Every airport bookstore is full of self-help and positive psychology books on setting boundaries, and these skills are critical to developing healthy relationships. The ability to set a boundary, to identify what behaviors we’re willing to accept and those we are not and to figure out what decisions are healthiest for our wellbeing, is a key life skill that underpins assertiveness, self-confidence, agency, and a positive self-image.
That said, when we establish a boundary, we are materially changing how we participate in a relationship, and these changes can trigger emotions like grief, loneliness, and self-doubt, emotions that tend to be de-emphasized in pop psychology. This post looks at those emotions and offers ways to cope so that they fuel your progress around setting boundaries, rather than derail it.
At its core, boundary setting is a bundle of skills that involve recognizing our needs and our limits, and prioritizing those needs so we can say no when we want to or need to. 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, 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. It touches on every aspect of our lives, romantic, familial, parenting, professional and sexual.
A significant volume of research suggests that boundary setting is correlated with happiness, fulfilment, and emotional resilience. One of the simplest ways of understanding the importance of boundaries is to think what life would be like without them, for example, without boundaries how would we know what our minimum acceptable behavior in a relationship would be, how would we feel safe?
There are lots of different ways to improve the skills, from reading books and listening podcasts to working with a therapist in behavioral or psychodynamic therapy. Broadly speaking the skills involve (a) learning how to recognize what we truly feel in a situation and what our needs are (quite an achievement if we are people pleasers), (b) recognizing how we self-sabotage and talk ourselves out of internal reactions (and stopping that), (c) gaining comfort and joy in expressing our needs (d) surrendering our sense of responsibility for other people’s feeling and our need for the approval of others (e) learning how to speak up. 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. For any therapist, it is thoroughly energizing to walk this path with a client because the skills are lifechanging, and it sure feels good to watch a client develop their sense of agency and confidence at their own pace.
The aspect of boundary setting that often takes clients by surprise and that tends to be glossed over in the popular literature and the podcasts, involves the discomfort, doubt, loneliness, and grief that comes from setting a boundary with someone who has built a relationship with us without that boundary. When we set boundaries, we are implementing significant changes in our lives. 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 will 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, other times may have narcissistic qualities that become threatened by an assertive interaction. Whatever the reason, it is important to be aware that the path of change here can be bumpy, relationships can change or even come to an end. The simple comforts of predictability and community can come under pressure.
Case in point, I recently worked with a professional in her late twenties, let's call her Maeve, who regularly hung out with a group of friends in evenings and weekends at the downtown bar scene. In the course of Maeve’s work in therapy, she decided to experiment with drinking less alcohol and wanted to explore different approaches to socializing. Not surprisingly, she decided to take a step back from the bar scene to minimize triggers and she shared this plan with her friends, in a jovial and lighthearted manner and suggested they try out other activities from time to time. Maeve’s friends reacted supportively in the moment but made no effort to try to adjust their routines to hang out with the client, showed no curiosity or empathy for this person’s journey, and passively allowed her to fade out of their lives and routine. This reaction triggered real shock and grief in this client, who believed the friendships were deep enough to adapt, and the client had to process grief in both losing the friendships, and in realizing they had misjudged the strength of the relationships in her life.
Don’t get me wrong, I have yet to met someone who has regretted developing boundary skills in the long term, and the research supports that practicing healthy boundaries over time can lead to happier and more fulfilling lives, but we may need to fasten our seatbelt in the short term. This early implementation stage of the journey can be tricky because the benefits of practicing healthy boundaries, let’s call it the fulfilment payoff, have not yet hit your emotional bank account, so it requires some grit and optimism to keep moving forward. Here are some simple suggestions to get you through this 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.
The loss of, or a substantial change to, a relationship will trigger grief. Allow yourself to grieve and to have doubts. 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.
Seize the opportunity to practice the skill of assertiveness, learning to speak our truth with respect and courtesy, and giving others the space to 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, 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. Observe it, engage it, but don’t be ruled by it.
This is a particularly useful stage within which to seek support from a therapist, who can help you to keep the changes in perspective, to process the reactions you are experiencing and recognize the presence of any derailers like the voice of your inner saboteur or your shadow side. People pleasing behaviors can have deep roots in our past, and therapy can help you understand the origins of these tendencies and develop the skills to free ourselves of imprisonment to them.
However you proceed, try not to be discouraged if you are surprised by the reactions of people in your life to your responsible expression of healthy boundaries. Push back, grief and isolation are all normal, even if they don’t quite fit with the sparkling narrative we often find in self-help literature. You are in a period of growth and adjustment, and growing pains are part of that. To paraphrase MLK Jr’s wonderful quote, the arc of change is long but bends towards fulfilment! Keep going.
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