Islamic Life Coach School Podcast
Islamic Life Coach School Podcast
Safe Boundaries. The 5:1 Rule
Ever wished a boundary could feel calm in your body instead of like a fight waiting to happen? We dive into a simple, powerful approach to setting limits that protect your nervous system, honor your values, and still leave room for warmth in the relationships that matter most. Instead of using boundaries as tools to change people, we reframe them as clear if-then commitments you control for yourself.
We unpack why control backfires and how judgment turns boundaries into a stress loop of rumination and resentment.
Regulate yourself by accepting reality without moral blame so you can follow through cleanly. You’ll learn the relationship bank account metaphor and a practical five to one ratio rule: for every firm boundary that may be perceived as a withdrawal, make five unconditional deposits—warmth, presence, respect, quality time—that signal continued care without undoing your boundary.
We also explore common pitfalls...over-explaining, bribing for approval, adjusting deposits to manage someone else’s emotions and offer language and mindset shifts to keep your boundaries sustainable.
For Muslim women, especially within family systems shaped by control, this framework restores dignity and autonomy while keeping the door open to connection. When you build from regulation, you stop arguing in your head and start trusting your follow-through.
Subscribe, share with a friend who needs boundary peace, and leave a review with the first clean boundary you’ll set this week.
To leave a review on Apple Podcasts, open the app and go to the show's page by searching for it or finding it in your library. Scroll down to the "Ratings & Reviews" section, tap "Write a Review," then give it a star rating, write your title and review, and tap "Send"
Welcome to Islamic Life Coach School Podcast. Apply tools that you learn in this podcast and your life will be unrecognizably successful. Now your host, Dr. Gamal Abdar. Hello, hello, hello everyone.
SPEAKER_01:Peace and blessings be upon all of you. Today's topic is something that I coach Muslim women on all the time. Muslim women in general have a very hard time creating and holding boundaries. There's always a fear of repercussions or making other people feel uncomfortable or not having enough practice and not being able to hold your ground in the face of disrespect. And when that happens, usually the subconscious fear behind holding boundaries is that it means that the relationship is going to be damaged. So I want to put most of these fears to rest today because they're making it hard for you to create boundaries. And I want you guys to start thinking about boundaries in terms of something that feels safe in your body. So first some basic reviews. Boundaries are not tools for changing other people, they're not meant as punishments. They're not attempts to get somebody else to behave better or think differently. They're not ways for other people to understand you better. The moment the boundary is used for any other purpose other than your own safety, it stops being a boundary and it turns into a control strategy. And control always backfires, especially in close relationships, because you don't have control. Control is an illusion that Shaitan creates. A boundary is a simple if then statement. If this happens, then I will do this. And it is done in a non-threatening energy. The boundary is not measured whether the other person agrees or complies with it. It is measured by whether you follow through with what you said you would do. Boundaries are only self-protective actions. They exist to keep your nervous system regulated and to protect your values. Boundaries are only about what you will participate in and what you will not. They do not require the other person to change. In fact, when someone is used to overstepping you, a clean boundary on your part will almost always feel inconvenient to them. They will interpret it as rejection and disrespect and disobedience. They may assign it moral meaning, calling you unkind or unislamic, or calling your actions selfish. None of this makes the boundary wrong. It simply reveals that the previous dynamic that worked for them no longer works. The person you're creating a boundary against does not have to come from your judgment of them. You don't have to say they're bad, they're morally wrong. Boundary is not saying that I'm doing this because I'm judging you hard. All a boundary is that it says this no longer works for me. And this whole distinction matters because the goal is not to teach them a lesson. The goal is to remain in a relationship with yourself, in the highest form of relationship with yourself. Boundaries do not give you power over others. This is one of the biggest misconceptions. They give you stewardship over yourself. Boundaries created from anger, judgment, shame are very metabolically expensive and ultimately unsustainable. Because when a boundary is formed from anger, the relationship is always going to feel unsafe. In that case, the nervous system moves into threat detection, and there you're no longer simply protecting yourself, you're fighting an invisible war. If you're attempting to create boundaries from thoughts like they shouldn't be like this, he should know better, this is unfair, this is wrong. Judgment that feels justified in the moment, but is metabolically costly. It's going to cost you your mind and your body's peace. It keeps the nervous system activated as long as you're interacting with the person or as long as when you're even thinking about the person. The boundary that was supposed to end the stress ends up prolonging it. For Muslim women, judgment rarely stays contained. It turns into rumination. You replay conversations in your head, even future ones. You mentally argue with people who are not even present. You question your intentions, your adab, your sincerity just because you want to create a boundary to keep yourself safe. Muslim women are enculturated to toggle between self-blame and resentment and create a boundary from that space. A boundary that looks firm from the outside and it looks like that you are a strong person for creating it, but internally you're leaking energy because of constant rumination. This is what I call a metabolically expensive state. And from this state, no matter how firm the boundaries look, they're hard to sustain. Either you release the boundary to regain the peace, or you abandon them completely because you're exhausted. And of course neither one of these options is healthy. After all of that, when boundaries are unsustainable, the only solution that your brain offers you is to cut people off entirely. And none of these outcomes happen because you somehow are a person who can't do boundaries. All of this happens because boundary was built on a foundation that is of threat origin rather than regulation. Clean boundaries come from an acceptance of the reality without its judgment. When the body is not interpreting the relationship as dangerous, you don't need to convince yourself that the other person is wrong in order to justify protecting yourself. You don't need to ruminate to stay anchored. This is when the boundary becomes sustainable. Judgment drains energy, regulation preserves it. Create boundaries from a regulated, healed nervous system. So when Muslim women who are already socialized to carry the responsibility of other people's emotions, they're socialized to carry the moral responsibility of all of the relational harmony. This distinction is everything. A boundary that costs you your nervous system is not a boundary that will last. One of the most helpful tools to make boundaries peaceful for you in this dynamic, all just to be able to nurture your nervous system, is something that I call the five to one ratio rule. This is the rule that I will define to you and is absolutely life-changing. And in an effort to do that, I do have to clear one more thing. There are relationships in your life that are transactional, and then there are relationships that are meaningful. And those might be your spouse, children, parents, chosen friends, close family, community members, your colleagues. These are relationships where you choose to participate. The five to one ratio rule only applies to your chosen relationships. I want to define this rule using a metaphor. Imagine you have a relationship bank account. This is made up of thought deposits, specifically the thoughts each person is having about the other. When both of you are having evolved, generous, grounded thoughts about someone, and they're also having evolved loving thoughts about you, the account is healthy. It has plenty of balance. And this happens because when both of you are having kind thoughts about each other, kind and generous actions will follow. This gives the account liquidity. Small disagreements are not going to end up threatening the relationship because the balance overall is healthy enough to absorb them. When one person is holding respectful, expansive thoughts and the other one is holding mostly judgment or resentment, even entitlement or control, the account becomes underfunded. There may be interactions, obligations, or even living in proximity in that relationship, but the balance overall will be low. And when both people are holding negative, fearful thoughts, the account is going to be overdrawn. The relationship is going to be operating from deficit. And in that case there's not a lot of cushion for any setbacks. The most important part that applies to you in regards to your boundaries is that you only control your side of the deposits. You do not control the other person's thoughts. Relationships at their core definition are your thoughts about another person. That means that the only way to create or stabilize a healthy balance is by tending to your internal deposits, your thoughts. Now, when it comes to boundaries, this becomes especially important. When you're teaching someone how to treat you, particularly someone who's used to mistreating you, any boundary will be perceived on their part as an inconvenience, as a threat. Not because it is unkind or you are wrong for doing it, but because it disrupts the system that benefited them. They will have negative thoughts about you. They may even label your boundary as unislamic or disobedient or selfish, even disrespectful. They may attempt to reassert control and even go harder in their efforts. From their perspective, you're withdrawing from the relationship bank account. This withdrawal is perceived, not actual. You're not holding negative thoughts about them. And if you haven't gotten there, this is what coaching is about. Like I said, you cannot sustain boundaries by having negative thoughts about other people, because you are not punishing them through your boundaries. You're not revoking your love or respect for them. You're simply no longer participating in a dynamic that harms you. But because they experience your boundary, your no as a loss of their control, they also experience it as a loss of connection, and they experience that boundary as a withdrawal, even when it's not. This is where the five to one ratio becomes very important. Only in select meaningful relationships, where you're consciously choosing to invest, for every firm boundary that is perceived as a withdrawal, you intentionally place five deposits of unconditionality. Now what does that mean? These deposits might look like warmth, presence, kindness, smiles, hug, quality time, respect, anything that otherwise can be perceived as a deposit from their part. Again, you're not doing it to manage their emotions. You're not trying to convince them to agree with you on your boundary. You are keeping your side of the bank account strong. You're basically putting in deposits of goodwill that are not contingent on their approval of your behavior. While you're not responsible for balancing the account alone, you might want to put in extra deposits because these are the relationships that you've chosen to invest in. So you want to stay responsible for your side of the bargain. This five to one ratio allows you to hold a boundary cleanly and firmly without resentment while continuing to invest in a relationship that matters to you. This way you're not sacrificing your values or your self-respect. Where most boundaries fail for Muslim women is when the relationship account is overdrawn. A boundary is a withdrawal from the emotional bank account of the relationship. If the account is already in debt, the boundary lands as being violent, and when it's clean, you carry no ill will towards the other person. This five to one ratio is not your attempt of being nice to soften the blow of your boundary. Although it might do that, the five to one ratio is your deposits and the relationships that are important to you. Again, the relationships that matter. Think about this carefully and clearly. Parents, in laws, elderly, spouse, children, close family, colleagues that you work with closely. These deposits must happen outside of the boundary creation. This is your show of unconditionality towards the person who you're holding the boundary with. This somewhat reduces their threat perception. It signals to them your effort of continued attachment and it might help them restore their own nervous system safety. So on their part, the boundary does not require constant hypervigilance. And believe it or not, when you train yourself to give these unconditional deposits to a relationship, your nervous system will also come out of hypervigilance. It will also calm down because you will then have proof of your relationship that you are investing in it and you are coming from a non-judgmental, open, abundant, respectful, loving place. When you can't do this effectively, you either give up the boundary or you cut people off entirely. Which I'm not against cutting people off. Sometimes you do need to let go of proximity in order to heal, but you have to create the distance for the sake of healing, not for the sake of punishing others. The five to one ratio rule is an extremely fruitful, viable option that feels very, very good in your own body. So what counts as five deposits, you might wonder? The five deposits are anything that signal unconditional value. They communicate through your actions or just through your presence that the relationship still matters, especially when you're telling others that your blind compliance is no longer available. These deposits are given freely, not in exchange of better behavior or their emotional maturity. They are not contingent on the person taking the boundary well. Anything that you think will stabilize the relationship emotional bank account without compromising your boundary. And it is absolutely life-changing when this is implemented correctly. Some common pitfalls that you might fall into that I want to clarify is number one, the five deposits are not an apology for your boundary, they're not explanations that are meant to make the other person feel better about your decision. Number two, they're not attempts to regain approval from the other person. The deposits are not being used to undo the boundary. If that happens, they're no longer deposits, they're withdrawals from your relationship bank account to yourself. If that happens, then you've fallen into people pleasing. Number four, these unconditional deposits are not dependent on the other person's reaction. You do not withdraw them if the boundary is misunderstood or even resisted. You also do not increase your deposits in order for you to compensate for somebody else's distress. You give to the relationship what you can. You give them because you're coming to it with the highest level of intention, which is a state ofsan. You're showing up in the best character for the sake of Allah. You're treating the other person with the highest regard possible in your own mind, only in your most important chosen relationships. After that, number five is that the unconditionality is not people pleasing. On the surface, the five to one ratio rule can look like appeasement to women who've been conditioned to overgive, but structurally and energetically, it is the very opposite of people pleasing, because you are inputting without the worry of the outcome. People pleasing gives the five and never holds a boundary, which is why the five to one ratio rule is completely different than people pleasing. Now all of these five pitfalls combined and all of the previous rules of the boundaries I discussed with you, this is what the difference is between unconditionality, how you want to relate to others, and self abandonment. This is specially true in cultures of Muslim family systems that are recovering from the effects of marginalization, occupation, colonization, that breeds a mentality in people that want to control others. You are an individual, free human being, you don't like to be controlled. It is an absolute must that you learn to create clean, firm boundaries. If you belong to any such culture or system where as a Muslim woman you were taught to believe from a very young age that any kind of autonomy or self-respect that is inconvenient to others is immorality, you absolutely need clean boundaries. If you try to set boundaries and your whole system goes into panic, what the five to one ratio will do to you is that it will help prevent you interpreting this panic as I'm being disowned or I'm being bad or that somehow I've brought dishonor to the family. It's gonna take you out of this fear-based response of I'm unloved to I can give as much love as I want to these important relationships. As a Muslim woman, many of you value respect, kindness, generosity in your close relationships, myself included. So this rule helps create solid boundaries without you losing your anchor and your values. This rules create your internal safety and it comes with practice, and from that safety come sustainable boundaries. The five to one ratio protects your relationship with you. With that I pray to Allah Swanallah, Ya Allah, give us the wisdom to protect our nervous systems, steady our hearts when we want to protect ourselves in boundaries, especially when our boundaries are misunderstood. Help calm the panic that's in our bodies and replace drumination with clarity. Ya Allah, allow us to show up with Isan in our relationships that you have entrusted us with. Make our boundaries a form of worship, and our integrity a means to get close to you. Amin Ya Rabul Amin. Please keep me in your drawas. I will talk to you guys next time.