Not in My Bucket Podcast

You can't set a boundary with someone else until you know who you are — and most of us  skip that step.   Sarah picks up the buckets-with-friends series by sending you back to your target. Last time you drew it  and placed the people closest to you. This time, redraw it and put people where they actually belong.  But before you can decide where anyone belongs, she says, you have to do the harder w...

Most of us are still making friends the way we did in first grade — we just don't realize it.    Sarah kicks off a new stretch of episodes focused on boundaries in specific relationships, starting with  friendships. She traces how we pick friends at every age — siblings and family friends when we're little,  whoever sits next to us in elementary school, shared values in middle and high school — an...

There's one more bucket, and it might be the one you're standing outside of right now,  looking in. After walking through the rescue bucket, the overloaded bucket, the collector's bucket, the trauma  bucket, the minnow bucket, and the sand bucket, Sarah introduces the final piece of the series: the  glass bucket. It's a real object on her shelf — a thick, slightly distorted antique glass ice bucke...

Not every violation looks dramatic. Some look like a tickle you never asked for, or a decision about your own life that someone else made for you. Sarah is back with the second half of her bucket violations series, and this batch gets into territory  that's easy to miss because it hides in plain sight: being told not to cry, being touched without  permission, being cast as your spouse's parent ins...

You've probably done at least one of these without meaning to — and you've definitely   had at least one done to you. In the last episode, Sarah talked about setting limits and how boundaries help define who we are. This  week she goes a layer deeper into the emotional side of that work: the specific, everyday ways our  emotional "buckets" get violated, often by people who love us and don't realiz...

In this episode,  Sarah Bentz  takes a deep dive into the practical mechanics of limit setting. Building on the previous conversation about the Minnow Bucket—and why secret expectations always backfire—Sarah shifts the focus toward personal identity: setting limits isn't just about saying "no," it is about clearly defining who you are and teaching others how to respect your individual space. Sarah...

We hit a massive milestone on the show this week— over 900 followers!  I can't thank you enough for trusting us, sharing these episodes with your friends and family, and spreading the word about why setting healthy limits actually works. In this episode, Sarah introduces one of the most clever metaphors in her entire collection:  The Minnow Bucket . Drawing from an antiquing adventure with her hus...

In this episode, Sarah Bentz  concludes her deep dive into  The Very Serious Business Bucket . While the first part explored the rigid external armor and warning signs we construct to hide our internal struggles, Part 2 goes straight to the core of what truly drives this profile:  unresolved trauma . Sarah openly rebrands this industrial mop bucket as the "Trauma Bucket," explaining how our past p...

  In this episode,  Sarah Bentz  introduces a highly guarded and complex profile:  The Very Serious Business Bucket . Visualized as an industrial, industrial-strength yellow mop bucket found in a janitor's closet, this bucket is built on wheels, heavily reinforced, and wrapped in strict rules and explicit warnings like  Caution: Wet Floor . Sarah reveals the poignant reality behind of the exterior...

In this episode,  Sarah Bentz  celebrates a massive milestone: reaching over 500 followers in just five weeks. She expresses deep gratitude to the listeners before wrapping up the final installment of her three-part series on  The Collector's Bucket . While the collector's profile represents the painful reality of living without an understanding of boundaries, Sarah reveals that it also holds the...

In this episode,  Sarah Bentz  brings us the second installment on  The Collector's Bucket , continuing the vital breakdown of our core human boundary rights. In the previous episode, we learned how collectors act like open garage buckets, accidentally accumulating the emotional trash, unvetted opinions, and expectations of everyone around them. Today, Sarah introduces four additional "Boundary Ri...

In this episode,  Sarah Bentz  introduces what she considers the saddest profile in her series:  The Collector's Bucket . Unlike other buckets, this profile represents individuals who don't even realize they have the right to establish limits. Visualizing it as a large, five-gallon home improvement bucket left out in a garage, Sarah explains how a collector's life becomes a catch-all for random de...

In this episode,  Sarah  introduces a profile that many kind-hearted individuals struggle with:  The Overloaded Bucket  (also known as the " Yes Bucket "). Unlike the rescue bucket—where people actively go out looking to fix or steal someone else's problems—the overloaded bucket belongs to those who simply cannot say no when asked for help. Driven by a massive heart, people-pleasers continuously a...

In this episode,  Sarah Bentz  introduces the first individual bucket profile:  The Rescue Bucket . Inspired by a vintage 1940s firehouse bucket from eBay, Sarah uses the imagery of first responders to examine our own tendencies to rush in and save others. While rescuing is vital in real emergencies, acting as a constant relationship rescuer often crosses the line from genuine help into unhealthy...

In this episode,  Sarah  concludes her breakdown of the "Boundary Not List"—the top ten behaviors that signal your bucket is overflowing with things that don't belong to you. Following up on the first five signs discussed in Episode 02, Sarah unpacks five more patterns that drive us to overextend ourselves, ignore our own well-being, and sacrifice our peace to manage other people's expectations. F...

In the second episode of the series,  Sarah Bentz  digs deeper into the invisible nature of boundaries and how we often don't realize they are broken until our lives feel like a "hot mess." Sarah explains that just as a piece of land needs a surveyor to mark its limits, we need to identify the specific behaviors that signal when our buckets are overflowing with things that don't belong to us.    T...

In this debut episode, we sit down with  Sarah Bentz , a Licensed Professional Counselor and owner of the Hope & Growth Center, to explore a unique and powerful metaphor for mental health:  the bucket . Sarah breaks down the complex world of boundaries by visualizing every person as a bucket, specially designed for what truly belongs to them. We dive into how life experiences, trauma, and even our...

Not in My Bucket is a practical, encouraging podcast I created to help you live with greater balance, purpose, and fulfillment. I'm Sarah Bentz, a licensed professional counselor, and I've seen how easily our "bucket" of time, emotions, and identity gets filled with things that don't belong— trauma, expectations, and other people's "stuff."   In each episode, I share simple truths and real stories...