How to forgive yourself when your boundaries hurt people.
Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves even when we risk disappointing others. — Brené Brown
One of the hardest truths I’ve had to accept is that sometimes, your (necessary) boundaries hurt people. People you care about. And that can be painful and earth-shaking.
You’ll know the feeling if you’ve broken up with someone who was still in love with you, and felt the guilt and pain of their heartbreak.
You’ll know it if you’ve asked your family members for space, distance, or time, and sensed their deep sadness and sense of betrayal.
You’ll know it you’ve needed to step away from commitments for your health and witnessed others’ disappointment and frustration.
Sometimes, our boundaries hurt people. And we feel deep guilt and shame in the process. It can take time and intention, but it’s possible to find self-forgiveness on the other side.
(Struggling with guilt as you practice setting boundaries? Join me on February 21 at my LIVE workshop, The Self-Soothing Survival Guide for Courageous Self-Advocacy, here.)
My Story
For a year or so, I’d been a part of a small group of friends. With time, I began to notice that there was one friend in the group I no longer felt close to. After we spent time together I felt a profound sense of heaviness, and I noticed that our values and approaches to life seemed mismatched on issues big and small.
I’d set a few smaller boundaries with her along the way, but I was beginning to notice that these “quick fixes” didn’t resolve the mismatch I felt in my gut. For many reasons, I felt like our connection took more than it gave. Participating in the relationship without addressing the disconnect began to feel painfully inauthentic, like a performance.
I contemplated letting the relationship fizzle, but due to the closeness of our friend group, that wasn’t possible. My friend noticed my distance and, when she questioned me about it, I had to make a choice.
Would I continue participating, inauthentically and resentfully, in a relationship that felt heavy and misaligned? Or would I express my feelings?
After a great deal of thought (read: many months of therapy, excessively Google searching “Is it unfair to outgrow a friend?”, re-reading my own Instagram posts for chutzpah, talking with trusted confidantes, and journaling), I made the decision to ask her for space, and expressed this decision via letter.
Because I was afraid of hurting her, I didn’t state my decision as clearly as I could have. In fact, I spread it out over a couple of months, first asking for some space, then asking for more space, and then finally, three months later, drawing our connection to an end.
It wasn’t graceful. It was messy. And, as many hard boundaries do, it had lasting impacts. My friend was deeply, deeply hurt by my decision. The small friend group fractured. My remaining friends in this group have been understanding and open-minded, but still hold occasional anger and anxiety toward me for the choice I made. And obviously, similar to a breakup with a romantic partner, navigating group events is kind of a nightmare.
The hardest part of this experience—and I’m sure many of you can relate—is the guilt I feel for hurting someone—and the shame of feeling like a bad person for my decision. Repeated doubts like “Couldn’t you have just swallowed your discomfort for the sake of the friend group?” and “You made a selfish and coldhearted decision” still keep me awake at night, sometimes.
“Shame works like the zoom lens on a camera. When we are feeling shame, the camera is zoomed in tight and all we see is our flawed selves, alone and struggling.” — Brené Brown
When our boundaries hurt others, many of us feel shame: that awful, heavy feeling that we’re fundamentally bad. It sticks to our hearts like tar and leaves us with tunnel vision, unable to focus on anything else. This feeling—this toxic shame—can be the hardest force to grapple with as we learn to set boundaries with others.
In my months of attempting to find self-forgiveness, a few practices have significantly helped me gain perspective and find self-compassion.
Part One: Own Your Part
When we feel shame, it’s common to externalize the shame by making it all other people’s fault, or internalize the shame by making it all our fault. It can feel relieving to get very honest with yourself and find a balanced view of the situation — one in which you take responsibility for the things you got wrong, and release responsibility for the things that aren’t yours.
You Can’t Blame Yourself for Your Feelings
We can’t control our feelings, but we can control how we choose to act on our feelings. If you’ve fallen out of love with a partner, or grown to feel disconnected from a friend, or feel angry with a family member, you are not bad for feeling those emotions. Your emotions are human.
It’s painful to fall out of love with someone, to acknowledge resentment, and to name anger. Trust me; it’s not like we “choose” these difficult feelings. (In fact, I often wished I could just magic-wand them away, and spent many therapy sessions attempting to do just that).
But as the recovering people-pleaser knows, we’ve spent too much of our lives not feeling our feelings for the sake of others’ approval. To name them and acknowledge them here is part of our growth.
Separate the Boundary “How” From The Boundary “Why”
Sometimes our boundaries hurt people because of how we set them. The need underlying the boundary (like a need for space, distance, time, etc.) might’ve been completely valid, but the way we expressed the boundary may have been harmful.
Maybe you lashed out in anger when your unspoken resentment built to an untenable point. Maybe you waited too long to set a boundary out of fear—and then took the boundary-receiver by surprise by telling them that their ongoing actions had always bothered you. Maybe you set a boundary over text message when in your heart, you believe it should have been in-person.
We can release shame by honestly taking accountability for parts of the “Boundary How” that feel out of alignment with our own integrity. For example, in my story, I feel I botched my “Boundary How” in a few distinct ways:
First, I expressed my boundary via letter instead of an in-person conversation—which I believe my friend deserved.
Second, I allowed my fear to draw out my decision-making process. Instead of taking place in one conversation, it took place in a few conversations over the course of months, which my friend understandably found confusing and whiplash-inducing.
And third—a point I know many of you will relate to—I could have been more honest about some of my small, piling resentments in real time instead of waiting for the end of a friendship to lay them on the table.
Own Your Part and Release the Rest
I found it helpful to take full responsibility for the ways I mishandled my Boundary How. I acknowledged to my friend that the methods I used to set this boundary were hurtful and confusing. I also acknowledged that my timing was not ideal, and that she deserved better from someone who had been a close friend.
It’s important to remember that you can apologize for your Boundary How while maintaining the importance of your Boundary Why. You can apologize for how you set a boundary while holding firm to your need for the boundary in the first place.
Owning your part and taking responsibility for what you feel you’ve done wrong is, counterintuitively, freeing. Instead of building an impenetrable case for why you “Did no wrong,” you can simply acknowledge your humanness, own that you’re not perfect, and admit that you botched some aspects of a really hard, really complicated process.
Part Two: Release Shame
Consider The Alternative
We don’t set hard boundaries just for the hell of it. Most of the time, these difficult boundaries have been percolating in our hearts for ages. Many of us set such boundaries when we’ve come to the conclusion that there’s simply no other way to move forward.
Though setting this boundary has been hard, think about it this way: What would have happened if you had decided not to set the boundary? What would your life look like 6 months from now? 1 year from now? 5 years from now?
Journal this out. Get real with yourself about what negative impacts not setting the boundary could have had. For me, my answers include things like: Continuing to be dishonest about how I felt. Feeling even more drained after interactions. Increasing resentment over time. Feeling inauthentic and bad for lying. And more.
From this eagle-eye perspective, it’s easier to understand that oftentimes, we were between a rock and hard place —and that the boundary we’ve set was the only viable option.
Separate Intention From Impact
We can simultaneously take responsibility for the way a boundary impacts others while acknowledging to ourselves that our intention was self-preservation—not to cause harm.
There’s a difference between harming someone with intentional, malicious actions, and harming someone because you made a difficult decision to prioritize your own mental health. You can have compassion for their hurt while simultaneously acknowledging that this was a decision you needed to make for your own well-being.
For the recovering people-pleaser, this can feel devastating. This task of putting your needs first even though they may hurt someone else is foreign, uncomfortable, and probably completely new. Keep in mind that the ickiness you feel is a growing pain, not a sign of your intrinsic badness.
Share Your Shame With Someone Safe
Shame researcher Brené Brown’s 2012 TED Talk, Listening to Shame, went viral for good reason: it taught us that our shame cannot survive when we speak it to an empathetic ear.
Identify someone in your life—friend, therapist, confidante—with whom you can share your story. Not somebody who’s going to reinforce the shame you feel, but someone who can truly listen and empathize from their own experience. Someone who can honor that none of us are perfect. Which brings me to, in my opinion, the most important part of this article:
Make Room For Imperfection
If you’re reading this blog, the act of breaking the people-pleasing pattern and setting empowered boundaries is probably quite new to you. It’s a skill you’re trying to develop—and it’s a hard one.
So yes: As all people do when they’re learning literally any new skill, perhaps you didn’t do it perfectly. Perhaps your Boundary How could have been better. Perhaps you could have been more honest, and sooner. Perhaps you just did this Very Hard Thing and now you’re clutching at your stomach, feeling ill and ashamed.
In case you forgot, you’re not a God On Earth—you’re a mere mortal. A human. And humans make mistakes, mess up, and fail. Not a single soul is exempt from this.
Especially as a boundary coach, I was initially furious with myself for not setting this boundary “better.” This is literally my job, I chastised myself, and I still didn’t get it right. Then I realized that I was holding myself to a standard of perfection that didn’t exist, because a perfect world in which our boundaries never hurt anybody doesn’t exist.
Really ask yourself: Are you expecting yourself to run headfirst into the delicate art of boundary-setting and do it perfectly right out of the gates? Because if that’s your only definition of success in this work, you’ll never get there—nobody will.
Sometimes, we need to make peace with these imperfections by acknowledging that we handled an extremely challenging, difficult, and complicated situation the best that we could.
Part Three: Grow Forward
Write Down The Lessons You’ve Learned
In my experience, any time we set a big boundary, we learn big lessons.
When the boundary is in the form of leaving a relationship—friendship, romance, or otherwise —you’ve probably learned some important lessons about what your needs and desires are in your connections with other people.
When the boundary is in the form of quitting certain projects or commitments, you’ve probably learned quite a bit about your own self-care requirements.
When the boundary is in the form of asking for space, distance, or time, you’ve probably gotten clearer on your own limitations, needs, and bottom lines.
Write down what this experience has taught you. Yours might include:
It’s always better to be forthcoming about small resentments than let them pile up.
It’s important to be discerning when forming new connections and be clear on my bottom-lines.
I need to take relationships (friendships, romance, etc.) slower from the outset, instead of making a commitment and backtracking later.
You can’t rewrite the past, but you can bring what you’ve learned into your other relationships to ensure greater ease and happiness in the future.
Remember The Vibrancy of Your Life Outside of This Connection
Shame is “the intensely painful feeling that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.” When we’ve hurt others with our boundaries, the resulting shame might lead us to self-isolate and disconnect from the people and pursuits that make our lives feel rich.
If you’re ruminating on someone you’ve hurt with your boundaries, try to give yourself permission—if only for a while—to think about the vibrancy of your life outside of this particular connection. Remember other family members, friends, work, communities you’re a part of, your passions, your joys. Write down what you love about them, or what excites you about them.
From there, encourage yourself to engage in those other connections and pursuits. Though it may be hard to believe in the thick of a shame spiral, your life is not confined to this one boundary with this one person. Give yourself permission to release your tunnel vision and remember your wholeness.
Some Final Thoughts
In many ways, this article is my own way of “speaking shame” and sharing the real-life challenges and imperfections that confront us in this (ever challenging, ever rewarding) boundary-setting work.
While I can acknowledge that I could have set my boundary in a much more compassionate way, I can also acknowledge that I was doing the best I could at the time. I acknowledge that, despite the hurt it caused, I needed this boundary. I can acknowledge that it was brave as hell, especially for this recovering people-pleaser. And I can acknowledge that ultimately, I would rather spend my life speaking hard, authentic truths than continuing to hide behind a veil of inauthenticity and people-pleasing.
If this resonates with you, or if you have a similar story to share, please drop your experience in the comments. We can “speak shame” together and help foster permission to be imperfect here!
For more reading on this topic, I recommend Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better by Pema Chodron and I Thought It Was Just Me by Brene Bown.
Join me LIVE on February 21 at my new workshop, The Self-Soothing Survival Guide for Courageous Self-Advocacy, where you will learn a robust repertoire of strategies for reframing, soothing through, and practicing self-compassion toward the difficult emotions that arise when setting boundaries.
You will leave with a concrete toolkit that you can use to combat guilt, shame, and fear so you can stand up for yourself with confidence. Learn more and get tickets here.