Terri Cole > Quotes

“It's not your job to educate every person in the world on healthy boundaries. It is your job to know and protect your own healthy boundaries.”
― Terri Cole, Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free

“Another person's bad, unconscious, or straight-up unhealthy behavior does not need to dictate yours.”
― Terri Cole, Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free

“We should not be concerning ourselves with the whys of others. After all, people can and will ask and expect ridiculous shit from us. That's not your problem unless you make it so. Focusing on them is only a distraction. Put your attention back on yourself.”
― Terri Cole, Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free

“A clue that all is not well comes when I ask them how they feel and they honestly don’t know. In contrast, they almost never have a problem telling me what they think about things. Not knowing how or what we feel can be a sign of disassociation from our body and lived experiences and can be a sign of trauma. By staying in this pattern, we are unconsciously denying ourselves the full spectrum of our experiences and emotions by suppressing parts of ourselves that need our attention. Then, the pattern of tolerating mistreatment can get repeated in our careers, relationships, and friendships—and we have no idea why this trouble keeps following us around.”
― Terri Cole, Too Much: A Guide to Breaking the Cycle of High-Functioning Codependency

“You must establish healthy boundaries to protect your gifts, talents, sensitivity, and life, so that you are making conscious choices about how you spend your precious time and energy.”
― Terri Cole, Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free

“As far as emotions go, shame is the heaviest and can be the most devastating. Whatever the source, shame causes us to hold ourselves in low regard for being somehow different. The effects can be far-reaching, corrosive, and devastating. Shame has a much more toxic effect on our life when we don’t even realize that we’re carrying it.”
― Terri Cole, Too Much: A Guide to Breaking the Cycle of High-Functioning Codependency

“All you need to do right now is be open to the idea that your responses to current things in your life might be driven by, say, five-year-old you. Would you let a five-year-old make major decisions for your marriage or family? Would you let a five-year-old decide your career moves? I don’t think so.”
― Terri Cole, Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free

“I’d like to make a simple request,” or “Let’s be clear about who is taking responsibility for what,” you set up your relationships to succeed and yourself to feel seen, heard, valued, and loved.”
― Terri Cole, Too Much: A Guide to Breaking the Cycle of High-Functioning Codependency

“your deal-breakers are between you and you. You don’t need someone else’s validation to make your deal-breaker okay. It’s your choice—and more importantly, your life. So get clarity on what’s a definite nope, and you will have an easier time knowing what to keep and what to discard.”
― Terri Cole, Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free

“According to psychologist Carl Rogers, caregivers or parents teach children conditions of worth, the standards of behavior that children must follow to receive love and avoid criticism.”
― Terri Cole, Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free

“There are a few ways this internalized oppression manifests in women. We invalidate our own experiences, for example, by not speaking up because we fear being seen as drama queens. We become overly concerned with our physical attractiveness, identifying with youth and beauty so much that we believe we are less valuable as we age or if we show signs of aging. We readily prioritize the needs and desires of others above our own, as if self-sacrifice proves that we are “good.” Internalized oppression only reinforces our disordered boundaries.”
― Terri Cole, Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free

“As Marianne Williamson once wrote, “It is not too late. You are not too old. You are right on time. And you are better than you know.”
― Terri Cole, Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free

“Give yourself permission to be the one who makes decisions for you.”
― Terri Cole, Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free

“For hundreds—if not thousands of years—women have been marginalized and objectified.”
― Terri Cole, Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free

“By becoming indispensable, you might also find a sense of security.”
― Terri Cole, Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free

“declining help is a covert way of maintaining control. You may not want to feel like a burden, indebted, or risk being vulnerable. This can show up in ways both large and small. You may be so committed to self-reliance that you don’t even let a cab driver help you put your heavy bags in the trunk on the way to the airport. Or you may find yourself in the midst of a family health crisis or work drama and simply hole up, taking care of everything for and by yourself. But here’s the thing, healthy vulnerability (or voluntary vulnerability, which we cover in chapter 6) is the foundation for authentic intimacy.”
― Terri Cole, Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free

“HFCs also often fall into the category of highly sensitive people. This means having a sensitive nervous system, being acutely aware of subtle mood shifts in the people around them, and feeling overwhelmed when in a highly stimulating environment.”
― Terri Cole, Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free

“prioritizing your feelings and truly taking care of yourself now can be a corrective emotional experience. Think of it as an opportunity to reparent yourself and provide the consistent nurturing and encouragement you deserve. In essence, we become the good, healthy, present parent we may not have had.”
― Terri Cole, Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free

“I learned to bury my true feelings. Adaptively, I transmuted them into more allowable ones (anger became sadness, for example) and ignored my gut instincts. This strategy kept me safe from disapproval and eased my primal fear of being kicked out of the clan if I dared to upend the unspoken rules.”
― Terri Cole, Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free

“Over-giving and codependent behavior eventually lead to feeling empty because at the end of the day there’s nothing left for you. Are you really a constructive problem-solver if your blanket solution to life is I’ll do more? Nope. Because no one can do that forever. The way out of this hellacious, self-sabotaging trap is mindfulness plus self-care. To interrupt these ingrained patterns, consider yourself first, instead of giving to others first. Consider checking in with yourself before committing.”
― Terri Cole, Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free

“Asking yourself what you get to not feel, face, or experience if you stay stuck will reveal its hidden benefit. Asking this question is a powerful tool for moving past resistance.”
― Terri Cole, Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free

“The point of going back to your childhood experiences is not to condemn anyone, but to understand. You also need to be willing to separate your image of your parents now (if they are still living) from who they were then.”
― Terri Cole, Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free

“any time you opt for being fake-nice instead of being truthful, you’re setting yourself up for unsatisfying experiences, resentment, and the loneliness of not being authentically known.”
― Terri Cole, Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free

“The evolution of women’s rights directly impacts our conscious, unconscious, and collective relationship to our beliefs about boundaries, even today.”
― Terri Cole, Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free

“That’s where she began to realize that no amount of self-punishment or over-functioning could change”
― Terri Cole, Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free

“the effort in the world won’t help you to move forward until you can become aware of, and explore, how you “benefit” from dysfunctional behaviors or, more specifically, what feelings and experiences the secondary gain guards against.”
― Terri Cole, Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free

“if you are a high-functioning codependent (HFC) or a highly sensitive person, you are especially susceptible to the Boundary Destroyer’s ploys. While you absolutely do not have to be raised by a Boundary Destroyer to struggle with them in your adult life, growing up in a household where the parents’ needs come first (at the expense of the child’s well-being) will make you more likely to encounter (and by “encounter” I mean “be tortured by”) Boundary Destroyers until you are able to heal the original wound.”
― Terri Cole, Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free

“To get your needs met, you have to be willing to be specific about what you would like and then open your mind and heart to a compromise, a conversation, a negotiation, a yes, or a no. Compromising with discernment is important (especially if historically you’ve been the one who is always giving in). Know the difference between giving in just to keep the peace and making a concession that feels healthy and equitable. If you’re always getting the short end of the compromise stick, that’s not healthy or equitable.”
― Terri Cole, Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free

“Kicking self-abandonment, deceit, denial, and resentment to the curb allows you to create a life based on joy, freedom, and genuine intimacy.”
― Terri Cole, Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free

“voluntary vulnerability—being discerning and thoughtful about how you share your body, your emotions, your history, and yourself with others.”
― Terri Cole, Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free