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Boundaries Are Your Responsibility: The Cost and Liberation of Saying 'No'

  • Writer: Yasmin Sorte, MSW
    Yasmin Sorte, MSW
  • Dec 28, 2025
  • 7 min read

Why Boundaries Fail and How to "Hold the Line"


Most people don't struggle with boundaries because they don't understand them. They struggle because they know exactly what holding one might cost.

A healthy boundary is a line drawn around your own time, energy, and emotions. It separates what you are responsible for from what belongs to someone else and protects your well-being.



Clinical counselor Kristen Jacobsen, at Cathartic Space Counseling, notes that boundaries require knowing your limits and accepting that you cannot control another person's feelings, thoughts, or behavior. Everyone is responsible for their own attitudes, choices, and emotions, a truth that feels empowering until we have to live it.

Boundaries often lead to disappointment, anger, distance, and misunderstanding. You know that saying 'no' to a request could make you look cold or uncaring. You worry it will be painted as selfishness in a story you've spent years trying to soften.


So instead of holding the boundary, you explain it. You justify it, offer context, and hope the other person will feel how reasonable you are. When that doesn't work, you assume you must not be "good at boundaries."

What really matters: Boundaries rarely fail because they are unclear; they fail because the person setting them isn't prepared to tolerate the reaction.

That's not a character flaw. It's a nervous system problem.


The Nervous System Collision

Jacobsen explains that you can't set healthy boundaries when your nervous system is stuck in survival mode. Many of us learned early to read rooms, manage reactions, and prevent escalation. In environments where keeping the peace meant safety, harmony-keeping became self-erasure. When you finally try to hold a boundary, your body reacts as if something dangerous is happening. You rush to fix the discomfort. You explain more, problem-solve for the other person, or offer an alternative. Not because the boundary is wrong, but because your nervous system is trying to restore equilibrium. This is why people-pleasing isn't about niceness; it's about managing risk. It's a fawn response: an automatic survival strategy to keep connection at any cost.

"People-pleasing isn't about niceness; it's about managing risk. It's a fawn response: an automatic survival strategy to keep connection at any cost."

The Moment Boundaries Break

There is a specific moment when most boundaries collapse.

It isn't when someone asks for too much. It's after you've already said no.

It's the silence that follows, the sigh, the look that says Really?, or the follow-up text that reads, "I just don't understand why you're being like this."


That's when people start negotiating with themselves:

Maybe I was too harsh.

Maybe I didn't explain it well.

Maybe I can lighten up without fully backing down. 

This is where boundaries quietly turn into suggestions. From the outside, it can look like kindness. From the inside, it feels like self-betrayal, because you know exactly what you're doing.



Why Saying No Hurts

Most people who struggle with boundaries aren't selfish; they're conscientious and attuned. They've spent years tracking other people's moods and adjusting themselves accordingly. In many families, that skill kept them safe. It made them useful.

Over time, harmony-keeping becomes a habit of self-abandonment. When you eventually say no, your body remembers every past time that "no" led to rupture.


Jacobsen notes that when your nervous system lives in chronic fight-or-flight, every relationship becomes a threat:

You won't know if you're saying yes out of love or fear; you won't know if your 'no' is coming from clarity or from shutdown. So you rush to fix things, hoping to restore the connection before conflict appears. This is where people confuse empathy with responsibility, believing it is their job to prevent others from feeling disappointed.


What Boundaries Actually Require


A boundary is not a statement; it's a decision you agree to uphold even when the other person doesn't like it. Mental health experts emphasize that boundaries only work when you accept that you cannot control someone else's reactions. You are responsible for your own feelings, actions, and limits, not for managing another person's discomfort.

Holding a boundary rarely feels empowered in the moment. It often feels tense, lonely, or even cruel, especially when you care deeply about the person on the other side and could ease the discomfort by giving in a little.


"If you can't tolerate someone's emotional response to your boundary, you don't have a boundary; you have a preference."

BOUNDARY vs. PREFERENCE: Know the Difference

A Boundary

A Preference

"I won't participate in conversations where I'm being yelled at."

"I wish you wouldn't yell at me."

You uphold it regardless of reaction

You abandon it when there's pushback

Enforced through your actions

Enforced through hope/negotiation

"If this continues, I will leave the room."

"Please stop doing this to me."

The Subtle Ways We Undermine Ourselves

One of the most common ways boundaries fall apart is through "helpfulness." You say no, then add a solution. You offer to fix it another way or explain how they could handle it. It sounds supportive and feels generous, but it keeps the same dynamic intact: You teach the other person that pressure works. Rich Oswald, a psychiatrist with Mayo Clinic Health System, describes this dynamic through what he calls the "law of relationships," noting that anxiety and stress develop when you take responsibility for others' emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. When you consistently step in to manage someone else's discomfort, you're not being kind. You're being predictable. Boundaries hold when you stop rescuing people from the consequences of their choices.

"When you consistently step in to manage someone else's discomfort, you're not being kind. You're being predictable."

Boundaries Aren't Punishments. They're Conditions.

This is where many people get confused. A boundary isn't about controlling someone else's behavior; it's about defining what you will participate in.

It isn't "You need to change," but "If this continues, I won't be here for it."

This applies to emotional access, time, logistics, and money. Clear boundaries aren't punitive; they are adult decisions that honor separateness and togetherness.

Researchers Leslie Baxter and Barbara Montgomery, whose Relational Dialectics Theory examines relationship tensions, explain that healthy boundaries require negotiating the balance between autonomy and connection:

Adults understand structure.

Children experience structure as punishment.

If you're relating to another adult, clarity is the kinder move.


How to Set Boundaries: The Grief Underneath

Another reason boundaries are hard is rarely acknowledged: Sometimes holding a boundary means facing the relationship as it actually is, not as you hoped it would become.



Hailey Magee, certified coach and author of Stop People Pleasing and Find Your Power, addresses this in her workshop, "Nobody Said It Was Easy: When Control, Boundaries, and Grief Collide," noting that boundary setting isn't always a cathartic victory; it can feel heartbreaking.

We often arrive at boundaries after years of unsuccessfully trying to make a relationship work, overlooking mismatches, downplaying hurtful behavior, and ignoring signs that the connection is eroding our well-being.

Finally accepting that a relationship cannot meet your needs can feel like mourning a future you desperately wanted. This grief process is similar to what families experience when their child enters treatment, accepting the relationship as it is, not as they hoped it would be.


"Boundaries don't create distance; they reveal where distance already exists."

Boundaries show us who reaches toward repair when we stop over-functioning. They ask us to grieve the loss of an idealized connection so we can stop exhausting ourselves trying to maintain it.


What Consistency Really Looks Like

Consistency isn't dramatic; it's repetitive and often boring. It's saying the same thing again without adding a new justification. When you hold the line calmly, one of two things happens: The relationship adjusts, or it reveals its limits. Either way, you gain clarity.


Boundary Language That Works:

Instead of defending, explaining, or negotiating, try these responses:

  • "I'm not able to do that."

  • "That doesn't work for me."

  • "I'm confident you'll figure it out."

  • "I understand you're disappointed."

  • "My answer is still no."

  • "I've already given you my answer."


Why Boundaries Are Your Responsibility

No one else can hold your boundary for you, not because people are selfish, but because they're invested in things staying the same. Oswald at Mayo Clinic notes that anxiety arises when you take responsibility for others' emotions and behaviors, and that you are solely responsible for your own. Simply Psychology's research on boundaries, compiled by Olivia Guy-Evans and Saul McLeod, echoes this, listing feelings, attitudes, behaviors, choices, and limits among the things each person must own.

Understanding that you're responsible for your own responses, not others' reactions, is fundamental to what we mean by family resilience.


If you want change, you must be willing to feel temporarily uncomfortable.

You have to tolerate disappointing someone without rushing to repair it.

That's the work.

When you do it consistently (not perfectly, but honestly), something shifts. You stop feeling resentful. You stop rehearsing conversations in your head. Not because people suddenly understand, but because you do.


A Final Truth

Boundaries aren't about being harder.

They're about being clearer.

Clear enough that you no longer abandon yourself to keep the peace. Once you experience that kind of clarity, it's very hard to go back.


At YES Family Consulting, we help families move from understanding what boundaries are to actually holding them. This is exactly the kind of relational work we navigate through our comprehensive family care services.

Whether you're supporting someone in treatment, navigating recovery as a family, or simply ready to stop sacrificing your wellbeing to keep the peace, we provide the architecture and support to make lasting change possible.



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