Setting Emotional Boundaries, Sleepwalking & Turning 30 Epiphanies 💌 November Magic Mailbag

Hi, everyone. I'm Jessica Porter, and welcome back to Sleep Magic, a podcast where I help you find the magic of your own mind, helping you to sleep better and live better. Well, today, we are doing this month's Mailbag episode where I do my best to answer questions that you've sent in. But before we dive in, just a couple of things. I will give my experience and my perspective, but I am not a professional in many of the areas that you ask about. Only hypnosis am I sort of experienced? So if you need professional help with the stuff going on in your life, please seek it out. And finally, if you fall asleep when you hear my voice, which some of you do, and that's great, that's because you've retrained your mind and body to relax, please don't listen to this in a car or while you're doing something important, you want to find the time and space so that if you were to fall asleep, that would be okay. All right, let's start from anonymous. My boyfriend is going through a really hard time right now with his mental health and health issues within his family. I'm his first port of call for any rants or problems he has, which come up several times every day. I love him and want to be there for him, as I know he would be there for me, but it's starting to dim my sparkle and feel overwhelming. Should I set some boundaries or does that make me a bad girlfriend? Oh, anonymous, I feel for you and your boyfriend. You know, relationships are ever changing things and they're here to help us grow and create things with other people. And I'm sorry, you're feeling a little overwhelmed by this. And I find your use of the term dim my sparkle very interesting because a relationship is a circuit of energy between two people, bringing their own personal energy, which is its own individual circuit to the bigger circuit. And you know, I don't know if what I'm about to say is true, like according to physics or electromagnetics, but I like to think in relationships that is kind of like math where two positives make a positive. So in other words, when we both bring a positive charge to the bigger circuit that makes everything more positive, weirdly two negatives make a positive as well. If I'm down, you know, this is why we have funerals and we commiserate with people when we both can go to that downward charge, it lifts us both. But when you're feeling positive and the other person brings a negative charge, that in my experience tends to bring everything down. Now, in no way am I saying that we don't bring our troubles or issues to our partners. But when somebody is bringing chronic negative energy to the relationship, if one member is continually dumping or in a mood or processing problems, it does have a tendency to bring the other person down because the whole circuit of energy is pulled down. So yeah, I can understand why you're feeling that your sparkle has been dimmed. And that's not your fault. But really nor is it his, it's just the nature of the energy he's just doing what he knows to do at this point. So what can you do? Well, it's really normal and common to think that your love will fix it all. I think that we women especially, although men do it too, are prone to bringing extra love to the circuit thinking, this will help the person. This will save my partner. But that actually doesn't work. Yeah, we need to bring love. But the love emanating from your individual being is not enough to change another person from deep inside. It can soothe them, but not necessarily change them. We need more than the love of a single person to grow and to thrive. I mean, imagine if a farmer only watered a plant. You could hear him saying plants need water. And yes, they do. But they also need healthy soil and sunshine and fertilizer and the wind to make them stronger. They need stability and they need time. So your love is just one source of nourishment in his life. And the circuit of energy you have together is just one dimension of his life. And by getting too dependent on it, he may be hurting it, although I'm sure he doesn't want to do that consciously. And by believing you can be his only source of nourishment, and I'm not saying you do believe that, but you run the risk of believing that you may be hurting the circuit of energy too. And that's okay. There's no judgment here. This is a big lesson that we all need to learn. And it's not an easy one. I had a partner once who was very dependent on me emotionally, and there was a part of me that loved it. I felt needed, important, central to another person's existence. But it was also overwhelming at times. And when he had problems, he deposited them directly in my lap. And I felt responsible for them, or at least burdened by them. So I had to learn how to detach from his problems while still loving and respecting him. Tough love is a term that's used a lot. And I think if you distill it down to its essence, it basically means telling the truth, instead of enabling or trying to fix. And the truth is, your boyfriend probably needs more support. And you can't be all the support he needs. And you probably need to withdraw some of the support you're giving or change the nature of it because it's draining you. And it's too much for the relationship. And the good news is that you've discovered he needs more support than you have to give. And there's no shame in that. That's just reality for all of us. Just like plants, we all need resources from all sorts of directions, food, love, community, family. We need physical nourishment, emotional, intellectual, and even spiritual nourishment. And you are not the primary source of his nourishment, nor should you be the one receptacle into which he vents. It's not fair. And the thing is, it's not sustainable. It's just I'm not a model that works well over time. So, do you just tell him this, get him to listen to this again and again, asking him or nagging him to stop leaning on you, nagging him to get help, and thereby probably bringing the relationship down even further? No, because here's another truth. Your discomfort anonymous isn't actually about him. And I get that it seems that it is, but it's about you. You need and deserve support too. By believing that love is enough to support or heal or save another person, you may have unconsciously co-created a situation that isn't working for you right now. That's dimming your sparkle. And only you can change that. When you get consistent and healthy support, the whole situation may shift. And by consistent and healthy support, I mean, there be a support group, both meditation, reaching out to any sort of spiritual or religious community that you may be a part of, nourishment for your individual energy circuit. By doing this, I think you'll just feel better and get some of that sparkle back when you get filled up. And second, he will see that you are expanding beyond the energy circuit of the relationship to get support. And that's important. And he may feel threatened by that. But hey, you're doing something healthy and you're actually doing him a favor by doing that. You getting nourished nourishes the relationship. Finally, by getting support, whether, you know, by any means, getting nourished, you will be able to have the more difficult conversations that need to take place. When I was in my situation like this, it was during a time in my life where I was trying to heal from childhood wounds. And I was exploring a spiritual dimension to life. And that partner that I mentioned before, he was threatened by my taking myself beyond our little circuit of energy. And who knows, if I hadn't been doing that work, maybe I would have been threatened by a partner doing the same thing. It felt uncomfortable to him that I was growing in different directions and leaning on other people. And I felt very pulled in two different directions between his needs and my own expansion. And at a certain point, it all came to a head. And I remember the day I said to him, this support system in my life, this nourishment I'm getting, it comes first. It comes before you. It comes before the relationship or any relationship. And it always will. It always will. The all new 2026 Toyota RAV4 is here, building on everything drivers know and love about Toyota, with a redesigned look and modern tech that makes life behind the wheel easier than ever. 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There's no going back. Dr. Reckon is clear. Hang on. Tron Aries now streaming on Disney Plus, rated PG-13. I invite you to grapple with that because it's not going to change. I love you and I want to be with you, but the nourishment I require to be a healthy person comes first. And if I don't get it, our relationship is going to end anyway. What I didn't say to him, although I had in the past was, you need help. Get off my back. I can't handle your problems. That never worked. Well, he didn't like that conversation much, but he heard it. And you know why he heard it? Because I meant it. I really, really meant it. I was willing to let go of the relationship if it was going to interfere with my own health and relationship to myself and relationship to nature and the rest of the world. And after just a short period of time, maybe a few months, he started getting his own support outside of our relationship. He went and stretched beyond our circuit. But my nagging him to do it never worked. Believe me, like I said, I tried. I had to commit to my own support and just be willing to let the cookie crumble if it needed to. So anonymous, your boyfriend's issues are bigger than you and probably bigger than him at this point. And that is not your fault, nor is it your problem to solve. You can only ever look at your own stuff. But the good news is that that is often the magic key that lets situations unfold as they should. I hope that helps. And good luck with your relationship. Thank you for writing. Next, from Phoebe. I just turned 30 and honestly, I feel like I'm already having a bit of a midlife crisis. I keep hearing about meditation retreats. Some people have life changing epiphanies, or at least it helps clear their head, but they're pricey and I'm torn on whether it's worth it. Have you ever been on one? Should I just go for it? Oh Phoebe, I love this. First of all, 30 is huge. And yeah, I think there is a little bit of a crisis around it. No doubt. I remember when I turned 30, I had a couple of big insights. The first was, uh-oh, the world is taking me seriously now. Like, you land in adult world and I didn't have my wild and exploratory 20s to lean on anymore. People weren't cutting me the same kind of slack. I was officially grown up in everyone's eyes and that was great because it forces you to grow up, but it also meant I had to take my life more seriously, which was a bit scary. Second, I realized that my body was a vehicle I had to take care of. And I mean, this didn't happen the day I turned 30, but it was around that time. I realized I could no longer sort of drive it all night on crappy gas and just expect it to bounce back or treat it like it was immortal or not or a machine. And that was huge because on the heels of that, I had to realize that I was the only person who could actually take care of it and make the frontline decisions about what happened to it. And in taking care of my body, you know, that included my mind. So let's turn to the idea of meditation, which is a very effective and important way of treating and taking care of your mind. Wow. You know, it's just so funny, Phoebe. If we spent half the time managing our minds, that we do managing our eyebrows, you know what I'm saying? And I'm not making a joke. I mean, think about it. We are obsessed with the outer parts of our being. We spend ridiculous amounts of money on makeup, on our hair, on our bodies, an inordinate amount of time, energy, and attention all the way to obsession for many people. We look in mirrors, we take billions of selfies, and yet inside of you and me is this invisible system, this beautiful force, which animates our entire inner life and it spills out of our bodies. It is our vibe. And the mind is part of that. And no matter how attractive we become on the outside, it is this inner being that actually governs our lives. It's our vibe that we're bringing to relationships, to work, to the universe, not our eyebrows. Your vibe is actually running your show, so you can turn up at the party looking like a 10, but if you're a mess on the inside, the vibe eventually arrives too. And it simply doesn't matter what shoes you're wearing. So shouldn't we give at least as much time to this invisible inner part of us? This inner being? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Oh, and did I mention yes? And I'm not trying to be flippant about your question, Phoebe. I promise we are all trained especially in the Western world to be more interested in the outside, the results, the conquest and the winning and comparing ourselves to others. You are not alone in this. So it makes a lot of sense that you're wrestling with this question and I'm really glad you are. So let's talk about meditation. First, meditation, if nothing else, is the most practical tool there is. It's like brushing your teeth, but your mental teeth. It gives you space to self-reflect, flip through your mental to-do lists, brush aside annoying mosquitoes of your mind, or examine them. Being still will make you sit through impulses you may not want to act on, and that's always good. Oh, look, I'm biting my tongue when someone starts gossiping at the office. Thanks, meditation. Oh, look, I'm passing on that second cupcake at the office party. Thanks, meditation. Meditation lets you look at what's going on inside so you can let go of what doesn't really matter and face the day with more agency, more choices and more dimension. You wouldn't leave the house without brushing your hair, so why would you leave the house without brushing your mind? Now, I have explored a bunch of different types of meditation, Japanese Zen, Korean Zen, something called the School of Practical Philosophy in New York City, which was based on Indian tradition. But the one I landed on and continue to practice is called vipassana, which means insight or seeing things as they are. Now, you asked if I'd ever been on a retreat. There's different types of retreats, obviously. There are weekend retreats, and but the one that I went on was a 10-day vipassana retreat almost 30 years ago. And I promise you, I'll never do it again because it was very challenging, but also absolutely and unequivocally one of the best things I've ever done. It had a profound impact on me. Now, in order to answer your question, I just went on their website to see if and where vipassana retreat centers are still functioning, and they are. They're all over the world, and they're free. They house you, they feed you. All told, it's a 12-day experience because they're sort of the arrival day, 10 days of meditating, and then the leaving day. But I also looked at the rules and the schedule of meditation, and honestly, in a way, I can't even believe I did it. It's pretty strict, especially considering we live in a cell phone world now. We're talking no talking, no reading, no being on your phone, no interacting with the other participants. It's a very internal solo exercise with up to 10 hours of meditation a day. Now, not in one big block, split up in one and two hour blocks, but it's intense. Now, I went to this meditation retreat because my friend Lisa Silverman is like my soul sister, and I have a policy in my life which is if Lisa tells me to do it, do it. She's just one of those people that just radiates healthy things. So I listened to her, and when I was about 27, I was driving around the country, and there was a vipassana retreat in Texas, and I remember talking to her on the phone, and I said, I'm really nervous about this. At the time I was wrestling with an eating disorder, I was afraid I would overeat, I was afraid I would freak out or just sink into some weird dark place in myself. And I remember Lisa saying, this will only just bring you closer to yourself. That's all it will do is bring you closer to yourself. So there's nothing to be afraid of. Now, for some people that is a scary prospect, but for me at the time, I'd done enough work on myself that I was like, oh, I know my major stuff. The worst case scenario, I'll just be bored, you know, or in pain from the sitting, although, you know, you can sit on a chair if you need to. So a 10 day vipassana retreat is not necessarily something I would recommend to a beginner, but many vipassana centers have two day retreats or different ways of introducing you to the practice. And there are many teachers in the Western world who have been influenced by vipassana, Jack Cornfield, Cheryl Salzburg, and other teachers. So there are ways of studying it without immersing yourself completely or at least for 10 days. Let me tell you what I like specifically about vipassana. Well, first of all, you mentioned that these retreats seemed expensive. Well, this 10 day retreat, it's free. And in fact, they will not take any money from anyone who has not sat the course. And at that point, it's on a donation basis. After I did the 10 day course, I gave them a healthy donation because I knew it had changed my life completely. But I've never received an email from them or a letter or a phone call soliciting more funds. So it's not a money thing. But more than that, having done a bunch of different types of meditation, this meditation is very body centric. It's a form of meditating that's very connected to your actual body. You're not just hanging out in your mind. It grounded me in me, in my sensations, in the conflicts I held in my own flesh. And I really crave that. And I find that because it's so incorporated, it doesn't get fluffy and into opinions or ideas that might take me on a journey that doesn't feel centered or grounded. It's not a bunch of rules to follow or ideas to meditate on. You're literally meditating on your own body. And that helps release and free you from the gunk you may be carrying both physically, emotionally and mentally. Vipassana doesn't have some hallowed guru. And there was a guy named Gwanka, funny name, who was our teacher via video. Every night, we would watch a class and he would teach more of the technique. But he has passed away and no one's worshiping him. There aren't like pictures of Gwanka all over the place. And he's just a teacher and he's very humble and real. You do not, by taking Vipassana, have to declare yourself a Buddhist or you can come from any walk of life and Vipassana will welcome you. It's just a powerful technique for clearing the mind and liberating your inner being. Learning it doesn't mean you have to go up some set of ranks or become part of some community. And I really, really like that. And finally, it really helped me understand how my mind works. And I don't mean that in a psychological way. I mean it like we have these habits, the subconscious mind sets up little rooms and cravings and resentments. And I saw that I could meditate through that stuff and get past it and become more equanimous and more heart centered. And so it was an incredibly powerful tool for the rest of my life to manage my own mind. I mean, like I said, I went on that retreat like a zillion years ago. But it's still having an impact on me today, even though I don't, you know, they recommend you meditate quite regularly for long periods of time, if you can. And I'm like, no, sometimes I'll just do 15 minutes. But it's there, it's a practice. So going back to your letter, those epiphanies your friends are having? Sure, we should all be having epiphanies on a somewhat regular basis if we're growing and evolving. But you can't really go aiming for them. Epiphanies tend to come in through the back door when we're not looking and meditation clears the mind, making it more open to those kinds of awakenings and insights. It sort of clears the deck. And below the deck? Yeah, there are insights to be had. And under those insights? Well, ultimately, meditation helps us align with that big universal energy inside us, animating us, that vibe. Now, that might sound like a big thing. And yet, it's just a simple truth. And the more you live with that truth and align with it, the easier life is. The more you align with that inner vibe, that powerful energy running through you that has, you know, little or no ego attached, you experience less suffering and more joy. And you're able to call on universal energy and use it in your pursuits. The more you can listen to your intuition. So meditation is not a big deal at first, and it may seem boring or, you know, challenging to just brush your mind. But over time, it's a very big deal. When you start meditating, especially at a younger age, you are investing in clarity and peace and wisdom. And you're exploring your own subconscious mind. And that pays off over time. That changes your choices, your behaviors, the community you grow around you, and even the family you create. And the great thing is, it's not like, hey, you have to take this protein powder that contains this magic ingredient. If you don't, you've basically missed the train and you're a loser. No, with meditation, you can start anytime. You are the subject. You are exploring yourself all the way down to that universal self. And whether you do it or not, or skip a day, you're still here. So I think it comes down to this. Imagine that you lived on top of a diamond mine. Now, I know diamond mining is a little complicated in our current world, but let's just imagine diamonds right underneath you. Would you dig or no? I say dig. Please let us know, Phoebe, how it goes. Thank you so much for that question. I loved exploring that topic. And yeah, please keep listening. Next, Jessica. I've been sleepwalking since I was a kid, and it still happens sometimes as an adult. The most common place I find myself is in my office, sat in my desk chair. Weird. Anything I can do to stop this? I listen to sleep magic to get me to sleep, but I still do this. This is very, very interesting. This is from Caitlin. Very interesting. Thank you so much for writing. Now, I'm not sure if I'll be able to give you the perfect suggestion for this issue. And there may be hypnotherapists in the world who work on this actively and regularly. So I encourage you to seek them out. From the phrasing of your question, when you said, I find myself in my office, sat in my desk chair, it sounds like you may be from England, and there's lots of good hypnotherapists in England who can possibly tackle this. However, let's discuss regardless. First of all, you ask in your message if you can stop this behavior and obviously understand why you're asking that and what you're looking for. But the part of you that is sleepwalking is very definitely your subconscious mind. That's what's active when we sleep. And one of the things about the subconscious mind, it's governed by a lot of different rules. But one of them is that it doesn't like being told what not to do. In fact, the subconscious mind doesn't even comprehend the words don't or not. Like, when I work with someone who wants to change a behavior in my practice, we don't focus on the unwanted behavior. We create a whole new behavior and incentivize the client to move in the new direction. That's what the subconscious mind likes to do. It likes to add, not subtract. Instead of, I don't smoke anymore. It's, I feel free and clean and happy about myself. So I think we need to begin with accepting this behavior. In fact, I encourage you to make friends with this behavior, delight in it, even love it. I mean, unless you're doing dangerous things, which doesn't sound like you are, can you step into actually enjoying this, owning it, integrating it? And if you and I were doing hypnosis around it, I would have you in hypnosis, sit at that desk chair in the middle of the night, imagining that and really feel into it. What are you getting there? What are you feeling? Are there memories attached to it? Stress, unresolved conflicts? And the answers may be very subtle or fuzzy at first, but your subconscious mind is getting something from sitting at that desk. And generally the subconscious is looking for a feeling. Maybe you need to really lean into that feeling in order to let it change. I've had recurring dreams in my life that were very potent and sometimes perplexing, but when I let myself feel into them, sort of try them on like costumes, make friends with them, I got insights into what they were really about. And once I accepted those feelings and worked them through, the dreams tended to stop recurring, like their message had finally been received. Okay, one more angle on this, Caitlin, because you said that you've been doing this a lot and I get the impression you're not so much concerned with what's going on at the desk, although that might be interesting to explore. It's the sleepwalking itself. It is normal for the body to go into a sort of frozen state when we sleep, especially when we dream. Our ability to move and to speak is diminished while we dream. It's called REM or rapid eye movement, atonia. And this stops most people from sleepwalking and sleep talking. It stops the body from acting out what the mind is doing. And although sleepwalking is not uncommon, especially among kids, it may be that for whatever reason, and it could even be genetic because sleepwalking tends to run in families, that your brain isn't supplying you with the compound that causes the body to inhibit these impulses. Now, I am not a doctor. And frankly, the doctors are still figuring this stuff out. Sleep is somewhat mysterious to this day, but that could be a factor. Now, I don't know if there's treatment for that or medication for that. I'm not sure whether you'd want to live with the side effects. I would ask you, can you make friends with this first before you do anything and see what that gets you? Thank you so much for writing, Caitlin. Thank you for listening. Okay, that's it for now. We do this monthly with extended episodes for subscribers, so please submit your questions in the next few weeks so I can answer them on the next mailbag. You can ask me anything, whether it's about an issue you're having, a question about me, or just a question about life. I'm open to answering as many as I can, so be sure to send them in. If you listen to this podcast on Apple or the Sleepiest app, send your questions to hello at sleepmagic.fm. That's hello at sleepmagic.fm. If you listen on any other podcast platform, go to the show notes, and there's a link in the show notes, a supercast link, and within that link is a feature called Ask Me Anything, and you can leave a question there. I really look forward to hearing your questions, and please let us know in the reviews what you thought of this episode. Also, I'm sorry that we can't get to everyone's questions. Sometimes they don't pertain to a big audience, or I'm not great at answering them, so thank you if you've sent in questions and you haven't heard them yet. It's not that we don't love you, but you might want to try another question if you haven't heard yours. So, thank you, thank you, thank you for listening, as always, and good night.