How to Set Boundaries in an Already Established Relationship
While "boundaries" has recently become a buzzword on the internet, few actually know just how fundamental and essential boundaries can be in our lives.
In fact, drawing lines in a long-term relationship can be the cornerstone of the connection's longevity and health. However, establishing any form of boundaries, whether with a parent, partner or best friend, can also be nerve-racking. Thankfully, we had the opportunity to sit down with Emmalee Bierly and Jennifer Chaiken, hosts of the Shrink Chicks podcast and co-owners of The Therapy Group, to take a deeper look at boundaries and the importance of setting them.
Sweety High: Please introduce yourselves and how you both got started in therapy and mental health work.
Emmalee Bierly: My name is Emmalee Bierly. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist and sex therapist. I'm an LMFT-approved supervisor, I train other therapists, I co-own Therapy Group and I co-host Shrink Chicks. Jen and I met in grad school about 10 years ago, and both went to school to be therapists. One of the reasons we were going to school to be therapists is because we knew we believed in therapy in theory, but we both had pretty negative experiences with therapists, actually, and both of us also were a little bit petty. So we figured, you know what? F*** this. I could probably do this just as well. So, we decided we'd do that.
Jennifer Chaiken: My name's Jennifer Chaiken. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist and sex therapist. I am a co-owner of the Therapy Group and also co-host of the Shrink Chicks podcast. We love to talk about how important it is for us to destigmatize therapy, because when we were growing up, we didn't have that. I went to therapy as a 7-year-old, and it was always very hush-hush. A lot of what we do is around destigmatizing conversations around mental health and recognizing that therapy isn't as scary as sometimes people feel it is.
(via The Therapy Group)
SH: What's the best piece of relationship advice you've received, and what's something you don't recommend doing?
EB: For us growing up, the big thing was "never go to bed angry." Oh, God forbid you ever go to bed angry! Go the f*** to sleep. You really need to sleep. Sleeping and having a full REM cycle really repairs your nervous system. It allows everything to calm down so you can think more logically and more clearly in the morning as well. Fear-based marriage advice and relationship advice are something that we really try to stay away from. At one point, I was having a hard time in my marriage, and my mom said to me, "Emily, you can't get divorced because he's just going to have a new girlfriend in six months." And I said, "No, mom, I'll have a new girlfriend in six months." The reality is that relationships are really difficult and they're really complicated, and what advice worked really well for someone in their relationship might not work well for yours.
JC: Another thing that we hear all the time is that when you find the right person, it's going to be easy—that you're going to find someone, and they're going to completely fulfill you and complete you in some way. What we know as relationship therapists is that is just simply not true. You are coming from two different intergenerational backgrounds, bringing them into a relationship, trying to build a life together, and it is impossible not to have some struggles come up. That is just natural. It's part of being in a relationship and it's okay. You cannot control your partner's response or reaction to something, but what you do have control over is how you respond.
SH: There seems to be a huge fad on the Internet about boundaries. We would love for you two to set the record straight and clarify what boundaries are, and how to set them effectively.
EB: I feel like the internet's obsessed with boundaries, but I feel like the internet is really obsessed with cut-off. The big fad around boundaries on the internet is, if somebody gets in the way of my energy, they don't have to be in my life. Cut-off can be a type of boundary setting, but it isn't necessarily a direct boundary. And of course, if we're in a situation, especially if there is abuse or anything unhealthy, cut-off 100% if that's the safest way. You need to figure out the type that we're setting. There are physical, emotional and psychological boundaries. Psychological might be, my mom always has a comment to make about my weight, and so I'm going to set the direct boundary with her—"Mom, you can't speak to me about my weight. Please don't bring that up anymore." But also, when she says it, I choose to make a psychological boundary of, this is my mom, this is the s*** she says, and I actually don't need to take this on. I'm going to choose to not let it mess with my mind that day.
JC: I think boundaries, in a concise way, are basically where I end and you begin, right? There's a separation between the two of us. If we grew up in a family where there weren't emotional boundaries, we would be used to taking on the emotions of other people who are really close to us— feeling it's our responsibility, in some ways, to take that on. When we're talking about emotional boundaries, we're also talking about separating out the fact that your emotions are not my responsibility.
(via Shrink Chicks)
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SH: Is there ever a time that establishing boundaries may not be necessary? How important is it to set a direct boundary with someone?
EB: We like to talk about it in stages. Let's say somebody grew up in a really pervasive diet culture household. Say somebody made one comment. The first thing to say is, "Hey, that's actually really harmful talk around diet culture. I'm not interested in that. Let's change the subject." That's an example of a boundary. I think that one of the issues with how the internet has become so obsessed with boundaries is that there's just not enough nuance around it. Sometimes, establishing boundaries may not be necessary—not in the sense that it's not setting a boundary, but it's not a direct, "I'm going to communicate this with you." Instead, I'm going to choose to walk away and not be involved in that. I can choose what I participate in.
JC: I also think that boundaries look different for everyone. For example, I'm very introverted, so I need so many more boundaries around socializing than maybe someone who's more extroverted. Without those boundaries, I feel completely drained. I think you really need to understand for yourself where it's important for you to set boundaries so that you can live your best, healthiest life. It's knowing that that might be different from someone else, and it might be different for someone else in your friend group, it might be different for someone else in your family.
SH: For some, setting boundaries is easier said than done, especially if they fear confrontation. What's your advice for those people who want to establish boundaries?
EB: I want you to think about it like playing pretend. If I was to be my bravest self, my non-conflict-avoidant self, what would I say to this person? Let's say I meet a new friend in my class, and they're awesome, but I realize that they're in the same class afterward and they always want to walk with me, but that's my time. I also don't want to offend this person. How do I do it? Being honest. "It's so cool that we have two classes back to back. I have to tell you that I use this time to totally decompress, but could we please sit next to each other in psych so that we can take notes together?" So we talk about it in terms of stroke, stroke, kick. Stroke, stroke, kick. Right? So, stroke is, "It's been so great getting to know you. I like this friendship we have," and the kick is, "It's really important for me to have this time."
JC: If you're someone who's a people pleaser, or you're conflict avoidant, or you grew up in a family that didn't have boundaries, it might be the case that you might not know what your boundaries are or what's important to you in those relationships. The first step is figuring out where your boundaries are and what boundaries you want to set in your relationship so that you can communicate them effectively and authentically.
(via Shrink Chicks)
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SH: What if you want to establish with someone who has been in your life for a while and may not be used to what may seem like a random adjustment for them?
EB: I think for a lot of people, that's a scarier one. We're talking about really established relationships that also are probably super important to us. So, one, ask yourself, what's the fear around changing the dynamic? What we say in the work we do with systemic therapy is that it takes two people to set a dynamic, but only one person to change it. I can be the person who changes what this looks like.
JC: We might get some pushback, or we might get someone who doesn't respect the boundary, and because of that, we shut down, or we don't continue to set the boundary. Sometimes it takes setting that boundary over and over and over again until the person really hears you because they are so used to having a specific dynamic in your relationship. They are so used to you responding in one specific way. So, when you do something different, it might take time for them to adjust.
SH: Jen, you talked about how you may need to set boundaries several times before it gets to the person. But Emily, you explained that sometimes you have to accept people and move on. What's the healthiest way to navigate that?
EB: I guess it depends. My parents were born in 1947. The information that they had and the life they had was completely different than what I have. My grandmother worked for the New York public school system, and part of her job requirement was that she had to get weighed every single year, and you had to weigh a certain amount to hold that job. That's what my mom grew up with, so my mom is involved in diet culture. I don't think I can blame her that much. Not everyone has this huge capacity for growth, right? They just don't. You have to ask yourself, how harmful is this for me? How important is this for me? And what's this relationship?
SH: With someone from an earlier generation, like a parent or grandparent, do you have anything else to add in terms of approaching those conversations from someone who may not be used to having these lines drawn?
JC: I think something you can think about is changing your expectations about the relationship as well. As you're setting these boundaries, if your parents are not respecting them or they're continuing to do the same thing, you also get to choose how much you're talking to them on the phone. There are so many ways in which to set boundaries that aren't just, "I'm going to have this conversation with you, and you're going to have to respect it, and you're going to have to respond in this specific way."
SH: What do you do if you receive pushback on a boundary? How do you not internalize that?
EB: So, let's say you set a boundary, and then Uncle Todd says, "I was just kidding. Why are you so sensitive?" "You know what? Whatever it was, I didn't like it—joking, not joking, I'm telling you how I feel." This is exposure therapy. I want you to try it five, six, seven, 25 times before you're like, oh, I have no problem saying anything. You're going to internalize it. You're totally going to bug out afterward. You might, for a few days, have this anxiety spiral where you're overthinking it. That doesn't mean what you did was wrong. It means what you did was different, and different is hard. So, if somebody pushes back, I would stand your ground, or if that feels too much, you can say to them, "I said what I said," and that's it. Period. A boundary is a period.
(via Shrink Chicks)
SH: What if someone wants to set a boundary with you? What's the best way to handle that conversation?
EB: I'm going to give people the benefit of the doubt, always. If someone's telling me I did something that was harmful, I'm going to try to hear them out first, because even if my intent wasn't there, the impact wasn't well received. I'm going to go with impact over intent. It's actually really easy for me to say, "I didn't realize that I did that," or "God, I can see how it came off that way now." It sucks to get called out. It just does. But once again, it's a muscle we need to work on because people will call us out in life.
JC: If someone's coming to you and setting a boundary, the information that you can receive from that is that they very clearly care about your relationship enough to express their boundaries to you. Otherwise, they would not be coming to you. They would cut you off. They would internalize it. They would resent you. And so, for someone to be coming to you and expressing a boundary, it's also them saying, "I don't want to push you away and not tell you what I'm feeling." It might sting at first to hear that, but underneath that is that person saying they very much care about their relationship with you.
SH: Anything else you both would like to share and close out with?
EB: The disclaimer again—that this is not about abuse. If you are in an abusive situation, your job is to get help, to leave and to take care of yourself. Boundaries do not work when you're in an abusive situation, so this is really only for folks in possibly dysfunctional, but not abusive, situations. I like the idea of just meeting people where they're at. Give people the benefit of the doubt but also honor yourself, and the best way to honor yourself is to set boundaries and also accept other people's boundaries.
JC: I love this conversation around boundaries. Once again, I think that boundaries are essential to having healthy relationships. I think there's a misconception that boundaries separate, when in reality, boundaries are something that brings you more intimately closer to another person.
SH: And if it doesn't, it's probably not a match.
EB: Exactly. If it's not working, if we keep hitting a wall, there's a reason for that.
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