The art of setting boundaries is one that many struggle with, but is a necessary and fundamental life skill that leads to healthy assertiveness, self-confidence, agency, and a positive self-image. Before we can set boundaries, we must identify the behaviors we deem acceptable and those we do not, and make decisions from there that prioritize our well-being without harming others. Essentially, boundaries connect the space where our individuality ends and the realm of others begins. Mastering this skill empowers us to navigate interpersonal dynamics with clarity and ensures a healthy balance between our own personal needs and social interactions that involve others. The good news is that setting boundaries is a skill, and like any skill, it can be learned, practiced, and honed. Even better, the techniques for boundary setting are quite straightforward once you know where to begin.
What is Boundary Setting?
At its core, boundary setting is a bundle of skills that involves recognizing your needs and limits, and then prioritizing those needs, which can look different for different people. These boundaries can be physical, emotional, or psychological and serve as a way to define personal space, values, and acceptable behaviors within the context of your relationships.
What are some examples of boundary-setting?
Physical:
When meeting someone new, they lean in to hug you or kiss your cheek, but you are not comfortable with that. Boundary-setting can look like sticking your hand out and saying “I prefer a handshake.” without apologizing.
Emotional:
When your friend calls you unexpectedly in the middle of the workday and wants to process a recent breakup, saying, “I am so sorry this happened and I want to give you my undivided attention. Right now I’m in the middle of a project I have to finish by the end of the day, but I can call you back at 6 pm and we can both grab a glass of wine and you can tell me everything!”
Psychological:
When a distant relative at Thanksgiving asks, “When are you going to have kids?” without knowing anything about your personal feelings or struggles, you can say, “That's a complicated question I’d rather not talk about today." You don’t owe anyone an explanation about your relationship status, your fertility, or your personal choices.
Setting boundaries is important for maintaining healthy relationships both personally and professionally, preserving your well-being, and ensuring that everyone involved feels respected and comfortable.
Boundaries can vary widely depending on the context, such as personal boundaries in friendships or romantic relationships, professional boundaries in the workplace, or social boundaries in various situations. Effective boundary setting involves communication, assertiveness, and a willingness to enforce those boundaries when necessary.
Why Is Boundary Setting Important in Relationships?
Boundary setting is one of the fundamental skills of any relationship because it teaches us how to show up in a relationship with honesty and integrity, and to communicate respectfully and openly what we need while giving the other person a fair opportunity to think through their own needs and respond in kind. A significant volume of research suggests that boundary setting is correlated with happiness, fulfillment, and emotional resilience. One of the simplest ways of understanding the importance of boundaries is to ask: What life would be like without a boundary? How would I know when to stop walking towards the edge of the cliff, or which lane my car should remain in, or when I need to stop rubbing my pet’s belly because they’re getting agitated? Without boundaries, how would we know what our minimum acceptable behavior in a relationship would be, and how would we feel safe?
How to Build the Skill of Boundary Setting
There are many different ways to approach learning to set boundaries, all of which involve the following skills:
Learning how to recognize what we truly feel in a situation and what our needs are (quite an achievement if we are people pleasers)
Recognizing how we self-sabotage and talk ourselves out of internal reactions (and stopping that)
Gaining satisfaction and comfort from expressing our needs
Surrendering our sense of responsibility for other people’s feeling and our need for the approval of others
Learning how to speak up.
How Therapy Can Help
Working through these steps in therapy brings us face to face with our ‘shadow side’ (our needs and desires that we don’t easily acknowledge), as well as our inner saboteur (that inner voice that snatches our defeats from the jaws of victory), and so the work here involves a gradual and incremental journey towards empowerment, with the support of someone who specializes in helping you do so. As a therapist, it is thoroughly energizing to walk this path with a client because the skills are life changing, and it sure feels good to support a client in their development of their sense of agency and confidence.
Sitting with the Discomfort of Boundary Setting
There is one aspect of boundary setting that often takes clients by surprise and is sometimes glossed over in the popular literature and the podcasts, which is the fact that setting boundaries often triggers short term discomfort and grief. When we set boundaries, we are implementing significant changes in our lives and relationship dynamics. The persons with whom we are setting boundaries are used to the ‘old’ version of us, and often those people are less than thrilled with these changes, and may passively or actively resist them. There are many reasons for this resistance: sometimes people just don’t like change, other times they are used to exerting power unchallenged in the relationship, and other times they may possess narcissistic qualities that become threatened by an assertive interaction. Whatever the reason, it is important to be aware that the path of change can be bumpy, and that it may be essential to weather the storm of discomfort in order to build and maintain boundaries that serve the version of yourself that you’re working hard to grow into and support.
Practicing healthy boundaries over time can lead to happier and more fulfilling lives, though we may need to fasten our seatbelts in the short term. Many people find that they need to work through the hard part of implementing boundaries and losing those who may no longer serve them, in order to make space for the new, deeper, and more fulfilling relationships that enter their lives afterwards. Here are some simple suggestions to get you through the tough part of the process:
Remind yourself that this is a healthy and natural stage of the process, and that this will pass over time, stay focused on your long-term goals.
Allow yourself to grieve and to have doubts. The loss of, or a substantial change to, a relationship can trigger grief. Grief is a complex bundle of emotions including sadness, regret, depression, denial, an urge to negotiate away the loss, and ultimately acceptance and optimism. Processing these emotions takes time, patience, and self-care.
Approach boundary-setting as an opportunity to learn and practice the skill of assertiveness, where you learn to speak your truth and learn to allow others the space to process and react as they see fit. Keep in mind that when we set a boundary in a relationship, the other person has a right to decide how to react to that, and we need to ultimately accept their reaction.
Many of us who have struggled with boundary setting in the past are die-hard people pleasers. To move past people-pleasing tendencies, we need to release our need for the approval of others. Implementing boundaries gives us the perfect opportunity to diminish our need for approval, so look upon the doubts that emerge as the voice of your inner people pleaser struggling to maintain control.
This work benefits immensely from support from a therapist, who can help you to keep the changes in perspective, to process the reactions you are experiencing, and to recognize the presence of any derailers that can make you feel unsure of your next steps.
If you are surprised by the reactions of people in your life to your expression of healthy boundaries, it is critical to take a long-term view, to stay mindful of the courage you are showing, and to acknowledge and celebrate the progress you are making on the journey, however modest. You are in a period of growth and adjustment, and growing pains are part of that. This work benefits immensely from working with a licensed therapist to ensure your psychological safety as you work towards becoming more confident in expressing your needs.
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