Boundaries and Roles: Anchors Away in Friendship and Life

Episode Title: Boundaries and Roles: Anchors Away in Friendship and Life Episode Description: In this raw and unfiltered conversation, Fawn and Matt dive into the messy reality of setting boundaries and navigating difficult relationships. From the frustrations of an intrusive neighbor to the larger questions of power, gender roles, and leadership, this episode explores what happens when our safe spaces are invaded and rage takes over. Fawn shares her personal struggle with anger, vulnerability, and the addictive pull of resentment, while Matt offers grounding insights on boundaries, perspective, and even a few playful (cartoon-style) ways of reframing conflict. Together, they examine how to protect your peace, keep your circle strong, and avoid getting pulled into destructive cycles—whether with neighbors, family, or even global leaders. This isn’t just about neighbors or noise; it’s about finding balance between strength and compassion, recognizing our triggers, and learning when to hold the line or let go. If you’ve ever wrestled with rage, struggled with setting limits, or wondered how to maintain your own peace in the face of conflict, this episode is for you. Key Themes: Boundaries and what to do when they’re crossed Rage, resentment, and the addictive pull of anger Gender roles and the myth of peaceful leadership The illusion of control vs. true inner peace Humor, prayer, and presence as ways to reset boundaries in relationships, toxic neighbors, dealing with difficult people, friendship podcast, setting healthy boundaries, anger management in friendships, how to handle rage, power dynamics in relationships, gender roles and leadership, mindfulness in conflict #FriendshipPodcast #HealthyBoundaries #AngerManagement #ToxicPeople #Mindfulness #ConflictResolution #SelfGrowth #CompassionInAction #PowerDynamics #InnerPeace "When boundaries are invaded, rage becomes addictive—but the real power is learning how to protect your peace without losing yourself." Boundaries and roles- Anchors Away FAWN: [00:00:00] Welcome back to our Friendly World, hopefully a friendly world. MATT: Hello everyone. Welcome back, everybody. Hopefully, yes. FAWN: Hmm hmm. Okay. From, setting boundaries. Boundaries. So you are safe from. What kind of people, what's the word I'm looking for, Matt? Because you know what I'm gonna talk about MATT: meanies. FAWN: Okay. Yeah. Good on when you can't escape them for the moment, like they're right next door or something. Or family or something. Yes. Or something from that to power roles. This is what I wanna talk about today in. Within our relationships. Mm-hmm. IE friendships. Okay. So initially I was thinking since I gave birth that it opened me up even more. I was already sensitive to it, but it really opened me up to how precious life is and everybody's life is precious. I was already open to that. I was already aware [00:01:00] of that. But something about giving birth, growing some human inside of you. Mm-hmm. Being a creator of that or a co-creator of that. once the baby's born, you just have this heightened sensitivity to everything. And I always thought, okay, if rulers of countries IE the men felt this, we wouldn't have any war. Ah. So whenever I have these like thoughts where I'm like, I'm better, it always comes back to get me because a few times it's come back to me and it, it's come back to me again recently where something that is really, who cares? Kind of a situation. Mm-hmm. I mean, at the moment it feels very charged and very heated. And yes, I'm, I feel entitled to my rage, but in the grand scheme, in the grand whatever it is of, living, of the world history, my little situation [00:02:00] really is not that big of a deal, but for me to have such rage about it, right? I was thinking uhoh, if I'm having rage about, an imbecile what's another word for her? Gossipy, nosy, busy body neighbor who storms in our house uninvited with her nasty shoes on all the way through our house. Scolding our youngest about our lawn. Number one, the whole scolding thing, number one, also coming into our home uninvited also with shoes on, and then also talking about the outside of the house, it like, I feel so much rage, Matt, that I want, I don't know, I, I've just been consumed by the rage and I was thinking to myself, okay, well how do leaders of countries feel when there's major injustice and , [00:03:00] major invasion in all of this, oh my God, I, I would probably like throw all kinds of bombs, probably like, oh dear. You know what I'm saying? Like it just, yeah, absolutely. It came back to me like, oh, I would be one of those violent leaders probably, I don't know, but maybe not, because every time I had that thought, I asked for God to take away that feeling. I asked for some grace. But then it would come back again, and I was like, yesterday consumed by it all day long. Mm-hmm. But thankfully, I have a couple of friends who sense me out there. Like, I didn't wanna call anybody because I didn't wanna disturb anybody with, with what I was feeling. But you know, there are some, I have a couple friends who sense me and so they always call, they're like, what's going on? I didn't even have to say anything. Oh dear. So I told them, and then their rage or their holding of my pain [00:04:00] made me feel much better. Like I felt like, huh, okay, I feel better. Thank you. Right. I just wanted to know that I was not in the wrong, that it was absolutely right for me to feel this rage. You know? I wanted someone to commiserates, is that the word commiserate? Commiserates a good word. Am I pronouncing it right? Anyway, so there you have it. And so we were talking about this and then we were talking about two things. Gender roles like men. How do they handle it? Is it true about women leaders? Do you think it would be more peaceful and also, Set you because I'm like, well, what are, what's the what's? What's the situation here? Like, what is going on, Matt? Why is this person like this? Because we've heard from people in the neighborhood, several people that the same house that we live in, every person who's lived here has moved away because of this neighbor, because of her actions. And so. What do you do? What do you do with difficult people? And you [00:05:00] said you set up boundaries, but then the boundaries get invaded. So what am I supposed to do? Like I, I don't, I don't know. MATT: Well, this is, Hmm. Let's take care of the, let's go through the questions in order, huh? Okay. So would it be more peaceful if women ruled the world? Yes. FAWN: Well, when I'm not angry, I wanna say yes. MATT: Well, let's, let's look at history, shall we? Now, we haven't had a ton of female leaders other than we can go Western European and we can go, there were an interesting number of queens who ruled the countries. Now, whether or not it was a puppet government or, or, or, or, I don't know. However, FAWN: isn't it always a puppet government no matter who it is? And MATT: there it is. Queens waged more wars per capita. Nuh, than the men did. FAWN: What? MATT: Yes. And then we take a look at like the [00:06:00] world and we take a look at the, the female leaders we've really had. Nuh, I wouldn't say that anybody ever considered British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as nurturing would you? FAWN: What does nurturing having have to do with It was, I mean, was she, was she going out there and raping and pillaging people? No, MATT: She didn't back down. FAWN: So backing down has nothing to do with going out and just raping and pillaging. MATT: True, true. But we are, and, and FAWN: destroying and invading for no reason. Did she do that? MATT: Did she? FAWN: No. MATT: Okay. FAWN: I don't know. Actually she was MATT: not regarded as a particularly Mm. FAWN: Careful, Matt. MATT: Careful, careful. Stepping very carefully on the uh, FAWN: tippy toe. MATT: She was not the most feminine prime minister Britain ever had, FAWN: so, oh my God, Matt, [00:07:00] no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not talking about being feminine. What is, first of all, being a woman? I'm trying MATT: to be careful here. You know what? I don't FAWN: think we can do anything right today because you know, no matter what we say, I'll be wrong. You'll be wrong. You are wrong right now because being feminine, what do you want, what to do? Walk around in ballet slippers and like tutu's. Being feminine. I mean, women take care of business. What do you mean being feminine? There you go. What do you mean? You want her to look like Twiggy? Women take care of business. MATT: No, no, no. I think you're right. I think by and large, FAWN: because I mean, think about mothering, right? I'm not always light and fairytale when I have to, I'm like, the kids are scared of me. They should be, MATT: and that's very fair. It's really hard to figure out how things would be if more countries were, um, ruled The chief executive, et cetera, et cetera, was [00:08:00] a woman because as it stands right now, the current count stands at there are 13 female leaders right now FAWN: around the world, MATT: out of 193 countries. Ouch. Yes. So it's really hard. However, your man Kofi Annan said hell no. That if there were more women in power, there would be less conflict. They would be very important in preventing conflict. FAWN: I mean, it is a complicated issue because there are so many issues that men don't think about, that women take care of. Mm-hmm. Um, so there's a lot of reasons why women would make better leaders and how we need both sides obviously. Because there are so many things that are overlooked in so many areas of life, from medicine to education, to finances, money, family, you know, the amount of work that a mother does that goes unseen. I mean, it's a [00:09:00] huge subject that will take a very long time to discuss. Mm-hmm. You know, to go over. So we go over every, every fair possible detail. Bottom line, I think, um, I'm realizing I can't just make blanket statements like that saying men are like angry Neanderthals and that women are more evolved because we give birth. So we understand. But, um, 'cause you know, like I said, every time I have that kind of thoughts, there you go. I end up feeling rage and I think, oh. What if I was ruling, um, a country right now and this neighbor is another country and I had the power to eliminate them, would I do it MATT: right? Yeah. You would really have to hope you had people around you that would block easy access to the red button for sure. FAWN: But you know, even so if you can do parallels, I could have done some terrible things to her, but I didn't.[00:10:00] But I did go outta my way to make sure she knows that I am documenting things so she can back down, MATT: right? Because what you really want from this person is stay outta my business. I'll stay out of your business and will just be quiet. FAWN: And also, if you ever do this again, I have ammunition to get you into some big trouble. But, but the thing is that I start thinking, is it enough ammunition? And then I start thinking, well, I'm, I, I could go further and further and further, and then where is the, the line that I, I just stop and go, okay, this is going overboard. Right? You know, 'cause I feel weak. You know, she's older, she's been in this neighborhood for God knows, 50 years, who knows, 60 years, I don't know, 50 years. So it's like, and, and she has a mouth on her and she's a gossip and [00:11:00] she's very sneaky. So I don't, you know, this whole time, I'm sure she's been the one gossiping to HOA or whoever about us because just. I don't wanna get into details, but sometimes I feel like I don't have enough power, and then feeling that way makes me feel more more apt to really go for her. . I just, I don't know. I don't know what I can do because it is like, we're the target right now. It's usually other people and I think her true face finally was shown last year and you know, we took, I took steps to take care of it and she backed down and then it comes back again and I'm like, Ugh. Mm-hmm. I have other things to do. Right. But yet I feel all this rage. So what do you do when you can't even have peace within your own life? Because [00:12:00] one, this person's buzzing around like a buzzard, and then also you can't stop thinking about it. Like, I can't stop thinking about it. Right. I feel obsessed with the rage. Right. It's addictive too. When you start feeling that way, it's, it's this hunger that takes over you. It's addictive where you just wanna keep going until you feel some sort of satisfaction. And the the thing is, you'll never get any satisfaction. Correct. We, we've talked about this, we've MATT: talked about this a lot. It, it's, you taught me that it's darn near impossible to get satisfaction. FAWN: So what do we do? MATT: Right? What do we do as a non stoic? How do we deal with this? FAWN: Pray like I ask for God to just take care of it. What was that MATT: prayer that ends with, please forgive. Then I tried that. I tried that. Right. FAWN: But I thought about the Nazis. I'm like, this prayer would not work. [00:13:00] Mm. And then a friend of mine who's a total woman of faith said, Ooh, out of the blue, by the way, she didn't know what was going on, but outta the blue, she calls me, she's like, oh, a friend of mine just told me we need to do prayer. The psalm, what was it? I think it was 1 0 9. MATT: 1 0 9 rings a bell with me too. FAWN: It was 1 0 9. So we looked it up 1 0 9 and the kids and I were, first of all, we started screaming with laughter and then we were scared because this psalm is crazy. Crazy, uh, violent. Like it's, it's violent is not the good word for it. What is it? It is, it's scary. It is scary. So then I had to go to, uh, a rabbi and say, can you please explain this? And he did. And actually, I understand it now. And he translated it. I'm like, well, why doesn't it just say it the way you just told me? And he said, I forgot [00:14:00] what he said, but it, it rang true. I'm like, okay, I'm good. Okay, thanks. But yeah, I mean, yeah. MATT: So that's certainly an option, right? FAWN: Yeah. It didn't help though. I mean, we started laughing and then we were scared, like, ooh, this is like extreme. But then if you think about it as far as like the Nazis go, like the rabbi explained that his grandmother was, um, a concentration camp survivor and that. What Germans would do, and what this German woman did was say to her or her family, I'll take you in, um, pay me this money and I'll protect you. I'll hide you. So she took their money, she hid them for a while, but then, and this is what a lot of them did, they they turned them into the Ss. MATT: Yes. Gestapo. Ss. FAWN: And [00:15:00] then so the rabbi's grandmother ended up in the concentration camp for a year and a half, and then she said when they, when they were caught, when the woman turned them in, that she was smiling while they were being taken away. She was smiling at them. This like, haha gotcha kind of way. The rage. How do you deal with that kind of rage? Do you know what I mean? Yes. That kind of, um, double crossing. Is double crossing a good word for this? I don't know. For that kind of evil behavior, I don't think the whole Ho'Oponopono prayer would work. And the prayer is, um. Help me to forgive John. Help John to forgive me. Help us to forgive each other, please, Lord. Thank you Lord. No, that's another one. Sorry. Sorry. No, the, the one you were thinking of was, um, this one. I'm sorry. [00:16:00] I love you. Please, please forgive me. Thank you. Is that the one? MATT: I think so. FAWN: Hell no. MATT: Speaking of Kofi Anan again, . Anyways. Nope, nope, nope. FAWN: No, no. It wouldn't work. MATT: So what are you gonna do? My little festering ball of rage. FAWN: Tell me. MATT: It's hard. It's super hard. Um, FAWN: how can you be friends with that? And here's the thing, going back to friendship. I knew this about her when we first moved in. All the neighbors told me. Mm-hmm. I'm like, well, that's your, that's your experience. I'm gonna make it a different experience. Right. Different karma, whatever. And so for a while it worked until it didn't. And then when I was really upset, one of her best friends told me, you know, when you moved in, um, really wanted to hang out with you, but she told me not to, that she'll take care of this. I'm the this, that what she really wanted to [00:17:00] do was control the neighborhood and control the landscaping of the area. So she didn't let us hang out, and I had no idea, like she was blocking us. Anyway, what, why am I telling you this? I totally forgot MATT: Ro. FAWN: I wanted to be friends with her. I thought we were friends, and then I was shown that she had no intention of being friends. It was a fake friendship. It was all fake. It was manipulation. And so can't be friends with that. So if you're, if you're forced to be face to face, MATT: right. FAWN: What's the best way to proceed? I mean, usually you all know my story. I cut them off. I move away. I, yeah, it's nice and simple. I, I completely cut myself off from my family. Mm-hmm. And by family. I say that in quotes. The people I was born into never saw them again, never spoke to them again. after years of trying, right, and I'm talking decades of trying, going through, seeing so many [00:18:00] psychologists and making sure I was doing the right thing, I finally came to the conclusion that all the psychologists were correct. You have to leave. What do you do when you can't leave for the moment? What is the best way possible? The only thing I can think of was, um, when I worked at this one company, I was a photographer. and I don't wanna get into the whole story, but it was a difficult situation and my friend, who was one of the executives looked at me. At this photo shoot, she's like, are you happy? I'm like, are you crazy for Tell what? She's like, yeah, but are you happy in this moment? And she brought me back to the moment because in that moment I was in a safe place. Mm-hmm. In a beautiful place surrounded by people who were protecting me. Everything was. Okay. Mm-hmm. So just coming down to that precise moment where you are like, right now she's not in this room unless I keep thinking about her. Then she comes into the room. Do you know what [00:19:00] I'm saying? Right. Mm-hmm. But if I can look around and go, okay, this is our sanctuary. I've reestablished our territory saying you are not allowed to even step foot on our lawn. Having peace of mind to to say, I can focus on my favorite Korean TV show right now. I can focus on this banana bread that I'm baking. Mm-hmm. I can focus on sitting here and speaking to our friends. I can focus on this music I'm listening to, I can just being in the exact moment. I mean, that will help. Right, right. And then hopefully that tiny little circle, that bubble you're in, you can expand it maybe little by little as you build your life, force, your energy and it gets bigger. Right. And going back to O Sensei Some things are not allowed in your circle. Right? MATT: Right. Just because somebody offers you something doesn't mean you have to accept it. FAWN: And also you can make your [00:20:00] circle so strong that it repels certain things. MATT: True. But again, that's what I suggested earlier. Barriers, physical, mental, spiritual So figuring out what a barrier looks like between us and our next door neighbor. Yay. FAWN: The problem for me comes in because I, it seems like the moment , I relax and my guards are down. Mm-hmm. Boom. There she is. So must I have my guard up all the time? MATT: That's exhausting. FAWN: It is. So what do I, how do you move through? I, I MATT: liken it to a breakup, right? So you're dating someone for a minute, maybe longer than a minute you break up, man. First of all, that sucks. Second of all, you just keep thinking about 'em and it's like, what do you, and you are only truly healed when you just don't care anymore. FAWN: Yeah, but you have, how do you get to a point where you don't care? MATT: That's a challenging thing. And it's, it's like a [00:21:00] muscle. You have to exercise it. You have to practice. You have to figure that out. You have to tweak your brain in various and sundry ways. FAWN: Listen to that song. We, listen to the anchor song. MATT: Uh, ale Storm. Ale Storm Sweet, sweet Ale Storm. FAWN: What's the title? MATT: It's called effed with an anchor where effed is not effed. It's the word. FAWN: It's a MATT: good, FAWN: it's MATT: a FAWN: good MATT: song. FAWN: Yeah. Don't play that around kids, you guys. No. MATT: But yeah, that's certainly one way. Another way is to start tweaking your head, and one of the fun ways to tweak your head is by zen cones. Zen cones, gotta love them. Master student students like. It's all the world is illusion, yada, yada, yada. They're walking across a bridge and, and the master's like, so you're telling me the entire, all of the world is an illusion and, because we're real, it [00:22:00] doesn't affect us. He's like, yes. And so then the master pushes him in the water. The apprentice sputters and gets up and he's pissed, and the master says, where'd your anger come from? Jerky. Because it's little tweaks like that. It's basically the actions have happened. Now I'm gonna get, all stoic on you for a second. The actions have happened. I can control how I respond to the actions, and I can respond to the actions by playing effed with an anchor i'm just coming up with different things that are possible to do. I'm not saying we should or shouldn't do any of these things, you know, I suppose if I thought longer and harder about it, I would perhaps come up with other things. FAWN: See, you are getting into revenge mode. Do not, though. I don't, I don't think that's okay. MATT: That's FAWN: not okay. MATT: Sometimes just a little is okay. Just a little. Keep it cartoon. Don't make it like really wicked. Make [00:23:00] it cartoon. Don't you think FAWN: it's better for the universe to take care of that kind of absurdity? Honestly. 'cause you're wasting your precious resources and, but if it gives, gives me MATT: a chuckle instead of giving me rage. I think that's a better use of energy is chuckling than raging. FAWN: See, I can't do that because I tend to go overboard. So then I'll, I'll end up doing something. I'm like, what? I didn't see that that was wrong until like years later. I'm like, oh my God, what did I do? Why? Oh dear. Didn't I know that that was so wrong? Oh dear. Do you know what I'm saying? I do. I don't know my boundaries sometimes because I don't like to fight back. So if I do, that's why I'm not a good person to fight with because it could all go out the window like I. I can probably fight really dirty. Mm-hmm. I'm scared of myself, so I won't, MATT: that's why I go for the cartoony approach. FAWN: That's just it though. I don't know. The, my cartoon is different than your cartoon. It MATT: is very different. [00:24:00] But anyways, FAWN: anyway. Oh my God. MATT: Set your boundaries, folks, FAWN: and if you are going through this, you're not alone. Obviously. Hello? Oh Lord, no. Um, okay. That's it. Okay. People think this is like a happy friendship podcast. It is, it is. But you know, we we're talking about, you know, MATT: vengeance, FAWN: vens, and anchors and MATT: Anyways, FAWN: uh, okay. All right. Have a beautiful every day. MATT: Keep, keep it light everyone. Oh my God. Be well. Okay.