Boundaries and Knowing What You Need to Show Up

Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Koogan in "The Kid", 1921.

Source: Wikimedia Commons - Public Domain; Photographer Unknown

The word boundaries gets thrown around a lot in conversations about relationships and mental health. People reflexively think of boundaries as a way to keep others at arm’s length — if not as an excuse to say: “Back off! You're dead to me!”

That version not only fails to foster recognition and connection, but it also fuels conflict and unnecessarily keeps relational scenes between people stuck.

Boundaries as a Beginning Instead of an Ending

To me, the point of a boundary isn’t to simply push another person away (the end). It’s an intentional choice that invites relational connection.

A boundary is any parameter, limitation, or stabilizing action that we feel we need to be as present and open to possibility with our scene partners in life as we can, without feeling compromised. Our boundaries are ours to name and claim, regardless of whether others understand or validate them.

Far from an excuse to exit a relationship (stage left), boundaries are what allow us to stay in the scene—even when it’s uncomfortable.

This relational view of boundaries is backed up by years of psychological research. Communication privacy management theory (Petronio, 1991), for example, explains that when individuals effectively deploy boundaries related to privacy with other people (friends, family, co-workers, romantic partners), they have the capacity to strengthen trust and intimacy, rather than create rifts.

More recent studies on this theory and relational boundaries consistently show that intentional, self-preserving parameters often enhance communication, mutual respect, and interpersonal satisfaction. (Petronio and Child, 2020).

Boundaries Help Us to Stay in the Scene

The first rule of improv is:

You can say Yes, and
You can say Yes, but
But you can't say No

“No,” ends the scene.

We can think of our boundaries like the choices improvisers make to stay present and alive in a given scene.

We can ask ourselves what we need to remain relationally available with other people (even minimally), without needing to completely retreat, react, or defend ourselves.

According to research, when we can identify and practice maintaining boundaries that make our minds and bodies feel free, we improve our emotional regulation (Porges, 2021). This means we’re less reactive to other people and better able to respond to them with openness and perspective.

A Few Everyday Scenes Where Boundaries Matter

Holiday visits: When family conflicts are amped up during a get-together, a boundary might be to book a hotel nearby and to strictly limit the length of the visit. (“I’ve learned to bop in and bop out,” one of my therapy clients says). Also, scheduling alone time for exercise, a walk, or just a few minutes to read a book will help to preserve your sanity. These are not necessarily ways to say No to the scene. Rather, they are ways to be as open as possible with the other people for however much time you can handle (even just a few minutes) without feeling resentful, shut down, or compromised in any way.

Dysregulated children or explosive colleagues: When another person’s emotions escalate, our boundary isn’t about rejecting or controlling them. It’s about deciding what we need to preserve ourselves without having to say No to them or their feelings (that is, as long as they are not directly harming us). That may include calmly reminding a child that their toys must get cleaned up by a certain time, or in a professional meeting, it may mean calmly requesting respectful language or reiterating expectations. Then, if the boundary is crossed, we enforce the stated consequence—not punitively, but as consistent with our stated limit, with the intention to stay as regulated and relational with the other person as possible.

Boundaries Are Not About Regulating Others

A boundary is not a demand that our scene partner fundamentally change. It’s a decision of what we will do or not do based on our internal limits. A boundary doesn’t say to our scene partners, “You must behave this way for me to be calm, to be present, or to exist.” It says, “Here’s what I need to show up fully. I invite you to see and hear me, to recognize and respect me. And I will do the same for you.”

If we think of boundaries as invitations (to see and be seen, and to hear and be heard), rather than as mandates, we can create opportunities for mutual recognition while minimizing animosity and resentment. With this approach to boundaries, we ask our scene partners to recognize us, not to regulate us.

Boundaries Essential Reads

The Psychology Behind Repeating Relationship Patterns

From Fear to Choice: How Empowerment Self-Defense Changes Lives

Longform Improv: Taking Time and Space for Our Nervous Systems

Part of staying in the scene is taking necessary time and space to regulate our bodies and minds before we respond—especially when our nervous systems are hijacked by fight, flight, or freeze reactions. From this position of awareness and centeredness, we can explicitly invite our scene partners to recognize us (instead of implicitly asking them to regulate us) when we set boundaries with them.

(And we can be inspired by longform improv, as opposed to the short-and-sweet, comic improv of which we’re all most familiar. I encourage you to think of process over product, as if two improv performers were allowed to indulge in an endless rehearsal without any demand for an immediate result.

Polyvagal theory helps illuminate this idea. Dr. Stephen Porges describes how our nervous systems continuously, and subconsciously, evaluate safety and risk. When our body’s intuitive sense of safety (what is known as neuroception) feels unthreatened, our natural drive to socially engage awakens. When it doesn't, our primal defenses protect us, but at the cost of relational connection (Porges, 2022).

“To switch effectively from defense to social engagement, the nervous system must assess risk and, if the environment looks safe, inhibit primitive defensive reactions.”—Stephen Porges.

Time and space help us to assess that risk.

Examples from everyday life:

Pausing before replying to a provocative text.

Stepping away and returning after gathering yourself.

Taking time alone to move, breathe, or reflect before re-engaging.

These are not retreats; they are relational regulation strategies to prepare yourself to stay in the scene with other people, with awareness and agency.

When we think of boundaries as capacity rather than avoidance, they free us up for connection. They allow us to show up fully to the scene with a sense of Yes—with presence, clarity, and choice — instead of hiding or shrinking ourselves with No. When we understand boundaries this way, we can own them as our personal invitations for connection.