Boundaries: The Secret Sauce to Not Losing Your Mind (or Your Friends)! with Barb Nangle

In this episode of "Casa de Confidence," your girlfriend Julie DeLucca-Collins chats with Barb Nangle, a boundaries coach and founder of High Power Coaching and Consulting. Barb shares her inspiring journey through recovery and the importance of setting healthy boundaries. She opens up about overcoming codependency, reparenting herself, and connecting with her inner child. Barb emphasizes that true healing starts with self-approval and feeling your emotions. The episode is packed with practical tips and heartfelt insights, encouraging listeners to prioritize their well-being and embrace their authentic selves. Tune in for an empowering and uplifting conversation!

Lessons from this episode: 

• Personal journey of recovery and healing
• Experiences with codependency and its impact on relationships
• Importance of setting healthy boundaries in personal and professional life
• The concept of reparenting and connecting with one's inner child
• Techniques for emotional validation and processing feelings
• The significance of self-approval and prioritizing one's own needs
• The role of community and support in personal growth
• Coaching programs aimed at empowering women
• The ongoing nature of the recovery journey
• Normalizing struggles and sharing personal stories for inspiration

Find Barb here:
https://higherpowercc.com/
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Transcript

Julie DeLucca (00:00:02) -  Welcome back to another episode of Casa de confidence, where we have the most incredible visitors. Come and have a chat with us. Happy to have Barb Nagle. She is a boundaries coach, speaker, writer and the founder and CEO of High Power Coaching and Consulting and the host of the podcast Fragmented to Whole Life Lessons from 12 Step Recovery recovery in 2015 at the age of 52. After decades of therapy and tons of self-help work in a variety of areas, Barb found herself in 12 step recovery. She's been in two such fellowships since then, and has changed deeply and profoundly as a result. As a former addict and people pleaser rescuer, she empowers people to thrive and take more control over their personal and professional lives by coaching them to build healthy boundaries. She works with organizations in helping professionals as well as women entrepreneurs to avoid burnout and reduce turnover. Her specialty is working with women who focus on what others think and neglect themselves. She's coached hundreds using her executive build exclusive build framework. I am so happy to have you here, Barb.

Julie DeLucca (00:01:25) -  Welcome.

Barb  Nangle (00:01:26) -  Great. Thank you so much, Julie. I'm really excited to be here. I've been anticipating this for a while.

Julie DeLucca (00:01:33) -  Me too. And we had to kind of finagle a little bit of a shift from our original date. So thank you for your flexibility. You know, the crazy life that we live in as entrepreneurs in this world. But thank you for your flexibility and today's a special day for you. Tell me a little bit more why this is a special day for you.

Barb  Nangle (00:01:52) -  Yeah. So thank you for asking. So today is the last day at my part time job. I've had a couple of part time jobs for a long time, but I will be working solely on my business, higher power coaching and consulting as of tomorrow. And obviously this is what I've been working towards for a really long time, and it's super exciting. I'm a teeny tiny little bit scared, and I'm sort of shocked that I'm not more scared, but I'm absolutely thrilled. I've been working at a place in New Haven called Known Co-working, which is sort of a hub for entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship, especially those who are Bipoc business owners.

Barb  Nangle (00:02:32) -  And I've I've loved really making connections for people. My job there is community manager, and one of my zones of genius is that I am a connector. And so it's going to be interesting to not have that piece. But I do a lot of networking as an entrepreneur myself, so I will always connect people. But it's it's really thrilling to be at this point in my business.

Julie DeLucca (00:02:57) -  I am excited for you because I think that, you know, life, at least the way I look at it, we are always running in seasons like the like the year has seasons, our life has multiple seasons and some of them are short. Some of them, like this winter made last a little longer than we want. but definitely I am excited for the possibilities for what's to come. And yes, you know, it's scary to take that first step for as exciting as something could be. but you also have had a lot of life behind you. Tell me more about what your journey has been like, because we talked about it on the in the bio.

Julie DeLucca (00:03:39) -  But, you know, sometimes we really need the person to tell us they're a hero's journey.

Barb  Nangle (00:03:43) -  Yeah. So I am 60, which I sort of can't believe, but of course I can, because I've lived these 60 years and I didn't know that I wasn't really living my life on purpose. prior to 12 step recovery, I just briefly I am a sociologist by training. I have a master's in sociology. I worked for 19 years for Yale University as a program coordinator for urban education, prevention and policy research. I actually hit what is called a codependent bottom while I was still at Yale. So my last couple of years there. So I implemented a lot of these changes while I was still in the organization I'd been at for a long time. And I was astonished at the impact of my especially building healthy boundaries on the rest of my team. The ripple effect that just my own change in behavior had on all those around me was astonishing. And because my core wound is co-dependence and boundaries is essentially the antidote to that.

Barb  Nangle (00:04:46) -  that's ultimately why I became a boundaries coach, because the boundaries permeate every single area of your life, and I had no idea how much of my life was affected. So I'll tell you how I hit this codependent bottom. So I had volunteered at my church to lead a project that was serving homeless people. And right around that same time, a homeless guy named Dan started coming to my church as a parishioner. And we became very friendly. And I sort of felt like it was like a sign from God, like, oh, we're going to introduce you to a homeless person so that when you're serving homeless people, they're humanized. They're not like homeless, the homeless, but people. And so he and I became very friendly. And a few months into our friendship, there was a snowstorm one day, and I invited him to stay at my home, which I now know is not normal behavior. And he did. And he stayed another time and another time, and within a few weeks he was practically living with me.

Barb  Nangle (00:05:44) -  And I eventually felt trapped in my own home. He was an addict. He wasn't drinking when I met him, but of course he picked that back up. I now know he was probably a narcissist or maybe had borderline personality disorder. And actually, is it okay if I swear because I'm a source?

Julie DeLucca (00:06:01) -  I am a potty mouth girl too. Okay, good.

Barb  Nangle (00:06:04) -  Me too. So this guy fucked with my head like nobody ever in my entire life. And I one day was in therapy with my therapist and I was talking about him in mid-sentence. I went, oh my God, do you think I need to go to Al-Anon? And she was like, yes. So for anybody who doesn't know what Al-Anon is, it is a 12 step recovery program for the loved ones of alcoholics. And most people, if they've ever heard of. Of 12 Step Recovery, they know about Alcoholics Anonymous, which is the mother program of all 12 step recovery programs. And you might be saying, well, why do the loved ones of alcoholics need a recovery program? And here's why.

Barb  Nangle (00:06:45) -  Because the things that we tend to do that seem natural and make sense to us to try to help the alcoholics either quit or get into rehab are actually counterproductive, and what we end up doing is making our life be entirely about that person. And we stop paying attention to our own lives, and we get so fixated on them changing their behavior. And so we need to recover. Because alcoholism is a family disease, people tend to think, well, if they just stop drinking, everything would change. Well, people are drinking for a reason. And so if they you can just stop drinking and your life can still be just as much of a mess because the alcohol is really a symptom. And so the when there's an alcoholic in the family or there was an alcoholic in the generations past, it has an effect on the generations to come. So I went home and I typed, I don't know what I typed, I know I was looking for Al-Anon and I came across this word codependent, and I was like, wait, what is this word? Now, I have read a jillion self-help books.

Barb  Nangle (00:07:56) -  I had been in therapy for literally 37 years. Not continuously, but close. Yeah, I'm a very introspective person and had never heard this word. And I was like, how is this possible? And I remember saying to my therapist, you know, I don't feel like I got hit in the head with a baseball with the news that I'm codependent, I feel like I got hit in the head with a planet. What else don't I know about myself? How is it possible that I've been doing all of this work? And there's this thing that describes me that I just don't get? And she said, you know, Barb, I think for you that codependence is a unifying concept. It pulls together a whole bunch of things you did know about yourself. You just didn't know they were related. And initially, Julie, I thought she was saying it to make me feel better. But as time went on and I got to really get a better handle on what Codependence is, I realized that she was right.

Barb  Nangle (00:08:48) -  So I started going to Codependence anonymous and very quickly got a sense of relief. And I think partly it was to know there's this thing about me that explains all this stuff. There's a recovery program. There are other people who have this. I'm not alone. I'm not a freak. And I also very quickly had the thought, I think I need to be repatriated. But I didn't know that re parenting was a thing that people do. And I thought I made that up. And then not long after that, I went to go visit my friends in Cape Cod And Heidi of the couple had been in AA Alcoholics Anonymous for many years and just raved about how drastically her life had been turned around. So I said, hey, I've started going to Co-dependence Anonymous and she said, oh great, let's see if we can find a code of meeting while you're here and we'll go together. And she couldn't, but she found a meeting of, adult children of alcoholics and dysfunctional families. I had heard of it as a CoA.

Barb  Nangle (00:09:48) -  As long as I can remember. But it never occurred to me like, why do those people need a program? What does that mean? And it never occurred to me that I qualified for the program because I hadn't heard the and dysfunctional families part of it. And I was like, you know, I'll go for you because her dad's an alcoholic. And we walk into the meeting and one of the things they say is we repair it ourselves. It's like. What? And then they read the list of the 14 traits of an adult child, which is affectionately called the Laundry list. Now, Heidi tells me that I sobbed the entire meeting. I don't remember that, but I thought the literature came home to New Haven, Connecticut and started going to ACA. So ACA and HOA are the same thing. ACA is a trauma recovery program where you repair yourself to recover from the effects of growing up in childhood dysfunction, and you also use the 12 steps to recover. And so I very soon got into a group of women that actually actively work.

Barb  Nangle (00:10:52) -  The 12 steps started going to another meeting for that fellowship. And after about a year I was going to both Coda and ACA. I decided to let Coda go because it was maybe a 75% fit for me, and ACA was a 100% fit, and I just wasn't seeing and experiencing the kind of recovery that I was having dramatically in ACA. And that turned out to be an intervention for my higher power, because I went to Coda on Monday night and right after I decided not to do that, one of the women I was doing the 12 steps with had been talking about her thinking and behavior around her eating, and I remember thinking like, oh my God. And it wasn't, oh my God, what she was doing and thinking it was that I did that same thing. And I thought those same things, and I didn't know other people did. And so, lo and behold, she invited me to go to a meeting of Overeaters Anonymous. And I was at the point right then where I was, like, hitting bottom with sugar.

Barb  Nangle (00:11:49) -  And so I ended up at I didn't even know compulsive eating was a thing. I absolutely didn't know that I had that. And so I've now been, in recovery for compulsive overeating and sugar addiction, which is an actual thing. I know a lot of people say they're addicted to sugar. I literally am, yeah. So I've been in HCA. April 18th will be nine years, and I have been abstinent in. Oh, that's what we call it's like sober and Alcoholics Anonymous. I've been abstinent since April 20th of 2016. So almost eight years. I'm down over £100 from my tablet. And so when I say I've changed deeply and profoundly, I mean, like literally on a cellular level because I didn't know that I had trauma. I didn't understand that trauma is not just blunt trauma, like you were in a war. You were raped, you were in a hurricane or something like that. There's something called a relational trauma, which I call it, sort of like the drip, drip, drip of emotional and validation, neglect, gaslighting and that sort of thing.

Barb  Nangle (00:12:51) -  And I didn't understand that. And the thing about trauma is that it's literally in your tissues. And so I've done an enormous amount of work. And I think for me, the reason that the profound recovery has happened is because of the trauma. And I think that because of the 12 steps, there's something very different about them than every other modality I ever tried. So I could go on and on about this, but I will stop there. So you can I ask you something?

Julie DeLucca (00:13:22) -  I'm so happy that and grateful to you for sharing the story, because I know that as you unpacked where you've been, there's people who are listening. And even for myself, you know, I've heard a couple things that definitely I want to dig a little deeper into. One of the things is codependency. And I I've heard that before, and I'd love for you to tell us a little bit of what is the, I guess, textbook definition, and how did you see that in your life?

Barb  Nangle (00:13:54) -  Yeah. So I don't know that there is a textbook definition.

Barb  Nangle (00:13:57) -  So it's kind of like a syndrome in that there's a whole constellation of things. But to me, the definition that I use that makes the most sense to me is that we are focused on that which is outside of ourselves, often other people, what they're doing, what they're thinking, what they're thinking of. Me. And I will tell you, about six months into my recovery, I heard a psychotherapist say this thing that really helped me. I'm one of those people who suffers from the need to understand things. If I don't understand something, it's very difficult for me to buy into it. And she said, so her name is Tie Tion Dayton T Ion Dayton, and she's she's one of the mothers of the whole world of like codependency recovery and adult child recovery. And she said, you know, I've been around, a long time. And what's happened over time is that the theory and research on trauma has advanced beyond that of Codependence. And what we now know is that codependence is a result of trauma.

Barb  Nangle (00:14:57) -  And here's why. Because when you were traumatized, you were living in fight or flight mode. In other words, you're in. I call it your lizard brain, right? Yeah, well, that means that you can't access your frontal lobe, which is where the higher order thinking is. Here's the thing. The self is an abstract, ever changing concept which lives in the frontal lobe.

Julie DeLucca (00:15:20) -  Yeah.

Barb  Nangle (00:15:21) -  So when you're in fight or flight mode, you cannot get to self. So you must go outside. Yes. And we're doing this because we want to be safe. Because we want to get out of fight or flight mode. Yeah. So that it was like this understanding sort of fell in place for me because I was like, how the fuck did I get this way?

Julie DeLucca (00:15:42) -  How did this 100% I get it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Barb  Nangle (00:15:46) -  That's a.

Julie DeLucca (00:15:46) -  Great definition by the way.

Barb  Nangle (00:15:48) -  Yeah. And like I will also say, Julie, that for the first six months I was an ACA.

Barb  Nangle (00:15:55) -  It was very I objectively did not have it as bad as many of the people in the room. I didn't get the shit kicked out of me. I didn't get raped. I didn't get burned. I didn't get my bones broken. I didn't get told I was a piece of crap. I didn't get pushed down the stairs, but I had the traits. So I was like, you know, how did this happen? Now when I was 17 and again when I was 18, my dad tried to strangle me and I moved out of my house. I knew that that was trauma, right? But in my mind I was like, well, I was almost fully grown and and also, by the way, I was still blaming myself for that, which is super dysfunctional. I've come out of denial about that. And so I was like, how did this happen? And when I finally got that trauma can result from the absence of good things happening, I was like, oh.

Julie DeLucca (00:16:46) -  You just blew my brain.

Julie DeLucca (00:16:48) -  And yes, I've.

Barb  Nangle (00:16:50) -  Heard another definition of trauma is that it results from unmet needs. So many, many, many of the people in the ACA program weren't physically or emotionally abused or not physically abused. They were emotionally abused or they were neglected or both. Wow. And the thing about someone like me is like, you heard from my first six months, I'm comparing to other people and saying, like, I don't know that I belong here because I don't have it as bad as other people. Yeah. And I've heard some therapists say that in some ways it's almost more difficult to treat people who don't have physical abuse, because when you have physical abuse, you have evidence. I have been abused. There's no denying that that was wrong, that you were hit or whatever it was happened. But because the emotional stuff is it's not all the time, just like physical abuse is and all the time it's hard. And and here's the other thing. Just become because you come from a dysfunctional family doesn't mean it's not a loving family.

Barb  Nangle (00:17:53) -  That is. And those are not mutually exclusive. Absolutely. And that's another thing, is a lot of people have trouble with they don't want to go into the program because they don't want to be disloyal to their family. Nobody's asking you to be disloyal to your family. We're asking you to be disloyal to the dysfunction.

Julie DeLucca (00:18:10) -  The dysfunction, and a lot of people, you know, and this is where and by the way, I this is a lot of the work that I've been through in the in the past few years, that there is that level of shame as well that keeps you from saying, hey, I've been through this because you definitely don't want to, be that broken person. Or especially if you're looking to the outside for a lot of that validation, you don't want to be broken.

Barb  Nangle (00:18:40) -  yeah. And actually, the shame piece that you just talked about, that's the legacy of adult children. So we are really riddled with guilt and shame, and our greatest fear is of abandonment. And what's interesting is that the thing we fear the most is what we do to ourselves.

Barb  Nangle (00:18:54) -  So we grow up learning to abandon ourselves because we think that's what we need to do to get love. Yeah. And so the the what we say in ACA is the solution is to become your own loving parent. And that can mean many things. It can mean something as simple as you're good and kind to yourself, and it can be as complex as you create this whole cast of characters, inner child and teenager and or critical parent and or parent, and you repair yourself and then everything in between. And what's interesting is the like. What I found is when I stopped abandoning myself, I stopped being so afraid of abandonment from other people. And when I look back at what happened, the primary way I stopped abandoning myself was by building healthy boundaries. Because building healthy boundaries is you figuring out well what actually is okay and not okay with me. What do I like? Because I was a chameleon. I was like, oh yeah, I like what you like. And it doesn't mean that there are certain things that I've always liked, but I was there was a lot of me that was up for negotiation before.

Barb  Nangle (00:20:07) -  And so building healthy boundaries is essentially figuring what are the standards that I have for my life, living up to them and then getting other people to come along or not. And if they don't come along, then the question is, what are you going to do about it? Now there are going to be some people you might lose in your life, and they're going to be other people you're going to spend less time with. But when that happens, the people who like the actual authentic you are going to be able to get to you because you're not being blocked by all these people who aren't your real people. So this is yet another reason why I wanted to become a boundaries coach, because I learned that I even though I always had this high self-esteem, I didn't really love myself and I didn't have self-worth. When I looked at my past behavior, it was like, well, this is clearly the behavior of a woman who doesn't feel worthy. If you had ever asked me that, do you feel worthy? I would have said yes, of course, and I definitely did not trust myself.

Barb  Nangle (00:21:06) -  And the boundary building process is the process where I got to trust myself because I started saying, I'm going to follow through on this, and I started doing it. I got to know myself better, and so I got to like myself better, and I got to love myself better, and I held my standards for my life. And so all of that And so again, more reasons why I decided boundary coaching, because it was such a transformation for me. And and as I mentioned at the beginning, the ripple effect on my life of all the people around me, when just me started building healthy boundaries was astonishing.

Julie DeLucca (00:21:44) -  Yeah, I think that, you know, when the work begins with ourselves and, you know, we've spent so much time trying to change others, but the only person we can really change is ourselves. And what ends up happening is when we do the changes, those people who are meant to be in our lives and then also kind of come into alignment as well. And the people that don't are the people that don't belong in your life.

Julie DeLucca (00:22:13) -  right? And at times we're so, you know, that people pleasing mode, we want everybody to be in our lives. We don't want to hurt people. And, you know, that's a lot of of the of the work that we need to get through. Yeah, I, I, I love what you talked about when it comes to repenting. I did some of that work when I enter therapy for the first time and really going through and, you know, having that parent parent myself, the child putting some boundaries teenage Julie also. And so it's still an ongoing process is not something that, oh, you do it and then you're you're correct.

Barb  Nangle (00:22:52) -  Yeah. No I do it. Yeah.

Julie DeLucca (00:22:54) -  Years later still at it. yeah. Absolutely. So tell me a little bit of, for other individuals who are listening to us and, and really, you know what? I don't get it. Re parenting. you talked a little bit about that, but kind of deep dive into what was your process for repatriating yourself?

Barb  Nangle (00:23:15) -  Okay.

Barb  Nangle (00:23:15) -  So for the first number of years I did really like basic level stuff. So the most important thing I think I did was get a picture of myself from when I was like three that I love, and I looked at it every day and I started saying nice things to her. I did mirror work where I looked in the mirror and I said to myself, I love you just the way you are. I didn't mean it. I was crying when I did, but I did it anyway because I had heard that this is really effective. the way that I learned from the ACA literature to connect with my inner child was through non-dominant handwriting. And so the way that works is just you write with your dominant hand as the adult to introduce yourself to the inner child, and then with your non-dominant hand, perhaps with the crayon or a marker or something you write with your non-dominant hand. I don't have any understanding of how it works, I don't care. I don't know how electricity works either. I don't care, but it works, right? Right.

Barb  Nangle (00:24:15) -  So that was the only way that I knew how to connect with my inner child. And I would do that. I would say in my first like eight years, I did it maybe, maybe ten times, and probably seven of those ten times. Something really deep and profound came out that I didn't know was in there the other three times. It was just sort of mundane. And then last year in January, I was listening to the Adult Child podcast, which is hands down my favorite podcast, and there was a guest on named Susan Anderson, and she's a trauma recovery expert. And she said, if you really want to repair the relationship with your inner child, there are a couple things you need to do. One, you need to make consistent, conscious contact with your inner child. So 2 to 3 times a week, and then you need to make small promises to your inner child and keep them. And so I took that very seriously. I went out and I bought a little girl journal, and I started, I said to myself, Monday, Wednesday, Friday night, even if it's five minutes, I'm going to make conscious contact because that was the only way I knew how to do it.

Barb  Nangle (00:25:14) -  And what ended up happening, Julie, is that this I started seeing this little version of me and interacting with her, and it's like I'm watching a play that I'm in. I don't know how to describe it, and it sounds crazy and I don't care because when I first when I first got in, even when I was doing the first eight years of parenting, I would hear people in recovery telling these stories about having multiple inner children, and they had different names. And I was like, like, it's not that I thought that they were lying, but I'm like, I have no concept. I just had no framework for that. And here it started happening to me. And then, all of a sudden my inner teenager showed up. And then one day this, woman showed up and I was like, oh, that must be my inner critical parent. And then not long after that, I discerned that her name is Irene. And so now I still occasionally do the non-dominant handwriting, but I don't need to anymore because I can connect just in my mind and I don't, I do try to do things like play.

Barb  Nangle (00:26:26) -  like I did this, social media campaign last summer when the Barbie movie came out called Better Boundaries with Barbie, and I bought a doll that looks like me, and I called her Barbie's Boundaries coach. And so literally playing with Barbies was really, really fun. And it's like a way to tap into my inner child. But what I have found, like the deep and profound thing that I have found, is that when I'm upset and for me personally, the way that shows up most frequently is I feel pressure on my chest. What I do now is I close my eyes and I check in with my inner child and I say, hey, how are you doing? And if she's fine, then I check in with my inner teen, and if she's fine, then I check in with my inner critical parent. And what has happened literally every time I've done that is one of them is really upset about something. And what I do is either me, adult Barb, or I have this character that I have created that I call Big Mama.

Barb  Nangle (00:27:22) -  That's my inner loving parent. And she's a combination of, the character of God from the movie and the book The Shack, which was played by, oh my goodness. Olympia. I can't remember her last name. No, no, I can't, I can't I mean, I love this woman. So her and then, the grandmother of a former colleague, and she's just, like, pure love. Just pure yummy, delicious. Like unconditional love. And so I will either her or me will connect and be like, okay, so what are you feeling? What's going on? I allow my, let's say it's my inner child. I allow her to be sad or scared or whatever she is. And I'm like, you can be scared and we're going to be, I'm going to be here with you. Because what happened for me as a child was my parents weren't capable of being with me in my feelings. And feelings are really scary for adults. Never mind, never mind.

Julie DeLucca (00:28:21) -  Child.

Barb  Nangle (00:28:22) -  Yeah.

Barb  Nangle (00:28:22) -  And the thing is, there is no healing without feeling. When it comes to emotional work, there is no healing without feeling, you cannot hotwire your way around feelings. And so learning how to allow the inner child to express her feelings and being there with her and saying, you know, I'm right here, I'm not going anywhere. And I'll tell you, one of the most profound, re parenting sessions I had was telling my inner child, it's okay to be scared. It's okay to be scared. It's okay to be scared. I'm here, I'm here, I'm here. And so she started saying, it's okay to be scared. It's okay to be scared. It's okay to be scared and crying. And now if if you had been in my bedroom watching me, you would have seen adult Barb sobbing. And I was. But it was really my inner child, internalizing deeply the understanding that you don't have to pretend that you're not scared anymore. You get to be scared, and you get to come to me and tell me that you're scared and you don't have to pretend anymore.

Barb  Nangle (00:29:23) -  And it was this very cathartic situation. And I still sometimes have to say it's okay to be scared, but it's not this big, huge, profound deal because she got the message. Button it up. You know, when you're a kid, like, don't show stuff because it's not going to be received. It's not safe to do that. So, you know, those are some examples. I will say, you know, I have a number of episodes on my podcast where I have talked about re parenting. I also was a guest, on the Adult Child podcast that came out the day before Thanksgiving, where I told the whole story of what happened because last year my re parenting journey was profound. I mean, it's just it's astonishing to me that after eight years of doing a lot of work in recovery and how far I came that I made this many more advances. And the profound healing is like, I can't even tell. It's like on a cellular level, I feel like my DNA has changed.

Julie DeLucca (00:30:26) -  I love this, and I know that we're going to put all these resources for your podcast, for the repair podcast, and the show notes, because I think that this is the ongoing work for many of us. You know, I look at, even from my journey, you know, I keep a picture of myself when I was little. And a lot of the times that I'm feeling these intense emotions that normally I would have run away from or I would have avoided, or I would have, you know, done a number of things to not see them. I go back and I sit with that and I reassure that child, it's okay. It's okay to be scared. Don't worry about it. We can handle it. I'm here to help you. We'll figure it out. Yes, and? And these are the things that you know to someone who may be, hearing this for the first time, you may think like, oh, my God, these two are crazy. But it really is something that I want to encourage you to be a little curious about my listeners, because curiosity is the one thing that can help us kind of build a little bit of the momentum to begin a journey of healing.

Julie DeLucca (00:31:34) -  I for it. And you hear me talk about this if you listen to this podcast, I always said, oh, no, I never have trauma. I grew up in a great childhood. I had a loving home. But the reality is that there has been some trauma, and that trauma has carried me and led me to the places. And I don't have any regrets for the things that have happened in my life. But certainly, you know, that that I was seeking a lot of the reassuring or trying to hide some of the pain that the trauma had caused. And again, it wasn't because I didn't have a happy childhood home. It was because of everything else. So.

Barb  Nangle (00:32:17) -  Right? Yeah. Agreed. Absolutely. And I think, you know, judge me, if you will, if what I'm talking about sounds crazy to you, fine, I don't care. It is healing. It's healing on a deep and profound level. And if your judgment is going to keep you from that level of healing, then go ahead and judge me.

Barb  Nangle (00:32:35) -  You know, I definitely thought a lot of the stuff people were saying was kind of hokey. I remember in my first six months I went to a workshop for ACA, and this guy started talking about having multiple inner children, and this is me. I was like, here we go. By the end of the workshop, I was like, oh my God, this guy is brilliant because of what he talked about. Like what he got to in doing that work and how much it changed him and how much it healed him. So, you know, if you want to judge God, I care.

Julie DeLucca (00:33:04) -  Incredible. And by the way, this is why I know that Barb and myself do the work. Because we know that what we have been through can be a hopefully that moment for somebody that they can hear and say, wow, I get it, I see, oh my goodness, this is this is something that maybe I need. And you know, there's hope for all of us to continue to grow and evolve.

Julie DeLucca (00:33:30) -  And it just takes, again, having the people that come into our lives for a reason, a season or a lifetime that helps navigate what we're doing and becoming that better version of ourselves that we all seek to do.

Barb  Nangle (00:33:43) -  Yeah, absolutely. You know, there were a couple of things you said before that I would like to touch on very quickly. One was, people pleasing and hurting people's feelings. And so I didn't know that I was a people pleaser, until I got into recovery. And I remember hearing that term and I was like, oh, you know, my friend Joanne, she's a people pleaser. I'm not. No, I was the quintessential people pleaser. And here's the thing. that's manipulative and dishonest. It's not. I thought it was nice, Julie, I thought I was. I'm a nice person. That's why I help people. And it's manipulative. Because you were going about your behaviors for the express purpose of pleasing other people, trying to get them to like or approve of you.

Barb  Nangle (00:34:22) -  So that's manipulative. It's dishonest because you're saying things are okay with you that are not. You volunteer for things. You don't really want to volunteer for it. You don't say no when you really want to. So it's dishonest. And I remember thinking, oh my God, I'm a horrible person. I manipulate people and I'm dishonest because I thought it was honest when I got in recovery. And then I realized, oh, this came from somewhere. This is behavior that developed as a child. To protect myself, I still need to stop. And here's the thing. You get to be included in the people that you please, you get to. And it's fine to seek other people's approval, but only after you have your own approval. And then in terms of hurting people's feelings, I'd love to share this concept. There's a difference between harming someone and hurting them, so it might hurt you to use a needle to take a splinter out of your finger, but it's not going to harm you. In fact, it's going to heal you.

Barb  Nangle (00:35:13) -  Yeah, so it might hurt someone's feelings to set a boundary with them, but it's not going to harm them. And there's the potential to heal the relationship because you're becoming honest with them about what's okay and not okay. At minimum, you will be healing your relationship with your self. Yes, because you've started to show up for yourself. Be honest with yourself, follow through for yourself and stop abandoning yourself. So those are two concepts that I really like to share with people, because it can be game changing when, you know, to go from thinking I'm nice like I did and being like, oh my God, I'm manipulating it. Dishonest.

Julie DeLucca (00:35:49) -  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I, I want to, kind of unpack a little bit of what you are doing to help others because I know that you have a group coaching program. And now that you are, moving ahead and really creating these types of environments where people can come and leverage what you've been through and your experience and expertise, I definitely want to go ahead and touch on that.

Julie DeLucca (00:36:12) -  Would you mind telling us a little bit more?

Barb  Nangle (00:36:14) -  Yeah, I would say the number one way that people connect with me is on my podcast Fragmented the whole Life lessons from 12 Step Recovery. actually, March 18th will be five years since my first episodes, and right now I'm.

Julie DeLucca (00:36:26) -  At 252.

Barb  Nangle (00:36:27) -  Episodes. 30 something of them are exclusively about boundaries, and I do have a playlist of those 30 episodes on my website. I do private and group coaching. so my private coaching program is a 12 week program. I do coach men privately, but not in groups, though, since I've been my boundaries coach, before I niched into boundaries, I coached men. I really haven't coached men since then. They tend to be women who look on the outside like they have it together, and they're a mess internally. Like maybe they go from the boardroom to the bathroom and start crying, or they cry themselves to sleep at night. They're probably enabling an adult child or a spouse or partner. and that could be financially emotionally whatever.

Barb  Nangle (00:37:18) -  And so that tends to be but I've also worked with some like 20 something and 30 something young women who've never even been married. I have a group coaching program called Your Empowered Life. It's an eight week transformational group program to help women become the authentic woman they've always wanted to be, and learn to be honest with themselves and others. And what's really cool about that is that not only do you get coaching from me, but you get the synergy of being in a group program with other women doing the same thing. Amazing. And, I occasionally do other workshops and that sort of thing. I also have a newsletter every Friday. I call it Friday Fragments. It's like a plan words with my podcast, and it's very similar to podcast content. And my favorite place to hang out on social media is on Instagram. I'm at higher power Coaching and I have tons and tons and tons of free stuff on boundaries on Instagram. Yeah, I.

Julie DeLucca (00:38:20) -  Saw your newsletter today and I enjoy it. And I'm so excited that, you know, you have so many great things coming up.

Julie DeLucca (00:38:29) -  what an incredible journey. What an incredible, powerful story that is not just your story, but is now becoming the fabric of the story of others. I thank you for the work that you're doing, Barb. Amazing. Well, thank.

Barb  Nangle (00:38:44) -  You. And I thank you for the work that you're doing, and I appreciate you having me on. And also being vulnerable yourself and sharing a bit of your story that's so helpful to hear, like sort of behind closed doors stories about people because we have we get these ideas about, oh, someone's oh.

Julie DeLucca (00:39:00) -  So perfect.

Barb  Nangle (00:39:01) -  Or whatever. Yeah. Like they didn't ever have any trauma and everything was perfect for them. No, I meandered my way here.

Julie DeLucca (00:39:08) -  I want to normalize that. You know, there's brokenness and pain and sadness behind the instagramable perfect profiles that we all tend to keep. Because if there's always someone sitting alone thinking it's just me and it's not, there's power in our stories. There's strength and hope most of all that, hey, if I've been through this and I've been able to walk through it and get to the other side, so can you.

Julie DeLucca (00:39:34) -  So I know that there's a listener that has heard this and it's exactly what they needed to hear. thank you again. you're going to need to come back again and we can unpack some more of these things.

Barb  Nangle (00:39:46) -  I would love that. That'd be great. Amazing.

Julie DeLucca (00:39:48) -  Well, thank you, Barb, and let the listeners know. Where can they connect with you again?

Barb  Nangle (00:39:53) -  Yeah, again. So if you are an Instagram person, that's my favorite place on social media. At Higher Power Coaching, you can go to fragmented to whole.com to get to my podcast and my website is higher power cc.com.

Julie DeLucca (00:40:08) -  Amazing. Well thank you so much again. And everybody please make sure that you connect with Barb. Follow her like her, download her stuff, ask her questions because I know that she is more than happy to be able to be a great resource for you, or anyone that you know that can be that person that maybe needs to go from codependency to repairing eating, to really healing some of these wounds and trauma that, again, we all have because it's normal part of the human experience.

Julie DeLucca (00:40:37) -  So thanks again everybody. And don't forget go confidently in the direction of your dreams.