How to Set Boundaries

Source: Devika Bhushan, MD

Let’s get ourselves ready to stay emotionally whole and healthy this holiday season.

Your goal: To inhabit the kind of equanimity and openness my son is projecting in this photo — taken at a family wedding this year — and to avoid the emotional pitfalls of years past. Many of us regress into well-worn, sometimes dysfunctional patterns of relating with family and friends, and even when we can see that a given set of behaviors create emotional havoc, they can be hard for us to sidestep.

This is where boundaries come in.

This is also a good time to revisit how we can cut short our own cycles of reactivity so we are in a place to act thoughtfully and intentionally, rather than emotionally.

Boundaries help protect our own mental health and peace, especially when it comes to lessening the impacts of harmful or toxic behaviors from others. Remember that we can’t change anyone else’s behaviors and tendencies; we can only change what we choose to do or not do around them. Boundaries are like the bumpers on a bowling lane — they help steer the course of our lives in ways that are more likely to give us the results we’re seeking.

Reflect on what’s been emotionally trying for you during the holidays in years past, and find one or two tweaks that are in your control to help diminish this.

Over the holidays, a boundary could look like:

• Not imbibing alcohol at a holiday dinner so you stay in full control of your actions
• Going to bed on time even when others are staying up late
• Not allowing someone to stay at your house or with you because of previous transgressive behaviors
• A limited window of time during which to see someone who can be hurtful; not spending 1-1 time with them
• A conversation topic that you do not broach with someone — or a commitment not to get into pointless arguments that you can’t win, that only serve to generate angst; this can include closing or physically leaving such a conversation
• Deleting your email app off your phone and not looking at work over the holidays if this is open to you

Also remember: Nobody can give you permission to create and maintain a boundary but yourself. Only you know what you need to feel healthy. Trust your gut when it comes to what you need.

It can help to share your intended boundaries with someone close to you to help better ensure the conditions needed will be met, and to support you if needed. (But you absolutely don’t need to involve anyone else — a boundary can work well even if only you know about it.)

One important boundary I maintain, for example, is to protect time to recharge on weekends year-round. It helps to have my partner in on this to prevent us from over-booking our time.

Over the holidays, I work extra hard to protect my sleep — I give myself the option to go to bed early, regardless of how late others are staying up. I also work hard to avoid petty arguments; if nothing else is working, I will literally leave the room when one is taking place.

Source: Devika Bhushan, MD

Things to know about boundaries:

1. The boundary exists to protect you, not anyone else. It’s yours to choose and yours to maintain.
2. This is potentially counterintuitive: By lessening toxic interactions, a boundary can actually serve to strengthen relationships — especially with those our boundaries involve — rather than distancing us from them, which is what I’d initially expected and feared. Boundaries have brought me much closer to people with whom I would otherwise be at odds, allowing us to inhabit a healthier set of norms and behaviors with each other to build a better normal.
3. This is key: Understand that the boundary may actually make others upset, especially when it’s new — because it often involves the loss of a privilege that someone may have benefited from in the past. Before this boundary was in place, they may have felt entitled to parts of you they no longer deserve or haven’t earned. Expect this rancor — it is part of boundary-setting. In some ways, it demonstrates your boundary is working. And as long as the boundary is working well for you, do not let others’ feelings about it deter you from maintaining it.
4. Relatedly: It is not on you to tend to how someone else feels about your boundary, nor is it your aim to have them accept it. Your job is to straightforwardly maintain the boundary, not to explain or justify it. In fact, in many instances, you may choose not even to let on that you have one — and instead, just to practice it.
5. Boundaries are never set in stone — they can be experiments, and they can shift with your evolving needs. If a given boundary is not working to protect your peace as you’d hoped, you always have other options, including leaving the situation altogether or choosing a different boundary (like not visiting that person or home for the holidays next year).

So: this holiday season — find a boundary that sets you up to break age-old patterns and to find peace. Here's wishing you equanimity.

A version of this post also appears in Ask Dr. Devika B, my well-being newsletter.