3 Steps to Setting Boundaries with Confidence
Someone yells at you, a family member criticizes you, spanks your child, punches you, or gets drunk and passes out at your dinner party. Would any of these things be okay with you?
Let’s talk about boundaries and navigating them with confidence.
What’s a conspiracy, and what’s a confabulation?
We think we must set boundaries because of how other people make us feel. The truth is, we must first manage our minds about other people and the stories we’re making up about them. Only then can we get clear on what boundaries we’ll set.
Healthy boundaries are for everyone.
The unconscious process that can be blurring our boundaries…
Our brain is bombarded with millions of pieces of information every hour. To cope, the basic, primitive part of our brain narrows its focus and looks for dangerous things in our environment. It’s an unconscious process that makes up a story about good guys vs. bad guys. To this part of our brain, everything will either kill us or everything’s fine. It doesn’t realize that it lives in a modern society where relatively few things are dangerous.
The drama our brain creates is in our minds and can lead us to believe it’s real. Other people or situations aren’t toxic or draining — it’s your brain. It doesn't matter what they do or say.
Only you can cause drama for you.
It doesn’t matter if your mother criticizes you or your friend gets drunk and passes out at your dinner party. It doesn’t matter because no one else can cause drama for you — only you can cause drama for you. It only exists in your mind. How do you feel when you think someone or something is creating drama? You feel upset, angry frustrated, right? That’s your mind creating drama!
What other people say or do are neutral circumstances, and your thoughts about what happened create your feelings. “Toxic” is thought. It’s a label your mind created based on the story you’ve made up. Toxic things like lead and mercury are poison — people can’t be toxic. Same goes for drama. Drama happens on a stage or screen, and when we label these people, we look for evidence to support our thoughts and ignore evidence to the contrary.
We think the solution is to avoid these people and situations or set what we believe is a boundary where we expect others to change. We give away our emotional management, responsibility, and control to others. At some point, a person may be hard to avoid, like a family member, boss, or child. Often, we’ll put other people’s needs, wants, and desires ahead of our own, putting ourselves at the bottom of the list. And it’s difficult to set a boundary from that place.
Learning how to manage your mind about these situations is what’s actually helpful.
Otherwise, you’ll feel stressed and out of control around these people and emotionally exhausted from dealing with them. Your brain may tell you they’re dangerous, but it’s not always true. These are relationships where you both have unclear or unspoken expectations. You first need to have conversations before you can negotiate a better path. For example, you may want children and your partner may not. Rather than hoping he’ll change his mind, you can get clear if this is a dealbreaker for you or if this is something you’re willing to accept.
Look at people who push your buttons as opportunities to learn more about taking responsibility for your emotional experience instead of blaming them and expecting them to change so that you can feel better.
Here’s a different way to think about it. This is a workplace and people have expectations of me and things they want me to do. I have expectations of what I think is reasonable to do, and we’ve just got to negotiate. That’s a position of power. If you do your work and work with a therapist, you can make decisions based on your agency because it’s your decision, not because of how you label other people or circumstances.
Some situations may be deal-breakers for you, non-negotiables that require a boundary. An internal clue that we know we need to set a boundary is when we feel resentment.
The way boundaries have been taught in the past has been unclear.
Boundaries aren’t about asking other people to change. We don’t control other people’s thoughts, feelings, or behaviours. Many people make requests of others and expect them to do it, thinking that this is a boundary. If the other person doesn’t comply, people make it mean something about them or their relationship. In reality, the other person may not be willing or able to do what you ask of them. We often say, “If you cared about me, you’d do what I want.” Those two things are mutually exclusive. People can care about you, and there may be many reasons why they’re not complying with your request. Maybe they don’t want to, maybe it’s not in their best interest, maybe it’s too hard, or they don’t know how.
Boundaries are decisions about what you’ll do if you encounter behaviour you don't want to be around.
Let’s clear up a misconception. You'll be emotionally resistant if you believe the other person's behaviour is wrong and shouldn't be happening. When we’re emotionally resistant to things, we want them to change. And that means we’re mentally and emotionally focused on the other person and what's wrong with them and trying to change them rather than being mentally and emotionally focused on caring for ourselves and taking whatever action we need to do so.
How do you know you’re ready to set a boundary?
Here are some clues to when it’s time to put some boundaries in place.
You're coming from a place of unconditional positive regard for yourself and the other person.
You’re clear about the boundary you want to set.
You’re 100% ready to enforce the boundary.
The boundary doesn't come from a rejection of the other person and their behaviour and a belief that they’re not allowed to do what they’re doing. It comes from love for yourself and a commitment to what you are or are not willing to be around or experience.
An example of a boundary for me looks like this: It’s okay to disagree with me but not okay to punch me in the face. I will call the police. For others, like boxers or hockey players, getting punched in the face may not be a problem. It’s likely that people you interact with and are close to have different boundaries than you do, and it’s okay.
The decision to set a boundary doesn't have to be about how “bad” the behaviour is because bad behaviour is subjective. When you label something as “bad,” it becomes unacceptable and needs to change. There’s no rule book for life, and what’s unacceptable for us may be perfectly acceptable for someone else. Instead, consider the situation a neutral circumstance and then decide what you want to do about it.
It’s not about the person — it’s about the behaviour.
In relationships, you can decide that it’s okay to be mad and it’s not okay to be mean. You can talk about how feeling grouchy when hungry and tired is acceptable, but it’s not okay to yell or call me names. If it happens again, I’ll stop the conversation and walk away.
At work, it's okay to be short-staffed — it’s not okay to hold me accountable to three people’s jobs. I’m willing to problem-solve or help hire someone else, but I will not work past 5:00 p.m. or on the weekends to get it done. It’s okay to have conflicts at work, but it’s not okay to gossip about people. The next time you come to me with gossip, I’ll ask you if you’ve talked to the other person and then change the subject.
Boundaries give us power and freedom.
This is why taking responsibility for your thoughts and feelings, no matter what someone else is doing, is the most important thing you can do to create peace in your life. If you set a boundary intended to stop the other person's behaviour, that’s not a boundary — it's an ultimatum, and it usually won't work.
We’re so used to putting everyone else’s needs before ours as if they’re more important. Your needs, wants, and desires are at least as important as everyone else’s. Other times, we think we might hurt someone’s feelings if we say no. The truth is that we don’t control other people's thoughts and feelings, and we only assume that it will cause them discomfort. Even if it does, discomfort isn’t deadly.
It’s also important that we accept other people’s boundaries and not take them personally. It can sometimes feel like criticism or judgement, but reframe this as a preference. We always have the choice as to whether it works for us.
It’s easier to set a boundary when you come from a place of love for yourself and others. You’re not trying to control or manipulate them. Boundaries help me preserve my time and energy. The most generous people have the best boundaries and can be generous because they have the energy and time to do so.
Practice managing your mind and setting boundaries where you need to. It will take some courage and feel a little uncomfortable but will help you create a more peaceful life.
