Erin Braxton (00:00)

If you have ever been drained for your energy, if you have ever been told, my God, I don't know how you do it, and people try to come to you at work and tell you their problems and suck you dry, this is the episode for you. Just because you are capable of doing something doesn't mean that you're obligated to do it. We start to believe the bullshit ourselves, like, they need me.

let me help. I have some words of wisdom. Let me give them some advice. When you have boundaries set up, you have to use those boundaries in order to propel and advance yourself. There's only so much time you have in a day to spend thinking and making decisions. This may be an unpopular opinion for some.

Hey everyone, welcome to the Coffee No Cream podcast. My name is Erin Braxton and I am the host of Coffee No Cream here on Coffee No Cream. We are unapologetically dedicated to black women and we share what I like to call coffee no cream moments, those things that happen to us black women in business and in life just because we are black women. Now, today is the first of many episodes in a series I am calling the Coffee No Cream Corporate

code series. We're going to kick it off with the boundary code. Now, I got a lot of comments last week about we had our episode with Abby the attorney and thinking out loud Tracy Walker and it was great. We talked about corporate friendships and we got a lot of comments. We got a lot of comments on YouTube. We got a ton of comments on TikTok and there are some that really, really, really stuck out.

One or two in particular that I am going to get into during the episode but if you have ever been drained for your energy if you have ever been told my god I don't know how you do it and people try to come to you at work and tell you their problems and suck you dry this is the episode for you we're going to get into it somebody left a comment about being

⁓ These people at works therapists and that just struck a chord with me and Absolute no no no no no not having it. That is not our role. That is not what we are here for. Okay? Before we get into it, I want to ask you guys to please like please share Please subscribe the community is growing and I just want to thank you so much for your support ⁓ We've got a Facebook group where we continue the conversation

And we truly are aiming to create a safe space. I've had a couple of people sneak in there. I've had some non-Black people try to enter the space. I think out of curiosity, I don't know, but we are watching and we do our best to make sure that we are communicating in a safe space. Also, a couple of weeks ago, I announced the launch of our free educational resource tool where we have over 1,000

⁓ free courses from Ivy League universities, universities all over the world, all over the country that are going to help you black women level up, get yourself to the next level. So I'm gonna be talking about that a little bit later on in the episode. So I think that's all of the housekeeping and let's get into it. So Coffee No Cream, the Corporate Code Series, all right.

Boundaries is our first code, boundaries. Now, I wanna talk to you guys about what boundaries really are because I think a lot of times we don't realize that boundaries are not only protecting us from the outside world, but protecting us from ourselves.

Yes, we want to erect boundaries so that ⁓ people can't, you know, suck our time and all that. And we think it's all about, you know, not letting them do that to us. But we have to protect ourselves from ourselves. It is our natural inclination as black women to want to help, to want to serve, to want to assist. I've said this many, many times. But if we're doing all that for other people,

Where is the time that we have to do things for ourselves? There is so much time in a day. There is so much emotional bandwidth that we can deal with, right? When somebody sucks you dry of your energy, you don't have time to deal with your own shit, okay? So the boundaries are put in place not just to keep them from feeling like they can come at you and come to you for any and everything, but to prevent you from being the rescue.

person, the rescue mission in their lives, okay? Just because you are capable of doing something doesn't mean that you're obligated to do it. You might have this skill or that skill or this strength or that strength. You're not obligated to use it for the good of others. And it's okay to be selfish in saying that, right? I'm one of those people. ⁓

who can do a lot of things because I am a student of the world. ⁓ I have typically in my past learned how to do things due to lack of money, resources. So, you you have to teach yourself how to do things and it has worked out for me because I've been able to develop a career behind it and make a lot of money behind it, right? But that doesn't mean that I get to use

all of those life learned skills and resources that I have developed on other people. Okay, so let's get into boundaries at work.

Now, this is the quote that somebody left and I didn't love.

Someone wrote, I'm a manager at a really small firm. finally mastered how to give a lot, but give nothing at the same time. I go to group outings. I have lunch with coworkers. We text and have phone calls, but I act more like a therapist. Okay. Somebody else said they view, they view black women as emotional therapists. All right.

This one, I didn't like this, okay? And you know, you may disagree with me, but here's my take.

This is where the boundaries.

We need to have, like, you need to put some in place. You think that being a therapist is giving but not giving. It's not your place. It's not for you to do, okay? And here, I'm gonna tell you why. I'm gonna tell you little story about this white girl I used to be friends with. We were cool. We were cool when I graduated from college and I got my first job and we remained friends.

for about 10 years before the friendship was over, maybe a little more, because we had some falling outs and we got back together, whatever. This girl was a walking basket case when it came to emotions. And let's call her Beth, by the way. We'll call her Beth. I want to call her a crybaby, but now, with some wisdom, you know,

behind me and all of that. I know that this one used these tears constantly as manipulation tactics and just to gain control over situations. Now, initially, Beth seemed like a pretty cool chick, you know? She aligned herself with black people. She inserted herself into black culture. She only dated black men. Okay, she knew all the black songs. She knew all the old

you know, R and B, she, she was pretty dialed in. And in today's standards, you would consider her, uh, uh, a white, left leaning, hardcore liberal who was an ally. All right. But Beth was an emotional drain. She was an energy suck. Okay. From the time I knew her at work to us not being at work to us,

being in LA at the same time, because this happened in Dallas and then she moved to LA and I moved to LA, this woman would drain the absolute fuck out of you. All right? She was always crying about a man, crying about everything. She used it as control. She just would cry, cry, cry. We'll talk about the control thing later. But for right now, I'm talking about boundaries. I'm talking about the way that

people can, and particularly white women, because that has been the conversation, so I'm addressing it by telling you a story about a white woman, how they can push into your private space or your personal space or push it too far and drain the fuck out of you and leave you depleted. She was the type of person that when you would hang out with her, you just didn't know what you were gonna get. She was moody. ⁓

She was very hot tempered, just not, she was cool, but she just wasn't always the best person to be around. It was a lot to hang around this girl. I remember we were driving around in Dallas and her latest man was black. And she said, well, his name was Jay. Jay feels more comfortable around white people than he does black people.

I was just like, well, if Jay feels like that, then that's his mama's fault. Well, she gets ramped up. Well, his mom was an educator. My response was, so was mine. Then she went on to say, they lived in an all white neighborhood. My response was, so did I. The fuck? So she kept getting all upset and mad. And I said, listen,

At the end of the day, I'm black, you're white, you just don't know what you're talking about on this one, you're wrong. So she flipped out, she's screaming and crying. I'm driving the car, we're headed somewhere, I do not remember. And she's like, I want to go home. It's time to go home. Fine. We go home. We did not make it to our destination. And that was it. That was just one episode, but it was constant with this woman.

Constant crying tears not all the time over some man. All right, and then you know when she didn't need me later like when we were we got to California I remember she had ⁓ we had the end on some party because she worked for louis vitton mo at hennessey on the hennessey brand and she would have these parties or you know, Put these parties on with people urban parties, whatever always cool. Always a good time

And I remember she had the end at some mansion in Malibu, invited me to go, pulled back the invitation, because all of a sudden, oh, I don't have a ticket, went. I decided to go to another party I was invited to, my girl's party up at her house up in the Hollywood Hills. Great vibe, great energy. Later that night, this girl was texting me off the chain, Beth was texting me off the chain while I was at another party, because she was

crying and upset about some dude as usual, insinuating herself into my good time, my good vibe Hollywood party out by the pool around somebody's fire pit. It was just so fly and good. But I had to leave. I didn't have to leave, but I had to leave because she was in a crisis after she had dissed me earlier that day to come meet her so she can cry.

to me some more about whatever some dude did to her, black man. I think this dude this time maybe was black. I think he was Latin. I don't know, but it was a constant energy suck. Okay. And at that time I say all this to say we can lend ourselves so much in these situations where we start to believe the bullshit ourselves. Like, ⁓ they need me.

let me help. I have some words of wisdom. Let me let me give them some advice, but absolutely not. This is a fucking drain. Historically, black women have been treated like they don't have any feelings, like we are the backbones of strength. We are the epitome of strong hell. used to cut us open with no anesthesia. You know that they tested all of modern day ⁓ gynecological

tools on black women. That's how they got what they have now. Right. We have been tested to the core. So somehow psychologically, these thoughts still remain in these people's minds. They know that we are emotionally strong. They know that we are hard workers. They know what we're capable of.

But just because you can do some shit doesn't mean that you should do it. It doesn't mean it's available for them. Same with the boundaries. So when the woman says, I give a lot, but I don't give anything at all. Yes, you do. Here's the deal.

When you have boundaries set up, you have to use those boundaries in order to propel and advance yourself. Those boundaries aren't just up just to be like, yeah, no, don't talk to me. Don't come to me. I don't play. You need to be using whatever gifts God has given you, whatever gifts you have given yourself or gifted yourself or worked on for yourself for you.

So if you have emotional strength or history with relationships or life skills that could be beneficial for somebody else, that's fine, but you don't have to spend and drain your time and energy and resources to help somebody else. I don't care if it's at work. I don't care if it's with a friend. Okay. I have a friend right now. She loves to call me and just be like, hey, but you know, every time that she's calling me,

she's calling me when she doesn't have anything to do. Cause you can hear just right at the time where she like clicks off and she's kind of bored of the conversation. Let me call her just because most of the time she's not going to answer the phone. So I peep that. Like I peep it. I see it. I understand it. Doesn't make her a bad person, but I had to learn to stop answering the phone all the time.

I'm not available all the time. What you need to be doing with your boundaries erected is working on your own shit, your way out of the job, your own hobbies, your own interests, your own family. There's only so much time you have in a day to spend thinking and making decisions. I can't remember the statistic, but it's a real thing. If I remember it, I'll put it up on the screen.

You have so many decisions to make in a day, right? So when you decide to play counselor or therapist to people at work, that's taking away from shit you could be doing, all right? You use those boundaries to get yourself to the next level. That's what you should be using those boundaries for. The boundaries of when people call you and they want you to go out and do stuff and you know you've got to be doing something else over here because you're working on something.

You use those boundaries to work on, you know, your resume or getting the next better job, working on that business. Don't think that just because you're giving your time and talking about them, that it's not sucking off of you. That's exactly what it is. It's an energy suck. And you shouldn't let people suck off of you at all. That's an energy suck. And the sooner you realize that, the better, right?

boundaries are put in position for a reason to help you no matter if The pressure is coming from the outside or within you to like step outside of those boundaries and do something else instead of doing what you need to do to get where you need to go, right? So that's what I have to say about that. You can be lovely You can be nice, but you need to start to act in a certain way especially in work or at work so that people know

that you're not even approachable with this type of bullshit. Okay. So that leads me into self preservation. Now we talked about work events and, ⁓ you know, work trips and different things like that. This may be an unpopular opinion for some. When you work in a place, depending on what your job is, there is a level of

extracurricular activity that you are required to do, whether it's written in your work description or not. That's just fact. Okay. Now a lot of times people try to ⁓ insinuate themselves into what it is you have going on or decide for you what you can and cannot do. For example, when I was working, I'm single.

I have no kids. So I was never given a pass. I could never leave early. I was expected to be there late. ⁓ I did not have the same allowances as people who had families and children, which we all know is bullshit, but that's just the way it goes. When people ask you to do things that you don't want to do, for example,

They want you to go to happy hour. They want you to go drink. They want you to do that. Do this, whatever. You don't have to say no all the time and just distance yourself because let's be honest, you're trying to preserve your job. You might be trying to advance yourself in this organization. You might need these people as a reference one day. Okay. So you can't just completely disassociate yourself completely. that, you know, you have to play along to get along.

And that's just the way it is. We don't want to be at work in the first place, but we do have to be at work. So realistically, depending on what job you have, you are going to have to do some shit you don't want to do. You are going to have to socialize and do some shit you don't want to do. And you know, it's not always terrible, know, work events can be fun. They can be cool. You know, you don't have to participate in everything, you know, put a boundary up, decide.

Okay, I'm going to go to one happy hour every, you know, quarter. If that's enough for you, because I guarantee you in a lot of situations, if you don't, unfortunately, they are going to be looking at you in a certain way. People can disagree with me if they want to and you don't have to, but I'm suggesting that you play along to get along.

While you have your boundaries up and you're planning your exit, your strategy to get out, to get another job, whatever it is you're doing, you're not trying to burn bridges with these people. You're just trying to be cool so you can utilize their reference or whatever, all right? People ask you to do stuff, don't give them a hard no. You don't have to act funky like, no, I don't do that. You could just be like, you know what? Oh my God, that sounds so cool. I would love to, but blah, blah, blah.

I've got this other thing planned. my gosh, yeah, I know. I've got this other, be lovely about it. And then, know, every once in a while go, whatever. When they start talking about what old girl's doing in accounting or what old girl's doing or old boy's this or so and so sleeping with so and so, don't be a part of it. Pivot the conversation. Really? And pivot the conversation. If they keep talking about it, move on around to the next person at the happy hour.

are ways around it, ways around dealing with the bullshit. I'm just telling you that if you need to play along to get along, that's fine. Sometimes, a lot of times, white people or people at work are a problem, but they're not the problem. And that's the distinction that you need to make. It's how we handle those situations.

learn how not to internalize everything. You know, they're going to do the shit that they're going to do. All right. And there's nothing you can do about it, but what are the things that you can do? All right. Put those boundaries up, work on your own shit, do your own thing. That's just my recommendation. Now with that, a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned, or I brought up, or I announced that we were going to be launching a

resource tool to give you guys that had over a thousand free educational resources. Resources that were classes from like Harvard and Princeton and MIT and I mean there schools all over the world. There are schools and universities that are offering these free courses and we've just collected them all in one place and this is part of your boundary.

Maybe you wanna get in there, you find a course, you wanna learn how to code, you wanna learn business development, project management, one of those things. There are tons of free courses. So we've got ⁓ categories like business management, science, social science, humanities, tech. ⁓ What else? I'm forgetting. We have a lot of categories. Some of the courses are beginner.

Some are intermediate, some are advanced. We have all levels. We have courses that provide a certificate, courses that don't provide certificates. Some certificates may be paid certificates, but the actual course is free. So this is totally free for you guys to use. You know I am a student of the world. I talk about the skill of learning how to do something. Use your boundaries to help you level up.

Get yourself going. So the link to that resource tool is in the bio. It's up, it's live now. So definitely go over there, get it. ⁓ Actually the link is coffee, no cream.com forward slash free and you can sign up and you know, put those boundaries up from not just people at work, but people.

everywhere in your life that are overstepping inserting themselves selves in sucking you dry and Lowering your vibration just by being around them. That is what we do not want. So in closing I just want to say use these boundaries as Protection as well as strategy, okay? Yes, people are gonna want to try to get in and be friends with you at work and all this stuff

Be polite about it. Participate minimally. Move in silence on what you're doing. Don't tell all your business. Don't give it away. But don't burn your bridges in that space because the world is small. The world is small. Okay. I was living in LA and would hear stuff about people I knew once upon a time all the way from New York City and

It was from somebody that I didn't know, right? The world is small. Okay. So remember that you've got to play smart black women. We've got to play along to get along, strategize, boundary up, use those strategies and those boundaries to get yourself in a better situation. And Hey, if you don't care and you're not, you know, you don't have that kind of job or whatever.

I totally get it, but for those of you who do, play along to get along. Try your best not to get in your head. And instead of playing somebody else's therapist, make sure you're in line with your therapist to make sure that you're not getting all fucked up and switched around every which away and traumatized by these people. And then use your boundaried up self to get yourself.

in the best possible position that we can. That is the first code in the series, the boundary code, and hopefully that helps. Hopefully that gives you something to think about. And I think that's it. So I will see you in the next episode.