Therapist Lori Gottlieb Explains How to Set (and Keep) Better Boundaries This Holiday Season

Many of us have trouble setting boundaries—and this is especially true around the holidays. So, let's take a moment to talk about what boundaries are (and what they aren't), how they can help us, and how misconstruing what they are often creates disconnection.

Here are three questions that can help you when setting and sticking to boundaries: 

Question No. 1: What am I requesting, and is it a boundary with myself? 

A lot of people think that a boundary is this: You say to someone, “If you talk about the way I'm raising my children, I'm not going to see you anymore.” Or you might say to a loved one, “If you talk about my appearance or raise your voice, I'm going to end the conversation.” 

The request is reasonable. You don't want to be yelled at or criticized or told how to raise your children. That’s fine. But here’s the key: The boundary isn't about what they do, the boundary is what you are going to do. 

Question No. 2: Am I being consistent 100 percent of the time?

It’s your job to honor your own boundaries, but you have to do this consistently—which means 100% of the time. What does that look like?

Let’s say you tell your partner: “If you raise your voice, I'm going to end the conversation.” And then if it happens, you end the conversation by saying something like, “Hey, you know what? You're raising your voice. Let's come back and talk about this later.” 

But if you do this 90 percent of the time—and 10 percent of the time you continue the conversation while the person yells, then the person thinks, “Oh, it’s kind of a fuzzy request. Sometimes I can still raise my voice to make my point.” In other words, the person realizes that you won’t keep the boundary you set, so why should they honor it? 

The result? The conversation gets heated and you argue. And then, you might say something like, “See! You don't respect my boundaries!” 

Actually no, you didn't respect your own boundary because you stayed in that conversation when you said you wouldn’t.

It’s important to remember that a boundary is a bid for connection. If you didn’t care about being in connection with this person, you’d just walk away. You’re setting the boundary because you care about preserving the relationship. That's the way a boundary should be presented. It’s essentially you saying, “I really want us to be closer, and when X happens, it pushes us apart, so I’m asking that we do Y instead.” 

And you don't have to go through the whole explanation about why you set a boundary again and again. If you’ve said it once and explained your boundary clearly, from then on you can simply say, “Remember what I told you about not continuing this conversation if you raise your voice? Well, I’m going to leave this conversation now but I'm really looking forward to talking another time.”

When you stick to your own boundaries, others will change their behavior because they have to if they want to be in relationship with you. But there’s a caveat…

Question No. 3: Am I asking for something reasonable? 

If you’re finding that others are choosing to avoid you rather than spend time with you and honor your request, you might ask: “Am I setting a reasonable boundary?” 

Sometimes people set boundaries that are so tight that it’s like swimming in a fishbowl—there’s no room to maneuver. On the other end of the spectrum is an ocean—where there are no boundaries at all. That doesn’t work either. Then there's an aquarium, bigger than a fishbowl but more contained than an ocean, where we know the rules of the relationship but they're flexible enough for us to be ourselves, too.

We all want to be in aquariums.

A parent recently wrote to my “Dear Therapist” column saying, “My daughter has all these boundaries, but there shouldn’t be boundaries in a relationship with my daughter.” I had to explain to him that every relationship has boundaries. We can't just treat people the way we feel like in any given moment because we’re related to them; that’s not appropriate or considerate. Every relationship has rules that make that relationship strong and peaceful. A boundary-less relationship creates chaos.

So, as we move into the holiday season, I encourage you to remember that boundaries aren’t dependent on whether another person does what you ask. They’re dependent on whether you follow your own boundary and do what you say you’re going to do.

Lori Gottlieb is a psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone which is being adapted as a TV series for Netflix. In addition to her clinical practice, she is co-host of the popular “Dear Therapists” podcast   and writes The Atlantic’s weekly “Dear Therapist”  advice column. Learn more at LoriGottlieb.com.