One of the questions that I often get from clients and readers who are learning to set boundaries in their enmeshed family system is along the lines of:
What do I do if the other person reacts? How do I set a boundary without upsetting the other person? How do I get the other person to understand and accept my boundary?
My short answer to all of the above is often: You can’t.
If it were going to be easy, you probably wouldn’t be here learning how to set boundaries in the first place. You might not even have to set boundaries explicitly with a person who understands healthy boundaries. However, most members of enmeshed families do not understand, practice, or respect boundaries.
For whatever reason, in their lives, boundaries were never modeled for them and they never learned how to practice healthy boundaries. Therefore, boundaries are experienced as rejection. It requires a paradigm shift to understand that boundaries are actually an act of love:
We set boundaries so that we can be healthier people, both for ourselves and for our loved ones.
We set boundaries to honor our limits, so that we don’t overextended ourselves and then burnout and check out of the relationship.
We set boundaries so that we don’t subject ourselves to hurt and then grow resentment for the other person, which then distances us emotionally from them.
We set boundaries to protect our physical, emotional, and psychological integrity, as well as those of our vulnerable children.
We set boundaries to not tolerate certain behaviors from others that we know will affect the relationship, and to show them that we expect more from them and trust that they have the capacity to be a better version of themselves in the relationship.
And yet, still, you can pretty much bet on the fact that setting boundaries with family members who have spent a lifetime crossing them will stir up some feelings. This is largely unavoidable with most families in which there is a decent degree of enmeshment. They may very well react. They likely won’t understand. They’ll probably resist and pushback on you.
And in those situations, you’ll need to…
Remember the Purpose
Oftentimes, we end up feeling really bad when people react to our boundaries. We don’t want to feel like we’re the ones causing others pain or discomfort. We don’t want to deal with their emotional reactions. We don’t want to feel like we’re bad people.
However, boundaries are a tradeoff of short-term discomfort for long-term well-being. In the short-term, it’s often going to feel uncomfortable, otherwise the boundary probably wouldn’t need to be set in the first place. But, in the long-term, boundaries can help you live by your values and principles, reach long-term goals, and create emotional, psychological and relational health.
That’s why it’s important to be clear on your reasons for setting certain boundaries. You have to understand what the long-term goal or higher purpose for that boundary is:
Is it to prevent burnout?
Is it to create more respectful and reciprocal relationships?
Is it to protect you from emotional harm?
Is is to be more deliberate in how you spend your time and energy?
When we are connected to the long-term, we can more skillfully and gracefully endure the short-term discomfort.
Empathize but remain firm in your position.
It can be tempting to cave into the guilt trip or to become convinced by the person’s attempts to talk you out of your position or rationalize why you shouldn’t be
When you set boundaries with others, it can feel really uncomfortable for them, especially if they’re not used to people setting boundaries with them. Sometimes, this is the first time you’re setting a boundary with them and they’re surprised because they’re used to you being a different way. It can be hard for them to understand or accept your position.
Additionally, people might have experienced a history of rejection in previous relationships and boundaries feel really threatening for them. They might personalize it and think it’s because they are a bad person or because you don’t want to have a relationship with them anymore.
They’re not used to experiencing boundaries as a way to strengthen relationships, so they experience boundaries as a threat to the relationship.
It’s important to contextualize their experience so that we can accurately empathize with their reaction. However, empathize with their reaction is mutually exclusive from caving into their reaction. We can empathize with their reaction and stand firm in our boundary at the same time.
Like when your teenager asks to stay out late with his friends and you say no because you know he has an important school project to finish the next day. He might get really angry at you and upset that he’s going to feel left out of the gathering. This is a real emotion for an adolescent at this stage of life.
But, if we cave, we understand that the long-term consequence — which he is not yet primed to understand as clearly as you are — will be much worse than the FOMO of not attending. You can both empathize with his feeling left out and his misdirected anger at you, while still holding firm in your position of saying no.
My favorite phrase is, “I can imagine this feels hard for you and I can understand how my position might be hard for you to accept. However, I stand by it.”
Understand, too, that if you go along with what they expect even if you strongly need something else, this will likely not only drain you but affect your relationship with that person due to your growing resentment. This is worse for the relationship in the long-term.
Resist reacting to their reaction.
Its often the case that the relationships that we most need to set boundaries in are the ones in which people don’t respect them. So, we need to be prepared for their reaction:
They might experience negative emotions, such as anger, disappointment, frustration, and sadness.
They might make up a story in their head that paints you as the bad guy in the middle of it all.
They might try to convince you you’re wrong and give you a million reasons why you shouldn’t be setting the boundary.
They might try to guilt you, threaten you, or use other covert manipulation tactics to get you to change your position.
They might pull other people in that you wish wouldn’t get involved.
All these things can then trigger a reaction in you. You might react to their reaction and feel upset that they didn’t respond in an accepting way. You might find yourself:
Getting defensive and trying to explain or justify your position.
Trying to convince them they’re reacting in the wrong way.
Making up excuses or white lies to soften the blow.
Venting to others and getting them to side with you.
We want to convince the person that it’s acceptable for us to be setting this boundary, and we want to convince them that they’re wrong for the way they feel about our boundary.
This is understandable, of course, because in ideal situations in a healthy relationship, people listen to, accept, and respect our boundaries. But you can’t control how people react and it’s not your place to tell them how.
You can only manage you and your reactions. So the best thing you can do in these moments is to try not to react to their reactions and to hold firm in your position in a loving way.
Tolerate the temporary emotional discomfort.
To do the above, you basically have to learn to tolerate the discomfort necessary to stick to your values, principles, and long-term goals. The discomfort that’s often necessary to create the types of relationships you want to have with others.
When people react to your boundaries, it’s likely going to feel uncomfortable for you, especially if you care about those people, and especially if you have a history of being sensitive to the emotional reactions of others.
Discomfort is often the admission price to a good life. Maturity requires to be strong and remain steady in the face of opposition, so that you can stick to living by your principles and values, and so that you can create the type of life and relationships you envision for yourself.
This means you will need to take a deep breath, bite your tongue, regulate your emotions, and surrender to the process of their reaction to you. You will need to stay calm amongst the storm of their emotions. And you will need to trust that the emotions will pass and this person will eventually calm down. You do not need to cave into their reaction or soothe their emotions about this.
It’s like breaking up with someone that you care about but know you just isn’t right for you in the long run. They’re going to feel upset. That’s a very likely thing. But should you cave on your decision because they’re upset?
Or, for a simpler example, you’re kid wants to eat his fifth cookie for the day and you say no because, well, come on, it’s the fifth cookie. They’re going to feel upset. That’s a very likely thing. But should you cave on your decision because they’re upset?
And it sucks to see those we love upset. It sucks even more when we feel like we’re the one’s causing that upset. But, emotions pass, despite being very uncomfortable in the moment. Maturity is being able to tolerate that temporary emotional discomfort for something more important or more worthy in the long-term.
Allow the relationship to change organically.
Often times, people are in relationship with us because they are benefitting from our lack of boundaries. You need to be prepared that when you set a boundary with someone, and they can longer benefit in the way that they were, their reaction might actually be leaving the relationship altogether.
And this might be incredibly painful to you. Firstly, the loss of a relationship is never easy, simple as that. Additionally, it sucks to realize that a relationship was actually transactional and a person’s connection to you was conditional.
This is also why it’s so important to be clear on our values and our reasons for setting certain boundaries. Are you prepared to lose this relationship? Do you value yourself enough to risk losing it in order to stand up for what you want or will no longer tolerate?
If you’re setting a boundary, you have to be ready for the relationship to shift and change in ways you might have not predicted or wanted. The other person might shut down on you, they might get petty, they might get distant, they might hold a grudge, they might seek revenge.
A number of things can happen that are out of your control. You’ll need to allow the person to have whatever reaction they have and allow the relationship to change organically.
Because this is the only way to guarantee the positive version of setting the boundary, which is creating a healthier relationship with greater levels of understanding of each others needs and respectful of each others limits.
Final Thoughts
We set boundaries so that we can have stronger and closer relationships with others. The are an act of both self-care and care for the relationship. And, it’s unfortunate, but people are going to react and misunderstand. Expect that as a part of this process and trust that it’s a necessary and healthy thing to do anyway.
It’s hard work. It often doesn’t feel good in the moment. But maturity is about living by our values and principles over allaying the anxiety of the present moment. It’s about setting long-term goals for our lives and pushing past the discomfort necessary to get there.
It’s about understanding the higher purpose of saying no to what’s not helping us have the types of relationships we want, both with ourselves in others. That might not always feel good, but many things that don’t feel good in the short-term are actually what get us to feeling great in the future.
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“Anytime anybody makes a significant step toward differentiating a self, the rest of the emotional system attacks. This is my notion of why it is so difficult for a person to differentiate from another person. It upsets the other and it upsets self to have the other upset.”
— Murray Bowen, Pioneer of Family Systems Theory