183. How Do I Know I Need a Boundary? A Boundary Diagnostic for Divorced Women (Part 1)

Opening: A Moment to Breathe

Amie: Hello, hello, my amazing, beautiful listeners. Welcome. Thank you for being here with me today. I think it’s been a while since we’ve pushed pause together. So before we dive in, wherever you are right now — walking, driving, doing dishes — just take a moment.

Take a deep breath in through your nose and out through your mouth. Do a couple more. Observe your body as you breathe in and as you breathe out. Watch how your ribs expand — front and back. Feel the release of that breath through your body as you exhale.

Take a moment to notice your jaw — is it tight, clenched? Notice your chest or your stomach. Not to change anything, not to judge. Just to be aware. Be aware of what your body might be holding, bracing, or armoring against.

Maybe as you took that deep breath, your eyes got a little watery. Maybe some tears started to fall. Maybe you’re realizing how exhausted you really are — how hard you’ve been working, how much you’ve been focusing on things outside your control. Maybe there are people in your life who still have access to you, still taking up space in your brain, your mind, your heart, who don’t need to be there. And parts of you are exhausted because there’s no protection, no safety there.

You Know You Need Boundaries — So Why Can’t You Set Them?

How many of you have heard a hundred times that you need boundaries? You nod along to every podcast, every book. You agree. And then you put the book down and you don’t know where to start.

Because knowing that you need boundaries, knowing where you need them, and knowing how to formulate the language — those are three completely different things. You’re doing everything you think you’re supposed to do. You’re trying to be the bigger person. You’re trying not to make waves for the kids. And somehow you are still getting hurt. Still being pulled back into destructive patterns. Still feeling re-traumatized every time he texts, every time there’s a custody exchange, every time he shows up to something he never cared about before.

Today we’re going to do something a little different. We’re not going to talk about what a boundary is in theory. We’re going to help you figure out where you actually need one — and give you the language for it, so that what you’re setting is actually a boundary, not a demand or an ultimatum.

The One Question That Shuts People Down: How Do You Know You Need a Boundary?

Let’s start with one question. When I ask this to clients, I can watch their brain just shut down. If that happens to you — just notice the shutdown. The question is: How do you know you need a boundary? What informs you that you even need one?

This question is hard to answer — partly because boundaries are so often misunderstood. Sometimes when clients tell me they need a boundary, what I’m actually hearing is: I need this person to stop doing this thing. Or: I need this situation to change.

But boundaries are established by changing your own response to the situation — not by expecting others to change their behavior to make you more comfortable. A boundary is not what you’re asking someone else to do. It’s what you’re declaring you will do.

Why It’s So Hard to See: Living in Chronic Activation

Sometimes we’re just not aware of the patterns, the triggers, the activation — especially when you’ve been living in such high activation for so long that it becomes your normal. When dysregulation is your baseline, it’s hard to know what regulated even feels like.

One of the biggest things I see is that women are living in a heightened state of hyper-arousal, over-functioning, survival-mode energy — and that has become the norm. Which makes it really challenging to see where a boundary is needed, because sometimes when we start to slow that energy down, it actually feels more dangerous than the heightened state we’re used to.

The Boundary Diagnostic: Where Are You Leaking Energy?

Here’s the tricky part about energy leaks: sometimes we don’t feel the consequences of them. Sometimes they don’t feel like leaks at all. In fact, sometimes they trick the body into feeling very alive.

Think about that perfectly crafted text response you just spent 20 minutes writing and rewriting — to make sure you have a voice, to make sure they know you’re not buying into their narrative anymore. The moment you hit send and feel that surge: There it is. I said it. They needed to hear that. That feels like justice. It feels like thriving.

I remember this feeling so clearly. For those of you who felt silenced in your relationship, or who are just now finding the language to describe the abusive behaviors, calling it out feels like freedom. It gave my body a reason to keep going. To be honest, it gave me the energy I needed, because if I stopped, it felt like I’d never get up.

What’s actually happening in your nervous system when you’re in fight mode: your body floods with adrenaline, cortisol pumps in, your heart rate is up, your muscles are braced, and your brain hyper-focuses on the threat. In the short term, it feels purposeful, productive — even powerful. When you’ve been powerless for so long, that makes complete sense.

But there is a difference between power and empowerment. This is the difference between an empowered divorce and a power-trip divorce.

Empowered Response vs. Chronic Activation: How to Tell the Difference

Let me be very clear first: standing up for yourself is not wrong. Speaking truth to abuse is not wrong. Finding your voice after years of being silenced — that’s brave, necessary, and part of your healing. If you’re just starting to say no, just discovering you have a right to be angry — that is good and beautiful and important.

What I want you to see is the difference between standing up for yourself in a way that moves you forward versus staying engaged in a way that keeps you stuck. I was trying to speak up and have a voice — because that was so important after years of it being dormant — but I was doing it with a person who was weaponizing it, using it against me, keeping me engaged and trapped in a pattern that was re-victimizing me.

Your nervous system does not know the difference between an empowered response and chronic activation. Every time you went back in — trying to get them to understand your truth, fighting back against the gaslighting, the manipulation, the false accusations — your nervous system learned: engage equals adrenaline equals alive. Over time, the brain starts to associate that engagement with survival. And that’s when standing up for yourself quietly shifts to staying stuck in fight mode.

Signs of an Empowered Response

You speak your truth once and then step back. If you’re repeating the same thing in different ways, trying to find the wording that will finally make them get it — that’s a sign of chronic activation, not empowerment. You feel clear, grounded, maybe angry, but not obsessive. Anger is informational. It tells you a boundary has been violated. After you’ve said what you needed to say, you can set it down. You’re not checking your phone every five minutes waiting for their response. You’re not mentally drafting rebuttals to answers you haven’t even received yet.

Signs of Chronic Activation

You keep re-engaging, re-explaining, re-defending the same ground over and over. You’re mentally drafting responses at 2 AM. You’re at the park with your kids but writing out text drafts on your phone. You can’t stop checking your email or their social media. Conversations are playing on a loop in your mind. The adrenaline carries you through the day — and then you’re completely flatlined by evening. You find yourself saying things like: I just can’t get out of this. One thing after another. I feel like I can’t ever be free.

Those statements are key indicators to slow down and ask: is my energy here an empowered response, or a chronic one? Please approach this with compassion, not judgment. Chronic activation is not a character flaw. It is a nervous system that has been trained by trauma to stay on high alert.

If you’re sitting here saying, “Amie, I know, I see the pattern, but I just can’t get out of it” — that is your indicator that you may need body-based work. We probably need to move away from top-down, cognitive approaches and start working from the body up — releasing the shock, the bracing, the armoring that’s stored in the body, so we can begin to reduce this chronic activation.

Post-Separation Abuse: Why the Threat Doesn’t Just Stop at Divorce

It’s hard to tell yourself you’re not in danger anymore. You filed. You left. You’re divorced. For most of us, though, the post-separation abuse gets worse, not better. The nature of the threats changes, but the threats don’t disappear.

You’re no longer walking on eggshells in the same house. But now it’s coming through the court system, the legal battles, the text messages, the children being weaponized, financial manipulation, lies and rumors being spread. Threats from their attorney. Suddenly becoming parent of the year in front of the judge.

When I say you’re in chronic activation, I’m not saying the danger is over. Your body is still picking up on real threats — they’ve just changed form. We need to listen to your threat system. We just also need to be very intentional about using the boundaries available to us now to give your nervous system rest. Because when you aren’t in the same house, when you don’t have to be in constant contact, you have an opportunity to slow the nervous system down. And if we don’t take advantage of that, we get insomnia, digestive issues, jaw clenching, brain fog, irritability, sickness.

The question to ask yourself is: is this a real threat that requires my attention right now, or is this them trying to keep me in fight mode? You can respond to a legal filing and not respond to the 11 PM text. You can document violations but not defend yourself to their mother. Addressing real threats is necessary. Staying chronically activated because they keep pulling you back in — that is not the strength that is going to move you forward.

The Four-Question Boundary Diagnostic

Here is your map for identifying where boundaries are missing. Sit with each of these questions honestly. If you really let yourself see your answers, this will show you where the boundaries need to go.

Question 1: Where Am I Leaking Energy?

Are you still explaining yourself over and over? Responding to texts you don’t have to respond to? Defending your choices to him, to family, to your children? Checking his social media? If it’s not healing you, grounding you, or moving you forward — but it’s keeping you in an emotional, psychological, or energetic relationship with him — you probably have a leak there.

Question 2: Where Do I Feel Trapped?

Trapped doesn’t always mean physical danger. It means the emotional captivity kind of trapped — where you can’t move forward because they keep pulling you back in. Maybe he texts late at night and you feel like you have to respond. Maybe they show up unannounced and you don’t enforce a limit because you don’t want to seem difficult in front of the kids. Maybe at drop-off they corner you into conversations that aren’t legally appropriate. Maybe you feel like you can’t make a move without fear of losing custody. Identify where you feel trapped from simply living, existing, and being free.

Question 3: Where Am I Afraid?

Fear is information. It tells you where you feel vulnerable, where you feel exposed, where it doesn’t feel safe. Common fears after divorce include: afraid they’ll use the kids to manipulate you. Afraid you’ll lose custody. Afraid of what they’ll do if you don’t respond the right way. Afraid of enforcing the parenting plan. Afraid of what people think. Afraid the kids will take his side. Afraid that holding your boundaries will make your life harder. If you’re making decisions — or allowing things — out of fear of their reaction, that tells you exactly where a boundary is needed. Not to eliminate the fear, but to protect yourself in spite of it.

Question 4: Where Am I Still Hoping?

This one might sting a little, but it’s important. Hope isn’t always healthy — especially when it keeps you tied to someone who has shown you exactly who they are. Sometimes hope doesn’t even look like hope. It looks like seeking justice, wanting validation, waiting for an apology, wanting someone — anyone — to acknowledge the harm that was done.

But underneath, it’s hope. Hope that if you explain it one more time, they’ll finally get it. Hope that if you present enough evidence, family will believe you. Hope that the court will finally see who you’ve been living with. Hope that someone will say: you’re right, what he did was wrong, and you didn’t deserve it.

If you are seeking something from them or from others to validate your experience, make it right, or give you closure — that hope is keeping you emotionally tied. And as long as you’re waiting for that, healing is on hold. Identifying this hope will show you where a boundary is needed.

Closing: This Week, Just Notice

Here’s your map. Ask yourself: Where am I leaking energy? Where do I feel trapped? Where am I afraid? Where am I still hoping? If you answer honestly and take time to really see it, this will show you where the boundaries are missing. Maybe it’s everywhere. Maybe it’s one specific place. Either way, you’ll have more clarity. And clarity is the first step.

Here’s what I don’t want you to do: I don’t want you to walk away from this episode and try to fix everything at once. I don’t want you to set ten boundaries tomorrow and feel like a failure when you can’t hold them. Boundaries are not built in a day. They are built one decision at a time.

This week, we’re just noticing. We cannot change what we cannot see. And for so long, you have been so close to the pain that you can’t see the patterns.

Next week we’re going to talk about how to actually set these boundaries — the language, the frameworks, the specific words that can help. Because I know that’s also where a lot of people get stuck.

You did not choose this divorce. You did not choose the betrayal, the abuse, the custody battle, the post-separation nightmare. But you do get to choose what happens next. Choosing to protect yourself, choosing to see where boundaries are needed, deciding that they matter because you matter — that is not selfish. That is how you create your own sense of safety, anchored to your own sense of self.

You are the chooser in your life, and you get to create healthy boundaries that protect that — because you can.

Key Takeaways from This Episode

A boundary is not what you ask someone else to do — it’s what you declare you will do. Chronic activation can feel like empowerment, but it is not the same thing. Standing up for yourself is right; staying chronically engaged with someone who weaponizes your responses keeps you stuck. Post-separation abuse is real — the threat doesn’t end at divorce, it changes form. The four questions to find where boundaries are missing: Where am I leaking energy? Where do I feel trapped? Where am I afraid? Where am I still hoping? This week’s work: just notice. Awareness before action.