Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele Taraba
Ep. 113 – Creating Healthy Boundaries to Heal Ourselves and Our Lives
TRANSCRIPT Gissele: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content. And if you’d like to support the podcast, you can go to buymeacoffee.com/loveandcompassion. Today, we’re gonna be talking about healthy boundaries, and Our guest today is Nina Tiara, a self-growth coach who helps women stop over-functioning, set healthy boundaries, and reconnect with themselves. Drawing on her own journey of healing and personal transformation, Nina brings a no-nonsense, honest perspective to personal growth. Her three pillars are processing emotions, understanding core programming, and creating healthy boundaries. Please join me in welcoming Nina. Hi, Nina. Nina: Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to share the wealth of information I have in my lived journey. Gissele: amazing. Thank you for being on the show. Can you tell the audience a little bit about how you got started in [00:01:00] this work? Nina: How did I get started? That’s interesting. I had an arranged marriage, and in that arranged marriage, actually, the arranged marriage had nothing to do it. It was just more stressful. What really happened was, as a child, I had a lot of programming. I didn’t have any boundaries in my life. I didn’t know how to process my emotions. they say a child, when they’re young, from age, I don’t know, from the day they’re born till seven, I think, the age is, they take on programming. So basically, my parents, whatever they knew, they passed it on to me. But me being a very sensitive nervous system, I absorbed it. I internalized it. And I didn’t have anybody to model anything different. My sister was younger, my brother came 10 years later. I didn’t have any cousins or anybody. That’s just the way it was in my environment at the time, okay, when I grew up. So then as I got older and when I got into a marriage at 21, I had more responsibilities. I ended up having a host of symptoms: depression, anxiety, insomnia stomach [00:02:00] issues. I had a lot of symptoms like that, and there’s a lot more I could go into. But I had a lot of symptoms that are coming up, and I was looking for help everywhere. I was going one modality to another. And then 2006, I met a woman who’s a woman’s health coach and naturopathic doctor, and I started working with her. And, she basically said a few things to me. You’ll become symptom-free. You’ll live the life you want. Your children become like you. You’ll find your soul purpose.” At the time, it was just … I was like, “I wanna get, work through these symptoms.” And what I thought was, like, maybe a few months’ journey ended up on a, from 2006, I would honestly say October 2025, I still remember it clearly what happened. Everything, like all the jigsaw puzzles just connected. I really started in tune with my emotions and having boundaries in October 2025. And that’s how I ended up finding my soul purpose after 20 years of work with her, healing myself, and that’s how I found a soul purpose to support [00:03:00] other women that are going through, And I still see it and no judgment ’cause I was there too once Most of us as women, we know how to feel, but we don’t know how to process emotion deeper. So I help women process their unprocessed emotions, feel them, and then I help them look at their core programming, ’cause that’s huge. Those in- two interact. And once we got that sorted out, then we can go deep into helping you create effective and healthy boundaries. All three of them connect together. Gissele: That’s beautiful. Thank you for sharing your journey. And I agree with you. Many of us that had programming from, parents that might have had their own intergenerational trauma and their own issues, and so we tend to hand that down. But the good news is we also tend to hand down compassion and love, and you can have that intergenerational health, which is important. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how you recognized you did not have healthy boundaries. Oh. Because in this society, I think that we’ve been conditioned to [00:04:00] overgive, and so to not overgive may seem like an odd thing to do. How did you realize you didn’t have healthy boundaries, and what helped you shift ? Nina: So when I was doing the work with my practitioner, like I, I was already a very highly intuitive empath. I didn’t know this until I did my journey. So I was already thinking when things were happening, this isn’t right. They can’t treat me like this. But I didn’t know it was boundaries. And when I started, people can’t treat me like this, right? In general or the s- stuff that was happening in my life. And it wasn’t until I started on the healing journey, I realized through processing emotions and then doing, and looking at the patterns where it was all coming from, that I was really not taught anything about boundaries. It wasn’t… My family didn’t have it either. Basically, I was living on autopilot, and that was through shifting through my emotions, looking at my patterns. I realized that… And I used to think having boundaries was guilty and shameful. I can’t do this. W- but then I realized the way people were treating me people will take [00:05:00] advantage of you. I’m sorry to say this, but even your family. And there’s nothing, no shame or any guilt around it. And I learned that people were taking advantage of me for my kindness. I was an overgiver, and being an overgiver was a reason I had all these health issues because I was go go. There’s no way this nervous system, I call it, or body can take the amount of stress that I took. It’s a miracle as well because some of the things that were happening to me, like I was actually having mini seizures. I didn’t know this until later- Oh, wow … as I was healing. At night. Yeah. So now that I’ve healed, I notice that not feeling your emotions on a deep level and not connecting to your core programming, meaning patterns as well, where did it all come from? Can you understand boundaries? If I told you right away, and you’re coming as a client to me or a friend, “Hey, do you have boundaries?” They’re gonna look like They’re gonna be so dumbfounded because if they don’t know boundaries, if they haven’t done the other two steps, feeling their emotions and [00:06:00] looking at where it all came from, understanding their upbringing, their subconscious programming, they’re not gonna understand boundaries. So that’s when I realized that when I started doing the work that I was… All this stuff, I started connecting dots. I remember when my mentors taught me, told me to connect the dots. That was the hardest thing. I was like, “Connect the dots.” That took me a long time. And once I started connecting the dots and now I have simpler, more prompts and tools for my clients. I feel my mentors were very hard on me. Maybe that was my journey. But I know depending on where my client is, I want them to learn to process their own emotions, how to get to the boundary parts. But I found my mentors were very hard on me. Maybe that’s, that was my journey, right? But yeah, that’s how I realized that through my own healing journey, The way my stories had flowed, the things that happened in my life, I didn’t have any boundaries, and that’s why they happened Gissele: Yeah. Yeah. That’s very interesting. I wanted to go back on the the comment you made about [00:07:00] kindness. And I think it’s often a misconception that kindness is over-giving, and it is not. Because the kindest thing and the most compassionate thing you can do for yourself is have healthy boundaries. Because I don’t feel like other people want to violate our boundaries. They don’t wanna do hurtful things. They just do it out of ignorance or fear. And so the kindest and most compassionate thing you can do for yourself and others is have healthy boundaries. But we have been taught that over-giving is kindness. We have been taught that putting others first is kindness, and it is not. That’s why in the Bible… I think it’s in the Bible, they talk about love your neighbor as yourself, right? And so in order for us to be able to give to others, we have to be able to give to ourselves. Nina: 100%. And I actually had a aha moment, ’cause I visited somebody on the weekend that I hadn’t seen for over a year, connected to my past. And it was interesting. She brought up some stuff, and I said, “Wow.” She was absorbing that. So people were [00:08:00] seeing it because they had boundaries, or they just didn’t sit right with it. So she shared with me, like, when I was in that place, in that family, or in that system or environment, what her perspective was. I’m like, “Wow.” And so going back to kindness, I had to do more journaling that day when I got home. Actually, I was doing it last night. I was like, “Wow, do I be mean to this person and totally shut them out of my life because they are part of my life?” But I had already done this work, so that kindness part was healing myself further because this person is gonna be part of my life as long as I’m around, my children are around, and I will be connecting with them somewhere as I have grandchildren, all that. I f- I thought I had to heal that part of me, right? So yeah, the kindness is… Once you start loving yourself and you start feeling your emotion, you start understanding what happened to you it’s gonna take time. It’s not… Because first it’s gonna… It’s not gonna feel so good. I gotta be honest. This work does not feel too good. But it’s not a quick [00:09:00] fix. And, you’re nodding your head. You agree . It’s not a quick fix. I don’t… I remember when I was doing the work, my mentors did not tell me it was gonna be hard. Because had they told me, “Oh, you’re gonna feel like crap,” I may have not done it. Seriously. I tried to get out of it a couple of times. She goes yeah, but your symptoms aren’t gonna go away.” And I’m like, “Oh, shoot. That’s what I’m here for. I wanna get better.” So going back to kindness, I think that you develop that kindness muscle as you heal yourself. You understand those people were a mirror to your healing, to your deep- understanding yourself. And you know what? You’re still mirroring. As, even as you heal… I know, I’m looking back, some of the stuff that’s happening, but it’s just flowing through me. As you heal, the healed version, people are gonna be triggered by you. So first you’re the unhealed, people reflect. You don’t have boundaries people are gonna treat you that way. So once you have the boundaries, you develop that kindness, people are gonna be kind to you, and their kindness may look like they don’t call you [00:10:00] anymore. That’s okay. Yeah. A- that means they’re not supposed to be in your life anymore, right?  I’ve developed that kindness muscle now. But Women are shunned for their emotions and having boundaries. and I do not bash men at all, because everybody’s unlearning. Okay? Yeah. Once we learn it for ourselves, we treat the other person way better, whether it’s male or female. But going back, it’s a belief that we have to be kind, right? But kindness at the expense of where we’re hurting ourselves, no. Then that comes people pleasing, right? So I think on my journey, as I healed, I mirror to others that I’m not accepting that behavior, and it’s just been a ebb and flow. It… I’m just mirroring, and I’m sure you’re mirroring with other people you connect with. So I think that’s how I developed my kindness muscle. Yeah. Gissele: Yeah. So you mentioned your culture and how it influenced your ability to have healthy boundaries. How can you still… respect your culture and at the same time do something that might [00:11:00] support yourself that may not necessarily align? Nina: That’s a good question. I think when I look at… I don’t think it’s just a culture, it’s a family system. So we- … can name it as a culture. You’re in that environment. That’s where you grew up. That’s where you were born. That’s how they were programmed subconsciously. They’re not being bad parents, but you know what you know, right? Yeah. So they keep doing the same thing, it’s like they always say, teaching a dog a new trick. And to ch- shift that programming, or the, they also call it neuroplasticity, to change it, it’s a lot of work. It’s not a day’s work. And it’s also depends how much are you willing to do the work every day. Because I can be your guide, but how much are you willing to… I love learning. I could sit there and journalize and come to a conclusion within minutes. I connect dots really quickly. So when you go back to the culture I think understanding where I am at the level, that was their level of consciousness . And I saw that through my family, how my father started [00:12:00] treating me when I first separated in 2012 to divorcing 2015 to now how my family was treating me. I could see that. Sure they said a lot of things. “Oh, she’s doing this to culture. She’s leaving.” But once I shifted myself, and the biggest fear in a culture or even a system it wasn’t too long ago divorce was shunned even in other communities . Yeah. It’s not just my culture. In the white culture- … or Chinese, whatever, it’s… At the end of the day we’re all one under this umbrella. But we have these names. It was shunned Upon. And people worried about what happened to your children. But what I learned in going back to when I was doing the work, she said, “Your children will become like you.” I actually saw that shift with my children, I would say more so in the last five or six years when I shifted. And I was shifting. My older one’s a very old soul, and I have a different relationship with him, the firstborn, and I have a different relationship. Now it’s all good, but differently. But with the younger one they’re only five years [00:13:00] apart, but he would make co- little remarks here and there as I was doing the healing journey. “Oh,” just little remarks and I would like okay.” “Are you going to learn that now, Mom?” And I’m like I think he knows. Yeah, he’s a s- he’s a old soul.” And as I’ve healed I have an amazing relationship with my two boys. Yeah. So going back to the culture, that’s all they know, but you shift yourself. And shifting doesn’t mean I’m gonna be mean to you now, but I’m gonna have boundaries. And boundaries are self-love. You actually have better relationship with people, first with yourself because you’re in control of your time, you’re in control of your environment, you’re in control of everything around you. And also the people you shift, and then you decide who do you want to be with. Andyou’re gonna have to have different boundaries with different people because you’re able to decide, oh, this person operates this way. Not in a mean or a manipulative way, but that’s how kindness and compassion or boundaries are gonna work with them. Yeah. Gissele: Definitely. I’ve observed that in my own [00:14:00] life. I wanted to comment on what you had said, which I think is so important for my listeners to understand, is that this journey is not an easy journey. It’s simple, it’s not easy, which means you have to be willing to face those difficult feelings. You have to be willing to sit in the muck, to sit in the fears, and to constantly or daily show up for yourself. And that’s why, you mentioned, you’re like if they had told me how hard this was gonna be, I probably wouldn’t have done it.” That’s probably why they didn’t tell you,  Because if somebody tells you, “This is gonna suck,” we are taught to avoid pain. We are taught to move away from difficult feelings, but it is through the feelings where the healing happens. I know from my own journey, there was many years where I… My journey could have to healing could have been a lot faster, but there were some things I wasn’t ready to face in that time. So I still kept taking baby steps, but I was like- … “Okay, I’m not ready for that yet. I’m, I’ll do whatever.” So I’m curious as to [00:15:00] what helped you keep going in the face of-… the adversity and the challenges you faced in your healing? Nina: Oh, what kept me going? I’m also a kind of person when I start something, a course or any kind of thing, I love learning, so I keep on the route. But what was interesting with this lady or the modality I did, it’s called biotherapeutic drainage. Not many practitioners do this, but she was also same culture, about 10 years younger than me, and she was just… She embedded in me those four things. You become symptom-free. You’ll live the life you want. Your children become like you. You’ll find your soul purpose. So as I was stepping in one step, I saw ebbs and flows of the journey where a year … So from 2006 to 2010, I was completely fine. I had energy. I was still on autopilot, but I still saw the energy coming. But I was still not 100% well. I still hadn’t learned how to feel emotion. And [00:16:00] then I had my heating crisis, which was 2010 or 2011. That was hard, ’cause all of a sudden I felt well, and then I crashed with deep depression. It wasn’t just deep depression. I crashed with … ‘Cause I had irritable bowel syndrome, and everything that I had came to the surface, right? So now I’m actually connecting more dots. So it came to the surface. I think what kept me going on, because there were times I felt better and there were times I didn’t, and I finally connected the dot that, yeah, your body that wasn’t felt at that time when you’re going through that situation or a problem and you don’t feel it then, it has to come out. That took me a long time to understand. And I, in the back of my head, I would say, “This woman’s crazy”, and I would swear at her. I would never do it in front of her, but it was in my head. I’m like, “Is she nuts?” I’m not … I would question it continuously. And I think that was the biggest thing, that I had that resistance. If I don’t, now I’m gonna have to … Okay, I’ll [00:17:00] tell you. A situation that happened yesterday. I was coming down the stairs and I was putting on my jacket and about to go to the gym, and I hit this funny bone on a edge of a corner. Oh, my God. Did it hurt. old Nina would’ve screamed and yelled and She breathed through it, and because she breathed through it, she had less adrenal hormones that came up. She had less cortisol that got pumped out. Everything. I breathed through it. I’m not saying it didn’t hurt. I breathed through it, and I was fine. Sure, it’s s
