I have this thing that I love and that my clients love called the Dead Bird Theory.
It’s one of the “visuals” that came rolling out of my mouth while I was coaching a client. It somehow, weirdly worked perfectly. Well, it started to spread into groups of women. A past client recently told me she taught her therapist and that she now uses it.
If you’ve ever had a cat, they will just bring you a dead bird and they’ll just drop it.
They drop it there like a gift, make awkward eye contact, and then walk away.
The Dead Bird Theory is one of my favorite somatic boundaries tools.
Not because it’s an actual boundary, but because many of those who are “bad at boundaries” spend a lot of time trying to find the perfect timing and the perfect way to say the thing to avoid them or the other person from feeling uncomfortable.
We try to over-explain things, so that they deeply understand us.
We like to bring things to people in nice, neat, emotionally figured-out packages.
I often used to not ask for help or communicate my needs, wants, or even share my struggle until I had it all taken care of.
I saved myself and others the tension of my needs being in the room.
I didn’t trust anyone else to take care of this the way that I take care of this.
Even if or when I needed help or to communicate what I was experiencing, feeling, or wanting- I would wait until I even had my ask neatly tied up in a bow.
I’d wait for the right timing and mood to say the thing that felt like cement coming out of my mouth. But for many of those things, the right and perfect timing never came.
The way to say the thing without me feeling bad or guilty, it didn’t come.
The way to ask of someone or to tell them what was no longer working for me- the perfect words didn’t come.
So I swallowed it all. I shined myself up. It was desperately lonely.
I think even the people who loved and liked me the most, never saw the not so shiny parts. The parts of me that were in process. I protected myself from rejection, and insulated myself from love and support when and where I needed it the most.
And then, I started learning how to drop it like it’s hot.
I had spent a lot of time trying to find the right “boundary” to bring to my husband around this one topic I was really struggling with. This was one of those messy tricky boundaries where there wasn’t a clear villain or victim or even behavior to point at. It was one of those messy fights where there are so many needs and wants clashing. Where we seemed to circle the drain with it.
I kept overthinking the complexities of it. I got a lot of coaching around where I was and what I wanted and needed and felt. I stopped centering his “behaviors” or his responses, his emotions, how he felt and I got really clear around what I felt and what I wanted and needed.
Every complaint, can be translated and communicated as a request. As an ask. As a desire.
And I brought him my “dead bird”.
It was maybe a sentance, maybe two. But new for me- I stopped. I said what I needed, I asked of him.
And then I left it there.
I FELT like a cat leaving him a dead bird and walking away.
My preference, my habits- the way I used to show up to conflict was by beating a dead horse. By overthinking and overexplaining. By bringing ALL of the topics to the table.
I would try to make it neat and pretty. I needed to just tell the damn truth. The brutal one. The raw one.
And then leave it alone and invite him into what felt like a vulnerable ask. In that I wasn’t telling him how to fix us, or me. I wasn’t only brining a problem that I had presolved with 15 different options for us both. I invited him into the process.
This was new for me back then.
It would be years before I brough the concept and even the language of “the dead bird” theory into my coaching of clients and yet, it’s stuck.
Boundaries Conversations that Never Use the Word Boundaries
A lot of people who are “bad” at boundaries are people who feel uncomfortable, often massively so- taking up space in the room, the conversation, the relationship.
So much of what feels like conflict and urgency – is really you jsut expressing and telling someone else the truth about you. About your relationship to them. About their impact on you. About what you want or need.
Hell, most people pleasers can’t even FEEL what they want and need, so communicating that feels like cement coming out of your mouth. It makes you feel bad and guilty and weird.
A lot of that is old patterns. We aren’t going to dig deep in that here. Just know that a lot of times when things feel too emotionally big for what is happening- it’s because we are emotionally responding to a past event or relationship- not the current one.
You do not have control over other people and how they react and how they respond.
There is not going to be a perfect boundary that is going to tie a pretty bow onto your relationship or your business or your person or even yourself.
Even the healthiest, most wonderful humans are messy and imperfect and triggering.
So instead of always presenting a shiny good self. You learn how to drop dead birds. You learn to be honest with yourself, and then to others.
Here’s what I want and need.
I’m going to drop it at your doorstep.
You figure out what to do with it.
Now you have the chance to relate, respond, and react however you want to.
You’re over there. I’m over here.
A lot of times, the reason that we’re struggling setting a boundary is we are trying to set a boundary with who we want that person to be, who we expect them to be versus who they actually are.
Dropping dead birds, having an ask in a relationship over a direct “boundary” will give you information about the reality of the person. Not as a test or a manipulation- as a living breathing relationship where you stop micromanaging them through not telling them the truth about you or the relationship.
Dropping dead birds is learning how to stop people pleasing, high functioning, and over-compensating in relationships where the roles and unwritten rules of the relationships aren’t working for you anymore.
What is yours?
What is your responsibility?
What is your right?
What sovereign choice and rights are you giving the other person? Do they have the right information about you- or are you sending them mixed messages? Are you always preventing the sting or the blow of human emotions?
You need to learn how to get out of other people’s business and keep your eyes back on your own business, which does not mean we’re disconnected to them.
I don’t want to be so far in your business that I’ve lost context with myself.
A lot of times that is fawning.
Where do they end?
Where do you begin?
Where do you begin?
Where do you end?
Feeling that separation between me and that other person.
Giving them their honor.
Giving them their sovereignty of choice, of agency, even if it’s choices and agency that you don’t like and that you don’t agree with.
That is their reality.
That is giving them back their agency and their choice.
And that gives you information around how you want to relate, react, and respond to that.
Drop the dead bird.
The Dead Bird Theory is:
Here’s what I want. Here’s what I need.
Here’s how I am feeling.
I’m going to drop it at your doorstep.
You figure out what to do with it.
When you do not tell people the truth of these things, you set them up to fail.
When you hide your dissapointment, your resentment, your asks, your needs, and your desires and try to hold it too close to your chest- you set them up to fail.
You test them over and over without ever giving them the keys of honesty. That is YOUR job. It is not their job to know what you want and need and how. That only works in books and romance comedies.
When you are healing from empathy or people pleasing- you often aren’t owning your own needs and emotions and are emeshed in theirs.
Treat others with dignity and sovereignty. Their emotions and experience is their own. Stop trying to prevent them from feeling bad.
Are you being honest and kind- that is your job.
We are setting them up to succeed. We are no longer playing emotional and relational chess of preventing them any discomfort as if that protects us from disappointment.
The dead bird theory doesn’t necessarily feel good in the moment. It’s why I love the name.
We are hopefully giving them enough information, and then we are allowing them to decide what to do with it.
You’re over there.
I’m over here.
Here’s how you have access to me.
Here’s how I would love relationship with you.
And then you let them react, respond, and relate to you.
Sometimes you just leave it alone and see how they react and respond.
Not as a test.
As giving them space and leaving them alone enough to decide what they’re going to do with it.
The information of how they behave or how they don’t behave is the information for how you keep going.
A boundary isn’t always a big define-the-relationship conversation.
I think boundaries when they’re usually talked about, it’s making it seem like it’s always this big define-the-relationship conversation.
I can think of very few times where I’ve ever used the word boundaries in a boundaries conversation.
And I can think of very few times where it was even a like:
Your boundaries have nothing to do with them and what they’re doing or what they’re not doing.
It’s me.
What am I doing?
What am I not doing?
How am I being in conversation with you? How am I being in relationship to you?
Am I being in conversations that I don’t want to be in?
Am I feeling like a punching bag every time I answer the phone from you, but I keep answering the phone from you?
Am I annoyed and resentful every time you do this, but I keep not changing how I relate and react and respond?
Boundaries are not how we control others. The dead bird theory gets you back in your business. Sometimes the hardest boundaries are you no longer playing relational chess and doing emotional labor for them and invite them into the problem with you.
Your job is not to control what they do with the dead bird.
This is where it requires deep self-trust and clarity.
Because sometimes people disappoint us.
In fact, a lot of times they do.
This is why boundaries are so costly.
This is why we so often “suck” at boundaries or avoid boundaries.
Yes, boundaries do give you more capacity.
They allow you to live in more self-trust.
They allow you to live in your integrity.
They allow you to walk away from tricky, messy relationships and people liking how you are showing up. And most importantly they teach you how to stay in tricky messy relationship without abandoning yourself and actually liking how you show up.
Sometimes there is still grief and pain and anger, even if you’re doing it really, really well.
Even the healthiest humans and relationships have hard stuff. Hard conversations. Hard seasons. Hard conflicting views, needs, and desires.
That sucks. It’s bullshit when we thought we were promised that there was a certain way we could out heal all this human turmoil in ourselves or in other people.
I think we’d rather have the boundary that gives us the thing that we want.
And sometimes we don’t get the thing that we want.
Sometimes we break their heart.
Sometimes we break our heart.
Sometimes everyone’s heart is broken, and no one is happy.
Healthy relationship is not always what we wanted with that person or with that thing.
Healthy relationship is owning what is within our control- our impact and influence. Owning our side of the street. And the reckoning with what is not ours. It’s the relationship to self and then other. Do we like the way we move, love, and show up to the good stuff and the hard stuff.
Their response is information.
That’s the Dead Bird Theory.
Here’s what I want and need. Messy, raw. Not all shined up or pre-solved for you.
I’m going to drop it at your doorstep.
You figure out what to do with it. Or we do together. But I don’t have to keep carrying it alone.
Further Resources and Support
Want more help with boundaries? You can read some of my other blogs here, I recommend reading about Messy Tricky Boundaries.
Want to work with me in coaching to find what you want and need and be able to communicate that clearly? You can click here to book a free interest call or here to book a drop in call.
Listen to The Motherhood Mentor Podcast
Boundaries Integration playlist. Music is medicine.
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