Boundaries Updated and Expanded Edition

f you have been raised in a family that said implicitly or explicitly that your boundaries are bad, you know what I am talking about. When you say no to a request, you feel guilty. When you do not allow someone to take advantage of you, you feel guilty. When you separate from the family to create a life of your own, you feel guilty. If you do not rescue someone who is irresponsible, you feel guilty. The list goes on.

Guilt will keep you from doing what is right and will keep you stuck. Many people do not have good boundaries because they are afraid of disobeying the internal parent inside their heads.

Many depressed people suffer from a syndrome called “learned helplessness,” in which they have been taught that whatever they do will make no difference on the outcome. Many dysfunctional families caught in destructive cycles reinforce this in their children. But when you grow up and see other options that will make a difference, you do not have to stay stuck in the helplessness you learned at home.

Another powerful internal resistance to setting boundaries is the fear of the unknown. Being controlled by others is a safe prison. We know where all the rooms are. As one woman said, “I didn’t want to move out of hell. I knew the names of all the streets!”

Three partners of a management team of one company were working on a big project with another company. In the course of negotiations, the president of the other company got very angry with the trio because they wouldn’t do something he wanted them to do.

Two of the three partners lost sleep, worried, and fretted about the breakdown of negotiations; they wondered what they would do if the president of the other company no longer liked them. They finally called a meeting with the third partner to talk about a strategy. They were prepared to change all of their plans to appease the angry man. When the two told their third partner of their plans to “give away the store,” he just looked at them and said, “What’s the big deal? So he’s angry. What else is on the agenda?”

They all began to laugh as they saw how silly they were being. They were acting like children with an angry parent, as if their psychological survival depended on this president’s being happy.

Each of the two partners who had feared the anger of the other man came from homes where anger was used to control; the third partner had never been exposed to that tactic. As a result, the latter had good boundaries. They elected him to meet with the president of the other company. He confronted the man, saying that if he was able to get over his anger and wanted to work with them, fine. But if not, they would go somewhere else.

We play the “if onlys” instead of having boundaries. We say to ourselves, unconsciously, If only I would try harder instead of confronting his perfectionistic demands, he will like me. Or If only I would give in to her wishes and not make her angry, she will love me. Giving up boundaries to get love postpones the inevitable: the realization of the truth about the person, the embracing of the sadness of that truth, and the letting go and moving on with life.

Blamers will act as though your saying no is killing them, and they will react with a “How could you do this to me?” message. They are likely to cry, pout, or get angry. Remember that blamers have a character problem. If they make it sound as though their misery is because of your not giving something to them, they are blaming and demanding what is yours. This is very different from a humble person asking out of need. Listen to the nature of other people’s complaints; if they are trying to blame you for something they should take responsibility for, confront them.

A man telephoned his mother, and she answered the phone very weakly, with hardly any voice at all. Concerned, thinking she was sick, he asked her, “Mother, what’s wrong?”

“I guess my voice doesn’t work very well anymore,” she replied. “No one ever calls me since you children left home.”

No weapon in the arsenal of the controlling person is as strong as the guilt message. People with poor boundaries almost always internalize guilt messages leveled at them; they obey guilt-inducing statements that try to make them feel bad.