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Erica D'Eramo 0:05
Hello and welcome to the Two Piers Podcast. I'm your host Erica D'Eramo, and today we have Krista Casey joining us. Krista spent over 10 years as a creative director at Fortune 500 companies, including Wayfair and New Balance, leading teams of over 50 people across the U.S. and Europe. On the outside, everything looked great, and on the inside, she was overwhelmed, running on empty, and burning out. It wasn't until she learned she was a highly sensitive person that everything started to make sense, and she began building the structures, boundaries, and nervous system tools that changed how she worked and lived. Today, Krista is a certified life and career coach based in Berlin, specializing in helping highly sensitive people design careers and lives that actually fit them. She's here to talk to us today about how the concept of boundaries can help us at a personal, professional, and organizational level. Hi, Krista. Thanks so much for joining us.
Krista Casey 1:08
Hi. Thank you so much for having me.
Erica D'Eramo 1:10
Yeah, boundaries is like one of my favorite topics. So I'm super excited to kind of geek out about boundaries today with you. I before we kind of jump into the concept of boundaries, I shared a little bit in the intro. But what was your what was kind of your journey to go from corporate to coach and to really center your work on highly sensitive people?
Krista Casey 1:38
Yeah, sure. So I'm originally from New York City, but I've been living abroad in Berlin, Germany, for the past eight years. And as you mentioned, my background is in corporate creative direction. And there was a lot I really loved about that work. I'm a creative person, and I learned through leadership that I really do love supporting and helping people with professional development or upskilling or kind of like finding their way in their careers, but what the the turning point for me, honestly, was when I became a parent. So you know, we're living abroad as an expat family, and then when you add a child, it just your world changes a lot, regardless of of your context. And I realized that those corporate environments were no longer the right fit for me to show up as the parent that I wanted to be, and so I slowed down. I actually got my own coach. I really tried to figure out what I wanted to leverage from that experience and what I wanted to bring forward. And coaching emerged pretty early on because of those pieces of leadership that I love so much, and then how I got focused on highly sensitive people. I maybe won't surprise you. I am one myself, and that was a really big part of my journey. Understanding what high sensitivity is, bringing so much language for for my experience, and I really wanted to help other highly sensitive people. Yeah, figure out you know a life and how work fits into it in a way that suits them and kind of like plays to their strengths, but also protects them.
Erica D'Eramo 3:12
Yeah, I think that it's interesting too because from from even like an organizational perspective, I think that people people might hear, you know, highly sensitive person or the concept of boundaries and think like, oh, that sounds like a personal issue. That sounds like something you should work through individually. And yet, what we see, right, and what I'm sure we'll talk about today, is that the impact is so much broader when people are not understanding these concepts, and I, you know, I I have to give Ludmila Proslova her due because I'm about to use her metaphor. But the often these folks are the the canary in the coal mine, right? Like what is affecting what is affecting people who are highly sensing? What is affecting anyone, any disabled individuals in the organization? Anyone who's marginalized? Like all of these people are just what they are experiencing is being experienced at an organizational level too. So that's one of the reasons that like this topic is so important for Two Piers to be talking about because it's it's maybe some of the work is happening at an individual level, but the impact is so much broader organizationally.
Krista Casey 4:29
Yes, I love this concept that when you solve for the edges, like the middle prospers, you know. And when I talk to people about what works for a highly sensitive person or like solutions for a highly sensitive person, it would of course work for anyone. You know, it would benefit anyone. It's just when you look at it through the lens of high sensitivity, there's specific things that you're solving for. So yeah, I love that you mentioned that.
Erica D'Eramo 4:52
Yeah. So when you approach the topic of boundaries, what do you feel like most people get wrong? What are some of. Myths that you find yourself busting as you talk about this.
Krista Casey 5:03
Yeah, I think the first one is that I feel in some conversations, boundaries gets a bit of a bad reputation. Like you might hear, oh, they're so boundaried, and that means oh, they're either unapproachable or uncollaborative, or they're kind of yeah maybe defensive. In my work with boundaries, I actually think of boundaries as an opportunity for clarity and connection. So it's not about putting up walls and defense. It's actually an opportunity to state your needs clearly and for other people to understand you better. So yeah, I think that if that's what's coming across, then those boundaries are not being set well. Would be my perspective, and I think the second one is, I think there's a misconception that when you set a boundary, it's about telling the other person what to do. You know, maybe there's someone in your life where you have different views on a certain topic, and you might think like, okay, well, I'm gonna tell them that they can't talk about this anymore when I'm in the room, or you know, don't send a type of podcast or like whatever it is. And that's not how it works. I mean, the maybe the hard reality for all of us is we can never control someone else, so that's not what this is about. It's about, but but let's take that scenario. If there is someone in your life where there are certain topics that feel off limits, a healthy way to set that boundary could be like you know, whenever we discuss this certain topic, it's really activating or uncomfortable for me, and the next time it comes up, I'm gonna take the dog for a walk or like I'm gonna go get a coffee. Because when a boundary is set well, in my opinion. It's about what you're gonna do, like how you're gonna show up, or maybe you're not gonna show up in that situation. But yeah, that would be the second misconception.
Erica D'Eramo 6:51
I mean, that probably brings us to maybe an underlying element here that's good to define up front. Like, how do you how do you typically define boundaries, or how would you describe boundaries? Because I think that is maybe at the core of a lot of this misconception that I also encounter when people are like, "You can't do X." I'm setting that boundary. I'm like, "That's that's not how this works." Exactly. Yeah,
Krista Casey 7:16
I try to simplify it as much as possible, and I think it's really just a clear statement of your needs. What do you need in this environment or relationship or or situation? And I do think it should be neutral if possible. You know, like when this topic comes up, I need to leave the room because it's too activating for me. Because to your point, I think boundaries have become a bit of a buzzword, and they've spun out with all these definitions that, unfortunately, give people the wrong tools. I think to to set them.
Erica D'Eramo 7:52
Yeah, yeah. It's interesting when I hear the concept like I'm. I need to set a boundary. It feels so kind of like a like a wall, right? I picture almost like bricks, like a boundary, and and yet the reality that when we explore boundaries, what it really feels like is actually more of a bridge in a way because it's communication, right? It's for my engineers out there. I always joke this is your SOP. This is your this is your standard operating procedure. You are giving people the manual with which to understand how you operate, and that's good. We want people to understand that because now they can, now they can operate with us effectively instead of bumping up against things or having us just bury our needs and and create friction and eventually create breakage, right? Like that's what happens with with equipment. If you don't read the SOP and you operate it outside of its boundary conditions, then eventually you get failures. So,
Krista Casey 8:54
absolutely, yeah. One of my favorite quotes about boundaries, which is a bit more for the personal side of things, is from Prentice Hemphill, and they say boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously. But for me, that really hits on this idea of what you just said. Like it is not a wall; it's like an invitation to to know me and understand me better by me feeling comfortable enough with you to say what I need and to be able to show up authentically.
Erica D'Eramo 9:24
Yeah, yeah. So I know you kind of talk sometimes. You talk about self boundaries as one of the foundations for all other boundaries, but perhaps for our listeners, can you explain a little bit about what that means?
Krista Casey 9:39
Yes, definitely. Yeah, yeah. So my experience with boundaries in corporate was non-existent. I didn't have them. I didn't know I needed them. They were missing. When I pivoted into coaching, I brought all of my corporate programming with me. So I still didn't have them. I started my business kind of a mess. And then when I started to. Study them because I actually felt like I needed to become a student of boundaries. I encountered this concept of a self boundary, and it's really just what it sounds like. It's a promise that you make to yourself, and I think it's so foundational because if we cannot set and hold boundaries internally and kind of give ourselves evidence that we have our own back, that we're going to show up for ourselves. By the time you get into a position to set an external boundary, you're on like a very wobbly foundation. And just like a very concrete example of a self boundary, maybe that's helpful. Like for me, every Sunday I have to go to a sound bath. It's something you know. You go and like you lay on the floor, and they play these beautiful bowls and chimes, and it's just an amazing place for me to like process the whole week that I've had and come into a new week. And in order to do that, I have to show up for myself every Sunday. I don't make plans after you know 4pm. I make sure that someone else is taking care of my son, and by doing that, I've built a lot of evidence that, like, yes, I'm here. I'm showing up. I'm doing what I need to do, and I think that's really beneficial when you get into the external boundaries.
Erica D'Eramo 11:11
Yeah, that's interesting because I I hear it in coaching all the time around. Oh, I really, I really find the time that we spend in coaching valuable in terms of strategic thinking and just creating the space for deeper thinking. And when the coaching engagement ends, I'm worried that that's going to go away too. It's like, well, you did make the time available when you were in the coaching. Like here, here's the mirror I'm going to hold up right now that I am, I am hearing that you can't carve the space out. I am seeing that you can carve the space out. Like there is evidence that you you can do it when we when we prioritize ourselves in it. And right now, and what I think ends up happening is that people prioritize the others before they prioritize self, and that's just our natural way of operating in corporate. If there's a meeting on the calendar, that gets prioritized. If there's another, if there's another person invited, and that idea that our own personal elements are the ones that get squished, I think is very rarely challenged as a concept, and we just become the buffer, like us, our our own well being, our own sustainability, and so your example of the sound bath actually is very pertinent for all the people out there who are like, I don't have time to do deep thinking in my corporate environment, like you, if it involved me as your coach, you would show up, right? So then prioritize your strategic time as much as you prioritize my time for showing up as your coach. But that self management is the enabler for everything else, and we see it in coaching, right? Like self management is like the first step to coaching. Self management is the first step to being a good leader. And so, I'm hearing these themes too. Like it's the self management and the self boundaries that are the the first enabler for for almost everything else.
Krista Casey 13:17
Yeah, and I think the to give a very specific example of self boundaries in a corporate context. If I think of myself in my corporate leadership roles, I was this reflexive yes person. I was known as the person you could come to me and I would say yes. I was saying yes before the other person had even finished asking something of me, and because I didn't have any self boundaries, I was participating in how people were treating me because I had built this reputation of like just go put it on her, she'll take it, and and this I mean this led to multiple burnouts for me. This was completely unsustainable, and so this idea if someone had introduced this to me, self boundaries are like first you getting in control of your capacity and and your scope, and so that other people observe that, and then they also know how to treat you and interact with you. I think that's important.
Erica D'Eramo 14:09
Yeah, that's. I mean, one dynamic that I've noticed a lot, and I'm interesting interested in your thoughts in terms of maybe the correlation with highly sensitive people. But I have noticed that there is like a perception with a lot of folks who default to yes that the other pe the other people are aware of the impact and will notice and proactively shift or change because they're noticing, and the reality is, I think people notice a what's difficult for them, what's causing a friction point for them, or what's getting in the way of an incentive for them, and so a lot people are not really incentivized to notice that somebody is on the verge of burnout and. And yes, good leaders should have the skill set to check in and understand and ask the open-ended questions to draw out what this, what the unspoken boundaries might be. And yeah, we know like leaders are not necessarily trained in those capabilities. They haven't necessarily observed those end to make a gendered observation here. I do notice that there are a lot of women who are very observant of the state of things, like how people are doing, how energy is doing, and for better or worse, socialization probably a lot of men are not necessarily trained to constantly be checking how is everyone doing and and are there people who need something and so especially with the difference that we see in you know who gets promoted and who doesn't we end up with a lot of male managers who do not necessarily know to be checking in on the state of people's boundaries, and a lot of women who are going above and beyond, ensuring that everybody's taken care of, not ensuring that they are taken care of, and defaulting to yes, but feeling like, well, they should know, they should know. I'm like, well, you've been doing the thing though, so now it's working for everyone except for you, so you, what is your role in this situation?
Krista Casey 16:26
Yeah, and I, I only could see that for myself in the rearview that I was actively participating in this. But to your point, for people with high sensitivity, what you just mentioned around, you know, when you have high sensitivity, you have high levels of empathy, so if someone is coming to you, you speak up on all of this. Like they're anxious, they're stressed, they really need help. Like I have to jump in and figure out how to support them. That's all dialed up to 100, and then part of the the highly sensitive experience is called depth of processing, which means that you know we get a lot of stimulation from our environment and we think about it very deeply. A lot of my clients call this overthinking. You know we have a lot of open thought loops. We're we're kind of like circling back on a lot of things, and that can sometimes make us like second guess ourselves or feel like oh maybe I do need to take extra on because maybe they think you know I'm not doing enough, or or maybe I need to prove myself in in some capacity. So yeah, I think the the highly sensitive trait does tie in with this.
Erica D'Eramo 17:32
It's interesting. There's so much overlap too, and I know you know I'm not a big fan of hard boundaries around buckets of definitions and stuff, but there's a lot of overlap between what you're describing with highly sensitive people and a lot of neurodivergence. And as an ADHDer here, who who has very high sensitivity to stimuli and non-linear thinking and all the loops. There's a lot of yeah. So how people show up or identify whether somebody has an autism diagnosis, an ADHD diagnosis, is understands themselves as a highly sensitive person. I think that this is applicable to so many different people. People who suffer from migraines, right? Like even some of these elements that we might hear this episode and think like, "Oh, but I'm not that. That doesn't apply to me." It probably does in some way, shape, or form. Like, and it's not gender. I think that the default to yes, I mentioned gender in the workplace, but I see this regardless of gender, like across the spectrum.
Krista Casey 18:41
Agree. Yeah.
Erica D'Eramo 18:41
Yeah. So for for someone who maybe has these patterns and has noticed this for themselves, and maybe noticed the broader impacts, what what do you find is the most helpful place for them to start in terms of change?
Krista Casey 18:58
Yeah. If someone resonates with this idea of people pleasing or maybe being a reflexive yes person, I think the it might sound really simple, but the first step is inserting a pause because if you're someone who has such an ingrained habit that you say yes automatically tomorrow, you're not going to wake up and say no. That's too far of a jump. But what you can do is like start to slow down the ask. You know, when an ask comes at you, you have to find the right language for yourself. But it could be something like, "Oh, that sounds really interesting. Thank you for thinking about me. I need to go and take a look at my calendar or my capacity or like my my priorities, whatever language feels right for you, and like I'm gonna come back to you by the end of the day or tomorrow morning because we just have to slow down your ability to like stop and think and assess. Do I have time for this? Is it aligned with what I'm working on? And then there's something called the yes cost, which we can talk about because you can. Advocate for yourself in terms of you know if you don't have capacity, there are things you can say. If you do have capacity, then I guess that that answers your question. But but yeah, I think I really think the pause is the first step.
Erica D'Eramo 20:13
I think well, and it's interesting because that pause probably allows a some curiosity, right? We can be like curious. Oh, what's happening here, or what is my reaction, or just that like that little moment of curiosity. But I also think it ties back to maybe that empathy that you mentioned. Like it allows the connection between the empathetic self and actually the broader perspective, which is I'm guessing maybe where you're going with the the yes cost because we think oh I'm saying yes because I want everybody to be okay or because I'm a nice person but the reality is then we just get resentful that resentment is not kind right like clear is kind resentment is not kind and also if you're if you are continuing to become the single point of failure or this like hinge point that is vulnerable, and then all of a sudden you're in burnout mode and the organization is struggling. That's also not kind. That's not really prioritizing the well being of the system. That was just avoiding conflict in the moment. So, so how do you describe the yes cost? Because I think that that might also be a key enabler that ties like the value system to the action in the moment.
Krista Casey 21:28
Definitely, yeah. So the yes cost is how it sounds. It's the idea that every time we say yes, it costs us something. Could be our time, our energy, our mental capacity, whatever it means for you, and and and also, it's important to remember we do have a finite capacity every day. We can't just keep borrowing from something that doesn't exist. So we have to keep this in mind. And you know, if we go back to this example where someone approaches you, maybe you're getting like a frantic energy from them, and you're just trying to slow this down to kind of assess if this is possible for you to take on. If you run the math, I guess you could say on your yes cost, I would see it going through three filters. The first one is around alignment. So if you're in a workplace setting, you know, is it aligned with my priorities? Whatever you're working with, like if it's OKRs or goals, like does this actually map to what I've been asked to work on? That would be the first question I would have. And then the capacity check like do I actually have time based on the other things that I'm working on? That would be the second check. And then the third is like do I have to drop something or delegate something because that's where you start to have leverage and be able to advocate for yourself. Because if you're in a situation where you're either at or over capacity, this thing is coming on top. My first recommendation would be to say, you know, I would if it aligns to your priorities, I would be happy to support you with this. But that would mean these two projects have to get parked for the next six weeks, and I won't be able to touch them and kind of see. You know, does this person think that that's a good idea? Are they all of a sudden like, oh no, well we can't park those projects because then you know you start to negotiate with your capacity and what you have time for and and what you don't. And that I think it's interesting because I do think boundaries and negotiation are inherently tied together. Yeah, when you when you see the line and you know where the boundary is, then you have to step into advocating and negotiating for yourself.
Erica D'Eramo 23:31
I mean, as you're talking, too, I think it reminds me of the value of coaching as well. Just because, well, one, you have a thought partner to think through this, and maybe even highlight and raise awareness to some of these elements. But two, because in coaching we ask so many open-ended questions, we're modeling in that moment the exact type of questions that can be helpful to use when somebody brings something that we can't effectively accomplish, like where does this sit in the priority list? What would have to, you know, if we can't do all of these things at once, which which one would you want to proceed with? What level of quality depreciation are we okay with if we do try to do all these? But those are the those are the open ended questions that I think can be so much more effective in negotiations because it's not a no. A lot of I feel like a lot of people are rightfully concerned about what will happen if they say no or are seen as not being a team player, and the cultural zeitgeist is kind of like, well, just just hold your boundaries, set a boundary, be confident, say, ask for what you deserve. Like, like we haven't navigated this and experienced what happens when we do that. Like, we're just these little like children bumping into walls. So I think it's when you talk. The negotiation it really is around like a two way conversation with curiosity, and that's where folks like you who are coaches can can help not just model it, but also with the implementation and practice of that.
Krista Casey 25:14
100%, yeah. And I love to tell clients because I think so much of the negotiation advice, you know, is written by men for men, and we get all of these confusing messages that we have no idea how to act on. And I like to say a negotiation is just a conversation about what's possible. And I love that you brought up curiosity because we have to go in with curiosity. Like we need to ask questions. We need to understand. You know, where are their boundaries? What are their like no cross lines, and then there are strategies that we can pull. This idea of the yes and is always a strategy. The idea of like offering options is a strategy. Like I can prioritize this, but then I drop this or like whatever you know the examples you were just giving. But yeah, I think I mean this was also one of my pain points. I think women just lack the tools to understand how to navigate this, the negotiation particularly. Yeah,
Erica D'Eramo 26:07
Yeah, and I think a lot of the reason that we see this lack of tools out there is not because women are like bad at negotiation, which I think is some just unfortunately the default that people go to. And in fact, it's probably more that women are navigating a different risk landscape in terms of the impacts of the words and and are so observant of so many data points, right? Like that that information overload sometimes can be like, well, what if this happens and what if that happens? And I'm sensing like the twitch in that person's eyebrow as I say this, or like they the sigh that they just made when I asked for you know how much how much leeway do we have on this and and all of those little elements are energetically expensive like cognitively expensive and so the subtlety of the advice and tools out there just doesn't often take that into account when we are and it and it's not just women, right? Like, but this is again the canary in the coal mine. We see some of these like more extreme examples. I don't know. What are your thoughts?
Krista Casey 27:09
I mean, as you were talking, I was thinking about this research that points to the backlash penalty, where if women do just come in and try to do a hard no, you know, that's not how we're supposed to behave in these environments. Supposed to be accommodating and collaborative, and so when men use that tactic, you know they're seen as like authoritative and bold. And when women use it, then they get these other labels that are not favorable. So yeah, this is actually a really big topic for me in in coaching because and I love what you said. Like women are not bad at negotiation, but they're using tools built for men that have this known penalty associated with them. So we just need to shift the conversation.
Erica D'Eramo 27:52
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, like, if we zoom out a little bit, then when what do you see at the organizational level, that happens when folks are not setting boundaries when they don't understand how to implement boundaries in practice.
Krista Casey 28:10
Yeah, I mean, if I look at my own experience and what I support clients with, I think the ultimate, you know, undesirable end result is the burnout. Is and I liked what you said around. You know, you think you're being helpful, you think you're being accommodating, but you're this one point that's about to crack. And then what is going to happen to the larger organization? And for me, when I had my first burnout, I was over like a 50-plus person team, and I just had to get out for like 10 days, and they this was like very destabilizing to the department. So this is not what you want. This is this is like not set up for success. And if I also think of the the downstream effects of how I was navigating the environment, I saw my team taking on some of that behavior as well. Because you you're you're in a leadership role. You're modeling for them, you know what good looks like in this environment, and this is also not sustainable to have an entire team that is overextending themselves and and overscope. So yeah, I think it really quickly has these ripple effects.
Erica D'Eramo 29:17
Yeah, oof. I remember when I was in a leadership role offshore, and I had a lot of jet lag. Right, like I was going from seven time zones, and my boss saying to me because I would work really late because I just I couldn't sleep. Right, like I was very tired in the mornings, but I couldn't sleep at night, especially if I was up after nine. I'd be up till three or four, and so I would just be working, and he was. He finally said, "Like Erica, you cannot do this in front of your team. Like they can see that you're up. Night crew can see that you're awake. If if you feel like you can't sleep, go to your cabin and do work there. But like, don't visibly do this because they don't know that it's just because you are experiencing jet lag. They think you're.". Working because you feel the pressure to work, and so they are going to replicate that. Like he even said, "Did you notice?" And I was pretty new into leadership, but he was like, "Did you notice that when you stay up late, other people stay up late too?" And I was like, "Oh my goodness, you're so right!" And ironically, then being able to prioritize the well being of everybody else allowed me to set better boundaries for myself, but hey, if that's where we got to start, that's where we get to start.
Krista Casey 30:25
Yeah, that was very much my. I mean, not with the jet lag, but I guess I feel some resonance with that experience. I think because in the environments I was in, I was really praised for like showing up at PM and staying until 7pm. I got so much just recognition for this, and I thought, okay, this is what they want. This is what they're looking for. I'm going to do more of this, and it was bad for me. But then, what you just said, my team started doing it too, and all of a sudden, I thought, oh, this is bad, and that was really a bit of a turning point for me as well, because because of the high empathy, you know, you don't want other people to be taking on that behavior. So, yeah, that was a bit of a wake up call, honestly.
Erica D'Eramo 31:06
Yeah, even in terms of like reliability, sustainability, and kind of organizational effects. As you were talking through that kind of that moment of breakage, it it made me because I'm a nerd. It made me think about material science, and we talk about you know like resilience and plasticity and elasticity. And I just had this image of kind of the very brittle materials that, like, yes, they might be strong up until a certain point, and then boom, it's it's you have no signal or sign that you are about to have a failure because nothing's showing any different, and versus something that's a little more elastic before it goes into plasticity, right? Like we can be communicating our stress strain gage readings to kind of be even letting that sit at the level of risk management and leadership that it probably needs to that hey leader this is what it's looking like right now we're approaching we're approaching a plastic failure like we're approaching an eruption or a breakage so how do you want to proceed this is the sometimes when folks don't want to speak in absolutes because I can't say, "Oh, this isn't going to work." Because, well, you've always made it work in the past, so I know you'll figure it out somehow, right? Like the people who always show up and get praised, they have a lot of trust in the organization. So when they do say, "Hey, I don't think this is going to work," a lot of times, instead of the organization actually acknowledging that and trusting it, they say, "We have faith in you. You always figure it out," right? "You've always showed up in the past. You'll be fine. Just try harder." And so, speaking in terms, one thing I've noticed is speaking in terms of probabilities can be helpful instead of the absolutes of like, okay, I'm seeing a risk here. Maybe right now, based on what I know, it's like an 80% or it's a 20%. Like Annie Duke talks about this in her thinking and bets, but what have you seen as being effective with your clients and how they start to communicate, you know, what they are seeing or like start to signal that things might need to change?
Krista Casey 33:16
Yeah, I learned that lesson firsthand, and you know when I was moving towards a second burnout, I was much faster to say because I knew what the signals were. And then with my own experience and also with clients, I think then we click back into that negotiation.
Erica D'Eramo 33:34
Yeah,
Krista Casey 33:35
I think you know we can offer options at that point. I remember having more than one conversation about being overscoped, and here would be some possible paths forward for me to get back on scope for my level. But that's also what I find myself talking to clients about a lot because once we see where your boundary is, then we need to go into yeah, how are you going to advocate for yourself in in this situation, and I think also it's important with negotiation. It could end up being a series of conversations. You know, I think sometimes a lot of pressure on themselves. Like, okay, I'm going into a negotiation. Come out with what I need. Yeah, my experience like it rarely works that way. Every time I've had negotiations where I felt very good about the outcome, but sometimes it took weeks and multiple conversations and going back and forth. So I think trying to take a breath and and realize that like that's not a failure. This is part of the process is helpful.
Erica D'Eramo 34:32
Yeah, 100%. And I I do think that tying into that empathy that you spoke of earlier, that you know when we ask clients a lot of times, and what what is it that's getting in the way of setting the boundary, right? And they usually speak to something tied to their values around, like I want to be seen as a team contributor. I want people to be okay. And then when we go, when we pull up to that higher order value, and we say. Okay, now what would actually serve that value? It would probably be communicating in a way, like doing this negotiation for the sustainability of the team, doing this negotiation so that we can show up wholeheartedly and not with resentment, but like really, it is more effective towards what we actually value and more in alignment.
Krista Casey 35:22
Yes, 100%. The other thing that's coming to mind is sometimes clients have a real fear what you were just saying around like their environment will not be receptive to the boundary, and I think that's really valid. And then it's always my recommendation to almost like test into the boundary. Like, can we can we? I always believe that the boundary should be rooted in something that's important to you. So we're not going to do something random. But can we find like a small one to start with and just see like what is the response from the environment? Is it like
Erica D'Eramo 35:56
I love that?
Krista Casey 35:57
Yeah. Is it like sure or is it already being slapped down? And and honestly, for me, that's just data. Like,
Erica D'Eramo 36:04
yeah,
Krista Casey 36:04
we're just gonna take that in. If if that gets slapped away, and then you try again, and it gets slapped away again, you can get in the driver's seat of this situation. Maybe this environment is telling you that it's not going to be sustainable beyond the next six months, and then you have the agency to make changes to explore other options. Like this is important.
Erica D'Eramo 36:25
100%, 100%. Like the data is so important, and I think that especially for my very you know like linear or rational folks that think in these terms, where is we make a lot of assumptions, and we there's a story we're telling ourselves, and it's usually right. We know like heuristics is usually the bad story; it's not usually the optimistic story. So that testing gives us a set of data points, and then now we're operating with more information, and we can make our own choices based on the landscape that we actually understand. Yeah. Oh, that I love that. So, if folks are resonating with what they're hearing here and they wanted to reach out or work with you, like what are what are you working on right now? What are you excited about, and how can people find you?
Krista Casey 37:16
Yeah, cool. So, yeah. In addition to my one-on-one coaching practice, I have a coaching program which actually touches on a lot of the topics that we discussed. It's for mid-career women who are feeling stuck in maybe systems that they don't understand, or they feel like they don't have the rule book. It's called Power Circles, and it's four weeks long. And we cover boundaries, negotiation, confidence, visibility. So a lot of the things that we've hit on. But yeah, on my on my website we can connect, or on LinkedIn. I'm also on Substack, so yeah, I would love to.
Erica D'Eramo 37:50
Yeah, awesome. We will definitely include those in the show notes. So for folks who are listening, you can find them both on the summary page for this episode, as well as the transcript in the show notes for wherever you stream your podcasts. But really glad to talk about boundaries today. I love this topic and really appreciate your wisdom and insight. Thank you so much, Krista.
Krista Casey 38:16
Yeah, thank you so much. I also loved our conversation and our back and forth. I really appreciate it.
Erica D'Eramo 38:20
Yeah, cool. And for our listeners, we will catch you next episode.
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Yes. I’d smooth this into fuller paragraphs, reduce the stacked one-liners, and let each section read as a short narrative summary of the discussion rather than a sequence of punchlines.
Boundaries, Burnout, and the Cost of Saying Yes
Two Piers Podcast
In this episode of the Two Piers Podcast, Erica D’Eramo is joined by Krista Casey for a conversation about boundaries, highly sensitive people, burnout, negotiation, and what can happen when consistently saying yes becomes unsustainable.
Krista spent more than a decade as a creative director at Fortune 500 companies, including Wayfair and New Balance, leading teams of more than 50 people across the U.S. and Europe. From the outside, her career looked successful, but internally she was overwhelmed, running on empty, and eventually experiencing burnout.
Learning that she was a highly sensitive person gave her language for experiences she had struggled to make sense of. Today, Krista is a certified life and career coach based in Berlin, specializing in helping highly sensitive people design careers and lives that better fit the way they operate.
Her conversation with Erica begins with a familiar word that is often misunderstood: boundaries.
What Boundaries Actually Are
Krista sees two common misconceptions about boundaries.
The first is that having boundaries means being rigid, unapproachable, or unwilling to collaborate. In her view, a well-communicated boundary can actually create more clarity and connection because it gives other people useful information about what you need.
The second misconception is that setting a boundary means telling someone else what they are allowed to do. If someone regularly brings up a topic you find difficult, for example, a boundary is not necessarily, “You are not allowed to talk about that around me.” You ultimately cannot control what another person chooses to say.
The boundary is about what you will do when the situation occurs. Maybe you leave the room, end the conversation, or choose not to participate. Krista simplifies a boundary as a clear statement of your needs within a relationship, situation, or environment.
Erica compares that to an operating manual. A boundary gives other people useful information about how to work with you effectively rather than asking them to guess where your limits are.
Why Self-Boundaries Matter First
Before Krista began studying boundaries, she realized she had spent much of her corporate career without them.
When she left corporate work and moved into coaching, those patterns did not automatically disappear. She carried them with her, which led her to the concept of a self-boundary: a promise you make to yourself and then consistently keep.
For Krista, one example is a weekly sound bath she attends every Sunday. She protects the time, avoids scheduling other commitments around it, and makes arrangements for her son so she can go. The specific activity matters less than the practice of following through.
Over time, keeping those commitments provides evidence that you are willing to protect your own needs rather than treating them as the first thing to be displaced when something else appears.
Erica connects this to something she sees frequently in coaching. Clients value the protected space coaching gives them for reflection and strategic thinking but worry that the space will disappear once the engagement ends. The evidence suggests otherwise: they did make the time when another person was involved. The challenge becomes extending that same level of commitment to time that belongs only to themselves.
The Pattern of Becoming the “Yes Person”
Krista describes herself during her corporate career as a reflexive yes person. She became known as someone who would take things on, often agreeing before the other person had even finished making the request.
Eventually, other people behaved accordingly. If something needed to get done, Krista was a reliable place to put it.
At the time, she did not see herself as helping create that pattern. In retrospect, she can see how repeatedly saying yes taught other people what they could expect from her. That pattern contributed to multiple experiences of burnout.
The dynamic can be particularly pronounced for highly sensitive people. Krista explains that high sensitivity often comes with strong empathy and depth of processing. Someone may quickly notice another person’s anxiety or stress, feel motivated to help, and then spend significant time processing the interaction afterward.
That combination can make an automatic yes particularly tempting. It can also lead to second-guessing: perhaps I should take this on, maybe I am not doing enough, maybe this person really needs me.
Without a pause, those thoughts can move directly into another commitment.
Start With a Pause
For someone who habitually says yes, Krista does not recommend trying to transform overnight into someone who immediately says no. The first step is much smaller: pause.
Instead of answering immediately, acknowledge the request and create enough time to consider it. That might sound like, “Thanks for thinking of me. Let me look at my priorities and capacity, and I’ll come back to you tomorrow.”
The exact language is personal. What matters is interrupting the automatic response.
That brief pause creates room to ask better questions: Do I actually have capacity for this? Does it align with what I am responsible for? What would I have to move, delay, or give up in order to say yes?
Those questions lead into another concept Krista uses with clients: the “yes cost.”
Understanding the “Yes Cost”
Every commitment costs something. It might cost time, energy, attention, or mental capacity. Because capacity is finite, taking on something new usually has implications for something else.
Krista suggests evaluating a request through three filters: alignment, capacity, and tradeoffs.
First, does the request align with your actual priorities, goals, or responsibilities? In a workplace, that may mean looking at formal goals, OKRs, scope, or the work your role is intended to prioritize.
Second, do you realistically have the time and energy to take it on? This is different from asking whether you could somehow force it into the schedule.
Third, if you say yes, what needs to move?
This is where a boundary often becomes a negotiation. Rather than simply refusing the request, someone might say, “I can prioritize this, but that would mean parking these two projects for the next six weeks. Does that make sense given our priorities?”
Now the capacity problem is visible instead of silently absorbed.
Boundaries and Negotiation Are Closely Connected
Krista describes negotiation simply as “a conversation about what’s possible.”
That framing moves the conversation away from the assumption that negotiating means arriving with a hard demand and refusing to move. Once you know where your boundary is, you can begin exploring options.
Maybe you can take on the new project if something else is postponed. Maybe part of the work can be delegated. Maybe the scope changes. Maybe the deadline moves.
Erica connects this to coaching because many of the same open-ended questions used in coaching are useful in these conversations: Where does this sit among our current priorities? If we cannot do everything at once, which item should come first? What could be delegated? What tradeoff are we willing to make?
Those questions create a conversation about the work rather than forcing an individual to quietly absorb an impossible workload.
Why Standard Negotiation Advice Doesn’t Always Fit
Krista also points out that negotiation happens within a social context.
A simple instruction to “be confident” or “just say no” may ignore the consequences people have experienced when they behave that way. She specifically discusses the backlash women can encounter when they use the same direct negotiating behaviors that may be rewarded in men.
Women are often expected to be collaborative and accommodating. A direct refusal may therefore be interpreted differently depending on who delivers it.
For Krista, this does not mean women are inherently worse negotiators. It means that some common negotiation advice was developed without accounting for the different risk landscape women may be navigating.
Highly sensitive people may be taking in even more information during those conversations: tone of voice, facial expressions, changes in energy, pauses, or other signals from the people around them. That amount of processing can make negotiation cognitively and emotionally expensive.
The goal is not to ignore those signals, but to develop strategies that allow someone to advocate for themselves while still navigating the context they are actually in.
What Happens When Boundaries Are Missing at Work
The effects of weak boundaries do not stop with the individual.
Krista describes reaching burnout while leading a team of more than 50 people. When she eventually needed to step away for around 10 days, her absence was destabilizing for the department.
That made the systemic problem much clearer. Being the person who always says yes can look like reliability right up until the system becomes overly dependent on that person.
The same behavior also gets modeled downward. Krista noticed members of her team beginning to replicate her own pattern of overwork because, as their leader, she was showing them what success appeared to require.
Erica shares a similar experience from her time working offshore. Because of severe jet lag, she sometimes stayed up working late into the night. Her manager eventually pointed out that her team could see her working and did not know she was simply unable to sleep.
They interpreted her behavior as an expectation.
He asked whether she had noticed that when she stayed up late, other people stayed up late too. She had not.
For both Erica and Krista, seeing the effect on other people made the consequences of their own work patterns more visible.
Leaders Model More Than They Realize
People watch leaders for cues about what the organization actually values.
Formal policies may say one thing, but leaders communicate norms through what they reward and what they visibly do themselves. If the leader routinely works late, responds immediately, takes on everything, and never appears to protect their own capacity, employees may reasonably conclude that this is what advancement or commitment looks like.
That makes boundaries an organizational issue as much as a personal one.
Krista recalls being praised for staying late and consistently overextending herself. The recognition reinforced the behavior, even though the behavior was ultimately unsustainable. When the team began copying it, she could see the broader consequence more clearly.
Communicating Capacity Before Something Breaks
One challenge with highly reliable people is that organizations may have little visible evidence that anything is wrong until that person reaches a breaking point.
Erica compares this to material science. Some materials show deformation before they fail. Others remain apparently stable until they suddenly break.
People can operate similarly.
Someone who has always managed to get the work done may finally tell a leader, “I don’t think this is sustainable,” only to hear, “We believe in you. You always figure it out.”
The intended message may be supportive, but it can also ignore important information about capacity.
Krista describes learning to recognize her own warning signals after experiencing burnout and becoming faster at communicating when her scope was no longer manageable. Again, the conversation becomes a negotiation: here is my current scope, here are some options for bringing it back into alignment, and here are the tradeoffs involved.
She also notes that successful negotiation often happens across several discussions rather than in one decisive meeting.
Testing a Boundary Gives You Information
What if you genuinely believe the environment will not respect a boundary?
Krista does not dismiss that concern. Instead, she often encourages clients to test it.
Choose a smaller boundary rooted in something that genuinely matters and observe what happens. Maybe the response is easy acceptance. Maybe the boundary is immediately rejected.
Either way, you have learned something.
If reasonable boundaries are repeatedly ignored or punished, that is useful information about the environment itself. Rather than spending months or years making assumptions about what might happen, testing a boundary can provide actual evidence.
That evidence allows someone to make more informed decisions about whether the environment can become sustainable, whether further negotiation is possible, or whether they may eventually want to explore other options.
Boundaries as a Tool for Clarity
By the end of the conversation, boundaries look considerably less like walls and more like a way of communicating needs, understanding capacity, clarifying tradeoffs, and negotiating what is actually possible.
For people who have spent years being rewarded for saying yes, changing the pattern may begin with something as simple as not answering immediately.
The goal is not to become less collaborative or less caring. It is to develop a more sustainable way of working that allows people to contribute without making themselves the expendable part of the system.
Connect With Krista Casey
Krista Casey is a certified life and career coach based in Berlin who specializes in working with highly sensitive people. Her work includes one-on-one coaching as well as programs focused on boundaries, negotiation, confidence, visibility, and sustainable career development.
Connect with Krista through Krista Casey Coaching or LinkedIn.
You can also read and subscribe to her writing on Super Sensitive on Substack.
This should read much more like a straightforward episode summary and less like a sequence of mini thought-leadership punchlines.