I think of boundaries as our owner's manual. I have how I would define boundaries, um, in a human way. We're not necessarily labeling it as boundaries, but we've certainly been doing boundaries work for years. We've been talking about how to say this and what might happen if like… that is the work of boundaries. Where are you getting this? We've been talking about your mom for years, and now you want better boundaries with her.

I'm like, where did you get that? Like, I'm not saying that to you. That's how I know my clients follow me on Instagram, because they'll say it like, I'm working on my boundaries. I haven't been calling it boundaries.And I still don't say it. It's so funny because people are like, how did you come up with the concept of this book? I'm like, I've been helping people with boundaries for 15 years. And he said, I would suggest to you that every single thing we've talked about in therapy is a boundary issue. It’s funny, I've been in therapy for years now and I love my therapist and I know boundaries is having a moment, and you probably deserve a lot of credit for mainstreaming this idea, but maybe a year or so ago, I said to my therapist, I think I don't have any boundaries. But I also think that we can capture more people by speaking to them in a way that they can truly understand. When we're speaking in a very complex way, and we're using all of this lingo, we can miss a lot of people and it's not bad to have, you know, the terminology. And so if I'm using a therapeutic technique or I'm talking about these really complicated things, I have to think about maybe a show, someone is watching on TV that will help them understand the concept or some example that will really break it down, because that's how people are able to apply stuff. We really talk about the behaviors, not the labels, even with anxiety and depression. I know that certain words on the internet are having a moment, but I don't usually say to people in therapy, like you're having a boundary issue, or this is very narcissistic or this person is gaslighting.

But also as a therapist, it is not cool explaining concepts to your clients in the jargon that we use.

I certainly love psychotherapy and I love how complicated it can be. How are you so good at distilling our complex human interactions into these bite-size truth bombs? It's just like moment after moment of hits of like. It’s funny, reading your book and following you on Instagram, I feel like whenever you pop up on my feed, and I felt this way about your book, you don't have to read it in a linear fashion, whatever you happen to open to resonates.

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