SELF-CARE: Why Am I So Scared to Set Boundaries? + FREE Busting Your People-Pleasing Beliefs Worksheet

In my most recent posts, I shared why giving isn’t always healthy. And I explained why understanding your role in overgiving is so vital for finally breaking free of it and enjoying more balance in your life.

But there’s something else that’s important for stopping overgiving and getting your time and energy back: setting healthy boundaries.

And just like with understanding my power and role in overgiving, setting boundaries was something that I REALLY struggled with before I became a therapist.

You see, I used to believe that it was my duty to meet the needs of the people around me and make them happy and I didn’t even realize that I was actually losing myself. So I genuinely thought that if I said “no” to someone—even if I did it in the most loving way—that I was shirking my responsibilities and selfishly denying the person what they needed to be happy.

That’s why whenever anyone asked or expected me to do something, I would almost always just say “yes” even if what I was agreeing to was something that I absolutely did NOT want to do. That’s what good girls do, right!? Well, that’s’ what I thought at the time.

What I didn’t know at the time was that I wasn’t alone in having trouble with setting boundaries. Because the truth is that even though setting healthy boundaries is something that sounds like it should be easy enough to do, it’s something that MANY people struggle with.

The question, though, is why?

If boundaries are so good for us and our relationships, why are they so hard to set?

Why do we often feel anxious or guilty when we try to set them?

And even when we really care about a boundary, why do we often chicken out by either not setting it or not enforcing it?

These are exactly the kinds of questions that I’ll be answering in this blog post.

So if you’re the type of person who struggles to create or maintain healthy boundaries, keep reading below. Because this post is for YOU!

Here are 5 reasons why you might find it so hard to set boundaries:

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You Fear Conflict

When it comes down to it, setting healthy boundaries is about knowing your true needs, preferences, and limits and communicating these clearly in your relationships. So why is it so hard to do?

One reason why you might find it hard to set boundaries is if you have a fear of conflict.

If you have a fear of conflict, you might feel very scared that if you say “no” to a sister who always wants you to babysit or a colleague who always expects you to help with extra projects, they’ll get really angry or upset.

Now, it’s normal to anticipate that someone might become upset if you say “no” to them, especially if you know that this person tends to react like this when they don’t get their way.

But if you have a fear of conflict, you might feel very anxious or scared about dealing with this type of reaction and the conflict that may come along with it. And when the possibility of conflict is front and center in your mind, avoiding it might feel WAY more important than dealing with the negative feelings that you’ll experience if you avoid putting a boundary in place and keep saying “yes.”

So what do you do?

Even though you really don’t want to babysit or you’re already stretched thin, you decide that it would be much easier to just keep saying “yes” to your sister or colleague. Or if you’ve already put a boundary in place but your sister or colleague is violating it, you decide that it would be easier to keep your mouth shut and not enforce your boundary.

In the short term, staying quiet will allow you to avoid the anxiety you might feel about actually setting or enforcing the boundary and potentially experiencing conflict as a result. But it won’t help you overcome the frustration, exhaustion, or resentment you feel because you’re regularly saying “yes” to things that aren’t right for you.

You Don’t Want to Let Other People Down

Another reason why you might struggle to set or enforce boundaries is because you don’t want to let people down. In other words, you might be a people pleaser.

Pleasing other people and meeting their needs isn’t inherently a bad thing. After all, if you’re a teacher who truly cares about their students, for example, your students will have a much better educational experience. And you’ll probably enjoy your job more too!

But if you’re someone who puts pleasing other people ahead of meeting your own needs, you might struggle to set boundaries and take other healthy steps to manage your time and energy in relationships.

In particular, if you’re a people pleaser, you might worry that if you set a boundary with your sister about her babysitting requests, you’ll be letting her down.

Alternatively, if you consider putting a boundary in place with your colleague, you might worry about tarnishing your image as the reliable, dependable coworker who’s always ready and willing to help out.

In either case, the idea of disappointing the other person or changing their perception of you might seem worse than continuing to say “yes” to them. So even though you might really want to set or enforce a boundary, you might avoid doing it.

Of course, when you avoid setting a boundary, it might initially address your fear of disappointing others. But it won’t change the negative emotions you experience when you overgive and have little time and energy left for yourself.

You Don’t Think You Have the Right to Set a Boundary

You might also find it hard to set boundaries if you don’t think that you have the right to set them. This is actually a big part of why I used to be an overgiver.

You see, I was raised in a European culture that placed a lot of emphasis on doing things for other people, especially older family members and older members of the community. From a young age, I was taught that I should always go out of my way to help and serve others, even if it came at my expense. So I grew up believing that it was my job to always give to others if it was at all possible to do so. And I thought that it was selfish to place my own needs before those of other people.

That’s why when my parents wanted me to turn down a well-paying job so that I could move back home and live close to my parents, I did it. I sacrificed a future that I was incredibly excited about and had worked hard for in university all because I didn’t think I had a right to do otherwise. Taking the job and living in a different city didn’t meet my parents’ needs. And at the time, I believed that I didn’t have the right to communicate that my needs differed from theirs and to actually fulfill these needs.

Of course, it’s not just being raised in a particular culture that can lead you to believe that you don’t have the right to set boundaries and prioritize your needs. You might also have this kind of belief if you were raised in any environment that taught you that your role is to serve others or to put the needs of other people ahead of your own. This can include families where kids are expected to support traditional gender roles, subscribe to particular religious values, or serve others to earn validation.

You’re Codependent

You might also find yourself struggling to set boundaries if you’re codependent. Codependency is when you’re overly invested in how other people feel or what happens to them to the point where it’s harmful to you.

For example, if you’re codependent, you might feel very stressed about the fact that if you put a boundary in place with your sister and say “no” to babysitting on a regular basis, your sister won’t have anyone to watch her kids. In this case, you feel so stressed that it might as well be YOU who doesn’t have a babysitter.

Because you feel so stressed about the situation your sister would be in, you feel compelled to “save” her from it by agreeing to keep babysitting for her, even if it means sacrificing the things that are important to you.

In sum, when you feel responsible for other people and how they feel, you might feel very anxious about doing anything that could hurt or upset them. So if you think it’s even remotely possible that putting a boundary in place would negatively affect someone, you might avoid doing it altogether.

You’re Scared Of Doing Something New

Lastly, you might have a hard time setting boundaries simply because it’s something you aren’t used to doing.

You might think that setting boundaries is something that you’re supposed to be naturally good at. But the reality is that setting boundaries is a skill—just like cooking, driving, and swimming. And although there are some people who are just naturally gifted in the kitchen or the pool, most people have to practice, practice, and practice to really get good at a skill.

It’s the same thing with setting boundaries. Most people feel completely out of their comfort zone when they first start setting boundaries in their relationships. But as they get more practice with it and become more comfortable with it, they tend to feel more confident.

So even if you feel completely terrified about setting boundaries now, it doesn’t mean that you’ll feel this way forever. And every time that you’re able to sit with the discomfort and set a boundary anyway, you’ll get closer to being able to set boundaries with less stress and more confidence.

Mental Blocks Make It Hard to Set Boundaries

Lots of people struggle to set boundaries. In fact, over the years, it’s one of the core issues that I’ve helped many of my clients and students overcome.

The good news is that if you have a hard time setting boundaries now, you aren’t doomed to struggle with it forever. Because setting boundaries isn’t something that you’re either born to be great at or born to be terrible at.

Instead, it’s a skill that you can develop and master with time. You just need to be able to get past one or more of the mental blocks I talked about above first. Because it’s when you’re actually able to act in alignment with your needs and desires about setting boundaries that you’re able to get the practice you need to eventually feel confident doing it.

You might have noticed that many of the mental blocks to setting boundaries stem from concerns about pleasing other people and keeping them happy. If you think you might have these people-pleasing mental blocks, I’ve created a FREE worksheet for you called Busting Your People-Pleasing Beliefs.

It’ll help you challenge and replace your people-pleasing beliefs so that you can confidently set the boundaries and make the choices that are right for you.

And if you haven’t done so already, follow me on my Facebook page Vera Velini – The Assertive Happiness Coach. That way, you’ll be among the first to hear about new blog posts, resources, and courses.

Until next time!

Vera

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