#192: Boundaries vs. Ultimatums
In today’s episode, we’re unpacking the subtle (but important) differences between requests, boundaries, ultimatums, and dealbreakers. While these words are often used interchangeably, they carry different energies — and understanding those differences can help you communicate more clearly, hold your ground with integrity, and honour your needs without falling into patterns of control, people-pleasing, or collapse.
If you’ve ever tried to set a boundary—only to be told you’re being controlling, dramatic, or making threats—you’re not alone. Especially for those of us with anxious attachment, the whole landscape of boundaries can feel confusing, fraught, and overwhelming. When we’ve spent a lifetime trying to keep people close, it’s natural that speaking up for ourselves can feel dangerous, even selfish.
But here’s the thing: it’s not just setting boundaries that feels hard. Receiving them can be equally triggering.
If you’re anxiously attached, someone setting a boundary with you can feel like a door closing, a rejection, or even abandonment. And in those moments, our nervous system goes into overdrive, trying to make sense of it: Why are they shutting me out? Why won’t they just let me talk this through? Am I too much? Are they done with me?
It’s important to understand this dual dynamic—that anxious attachers often struggle to both set boundaries and to be on the receiving end of them. So much of the work here is about learning to sit with the discomfort, to self-soothe, and to stay grounded in our own worth and resilience.
What is a request?
A request is a gentle, open invitation. It sounds like:
“Hey, it really doesn’t feel good for me when you’re on your phone at dinner. Would you be open to us putting our phones away so we can be more present with each other?”
Requests are important in any healthy relationship. They acknowledge a need or a desire and invite the other person to meet it. Crucially, a request doesn’t demand anything—it allows for a no.
For anxiously attached folks, making requests can feel incredibly vulnerable. There’s often a deep fear of being “too much,” of taking up space, of being rejected. But bypassing this discomfort leads to self-abandonment—and resentment follows close behind.
What is a boundary?
A boundary is not just a firmer way of asking for something. It’s not about the other person at all—it’s about you.
Boundaries are about your limits, and what you’ll do to honour them.
For example:
“If you continue shouting, I’m going to leave the room and we can talk when things have calmed down.”
That’s a boundary. It doesn’t require the other person to stop shouting. It simply states your limit and your follow-through.
When done well, boundaries are not a power move. They’re an act of self-respect. But many of us—especially anxious attachers—have learned to set boundaries from a place of panic or desperation. We say the words, but they’re hollow. We don’t really believe we can back them up. And when the other person doesn’t comply, we abandon the boundary to preserve the connection.
What about receiving someone else’s boundary?
This is where things can get really tricky. If your partner says, “I’m not available to talk about this right now,” your inner alarm bells might start ringing. You may interpret it as rejection, withdrawal, or a lack of care—when in fact, it might be them regulating their nervous system and protecting the relationship.
But if you’re not anchored in your own sense of self, it can feel unbearable. And that’s when we push. We protest. We override. We try to break through the boundary because the silence or space feels intolerable.
This is where real growth lies—learning to hold ourselves tenderly in those moments, rather than outsourcing our regulation to someone else.
Boundaries vs. Threats
Some people will hear a boundary and perceive it as a threat. And sometimes, it is.
The difference lies in the intention and the energy.
A threat is: “If you don’t stop doing this, I’ll leave you.” It’s controlling. It’s reactive. It’s about fear.
A boundary, by contrast, is grounded and calm:
“This doesn’t feel safe for me. If it continues, I’ll need to take a step back.”
And it’s important to note: if you’ve never had healthy boundaries modelled to you, even a calm, well-intentioned boundary can feel threatening. Your nervous system might register it as danger, even when it’s not. That doesn’t make the other person wrong—it just means your system needs support and rewiring to feel safe in secure dynamics.
What about ultimatums?
Ultimatums are often deal breakers wrapped in insecurity. They tend to come from a place of powerlessness, framed as: “You better stop, or else.” The content of a deal breaker and an ultimatum might be fundamentally the same. The difference lies in the delivery. A deal breaker is a clear statement of your limit. An ultimatum is often a last-ditch attempt to control the outcome through fear.
If you find yourself repeatedly issuing ultimatums with no follow-through, it’s worth exploring what you’re afraid of. What feels intolerable about actually honouring your limit? Which brings us to…
The power of follow-through
For anxiously attached people, following through on boundaries is often the hardest part. We fear being the bad guy. We don’t want to upset anyone. And, let’s be honest, we often hope we won’t have to.
But when we repeatedly state limits we’re unwilling to enforce, it erodes trust—both in the relationship, and within ourselves.
On the flip side, when someone else sets a firm boundary, we can feel hurt, shut out, and destabilised. The work here is to move from personalisation to understanding: This isn’t about me being unworthy. This is about them taking care of themselves. Just like I need to learn to take care of me.
The deeper work
If communication is the tip of the iceberg, what lies beneath is self-worth. You can’t just script your way to healthy boundaries. You have to believe you’re worthy of having limits. You have to trust yourself to honour them. And you have to accept when someone else is doing the same. That’s the work of secure relating. And it’s not easy—especially when your nervous system is wired for closeness at all costs. But it’s what allows us to show up in relationships with honesty, respect, and mutual care. Because ultimately, boundaries aren’t barriers. They’re bridges to better connection—when built from a place of grounded self-respect.
FURTHER LINKS & RESOURCES:
Questions for Discussion & Reflection
Do you find it difficult to identify the difference between making a request and setting a boundary in your relationships? Can you recall recent examples of each from your own life?
When you set a boundary, do you notice a tendency to phrase it more like a demand or an ultimatum? Reflect on what the underlying emotions might be for you in those moments.
How comfortable are you with following through on a boundary if it is not respected? Are there certain situations or relationships where this feels particularly challenging?
Think about a time when you communicated a need or boundary. Did you genuinely feel that you were advocating for yourself, or were you hoping it would make someone else change their behaviour so you wouldn’t have to act?
Are you more likely to pursue connection at the expense of your own needs and boundaries? How does this tendency show up for you, and how might it relate to your attachment style?
Have you ever found yourself repeating a boundary or request over and over again, hoping for a different response? What effect does this pattern have on both you and the relationship?
Reflect on your relationship with self-worth: do you feel your wellbeing is as important as the desire to maintain connection with others? Where do you notice tension between these two values?
When others set boundaries with you, how do you tend to respond? Is there a part of you that feels rejected, controlled, or wants to push past their limits?
Can you identify any deal breakers for yourself when it comes to relationships? Are you clear about these—both to yourself and to others?
What does “embodied self-advocacy” mean to you in practice, and how might you begin to cultivate it, especially when it feels uncomfortable or uncertain?
Feel free to use these as journaling prompts, conversation starters, or simply as points of reflection as you explore your own relationship to boundaries, needs, and self-worth.
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:23]:
In today's episode, we are talking all about boundaries, and in particular, distinguishing boundaries from all of the other buzzwords that fly around. So what's the difference between a boundary and an ultimatum? A boundary and a request, a boundary and a demand, a boundary and a threat. I think that for a lot of us with anxious attachment patterns, and probably other insecure attachment patterns as well, this can all feel really murky. And that makes so much sense because most of just did not have good modelling around boundaries. And if you are someone with more anxious attachment patterns, there's a good chance that your communication patterns have generally taken the form of, how do I get someone close and keep them close? And so that might look like suppressing your communication, biting your tongue, not speaking up until such time as you get so overwhelmed and so overwrought with unmet needs and stresses that you blow up and become very demanding and protesting.
[00:01:28]:
And obviously that's not a very healthy way of communicating a relationship. And yet what I see often happen is that people learn about boundaries, they learn about communication. They probably know they have a communication issue in their relationship, so that's a skill deficit. And so they set about trying to improve their communication. But if that's done in isolation, so if you're not working on all of the underlying stuff in tandem with that, so healing the core wounds and insecurities that lead you to communicate in those desperate, panicky ways, what can often happen is a bit of a band aid approach whereby you're saying the words that you've read in a book or an Instagram post, right? You're following the script, maybe quite literally, but it just doesn't have the sturdiness within to back it up. And I think what can happen there is when that self advocacy is not taking place on a really solid inner foundation, it can take the form of demands and threats and ultimatums rather than a really embodied self advocacy, which is what we want to shoot for. So in today's episode, I'm going to give a bit of a lay of the land as far as all of that different terminology. So just kind of running through, you know, what is a boundary, what is a request, what is an Ultimatum.
[00:02:39]:
What is a threat? What's a non negotiable? What's a deal breaker? What place do each of these things have in a healthy relationship as well as what you should really be focusing on in a big picture sense so that you can communicate and set boundaries and voice limits and be clear about what you want to need from a really grounded and sturdy place rather than one that feels like you're clutching at someone to try and get them to change so that you don't have to follow through on what you're saying. Which I, I think is often where it lands for anxiously attached people. Okay, so before we get into all of that, a final reminder about the Secure Self Challenge, which is my 28 day challenge which kicks off on Monday next week. So if you haven't joined us already, I would love to have you. We talk about all of the stuff we're gonna talk about today. We talk about self compassion. So if you have a very vocal inner critic, we talk about self care and self regulation, we talk about self respect and self honouring and boundaries and integrity. And we talk about self trust and control and surrender.
[00:03:35]:
All of those things in a really n manageable, bite sized format over 28 days in a nice group. So there's a really strong community component. If any of that appeals to you, you can sign up via the link in the show notes or head to my website. There's a few days left to sign up before we kick off on Monday next week. So I would love to have you in the group if that is interesting to you and you're someone who is wanting to work on building self worth. Okay, so let's dive into this conversation around what boundaries are, what they aren't, how they're different from requests, ultimatums, all of the things. So let's start with a request because a request will often be the first step in the so something's going on in your relationship. There's behaviour that maybe doesn't feel good to you, there's some sort of unmet need.
[00:04:16]:
The first thing you want to do is make a request. A request is where you say to someone, hey, it really doesn't feel good for me when you are scrolling through your phone at the dinner table, would you be open to us putting our phones aside during mealtime so that we can actually be present with each other? That's a request, right? It's voicing. Here's how I'm feeling, here's what I would love. Would you be open to doing that? And a request can be used to make a request about a need. It can also be used in the context of a boundary. So that first example was more in the vein of a need. In the context of boundaries, expressing your limit might be, I'm not comfortable with you raising your voice, please stop shouting. A request is quite simply what you hope the other person would do, what you would like them to do.
[00:04:58]:
And it's an invitation to them to modify their behaviour in accordance with what you would like, feel more comfortable with, what would support you, whatever that might be. And that is a perfectly legitimate thing to do. You are allowed to make requests of someone that you're in a relationship with to, to accommodate you. Even that might be really uncomfortable for you if you're someone with anxious attachment. Because there's this sense of like, I'm not allowed to ask for anything or take up any space or be difficult at all. I just have to be this quiet little mouse who's fine with everything. Obviously that is a one way ticket to self abandonment and unmet needs and resentment and all of that. So requests are step one.
[00:05:33]:
That's where we ask someone, you know, would you be willing to or can you please whatever. Now, a boundary is best thought of as the limit of what you can tolerate, what you will tolerate, what you are and are not available for, coupled with the thing that you will do if that limit is not respected. And really critical here is that a boundary, properly framed should not require that the other person cooperate or modify their behaviour or do what you want them to do. Again, that's the domain of a request. But a boundary is the thing that I will do if my limit is not respected, if the request is not responded to in the way that I had hoped. So going back to the previous example, that might sound like if you continue raising your voice at me, I am going to leave the room or I am going to hang up the phone and we can resume this conversation later. Or not recognising that initially we can make the request, please stop shouting. I'm not comfortable with it.
[00:06:30]:
If the person continues to shout in spite of the request that you've made, then it's over to you to do something about that, to honour your limit and take action that is in the direction of respecting your own limit of really following through on what you've said. Like I won't tolerate X, Y, Z thing because it does not feel good or safe to me. So here's what I'm going to do in response. Now you might be hearing that and going like, oh, am I really allowed to do that because that sounds almost like a threat. I actually got a couple of people commenting on an Instagram post I did on this topic a few weeks ago saying like that, that framing of if you continue to do X, I will do Y felt like a threat, felt controlling and manipulative. And am I really allowed to say things like that? And I think a lot of people was saying if I were on the receiving end of that I would feel controlled or manipulated, like the person was trying to prevent my self expression or something like that. What I would say in response to that is that if you are someone who has not historically had any sort of boundaries and your sense of taking care of myself is trying to get people to behave differently so that I feel better, then that kind of language may feel controlling to you, right? Because if it has always been used in that way, if it's always been wielded as a form of control, and if you know deep down that were you communicating in that way, it would ultimately be to try and elicit an outcome in them. It would be more like a threat, more like an escalation, saying if you don't stop raising your voice, I'm going to hang up the phone or I'm going to walk out the door.
[00:07:55]:
All the while hoping that you don't actually have to make good on it. That makes sense that you would have that response of like that feels manipulative and threatening. But the difference with a boundary is healthy. Boundary is really not about controlling the other person. If you are articulating here is the limit of what I will and won't have in my relationships, what I am and I'm not available for, then following through on your boundary is very simply an act of responsible self care and it is in service of healthier relationships. Because if you're saying I will not put myself in the situation where I'm exposed to this thing that does not feel safe for me, then that is your responsibility. If you are continually brought into contact with this thing that does not feel right for you, it is your responsibility to ultimately act on that and defend the boundary to the extent that you need to. This is the part that is so hard for a lot of people with anxious attachment because we default back to step one.
[00:08:51]:
If someone is not respecting the boundary, we just say it again and again and again and maybe get louder and bigger and more emphatic and more desperate trying to explain why the boundary is important and why they should change their behaviour so that we don't have to do the difficult thing, which sometimes is to remove ourselves from a situation, from a relationship, to accept the fact that someone isn't going to want modify their behaviour to accommodate us. And that will happen from time to time. And part of really mature and self responsible boundary work is that sometimes we will have to do that. Now let's talk about the scenario in which this does feel controlling or misused or you know, someone's weaponizing therapy speak to have the upper hand or to gain a sense of power in a dynamic. If this is happening to you, if you're trying to voice a need and someone's saying, I don't feel comfortable with this, if you keep talking about this topic, I'm going to walk away. And maybe you've tried several times to talk about out the topic and you feel like you're being pretty regulated. It feels like someone's just putting up a brick wall in a way that feels really unfair. That is entirely possible, right? Like, I'm not saying that that can't happen and I'm not saying that what they're doing is necessarily healthy and secure behaviour.
[00:10:01]:
But ultimately that's not for you to decide. You can't decide that their boundary is invalid and therefore you're just going to keep pushing past it or ignoring it or dismissing it. That is you not behaving in a healthy, respectful way. It's really up to you to decide whether you like their boundary or not. In the sense of if I like it and I think it's valid, I'll respect it, but if I don't like it and I think it's unfair, or I think you're just using that as an excuse, then I'm going to push past it. Again, this is a bit of a tough one for anxious attachers who are actually not great at respecting other people's boundaries. There's this sense of like, yeah, but I just need to say this thing. And so I'll keep pushing and pushing and pushing.
[00:10:40]:
If you don't like the boundary that someone's setting, then you can reassess whether and on what terms you want to be in relationship with that person. If you feel like they are blocking you from expressing yourself and keeping you at arm's length in a way that isn't working for you and you feel really silenced by them, for example, then that's good information. But ultimately it goes back to you to decide in light of their boundary, having regard to their boundary, what am I going to do? What are my choices? What's in the ambit of my control and responsibility. Their boundaries, their behaviour, their choices are over there with them. That's not something that's for me to control. I can only control what I do in response. And that is, is a really big paradigm shift. It sounds kind of obvious, but if you are someone who has typically been very anxious, very enmeshed in your relationships, who has this sense of, I need to make them behave the way I want them to so that I feel okay, that can be a real adjustment to start thinking about relationships and boundaries and responsibilities in this way of like, what is actually within my sphere of control and responsibility here.
[00:11:48]:
Okay, so let's move now to talking about ultimatums. And I want to talk about ultimatums by contrast to something like deal breakers. So again, when I spoke about this on Instagram, a lot of people were saying, isn't that an ultimatum? And aren't ultimatums bad? Isn't that the same as a threat? And as I reflected on this, I think an ultimatum is essentially a deal breaker, but maybe coming from a more unhealthy, insecure place. So I think the words could almost be similar, like the substance of a deal breaker being, this won't work for me. So if this continues to be present, I'm out. I can't do it anymore. I think the substance of it, a deal breaker versus an ultimatum, could actually be very similar or even the same. The difference is often the energy with which it is packaged and delivered, you know where it comes from.
[00:12:35]:
And I think a deal breaker is a really important thing to have and to know and to follow through on for yourself. I teach this all the time in the context of dating. If you don't know what your deal breakers are, you're going to probably end up pursuing connections that aren't aligned because you're just following things like chemistry and connection and feelings and romance without really knowing if there's underlying alignment compatibility. So knowing where are my limits, what am I available for? What's absolutely a no go zone for me, that stuff's really important. So I think like, fundamentally having these bright lines, these lines in the sand of like, if it crosses that line, that is a deal breaker. So I think all of that can certainly be healthy and part of a secure relationship. For me, an ultimatum is more of a power play. And so I think it's like wielding a deal breaker as a way to get someone on the right side of the line.
[00:13:25]:
So it tends to be coming from this energy of threat and demand and like, you have to do this or I'm leaving or I'm gonna do blah. And it's sort of designed to maybe scare or intimidate someone into doing what you want them to do. And again, I think that's almost always coming from insecurity when it is carrying that energy. And so that's really the distinction that I want you to be mindful of when it comes to ultimatums is like, am I actually just over there with them trying to change their behaviour, or am I here with me saying this is what's true for me in terms of what I'm available for and what I'm not. And if this is present in the relationship, that's a deal breaker for me. And I'm not saying that to jump up and down to make you not do the thing, I'm just telling you, like that's the line. And I'm like, no. So to think of an example here, so many women that I work with, like a frightening number of women that I work with will be in relationships where there's like repeated known instances of boundary violations around infidelity and talking to other women in inappropriate ways, whether that's sexual messages or actual cheating.
[00:14:35]:
And it happens multiple times, again and again and again. But from this place of hurt and fear and worry and low self worth, rather than saying initially when something isn't okay, like absolutely not, this isn't okay, and I will honour myself by, you know, maybe walking away from the relationship, depending on the circumstances, there's this escalating, you can't do this to me, you have to stop doing this to me. Why do you keep doing this? Oh, you've done it again. Like I've told you, you can't do this. Why wouldn't you know, like just continuing to go back to that, like, please stop, please change, please hear me. And again, like, I have so much compassion for this because I've been there. But that is a really disempowering place to be. And so often with these big issues in relationships, the communication piece is not so much about words, it's about action.
[00:15:24]:
I think self advocacy as more of an umbrella is oftent about taking action to back up what we're saying because it's so much easier to say the thing. But I think a lot of anxious attachers are all bark and no bite. And there's this great fear around actually having to follow through on the thing that we're saying. And that dilutes the power of our words because it does end up taking the form of empty threats over and over again. And People clock onto that pretty quickly. And so the unfortunate reality, of course we would love for everyone to, to be respectful enough and attuned enough to see the pain that their actions might cause in advance so that they never do it. But if people can have their cake and eat it too, if they can behave in a way and you get upset and then say don't do that again, but then they do it again and nothing happens other than you getting upset, that might not provide enough of an incentive, right? That just might not be enough. And so sometimes people do need to experience consequences to actually understand that certain things aren't acceptable.
[00:16:25]:
So if there is a bit of a track record of a lot of empty threats being made, I think we have to look at the part we're playing in continuing that dynamic rather than just pointing the finger at someone else and saying, how could you do this to me? Really the question is, how can I keep doing this to me? Because I'm the one who's still here, I'm the one who's still tolerating this even when I say that I won't tolerate this. So I think it's so important that when you say something is a non negotiable for me, something is a deal breaker for me me that you honour that because I think we, we do often say that in the hope that someone will respect it. But then we continue to tolerate whatever the thing is and that is where we abandon ourselves. And that's really, really big. That's a big important piece for anxiously attached people. It's like, I will not abandon myself by continuing to tolerate something that I've said I will not tolerate. So just before we wrap up, I want to talk about the bigger picture, which is like that if you're trying to do all of this communication, hopefully you've gotten the sense through this episode that this is not just about saying the right thing in the right way in your relationships. And then like, voila, I now have secure communication.
[00:17:26]:
Communication is just kind of like top layer, you know, it's the tip of the iceberg. Underneath that is all of the stuff that makes self advocacy really hard and scary because it brings us into contact with, you know, can I really take a stand for my needs? Are my needs valid? Am I allowed to honour myself by walking away from something that doesn't feel good? All of those things are really big and they do bring us into contact with some of our deepest wounds and insecurities. So trying to just solve for communication without also bringing these other parts along. For the ride and getting curious around like, well, what is stopping me from actually honouring myself in the first place? Why does that feel so impossible? Why do I revert back to step one and just go back to pleading and persuading and explaining myself for the hundredth time? Until we understand that, and until we really bring those parts along for the ride, it's unlikely that we're going to be able to shift those patterns in any meaningful way. Because really, boundary work to me comes back to self worth. Boundary work is really about honouring ourselves, and it's really hard to do that. To put your wellbeing above a connection. If a connection is a lifeline for you, if you have this sense of I am not okay without this person or this connection or whatever it might be, when that feels like a life raft and you're going to drown without it, then of course, of course you'll say you have a need, but as soon as the relationship feels threatened, you'll drop the need and hold the relationship.
[00:18:56]:
So that's always going to be the bigger work for anxiously attached people is like learning to stand on my own two feet so that I can come to a relationship from a level footing and feeling like if it's not right, if it's not working, then I am comfortable honouring myself and walking away. Of course, there'll still be sadness and grief that comes with a relationship potentially ending or changing in form or shape, but my wellbeing matters. I treat myself as someone who is precious and worthy of care rather than casting myself aside in favour of holding onto someone else. Okay, I'm going to leave it there you guys. I hope that this has been helpful. As a side note, I meant to mention earlier my free training around how to Heal Anxious Attachment, which is a 75 minute webinar if you want to check that out, it's totally free. And I do talk about this topic in more detail, specifically that last piece around. Like if we just try and solve for the secure relationship skills without those foundations of self worth, it tends not to land and it can actually backfire. So if you're interested in going a little deeper into that, you should check out my free training, which is also linked in the show notes or on my website. Otherwise, thank you so much for joining me guys and I look forward to seeing you again soon.
[00:20:07]:
Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you wanna go deeper on all things attachment, love, and relationships, you can find me on Instagram @stephanie__rigg or at stephanierigg.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review and a 5 star rating. It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here, and I hope to see you again soon.
Keywords from Podcast Episode
boundaries, anxious attachment, secure relationships, self worth, communication skills, setting boundaries, requests, ultimatums, deal breakers, threats, insecurity, self advocacy, core wounds, self compassion, self regulation, self care, integrity, self respect, self honouring, inner critic, non negotiables, relationship coaching, self trust, control, surrender, attachment patterns, emotional safety, unmet needs, self abandonment, personal limits
#191: Pleasure, Rest, & Feeling Good in a Culture of Chronic Stress
If you find yourself spiralling into anxiety — overanalysing a text, catastrophising worst-case scenarios, or feeling like your nervous system is in overdrive — this episode is for you.
If the idea of prioritising pleasure or rest feels foreign—or even uncomfortable—you’re not alone. In a world that celebrates productivity, busyness, and relentless striving, the notion of slowing down and simply feeling good can seem radical. But what if that discomfort wasn’t a personal failing, but a natural response to the culture we’ve been shaped by?
In this post, I want to offer a gentle invitation to reimagine your relationship with rest, pleasure, and feeling good—not as indulgences or luxuries, but as essential components of wellbeing. Because I truly believe that when we stop outsourcing our vitality to achievement and start reclaiming our joy, everything shifts.
We Weren’t Meant to Live Like This
Before I became a relationship coach, before I spoke about attachment and self-worth, I was a corporate lawyer. I lived in the heart of hustle culture: long hours, chronic stress, and the unspoken belief that burnout was a badge of honour. For a while, I played the game. Until I realised I didn’t want to anymore.
Once you see the cost of that way of living, it’s hard to unsee it. And while not everyone is in a position to overhaul their life overnight, I believe we all deserve to question the systems we've inherited—particularly the ones that tell us feeling good has to be earned.
Because the truth is: you don't have to "deserve" rest. You don't have to prove yourself to earn pleasure. These things are not conditional rewards—they’re birthrights.
Why Pleasure and Rest Feel So Hard
There are many reasons we struggle to access rest and pleasure, even when we’re exhausted or depleted. Let’s unpack a few of the big ones:
1. Chronic stress as a baseline
If your nervous system is constantly in overdrive—always anticipating the next thing, bracing for impact—it’s incredibly difficult to slow down and feel good. Pleasure requires presence. And anxiety is the antithesis of presence. If you’re always rushing, mentally elsewhere, or feeling like you need to be productive to be safe or worthy, there’s little room left to feel.
2. Internalised beliefs about worth
Many of us carry deep scripts like: I have to earn rest. I’ll feel good once I finish everything. It’s selfish to prioritise myself. These beliefs often have roots in childhood or cultural conditioning and leave us in a state of perpetual self-abandonment. We care for everyone else first—and often, there’s nothing left over.
3. Hustle culture and identity
In our society, “busy” is code for “important.” We wear exhaustion like a badge of honour. And stepping outside of that can feel like a threat—not just to our sense of belonging, but to our identity. Saying no to overworking can feel rebellious. But it’s also the first step toward reclaiming your life.
Rest and Pleasure Are Not Luxuries
What if rest wasn’t something you earned at the end of a long day, but something you were worthy of—right now? What if feeling good wasn’t frivolous, but deeply regulating to your nervous system?
This isn’t about quitting your job and moving to the forest (although if that’s calling you, go for it!). It’s about small, meaningful shifts:
Drinking your morning coffee in the sun rather than at your desk.
Putting on soft clothes and actually noticing how they feel against your skin.
Pausing to inhale the scent of jasmine as you walk past a blooming bush.
Looking up at the sky. Really looking.
These are moments of nourishment. And they’re available now—not once everything is done, not once you’ve earned it.
Why This Matters (Especially If You’re Anxiously Attached)
For those with anxious attachment, life can feel like a constant scramble for safety and connection. We over-function, over-give, and overthink. We orient our nervous systems around others—trying to earn love, prove our worth, and secure our place in someone else’s life.
When you start to orient back toward yourself—your own pleasure, your own regulation, your own joy—you stop looking outward for all of your needs to be met. You stop outsourcing your sense of vitality. And that, quite honestly, changes everything.
FURTHER LINKS & RESOURCES:
Questions for Discussion & Reflection
What is your relationship to pleasure, rest, and feeling good? Do you find it easy or challenging to prioritise these in your daily life?
How has your upbringing or family culture shaped your beliefs about rest and pleasure? Are there messages you internalised about deserving (or not deserving) to feel good?
When, if ever, do you notice yourself feeling guilty or “lazy” when you rest or prioritise your own comfort? Where do you think these feelings come from?
Can you recall a recent moment when you truly slowed down and savoured something small (like a hot drink, a beautiful sunset, or a comfy pair of clothes)? What was that experience like for you?
Do you ever use busyness or constant activity as a way to avoid being present with yourself? How does this impact your sense of wellbeing?
In what ways might chronic stress or anxiety be keeping you from feeling at ease in your body or accessing pleasure in the present moment?
How does productivity culture show up in your life? Do you wear “being busy” as a badge of honour, or do you resist this cultural pressure?
Are there specific beliefs or stories you hold about what it means to take care of yourself—such as it being selfish or indulgent? Where do these stories come from?
If you could give yourself total permission to feel good for even five minutes a day, what might that look like? What might get in the way?
What small, specific adjustments could you make this week to orient more toward comfort, ease, or pleasure in your daily routine? How might these changes nourish you?
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:04]:
In today's episode, we are talking all about pleasure, rest, and feeling good, and how you can use these things as tools to increase your sense of joy, well-being, and vitality. Now this as a topic might seem a little bit random for some of you, but this is actually one of my favorite things to speak about and teach on. And as a little fun fact, when I first started coaching, long before I had a podcast or even really spoke that much about attachment, this was the kind of thing that I was focusing on because I had just come from being a corporate lawyer, and I was perhaps in reaction to everything that I saw in that environment, which was the opposite of pleasure, rest, and feeling good. It was an environment that was characterized by burnout and overworking and hustle, and I had such a visceral reaction to that. As much as I spent a few years participating in it and being very much swept up in it all, as time went on, I really felt like my eyes were opened to how much I didn't want that for myself, how costly it was to operate at that level of chronic stress and busyness and burnout. And I think once you see it, it's kind of hard to unsee it.
[00:01:51]:
And personally, even though I did live like that for probably the better part of a decade, I think that deep down I've always had a baseline orientation towards pleasure and joy and spaciousness and rest and ease. That's a very comfortable home base for me, and so I definitely experienced a level of incongruence in being in that environment, and I'm so grateful that I listened to that and that I made some really big choices in my life to change pace, to reorganize my life around feeling good as a priority. And as we're going to talk about today, for a lot of people that is utterly foreign, And it may be that you have some really heavy conditioning around feeling good, whether that's coming from a worthiness place, like I don't deserve to feel good, or a place of productivity culture, hustle culture, like feeling good is a luxury, and maybe I will make time for pleasure or rest or joy when I finish all of the things that I have to do. And we all know that that probably means never because the to do list is never ending, feeling like those things are selfish or lazy. These things are heavily laden with conditioning and shame and so much density that it can be really, really revealing to examine our relationship to pleasure, to rest, to joy, to feeling good. And the reason I talk about this, I personally think that these are an end in themselves. It is not about using rest as a way to become more productive or some sort of mechanism to achieve more, to increase our capacity to keep pushing. I think that these things are essential just for our sense of well-being, which I think is a very worthy goal and something that deserves prioritization independent of anything else.
[00:03:53]:
But if we were to look at the bigger picture, it is undeniable that pleasure and rest and feeling good are incredible tools for nervous system regulation, for signaling to your body that you are safe. And we know that that is absolutely paramount in our overall sense of well-being, not only within ourselves, but in our relationships as well. And as we'll talk about today, when you struggle a lot with anxiety, it's almost like anxiety and pleasure are separate pedals. Anxiety is the brake and pleasure is the accelerator. It's an imperfect analogy, but point being, when anxiety hits the brakes, it's really hard to access pleasure because pleasure is all about presence, and anxiety is the opposite of presence. Anxiety takes us out of the present moment, out of our bodies, and makes pleasure and feeling good really, really hard to access, and fuels the belief that it's not a priority. Feeling good is a luxury that we don't have time for because we are in danger. Right? So I want to talk about all of the different reasons why pleasure and feeling good might be challenging for you, some of the different ways that we get conditioned around this, and give some suggestions on how you can start to incorporate more of this into your life in a deliberate way, in a really nourishing way.
[00:05:16]:
And I should be really clear, I should have said this at the outset, when I talk about pleasure here, I'm not talking about sexual pleasure. Sexual pleasure can obviously be a part of pleasure, but that's not the focus here. I'm talking about pleasure really in the sense of feeling good, things that bring me pleasure, and that might be savoring a delicious piece of chocolate. It might be literally stopping to smell the roses. It might be turning your face to the sun. It might be putting on a really comfy pair of pants and getting into bed when you've just changed the sheets, and it just makes your body go, Ah, how lovely. Right? But so much of the time, we're in such a rush, in such a hurry, or we're so preoccupied with all of the things that are going wrong that we don't actually tune into all of the pleasure that is available in the present moment, and so we rob ourselves of the opportunity to enjoy all of that. Okay.
[00:06:08]:
So that's what we're going to be talking about today. This has been a very long introduction. I feel like I've already done half the episode before I've even started the episode. But before we get into it, I just want to remind you about my Secure Self Challenge, which kicks off in about ten days. If you are someone who struggles with self worth, and what we're going to talk about today absolutely ties into that, the Secure Self Challenge is a really great one. And actually, one of the weeks of the challenge is all about self care and self regulation. And really not in the sense of self care, having a perfect morning routine or whatever, but like, what is your relationship to taking great care of yourself? Is that something that you perceive as being a luxury? How good are you at turning towards yourself and saying, what do I need? How am I today? How could I make little micro adjustments in the direction of more comfort, more ease, more pleasure, more spaciousness, and how might that nourish me today and every day? So that is something that we really work through in the challenge, and you'll be invited to figure out, like, what does that look like for me, and how can I bring more of that in? And I find that when we do that, when we get really well practiced at nourishing and nurturing ourselves in that way, it really does increase our capacity. It really does change the way that we relate to ourselves and other people and makes us less likely to be really dependent on others from this needy, desperate place because our baseline starts to rise.
[00:07:34]:
And when we are accustomed to feeling bad all the time, whether that's emotionally or physically or both, we tend to expect to feel bad, right? When that's the baseline, when we always feel a bit rubbish, then bad things happening or high stress or being treated poorly by someone, that's just part of what we've come to know. Whereas when we really start to orient towards feeling good as our baseline, it becomes clearer what is not in alignment with that and what are the things that bring us down rather than contribute to our sense of well-being. So that's part of what we do in the challenge, among many other things, around self compassion, self respect, self trust. We cover a lot of ground in four weeks in a really nice, easy to consume, digestible way. So if you wanna join us for the challenge, link is in the show notes. It's also on my website. I would love to see you there. Okay.
[00:08:27]:
So pleasure, rest, and feeling good. So let's talk about a few of the reasons why this might be hard for you. I touched on this in the very long introduction that if you are someone who struggles with anxiety, from a nervous system point of view, pleasure and rest and feeling good is really the domain of a broadly regulated nervous system. I mean, there can be some activation in pleasure, obviously, if we looked at a sexual a sexual context, but chronic stress is the opposite of pleasure, rest, and feeling good, because those things really require that we're in that parasympathetic state where we're not mobilized into needing to do something to deal with a threat and deal with pressure and deal with stress all the time. And so if you're someone who spends most of their time in that state of activation, of mobilization, of go, go, go, I need to do something, and even if it's not coming from a consciously anxious place, if you just at that level of constant busyness and constant rushing, constantly needing to be somewhere else, that is mutually exclusive with pleasure and rest and feeling good as far as I'm concerned, because as I said, that takes us out of presence. It takes us out of feeling. We are so disconnected from our bodies and our senses when we're in that mode, and stress, when it's in that state, is a really powerful numbing agent. And that's why some of us can be almost addicted to stress and busyness and work.
[00:09:55]:
Maybe you distract yourself constantly if you do have spare time rather than actually being present and resting, you busy yourself with things, right? You can't actually sit still, you can't actually just do nothing, you can't just be, because all of that doing distracts you from what you might find in the being. And for a lot of us, that's really hard and that's really uncomfortable. Some people might even find that if you are good at just doing nothing, it's still lying on the couch with your phone in your hand and scrolling, right? It's still stimulating something that takes you out of your body rather than being fully present, being fully tuned in. So if that's you, that might be part of the equation for sure, that whether you like it or not, you rely on busyness, you rely on chronic stress, on always rushing from one thing to the next, and that robs you of the ability to tune into pleasure because there's not enough space and presence to be actually, like, here and now in my body in this moment. I'm always thinking about the next thing or rushing to the next thing. I've got 5,000,000 mental tabs open, or maybe actual tabs open, but all of that can really inhibit our ability to tune into pleasure. And as a side note, if we were to talk about sexual pleasure, you'll see the same things. People who struggle a lot with anxiety tend to be really cerebral during sexual encounters.
[00:11:24]:
So you're thinking about the other person. What are they thinking? Are they having a good time? What does my body look like? Your mind's going at a million miles an hour, and I don't know if you've noticed, but that really hits the brakes in terms of your ability to be in your body and experience pleasure in a really embodied way. So this operates on all levels, right? When we're so stuck in our head and so stuck in anxiety and stress, that really inhibits our ability to feel, for better or for worse. So that's one of the the main things that might be getting in the way of pleasure and rest and feeling good. Another one is more of a worthy and deserving thing. So for a lot of people, there can be this sense of I don't deserve to feel good, I don't deserve to be taken care of, I don't deserve to rest, I don't deserve to relax, I don't deserve to feel pleasure. I don't deserve to feel joy. And that can come from deep shame around those things.
[00:12:24]:
Maybe you've got conditioning around what your parents' relationship to those things were, and maybe in your family of origin or your community that you've been raised in, those things are seen as synonymous with laziness or selfishness or indulgence or any number of other things that have strong negative shame based connotations. Or you might have just this sense of, I don't deserve that because I'm not good enough. I am not worthy of that. I deserve to feel bad. I deserve to struggle. I have to do all of that in order to prove myself in some way, and it's only once everyone else is taken care of that maybe I get the scraps. I know a lot of women in particular struggle with that kind of relationship to rest and pleasure, this sense of it's so hard to put myself above anyone else. And you know, if you're operating from that place, there will always be people who could come before you, or things or tasks or to do list items that could come before you.
[00:13:26]:
And so what often happens is that that never arrives, that moment where everything's done and everything's taken care of and everyone's taken care of, and you finally get a moment to yourself. So if you've got this imprinting around taking care of myself, putting myself first, asking for support, asking for some time to myself, if that's selfish, if that makes me bad, if that makes me a bad partner or mother or friend or whatever, then I'm not gonna do that because that feels like it's risking connection or risking belonging or risking some sense of identity that I get from being endlessly selfless and caring and self sacrificial. So you can see there's so much in this, right? There's so much emotion tied in with pleasure and rest and feeling good. The other main bucket that I wanted to speak to is around productivity culture, hustle culture, burnout culture, like really, and I spoke about this earlier in the context of my background in corporate law, it's so normalized. A level of overworking, of pushing ourselves to the brink, and just operating way beyond a reasonable capacity. But because it's normalized and everyone else is doing it, we're looking over our shoulder feeling like, if that person's working that hard and pushing that much, then I have to do that as well. How many times have you run into someone on the street or at the coffee shop and you ask how they are and they answer, Yeah, busy. Good, but busy.
[00:15:00]:
And you say, Yeah, me too. I've been really busy. You know, that that's just expected almost. You're following the script and you talk about how busy you are, and that's the acceptable answer. If you were to answer that question by saying, actually, I haven't been busy at all. I've been taking things at a deliberately slower pace and really enjoying just prioritizing rest and pleasure and taking great care of myself. I'm sure that you'd get a look, right, from that person that would be really departing from the socially acceptable script of we're all busy, and that signifies that we are important and that we are doing well, we're successful, we're ambitious. Busy is worn as a badge of honor in our productivity culture.
[00:15:46]:
And so it is a radical act of rebellion almost to opt out of that system. And for me, to be fair, I still have a lot on my plate. I obviously run a business. I have a baby, but I really actively organize my life around trying not to overextend myself because I have no interest in being chronically stressed. I have no interest in being burnt out. I have no interest in being depleted. I don't think that that serves me. I don't think it serves my family.
[00:16:18]:
I don't think it serves all of you. Right? And I really treat my well-being and my vitality as an absolute priority, very unashamedly. And so I really feel like in the past few years, I have very intentionally unsubscribed from that kind of culture, and it takes courage to do that, but gosh, is it liberating to say, Actually, no, I'm not going to live like that. I'm not going to just run myself into the ground. To say, No, actually, I don't want to work as much as humanly possible. I want to be present enough to actually enjoy my life. I'm not going to work like a dog just to climb a ladder to accumulate stuff so that I can then maybe feel happy and fulfilled. And for me, success looks like being able to take an afternoon nap and have a bath every day and go to the farmers markets at 2PM on a Wednesday and buy fresh flowers and food and cook for my family.
[00:17:22]:
Like, that to me is more a picture of success than working in a high rise building for twelve hours a day and then going home to sleep and waking up and doing it all again. Anyway, I should stop myself because you might be sensing that I feel quite passionately about this, and it really is one of those things that when you take a step back from it, you really see it for what it is, and you can see that we were never meant to live like this. And so maybe the anxiety and the stress and the depletion that you're feeling isn't signaling that there's something wrong with you, but rather that there's something wrong with the way that so many of us live, and that the way we're feeling is a very natural response to the way we are living. And so if all of this is resonating with you and you're feeling like, yes, that's all well and good, but how am I meant to make any changes because this is my life and I have a job and I have obligations and responsibilities. I get it. I know that not everyone is going to make as radical a departure from that system as I maybe did. And the good news is that this doesn't have to be drastic. Bringing more pleasure and slowness and space and ease into your life does not have to be drastic.
[00:18:35]:
It can be as simple as drinking your coffee in the sunshine rather than rushing back to your desk or rushing to get in the car. It can be as simple as stopping and inhaling as you catch a whiff of jasmine in the breeze on a beautiful spring day. It could be the moment when you get into comfy clothes at the end of a work day and just taking a moment to notice how good that feels in your body. All of these things are oftentimes things that you might be doing anyway, but we're in such a rush and we're so mentally distracted that we're not present enough to actually take in the pleasure. And so just trying to be more aware and more present and more attuned to your senses. What can I feel? What can I see? Isn't that beautiful? To look up at a tree as you walk underneath it and look at the sky as it peers through the leaves and just soak in the sense of awe and wonder at how majestic regulating if only you slow down enough to actually take it in. So please know that this doesn't require that you quit your job and completely overhaul your life, although secretly I would be delighted if you did that. It really just does require that you slow down and that you give yourself permission to feel good. And what might that look like to give yourself total permission to feel good even if it's for five minutes a day? Starting small if this feels really challenging for you. And if it does feel really challenging for you, that's super interesting as well, and that's something to reflect on. Why might it be that pleasure and rest and feeling good feels so hard for me? What are the stories that I carry around this? Where did they come from, and how are they serving me? Okay. I'm gonna leave it there, guys. I really hope that this has given you some food for thought.
[00:20:26]:
As I said, it's one of my favorite topics and one that I don't get to talk about enough these days, so I'm hoping that something in that has landed with you, and I'd love to hear from you if this resonated. Otherwise, I look forward to seeing you again next week. Thanks, guys.
[00:20:43]:
Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you wanna go deeper on all things attachment, love, and relationships, you can find me on Instagram @stephanie__rigg or at stephanierigg.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review and a 5 star rating. It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here, and I hope to see you again soon.
Keywords from Podcast Episode
pleasure, rest, feeling good, nervous system regulation, anxiety, burnout, chronic stress, productivity culture, hustle culture, corporate law, self care, self regulation, self worth, self compassion, self respect, self trust, busyness, presence, mindfulness, worthiness, shame, conditioning, self nourishment, well-being, joy, spaciousness, relaxation, embodiment, slowing down, work-life balance