Breaking Our Borders

Send us Fan Mail Hello, everyone! I’m Doctor Michelle Border and I’m so glad you are joining me again this week. In today’s episode I will discuss the concept of our Inner Child. The "inner child" is a metaphor for the part of the brain that retains the emotions, memories, and beliefs formed during childhood. These emotions, memories, and beliefs can have a huge impact on our adulthood....

Send us Fan Mail Welcome back!  I’m Dr. Michelle Border and today I’m going to talk about what we can do when in unhealthy or toxic relationships that we are not ready to or cannot get away from. Negative relationships can take a toll on our mental health and build pretty strong borders in our minds. So let’s get started talking about how we can cope with these relationships, how to break down tho...

Send us Fan Mail Hello, and welcome back! I’m Dr. Michelle Border and in today’s episode I’m going to talk about Trauma Bond. Trauma Bond is what happens in our brains when narcissists manipulate us and change the biochemical pathways in our brains. I recently learned about this concept and wanted to share this new information with you. I’m going to explain what trauma bond is, how it happens, and...

Send us Fan Mail Hello, everyone and welcome back! I’m Dr. Michelle Border and in today’s episode I’m going to talk about grief. We think of grief as being associated with the death of someone close to us, but grief can be felt for other types of losses as well. Today I will talk about the many different ways we can experience grief, the different emotions that come with grief, and how we can work...

Send us Fan Mail   Hi, everyone! This week’s episode is going to be short as I’m on vacation and won’t be home to put together a regular episode.   You could use this time this week to check out my previous episodes that you may have missed on your favorite podcast provider, to find me on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube, or to check out my journal prompts on my website at breakingourborder...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome back! I’m super excited about this episode as this is the first time I have done an interview for the podcast. Today I have a special guest with me, Mr. Adam Copeland. I met Adam at a STEM teaching conference where he was the keynote speaker, and I was inspired by his speech. He discussed Positive Leadership, but I saw how his ideas about leadership related to personal gro...

Send us Fan Mail Hello and welcome back! I’m Dr. Michelle Border and in today’s episode I’m going to talk about perceptions. Perceptions are how individuals organize, identify, and interpret sensory information to understand the world around them. It has been my experience that the difference in perceptions can be the cause of misunderstandings, arguments, and hurt feelings. It is important that w...

Send us Fan Mail Hello, everyone!  Welcome back! I’m Dr. Michelle Border and in today’s episode I am going to talk about my healing journey. I have had several listeners say, I recognize my trauma and hear you about how I need to get on the healing journey, but how do I do that? Today I will tell you what I have done on my healing journey and what methods have helped me the most. So, let’s get sta...

Send us Fan Mail Hi and welcome back! I’m Dr. Michelle Border and in today’s episode I am going to discuss healthy and unhealthy romantic and friends relationships. Survivors of childhood trauma often carry personality adaptations and disorders into adulthood that are used to cope with their abuse, as well as borders created in their minds from the abusive treatment. These are not always positive...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome back! I’m Dr. Michelle Border and in today’s episode I’m going to talk deeper about physical and sexual abuse. Physical abuse is any aggressive or violent behavior by one person toward another that results in bodily injury, and includes any sexual behavior forced on a victim that provides stimulation for abuser. While physical abuse is done to the victim’s body, it also ca...

Send us Fan Mail   Hello everyone, and welcome back! I’m Dr. Michelle Border and in today’s episode I’m going to take a deeper look at emotional abuse. Emotional abuse is a type of abuse that affects the mind of the victim, not abuse on the body. The abuser uses words to manipulate the victim into someone who supports the abuser’s irrational view of themselves as being perfect. I’m going to talk a...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome back! I’m Dr. Michelle Boder, and in today’s episode I”m going to share with you an analogy that came to my mind while at a conference recently. This analogy helped me to better understand what I need to do to have a healthier mind and be a happier person. I want to share this analogy with you in hopes that it will help you as well. So let’s get started talking about it ri...

Send us Fan Mail Hello, and welcome back. I’m Dr. Michelle Border and in today’s episode I’m going to talk about a concept called mother and father wounds. When a child is abused,  neglected, or ignored they develop life-long struggles with emotional health and social experiences. Borders are created in their minds about who they are from their parents’ actions or lack thereof. Let’s get started t...

Send us Fan Mail   Welcome back! I’m Dr. Michelle Border and in today’s episode I’m going to talk about Empaths. Empathy is a personality trait, and basically the opposite of narcissists. Since I talked about Narcissists in my last two episodes, I wanted to talk about a personality trait with different motives than the narcissist. Empathetic personality traits can form in many of the same ways tha...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome back! I’m Dr. Michelle Border and this episode is part 2 about narcissism. In the first episode I discussed what narcissism is, what causes it, and what is going on in the mind of a narcissist. In today’s episode I’m going to tell you about the tactics they use on their victims to get what they want. I’ll also explain the borders this creates in the victim’s mind. So let’s...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome back! I’m Dr. Michelle Border and today I’m going to discuss a personality disorder called narcissism. Because there is so much to tell about this disorder, this episode will be part 1. My next episode will be part 2, continuing the discussion on this harmful disorder. I believe my mother was a narcissist and I have encountered several narcissists in my life. It is a condi...

Send us Fan Mail   Welcome back! I’m Dr. Michelle Border and in today’s episode I’m going to talk more about how childhood trauma affects us as adults. When we have a childhood of abuse, neglect, or trauma we find coping mechanisms to try to reduce the pain of trauma. These survival methods are typically carried over into adult relationships, usually with unhappy results, and we hold borders in ou...

Send us Fan Mail   Welcome back! I’m Dr. Michelle Border and today I would like to give a shout out to all my teacher friends out there because in this episode I will discuss how childhood trauma affects children in the classroom. I have taught for over twenty years in the public school system. During that time I have experienced many students, thousands, many who were dealing with childhood traum...

Send us Fan Mail   Welcome back to the Breaking Our Borders podcast! I am Dr. Michelle Border. In today’s episode I’m going to talk about parenting, what children need from their parents, and what you can do to be the best parent for your child. We may have borders in our minds about parenting from our parents’ methods, from friends’ ideas, and from society about how we should raise our children....

Send us Fan Mail   Welcome back! I’m Dr. Michelle Border and in today’s episode I’m going to talk about healthy relationships and how to communicate our feelings in healthy ways. Survivors of childhood trauma often were not provided with relationship skills, did not see by example how healthy relationships work, or allowed to express their true feelings in a positive way. This can hinder developin...

Send us Fan Mail   Welcome back! I’m Dr. Michelle Border and in today’s episode I’m going to talk about the healing journey after childhood trauma, what it looks like, how to heal, and how long it takes. Childhood trauma can cause a lot of pain and until we learn to acknowledge, accept, and cope with that pain our lives will not be as fulfilling and happy as it could be. A lot of borders were buil...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome back, everyone. I’m Dr. Michelle Border and I hope you have had a great week! Some think that when we become adults the experiences of our childhood are forgotten or we erase the bad stuff and just magically become the person we are supposed to be. But that is definitely not how it works. In today’s episode I will discuss how children who experienced trauma coped during th...

Send us Fan Mail Hey, everyone, welcome back! I’m Dr. Michelle Border and in today’s episode I’m going to talk about some other mental disorders and physical effects that trauma can cause. Childhood trauma doesn’t just affect us during our youth. Its impact can be felt well into adulthood. The borders built in our minds as children remain until we learn how to break them down. Let’s get started do...

Send us Fan Mail   Welcome back everyone! I’m Dr. Michelle Border and in today’s episode I will discuss personality disorders and other coping mechanisms. Experiencing childhood trauma leaves us with borders in our minds about who we are, and can cause us to make choices that ease the pain of trauma, but can be unhealthy. I will explain several personality disorders and coping mechanisms and expla...

Send us Fan Mail   Welcome back to the Breaking Our Borders podcast! I’m Dr. Michelle Border and in today’s episode I will discuss social skills and communication. These qualities are taught during childhood and for people who experienced childhood trauma these qualities were not on the agenda of parenting. I will explain what they are, how we may be lacking them, and how we can improve these qual...