Why are Boundaries so difficult?
Boundaries are now generally accepted and understood, and there’s a groundswell in acknowledgement of their importance. Theoretically, most people get the concept, and recognise the need for healthy boundaries, even for those who were traditionally denied any right to them.
Most people would now agree that children, for example, are entitled to their own boundaries. There’s more acceptance that parents - particularly mothers - have needs of their own. There’s an increased awareness that adult children may need to set limits with their own parents. Employees are advocating for their needs and wants, with more or less success, and women are gaining awareness (if not always much real change) of the cost of invisible labour.
So if we all agree that boundaries are important, why are they still so f*cking hard to create?
One reality is that there’s plenty of resistance to people creating boundaries where once there were none.
The individuals who will resist you creating boundaries are the people who benefit most from you not having any.
So while most would agree with them in theory, not everyone will be so supportive in practice, particularly when it impacts them.
It’s one of the reasons why most people struggle so deeply with boundaries around family. Families tend to operate on “implicit contracts” that dictate expected behaviours, which may not always be stated aloud, but are understood by all involved. These expectations can be old, unconscious, and rigid, so any attempts at change can be met with major resistance.
However, the pushback is not always external. Sometimes we do it to ourselves, in the form of guilt. Nedra Glover Tawwab, a brilliant author on this topic, says that the most common question she gets is:
“How do I set boundaries without feeling guilty?”
In her words,
My immediate thought is, “You can’t.” I know, I know — I’m a therapist; there must be something I can do to make boundaries guilt-free. I wish with all my therapist power that I could remove the guilt associated with setting boundaries, but I can’t.
Another issue is how confusing this topic can be. For some of us, it can be very difficult to know for sure what a healthy boundary is. As the discussion around boundaries has become more mainstream, like many psychological terms, this one has been bent out of shape. You’ll sometimes hear people describing efforts to neglect, control or punish others as “creating boundaries”. Creating rules how your can partner dress, for example, is not creating a boundary - it’s simply trying to control another person. On the flip side, if we’re coming out of decades of people-pleasing, expressing the simplest want or need can feel horrifically selfish.
So why bother?
Well… the numbers are in on this one. There’s now a large body of evidence describing the long-term health impact of stifling your own needs, feelings, and wishes, and over-accommodating others at the expense of yourself. Self-silencing, as a recent article in Time describes it, has been shown to be disastrous for our health. It’s a particular issue for women in our patriarchal culture, and could be one reason why 80% of autoimmune disease occurs in women.
What exactly are boundaries?
A simple definition of personal boundaries would be “the lines we draw for ourselves in terms of our level of comfort around others.”
Boundaries typically fall into a few specific categories:
Emotional (protecting our emotional well-being and energy)
Physical (protecting our physical space)
Sexual (protecting our needs and safety sexually)
Workplace (protecting our ability to do our work without interference or drama)
Material (protecting our personal belongings)
Time (protecting the use, and misuse, of our time)
And so on.
Put simply, a boundary is basically a preference.
The strength will vary - our response to what we perceive as a boundary violation could range from mild annoyance to relationship-ending crisis, depending on its importance to us. Most of us would have some red lines in how we will allow others to treat us, and every one of us will have unique preferences, which is where the need for communication comes in.
What bothers one person won’t affect the next, and so we can’t assume anyone can guess what our boundaries are, without us telling them. Many boundaries seem obvious to us, but they aren’t necessarily to others. Think about the people closest to you, and what bothers them. Now think about what doesn’t. There are likely things one person has no issue with that someone else would find intolerable.
One key point…
If I had to add one important point to clarify how we go about creating a boundary, it would be this:
A boundary is NOT a request
A request is:
Can you please lower your voice?
Would you mind not drinking at the family get-together?
Please don’t call me when I’m at work.
A boundary is:
If you raise your voice at me I’m going to leave
I won’t stay at the family gettogether if you’re drinking
I can’t answer the phone at work
You’ll notice a key difference in list 2 - it says what you are going to do.
A boundary is something that YOU do. The other person involved doesn't have to do anything.
If I ask someone to lower their voice, that’s a request. If they adhere to it, then great. If they don’t, that’s where I need to create a boundary, and a boundary is something I do myself.
A boundary is me saying that I will leave if you raise your voice, and then doing it if that happens.
Asking someone not to discuss your weight with you is a request. Politely ending the conversation if they refuse to do that is a boundary.
The reason I feel this point is so important is because setting boundaries is hard enough. There’s a high physical and psychological cost to the resentment and burnout that comes with not having boundaries, but starting to push back on the people closest to you, when you haven’t in the past, takes a toll too. It’s a necessary and constructive cost, ultimately, but it’s still uncomfortable, especially if you’re starting from zero.
If we’re not really clear on what a boundary actually is, then we’re adding to the confusion and mental cost. You’ll often hear people say “She doesn't respect my boundaries” when in fact what you’re talking about are requests. If you actually enact a boundary, then the person involved won't have a choice about whether to accept it or not, because it’s something that you will be doing yourself, without their input.
How do I know mine?
A friend once said that it’s only by going past them that we realise where our boundaries are, and I have to say I agree. We tend to find the limits of our patience or energy only by overstepping them, and there's no point beating ourselves up over that. What we have to do is learn. I’ve learned over time what trips to say yes or no to, what invitations to accept and which to politely decline, what level of work availability I can have without burnout, and so on.
The key metric here is resentment. When we’re giving freely of our time, resources, or energy, and feel a sense of fulfilment, enjoyment and where appropriate, trust in reciprocity, there won’t be any downside. Where we feel that we’re being taken advantage of, disrespected or depleted, you can be sure that there will be a large serving of resentment alongside, and this is a fluttering red flag that something needs to change.
Resentment is a signal that something is out of balance, and we need to pay attention to it. However bad the short-term repercussions of boundary setting might be, the long-term outcomes of neglecting them are worse.
In so much of the work I do, I know I am inviting clients into difficult territory. It is often easier, in the short term, to go along with the status quo. Renowned relationship therapists John and Julie Gottman have done decades of research into what makes relationships work, and have found that couples who make demands of their relationships - ie who do not just accept things the way they are if they’re not happy - end up with much better relationships in the long run. They’ve also found that in relationships in which people directly express their feelings, including anger where they feel injustice, there is a short-term drop in satisfaction, but a significant long-term gain.
I say this to provide some motivation for having the difficult conversations, setting the boundaries, and - hardest of all - maintaining them when you meet resistance.
As a final motivator to do this work, I’d like you to ask yourself:
In the areas in which I overextend (ie. where I don’t have boundaries), who or what benefits from me not having them?
If we take a clear-eyed look at the situations in which we overburden ourselves, we might not like the systems we’re supporting.
If you struggle with this, start small. Figure out inside yourself what you want and need, with any feelings of resentment as a guide. Define a small change you can make in your own behaviour - something you can do differently, which is different from a request to someone else, and try a 5% change. It takes time to see the benefits, as they come later. We may need to pay a little in guilt, discomfort, or friction, but when we eventually start to experience the gains in time, energy and resources, it will be worth it.
