Dear Milda:

You are very welcome.  “It will be hard now to start living, thinking, talking differently..“- it will be a struggle but you can succeed, one day at a time. Most likely you will find yourself, again and again, doing for others, or agreeing to do for others because the behavior you are trying to change is an old habit. Changing a habit like this requires time and patience with yourself because the progress you make cannot be  linear, as in: from now on, I behave differently all the time. It will be a stop and go process, going reverse and then forward. Over time and practice, your new behavior will be a new habit.

“Anita, as you seem a very intelligent and wise person, maybe you know some good books/podcasts/youtube videos regarding this topic that I am struggling with? Setting boundaries, how to stop being the care-giver to others,  start to live my own life?“-

–  (1) I repeated your words about me seeming very intelligent and wise because it makes me feel nice to read these words.. hmm, I hardly ever read or hear such words said about me (I suffer from significant case of ADD, and in-person, when talking to people, I am less intelligent than most), so,  thank you for this experience of reading your words this morning.

(2) One reason I do not read books or listen to podcasts etc., is my ADD, it is difficult for me to remain focused on what I read/ hear, especially when what I read/ hear is not articulated in the simplest, clearest, most direct way. I didn’t read a single book, including self-help books for more than a decade, and I never listened to podcasts or You tubes on mental health issues. (The format of these forums allows me all the time I need to rearrange what I read and process the information, so it works well for me).

(3) About how to be “Setting boundaries, how to stop being the care-giver to others,  start to live my own life?“-here is what I suggest: next time you find yourself automatically saying or doing (or thinking about) something in accordance to the old habit, apply the following strategy which I termed NPARR:

Notice (that you are thinking about doing for others, or you just offered someone to do for them, then Pause: let’s say you just told someone on the phone that you will help her with X. To pause would mean to tell that someone that you need to get off the phone right there and then, and will call her back in ten minutes or so.

Next, Address the situation: is X reasonable for you to offer (sometimes you will want to help other, and maybe this is one of these times that helping another makes sense). Or is X not reasonable to offer, and offering it was driven by the habit you want to change.

Next, Respond-or-not: say and/ or do something or not. Let’s say you thought about offering help (you didn’t offer it yet), you Paused, Addressed the situation and decided to not offer help. In this case you do not respond (you don’t offer help, you don’t help). Let’s say you offered help already, on the phone, you Paused (got off the phone), Addressed the situation and decided that X is not reasonable. Next, you Respond: you call her back and tell her that you take back the offer. You can tell her why (that you are trying to change your habit, etc.) or give her another reason.

Lastly, Redirect: think or do something else, move on to another topic.

What do you think about this strategy?

anita