The person setting boundaries can be heartbroken, too.
In mental health discourse, we frequently discuss boundary-setting guilt: the fact that sometimes, setting boundaries hurts the people that we love. But we rarely acknowledge the fact that the person setting boundaries is often heartbroken, too.
By heartbroken, I don’t mean “feeling guilty” or “experiencing sympathetic pain for others’ pain.” I mean personally heartbroken: mourning the ease, intimacy, familiarity, love, or idealized future the relationship offered before the boundary was set.
Being able to acknowledge, and tend to, our heartbreak separate from our guilt is crucial to our healing—and in this article, I’ll explain how.
Here’s why trying to “reason your way” out of boundary guilt isn’t working—and here’s what to do instead.
Telling yourself you “shouldn’t feel guilty” about setting a boundary is like telling yourself you “shouldn’t feel anxious” when you're anxious.
It doesn’t actually help.
We may intellectually know that it’s okay to put our needs first, but our emotions aren’t onboard. In this article, I’ll explain why it doesn’t work to “logic your way” out of guilt—and share what actually does help instead.
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