A “boundary” is a guideline or limit that a person creates to define what are reasonable, safe and permissible ways for others to behave around them and how they will respond when someone passes those limits. Boundaries can be physical, emotional, mental or spiritual. Having healthy boundaries is important for a few key reasons:
- Protect Your Self-Esteem and Well-Being: Boundaries help protect your sense of identity, values and self-worth. Without boundaries, you’re more likely to compromise yourself or lose your identity in relationships.
- Reduce Stress and Anxiety: Having clear boundaries reduces ambiguity, confusion, and uncertainty about what’s acceptable behavior. This helps lower relationship stress and anxiety.
- Gain Respect and Reciprocation: Setting fair boundaries shows people how you expect to be treated. It makes it more likely you’ll be respected and have your needs reciprocated.
- Improve Your Ability to Say “No”: Healthy boundaries give you practice articulating what behaviors you will and will not tolerate from others. This improves your ability to say “no” when appropriate.
How to Set Healthy Boundaries
Setting healthy relational boundaries is a skill that takes self-awareness, practice and often courage. Here are some tips:
- Get clear on your needs, values, priorities and deal breakers. Know your must-haves and cannot-tolerates.
- Decide what information, resources, roles or responsibilities you will and will not share. What requires your consent first?
- Determine what kinds of communication and behaviors from others are okay or not okay. Define what’s rude, abusive, manipulative or inappropriate.
- Develop scripts for asserting your boundaries, e.g. “I’m not comfortable with X. Let’s talk about something else.”
- Be specific about the consequence if someone crosses an important boundary, e.g. ending a conversation, leaving a situation, reevaluating a relationship.
- Apply boundaries evenly with people. Make sure you’re not making excuses for some and strictly enforcing with others.
What Gets in the Way of Setting Boundaries?
While healthy boundaries are critical, they can be challenging to set, communicate and uphold for many reasons:
- Fear of Conflict: You may avoid asserting boundaries to keep the peace and avoid uncomfortable confrontations.
- Fear of Rejection: You worry that if you communicate your boundaries clearly, others may get upset with you or reject you entirely.
- Lack of Self-Esteem: When you lack confidence in your worthiness and lovability, you’re less likely to defend yourself and say “no” to people.
- People-Pleasing: Due to over-empathizing with other’s needs and wanting external validation, you may not enforce your preferences.
- Guilt and Sense of Responsibility: You may feel overly responsible for other people’s wellbeing and happiness, causing you go past your own boundaries.
Tips for Upholding Your Boundaries
While setting boundaries can be hard, upholding them presents its own challenges. Here is some advice:
- Get comfortable with the awkwardness. Setting a boundary almost always initially makes interactions uncomfortable or awkward. Let the discomfort pass.
- Be ready to repeat yourself. You may need to assert the same boundary multiple times as people push back against it or test if you really mean it. Calmly restate it.
- Stand your ground in the face of manipulation. Tactics like guilt-tripping, shaming, threats, arguing and bargaining may arise. Recognize manipulation and don’t give in.
- Keep your reactions simple and detached. When boundaries are crossed, avoid over-explaining yourself or letting it turn into group processing. A simple “I am going to respectfully end this conversation now” can work well.
- Accept that some relationships may need to end. As hard as it is, you have to be willing to let go of toxic relationships that consistently violate your clearly defined boundaries. This empowers and protects you.
Setting boundaries takes courage, conviction and practice. But with time, it is a skill that will serve you well and can greatly improve all aspects of your mental health and relationships.
Implementing Boundaries with Different Relationship Types
Boundaries play an important role in every relationship in your life. However, enforcing healthy boundaries properly depends on the type of relationship. Here is some guidance on applying boundaries with different relationship types:
Romantic Relationships
Romantic relationships require clear boundaries around:
- Intimacy and affection – Discuss appropriate times, places and limits on physical intimacy to feel safe.
- Digital communication – Set rules about expectations and response times to texts, phone calls, etc.
- Solo time – Articulate needs for alone time or time with other friends. Don’t take offense.
- Finances – Have ongoing discussions around financial values, responsibilities and account transparency.
- Life goals & priorities – Ensure your visions for career, family, lifestyle, etc. ultimately align.
Friendships
It’s important to set friendships boundaries with regards to:
- Availability and response time – Don’t expect instant responses. Respect each others’ other commitments.
- Shared confidences – Clarify what’s shared in confidence between just you two versus what’s fine to share publicly.
- Borrowing money – Be very cautious about loaning money to friends unless you are fully prepared to gift it with no expectations of repayment.
- Advice and feedback – Make clear when you’re just venting versus when you’re openly looking for their suggestions or solutions.
Family Relationships
Family relationships require special care and skill to set boundaries lovingly, like with:
- Unsolicited advice – Do not feel obligated to heed unrequested advice. Politely say, “Thanks, but I have things handled my own way.”
- Political conversations – Ban politics as a discussion topic if it always leads to arguments. Change the subject or leave the situation whenever it comes up.
- Guilt trips and manipulation – Recognize when family members default to guilt tactics to get their way. Point it out directly or repeat your stance.
- Money and inheritance – Do not feel entitled to any inheritance. Make peace with receiving anything at all. Manage expectations through open conversations.
Work Relationships
Maintaining boundaries at work is crucial for professionalism and growth:
- Work hours – Be clear about when you are and aren’t available for calls, emails, texts from colleagues.
- Meetings – If meetings start to drag on unproductively, suggest kindly but firmly to table further discussion for later.
- Delegation – Don’t accept scope creep or unofficial expansion of your role. Ask clarifying questions about new asks.
- Social events – Attend work social functions as your comfort level allows. Don’t feel guilted into attending anything officially off the clock.