Quick Take: 5 Reasons Why Boundary Setting Hasn’t Worked for you (yet)
Boundaries help us with protection and connection.
Here are 5 things that get in the way of our boundaries being effective.
You are not clear about what it is that you need.
Up to this point you have spent so much of your time and effort on recognizing and meeting other people’s needs, that you are lost with how to decipher what it is that you may want or need inside your relationships. Check-in with yourself, where in your life do you feel resentful, anxious, or drained? That’s often a sign a boundary is missing. Clarity needs to come before communication.
If you communicate what you think you need and not what you actually need, it will create tension in your relationships with other people and yourself.
You are trying to control the other person’s behaviour.
You may have decided that your need is for another person to change their behaviour. For example, you may describe that you need your partner to tell you what is wrong or to stop yelling during arguments, or maybe you need your friend to stop asking you for a ride to the grocery store every single day. You might communicate this by saying, “You need to stop yelling at me anytime we disagree on something” or "I can’t drive you everywhere all the time, please stop asking.”
These aren’t boundaries, they’re requests that other people change their behaviour. It’s our attempt to control other people’s actions. The problem? We can’t. And anything that we try to control that is not within our power, will make us feel… welp, out of control (what a concept)!
Your boundary lacks personal responsibility.
Boundaries protect us. When used effectively, they are empowering and authentic. If your boundary lacks personal responsibility, it cannot be empowering or authentic. If we want to use boundaries to ensure that we are protecting ourselves inside our relationships, we must take on the responsbility of choice. It is our responsibility to make the choice of how we want to respond to a boundary violation.
You believe that boundaries will dissolve the relationship.
Boundaries connect us. A boundary doesn’t mean to leave people on read, ghost them, cut them off, or push them away. A boundary is intended to foster connection that feels safe and sustainable. Those that find your boundaries inconvenient or selfish either need more time to adapt or are not the people that are meant for you in this season of your life.
You are lacking assertiveness
Lack of asserting oneself can come from different places and show up differently. You may have fear that you are being unreasonable or difficult, which could result in others not wanting to be your friend/partner etc. You may want the other person to understand why you are setting the boundary and over use explaining yourself or apologizing for setting a boundary in the first place. Setting a boundary requires you to fake it ‘til you make it. That is, if you don’t have the confidence to assert yourself yet then you gotta play the role to be taken seriously.
Take Aways
If boundaries feel hard, awkward, or ineffective — that doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong.
It means you’re practicing something your nervous system isn’t used to yet.
Keep going.
You’re not pushing people away.
You’re learning how to stay with yourself.
I’ll Let you Sit with This
What might be getting in your way of setting a boundary within your relationships?
Feel free to share in the comments—I’d love to sit with that with you
