The communities that we are apart of and the society that we live in have set expectations on us that we didn’t ask for, but how are you combatting those unrealistic and unwanted expectations? In today’s episode, I’m sharing about the importance of setting boundaries and communicating those expectations to protect your physical and mental health.
Review the Show Notes:
Expectations in Society (1:16)
Examples of Expectations in Society (1:28)
Gen Z Breaking Expectations (3:55)
Are Expectations Helping or Harming Us? (4:10)
Communication (5:20)
Community as a Leader vs. Member (6:04)
Setting Boundaries & The Physical Impacts of Expectations on Bodies (7:51)
We cannot carry it all by ourselves. (13:15)
Create a Boundary Around the Expectations of a Community Around You (14:06)
Someplace Boudoir Facebook Community
Review the Transcript:
Hey, welcome to some place for everybody where we talk about belonging and being a human in our bodies in living in and learning to love our bodies. I’m your host Carly’s place. This podcast is brought to you by some place images, boudoir for everybody. You can see the full show notes at some place for everybody.com. Now, let’s change some self perspectives.
Hi, y’all, it’s Carly someplace. And I am so excited to talk to you about something that we’ve talked about before. So I feel like this is a subject that I tend to I don’t even want to say repeat myself, but I want to talk about it again, because it’s so incredibly important in so so many ways. I want to talk about expectations. And I want to talk about this on a larger scale. So expectations are this and this is also going to, like lead back into a talk about boundaries, because they kind of go hand in hand. Expectations are a very, like, interesting topic.
For me, I think that we all can say we have expectations placed on us in so many different ways. And let’s talk about the larger society ones, okay. So, in regards to expectations that we have are set on us for society, let me list out some examples. If you are a man or present as a man, you are probably expected to be, you know, stoic and all of this toxic masculinity bullshit, and you know, not show your emotions or do any of these different things.
If you are a woman, or present as a woman, you are going to be, you know, wanting these expectations that are set are new, there’s so many different body standards, obviously, we talked about that a lot, a lot. There’s these expectations that you want to grow up and become a mother, there are these expectations that you want to be a wife, potentially a homemaker to have all of these different things. And that you’re going to like, you know, softer subjects and softer, which I hate that word, softer hobbies, you know, playing the piano or gardening. Yet at the same time, these expectations that if you are will say again, a man. So let’s look at those same subjects, gardening and playing the piano, if you are a man, and you like playing the piano, or you enjoy playing the piano, like you’re expected to just be like absolutely freaking amazing at it. And it’s like such a Oh, that’s a really cool talent. Look at him. He’s musical.
And it’s, it’s such this other thing. And gardening could be like, okay, but are you gardening? Are you tree cutting? Are you is it bringing masculinity into it or anything like that, like, there’s so many expectations, and these like, really, really, really just binary roles that expectations have put us into in society. And I want to really call every single one of them out for being bullshit, complete and utter bullshit. I really don’t think that we need to live up to any of these expectations. I’m sure you’re shocked to hear that what, Carly, you’re such a rebel.
Oh my gosh, yeah, I don’t believe in any of this bull, I think that we should be allowed to be what we like, do what we like, enjoy what we like, have our own hobbies, and not have these societal expectations placed on us. And I’ve said this before, and I know it’s gonna sound like I’m repeating myself. But I really, really want to take a look at what Gen Z is doing. Gen Z is breaking so many of these expectations in society. And I think it’s something that we can all learn from them to question the status quo and to be able to look at these expectations being put on us and ask if they’re actually helping us or harming us. And maybe you’re thinking, Oh, but I have like expectations that my parents put on me or that my family puts on me that are you know, good things, and they’re healthy for me. But like, are they really?
Are they really, really good for you? Are they really good things that are going to fall into these expectations that society is putting on you. There’s also a lot of expectation within community, for example, there’s the expectation of everybody doing their own part, which I think we can all say that if you’ve participated in a group project ever, we know that that doesn’t work. There’s these expectations in community that you know, somebody will do Take charge and the person who takes charge likes taking charge or you know, different things like there’s, there’s so many just roles and expectations, again, that are constantly placed on us and constantly placed in so many spaces.
And what’s really lacking from these expectations. And I think that this is where Gen Z is breaking that barrier is communication. Communication is literally one of the most important things in my life in so many different ways. And why communication is so incredibly important is because communication, places value in boundaries, the boundaries are huge boundaries are huge, and boundaries are one of the biggest things that can sit and have anything happening with these expectations. Because if somebody expects something, something of you, but you’ve taken and put a boundary in place and communicated that that boundary is in place, and they still expect that of you, that’s on them, if you’ve communicated, that’s really on them.
So diving a little bit deeper into these boundaries. I obviously run a very large community, I have a community of over 10,000 women and non binary people in my Facebook group someplace boudoir and glamour, which is the majority of where my business does its marketing, and that I get to share my work with essentially a captive audience who is there for a reason. There are a lot of expectations within this community all around, there are expectations that I’m sharing. In certain ways there are I’ve had people come and tell me, Well, you’re not sharing enough or everybody everybody that you share is, you know, a smaller size or a very specific body type, or I’ve had then people turn around and say, the exact opposite to me, Well, I feel like you would never share my images, because you only share people in plus bodies, neither of which are true. But there’s these expectations around my society and my community. And there’s these expectations that are built into what boudoir is and should be and what people are perceiving it as.
And what I’m doing to combat those expectations is I’m putting up boundaries, but I’m also communicating, I’m communicating what boudoir is, and isn’t I’m communicating what I do and what I don’t do. And I think that putting these in place, and then having my boundaries with them is so incredibly important. Because all of these expectations that are put on me as a leader of a community is a lot different than an expectation of being a member of a community. So I’m sure you’re wondering like okay, Carly, cool boundaries, community’s expectations, we get it. But I want to talk about what these expectations can do to you, when you don’t set boundaries. And I want to talk specifically about what these expectations can do to you when you don’t set boundaries, and how they affect your body. So again, I run a massive community. And I love it, it is one of the biggest joys of my life, to be the head of this community to be in the spotlight for this community and to see what I can do and how I can change things.
But running this, and being in the midst of this, when there are these expectations that others have of me puts a lot of stress and pressure on me, I feel and I’m sure if you’re in any community leadership position, you probably feel the same way. I feel this intense pressure to constantly be on, I feel this intense pressure and expectation that I will show up every single day, or that I will answer every single message or that I will answer any of these things. And that one because social media has made everything so accessible, that I need to be there for every single little minute. And straight up. It’s just not true. I love my community so much, I will do anything for my community.
However, I have boundaries in place. Because the weight that this puts on my shoulders, and the weight that I feel when I’m so stressed out about community and about these expectations that community and society is putting on me and how I need to perform. And we’re even talking like, I feel like I have this, like societal expectation that because I’m fat and because I’m curvy that I, you know, hide my body. And I break that boundary all the time by loving my body and cherishing my body and showing my body off. But then there’s these other expectations that like okay, I’m in the plus size community. I’ve been told I’m not plus size enough. I’m not big enough. I’m not fat enough. I’m not you know, I’m not too big. I’m mid size, okay?
But midsize doesn’t really have a space and then now midsize is trying to have a space and people are like oh get bit, you can still like fit in a straight size clothing, I can’t, there are all of these expectations around what people want us to be. And the best way that we can say no and take stress and pressure off of ourselves is by creating these boundaries. Because when we don’t create these boundaries, who let’s talk about it, what it does to your body, the amount of like, super high stress. And the pressure that gets put on you is so incredibly bad. One for your mental health and two for your physical health. These are the type of things that feel like they’re crushing you, and they shouldn’t feel like they’re doing this, there shouldn’t be this, like, kill yourself over this work and keeping up everything expectations for other people. And I don’t take the words, kill yourself lightly when I say this, but if you’re putting so much pressure on yourself to perform at a high level every single day and every single hour of every single day, that’s not okay. You need to let go of the expectation that you can do that.
You need to let go. And you need to put up a boundary that says no, I’m allowed to have my privacy and my private time and all of these things that I’ve got going on, I’m allowed to have these boundaries in my life in order to be a better and stronger person, a better and stronger leader, a better person in my community, a more contributing member of my community, the stress that these things can put on us is so much that we’re expected to act a certain way. And that we’re expected to speak a certain way. And while I do believe in common courtesies, and I do believe that there are so many pretty reasonable expectations when it comes to certain things, I don’t believe that expectations of somebody of community into and society onto the pressure of an individual, I don’t believe that those should be the type of thing that makes you have so much stress on yourself. I think that you need to be putting boundaries in place. I think that we need to be separating ourselves from our community and still saying, Yes, I’m a leader.
And yes, I’m here. And yes, I’m present. And yes, I’m doing these things. But I still have boundaries for myself, because everybody needs their own sense of self. Like I said, I know I’ve said this over and over again. And the reason that I’m saying it again this time, is because this is an incredibly important conversation. And I see so many people right now, especially with social media, especially with the changing of the seasons, and let’s talk about it like COVID, sort of I don’t even it’s not over, but like things relaxing, and things going back to sort of being more normal and mask mandates being lifted, and the different pressures that are being put on society to to be like, Hey, we’re returning to normal. Now, that doesn’t have to be what you’re doing.
If you need another boundary, if you are immunocompromised if you need. There’s so many scenarios where I can take the expectations of community and talk about the way that we need to build boundaries for those things. Because as an individual, we cannot carry community by ourselves, we absolutely cannot carry community by ourselves. And these expectations will crush us. If we think that we can, these expectations are going to crush us with stress and pressure. And we’re going to feel it in our physical bodies, we’re going to feel it in so many ways, shapes and forms, manifesting itself into our health and our wellness and our everyday everything. Wanting to get out of bed in the morning makes a big difference of if I’m super stressed out or not. There are days that Hi, that leads into depression.
For me specifically, when I’m depressed, I don’t want to get out of bed, I don’t want to clean, I don’t want to do anything, I don’t want to I don’t want to do anything, I don’t want to talk to anybody, I don’t want to have any interaction, because of the expectations that are putting on me when I do do those things. So I’m gonna leave you with this tiny little thing. Create a boundary for yourself this week, but create a boundary specifically based around the expectations of a community for you. And it could be any community, it could be your family, it could be a Facebook group that you’re part of, it could be a friend group that you’re part of. And if you really need to enforce a boundary, I highly, highly encourage that you do it this week. I highly encourage that you take a step back and see if it’s best serving you for the expectations of that community and the role that you’re playing in it.
It’s important, it’s important to create boundaries, and it’s important to keep our spaces in our community but keep our spaces with boundaries for ourselves because we are still at the same time, individuals. Thanks so much for listening to someplace for everybody. If you love this episode, would you mind leaving me a review in your favorite podcast app and subscribe to the show. If you’re looking for a commute They need to love on you and support you in your self love Journey. Come join our all gender Facebook group someplace for everybody which can be found in the show notes at someplace for everybody.com Until we meet again, be kind to yourself.
