had all these stories:

“I’m introverted.”
“Networking drains me.”
“I don’t need that much social connection.”

And maybe those things were true once.

But the thing about stories you repeat often enough is that they continue feeling true.

And eventually I woke up one day and realized:

My world had gotten really small.

Then my husband would come to me wanting to make plans or commit to things, and what I now realize is… he was expressing a freedom I deeply wanted but didn’t believe I had access to.

And what came up in me was resentment.

Because I didn’t think I was allowed to claim that same freedom.

And the hardest part?

When he’d gently say, “Hey, I’ve noticed you haven’t made plans with your friends in a while. Is there anything you need?”

I’d get defensive.

Because he was right.

And that made it even harder.

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Teresa:
That ability to shift the story in your own mind is one of the only real powers you have.

You can’t control anyone else.

And for me, shifting my relationship with my dad was not a soft landing.

It took years.

For a long time, my story about my dad was abandonment.

And eventually, after another major health scare with him, I had this realization:

I cannot save my father from himself.

That was devastating.

Because my entire life had become organized around preventing loss.

Preventing regret.

Preventing pain.

And at some point I finally had to ask:

“What kind of relationship do I actually want with my father?”

Not what role do I play.
Not what guilt tells me.
Not what fear tells me.

What relationship do I actually want?

And the answer surprised me.

I wanted laughter.
I wanted adventure.
I wanted connection.
I wanted quality time.

Not endless emotional caretaking.

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Danielle:
That question feels huge.

“What relationship do I want?”

Because I think so many of us have never actually centered ourselves long enough to ask it.

I had a similar experience while writing my children’s book, Wrestling a Walrus.

I was trying so hard to write the “right” book.

The impressive book.
The intellectual book.

And then a coach asked me:

“How do you want to feel while making this?”

And I realized I had never considered that.

Not once.

And I think that’s the deeper thread underneath this whole conversation:

When you’re deeply people-pleasing or emotionally over-responsible, you stop centering yourself entirely.

You stop asking:

What do I want?
How do I want to feel?
What kind of life am I actually building?

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Teresa:
Exactly.

And what’s wild is that the people around us often don’t actually want us abandoning ourselves.

My dad didn’t consciously want me to become his caretaker forever.

He was just lost.

And I loved him.

But eventually I had to realize that my fear of disappointing people was exhausting me.

And that if I didn’t start communicating honestly, nothing would change.

One conversation with my dad changed everything.

I finally told him:

“When you call me and tell me every detail of your depression, it completely drains me. I love you. I want to support you. But I can’t carry all of this by myself anymore.”

And that conversation — one honest conversation — shifted our relationship more than ten years of resentment ever did.

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Danielle:
I think that’s such an important distinction.

Your boundaries served a purpose.

Mine did too.

But eventually we have to revisit them and ask:

Is this still protecting me?
Or is it keeping me from fully participating in my life?

Because what I started noticing was that the boundaries still serving me didn’t require constant emotional labor to maintain.

The ones that no longer fit?

Those required enormous amounts of energy to preserve.

And eventually I realized:

The boundary was no longer doing what the boundary was supposed to do.

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Teresa:
Yes.

And I think boundaries are less like walls and more like fences.

Or maybe even moats.

You get to decide who comes in.
You get to decide how close people get.
You get to decide when the gate opens and closes.

But rigidity isn’t the same thing as safety.

And for people like us, rigidity can feel like self-protection.

But sometimes it’s actually fear.

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Danielle:
One thing I keep coming back to is this:

Wouldn’t it be nice?

That’s genuinely how this whole season of self-discovery started for me.

Wouldn’t it be nice to laugh so hard I cry?
Wouldn’t it be nice to speak on stages again?
Wouldn’t it be nice to feel fully alive in rooms full of people?

And every time I ask those questions honestly, I rediscover parts of myself I forgot I was allowed to want.

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Teresa:
And I think the practice becomes:

What do I want?
How do I want to feel?
And what thoughts, behaviors, and relationships move me closer to that?

Because the stories we repeat become identities.

And eventually we have to decide whether those identities still fit.

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Danielle:
Your emotions aren’t problems to solve.

They’re information to understand.

And maybe sometimes resentment, envy, frustration, or grief are simply invitations to look more honestly at the life we’ve built and ask:

“Does this still fit?”

And if not…

What do I actually want instead?