How to Set Boundaries without Damaging the Relationship

Episode 186 – How to Set Boundaries without Damaging the Relationship

Most people think boundaries are about drawing a line in the sand to keep someone out. But when boundaries are used the wrong way, they can actually harm the very relationship you’re trying to protect—especially with your adult children.

In this popular episode, I’ll show you how to set boundaries that strengthen connection instead of shutting it down. Whether you’re navigating emotional distance from an adult child, feeling like you’re “walking on eggshells,” or wondering how to protect yourself without pushing someone away, this episode will give you a better way forward.

You’ll learn:

• Three common mistakes people make when setting boundaries—and why they backfire.
• The hidden beliefs that cause us to use boundaries ineffectively.
• How to protect yourself and stay open to connection.
• When creating distance is the healthiest and safest option.

If you’ve ever searched for:

• “How to reconnect with an estranged adult child”
• “Why won’t my adult child talk to me”
• “Setting boundaries with adult children”
  …this episode will help you understand why boundaries sometimes fail and what to do instead.

It’s time to stop using boundaries as walls and start using them as bridges—so you can protect your well-being and keep your most important relationships intact.

Related Episodes:Top of Form

Episode 142: How to Stop Polluting the Ecosystem of Your Relationship

Episode 130: Withdrawing from a Relationship- Losing Relationship Strategy #5

Tina Gosney is the Family Conflict Coach. She works with parents who have families in conflict to help them become the grounded, confident leaders their family needs.
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Tina is certified in family relationships and a trauma informed coach.
Visit tinagosney.com for more information on coaching services.

Transcript

Tina Gosney: 0:05

The boundary episodes are one of my most downloaded topics, and for good reason. We all know that we should have them, but most of us use boundaries in ways that actually damage our relationships instead of strengthen them. That's why I'm re releasing this episode. I know it's one of your favorites, and it's too important to let it get buried in the archives. When people are hurt, it's common to use boundaries as a way to cut someone out of our life because we don't know how to stop the pain any other way. But that's not the only way the boundaries get misused. Hey, I'm Tina Gosney, your advanced relationship and family conflict coach, and this is the coaching your family relationships podcast. Here are three additional ways that I see boundaries used in effectively. Number one, using boundaries to control someone else's behavior. Hey, I've tried this one too. So if you've tried it, you're not alone. So instead of protecting your own well being. You set boundaries like ultimatums. These are designed to force the other person to act differently, so then everything can be okay, and you can feel all right, and you might say things like, if you don't do x, then you can't be in my life. And this is not because you're truly prepared to take that step to cut them out of your life, but it's because you want to pressure them to change. So what's the problem with this? A lot a real boundary is not about managing someone else's choices, it's about managing your own. And deep down, we really, really want them to change, but this mindset keeps us hooked on trying to control the uncontrollable, and it robs you of the piece that comes from focusing on what's actually within your power, which is your response. The second way I see boundaries used ineffectively is that we use them as this kind of emotional armor, so we convince ourselves that if I just keep this person at a distance, that's the safest option for me. So you stop sharing, you stop engaging, and pretty slowly, you're just walling yourself off in the name of holding a boundary. But what's really happening is that you are avoiding the vulnerability that connection requires, and underneath all of it is this belief, if I let them in, I'm just going to get hurt again, and I can't risk that, so I will break the connection. And this is a high cost that armor does not just keep out pain. It also keeps out closeness love. It keeps out the possibility of repair. Boundaries should create safe ways to stay in a relationship, not permanent barriers that leave you isolated and lonely. The third way we misuse boundaries are we use them to avoid discomfort instead of actually building skills that we need. So it's tempting to label us avoiding someone as self care or protecting my peace, but when you do that, you dodge hard conversations, you skip family gatherings, you refuse to address conflict because it feels too messy and it's exhausting, and sometimes that pause is healthy. I just had an episode released just a couple weeks ago about a healthy pause. But if you're using boundaries primarily to shield yourself from discomfort, then you are missing a chance to grow in resilience. We have this underlying belief that's a fallacy that we're not supposed to be uncomfortable in our family relationships. They're supposed to be happy and kind and fun and engaging and connected all the time. But that is not possible. Discomfort is the tuition that we pay for deeper connection without leaning into those moments and developing skills like emotional regulation, clear communication, curiosity, if we don't use those, then boundaries become an escape hatch, instead of a tool for creating healthier and more resilient relationships. Now I want to be absolutely clear on something. There are situations where creating significant distance or even cutting off contact is not only appropriate, but it is vital. If you are in a relationship that is abusive, threatening, manipulative or unsafe in any way, your first responsibility is to protect your physical, emotional and psychological safety. That might mean limiting or ending contact involving legal authorities and seeking professional help. This is not the same as using boundaries to control or punish or avoid our own discomfort. This. Is you taking a stand for your own safety and well being, and no one should feel guilty for stepping back from a person who is causing real harm. Boundaries are about protection, not self punishment, and sometimes the healthiest connection you can have with someone is no connection at all. But the truth is, boundaries, for most people, are not about control walls or comfort. They're about learning to stay connected and stay true to yourself at the same time. In this episode, I'll show you a healthier way to think about and practice those boundaries, so maybe they can actually start strengthening your relationship instead of shutting them down. So enjoy this re released episode that originally aired last summer on boundaries. Thank you for being here with me today. This episode is on boundaries. You probably already know that, since you clicked on it, but if you are listening to this episode thinking, Oh man, I'm so hurt, and I just want to put up some boundaries so I can stop being so hurt. If you're thinking, you're going to learn all about how to get someone to stop doing something that is hurting you, you're going to be disappointed in this episode. I'll just put that up front right now, boundaries are a super hot topic these days. I have been seeing it more and more recently online, and I think that is because there are a lot of people out there with a lot of wounds that they're carrying around and they just want to stop hurting. You're going to find a lot of people talking about boundaries, how to establish a boundary, how to get people to honor your boundaries, all the ends and the outs of boundaries. But that is not how I'm going to approach this episode. I want to help you keep people in your life, not cut them out, but I want to help you do that in a way that you'll receive less wounds, and hopefully the other person will too. Why do we need boundaries? Why is this topic even important? Well, because we are humans, and we need other humans, and we need to connect with each other. It's in our DNA. I'm sure you've heard that. You know babies, if they're left alone without any human interaction, that they will deteriorate, they will not thrive and grow. Babies have to have human connection and interaction in order to be healthy and to thrive in their lives. And I would say we are not much different as grown ups. We also need other humans. There was a study done. It started in 1938 it's actually still going on. It was called the happiness study, or sometimes it's called the Harvard happiness study. You can Google it online. It's the oldest study, the longest running study that has ever been done, and like I said, it is still ongoing. And what the original study was, was they took a group of men from Harvard, and actually JFK was in the original group, and they wanted to know what makes us happy in our life, what are the things that create happiness for us in our life? And they studied them over decades. Actually studied many, many aspects of life, like achievement, money, career, family size, marital status, healthy diet, where you live. They studied every aspect of a person's life they could think of, and this is what they found, that the most important factor in happiness and in a long fulfilled life was positive relationships. In fact, they found out that loneliness is extremely unhealthy to our bodies. Loneliness has the same impact on our body that smoking a pack of cigarettes every day does, or being obese or being an alcoholic. That's the type of impact that being lonely and not having really significant human interactions can have on our health. That's how serious it is of not having positive relationships in your life. There's another coaching tool I use, sometimes called the perma model. Perma stands for Positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment. This is based on all the aspects of positive psychology. And out of those five things, positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment, they found out that the most important one of those five is real. Relationships. In fact, the best predictor of longevity of life and of happiness in our 80s is the health of our closest relationship in our 50s. And if you are in your 50s like I am, How is your relationship going? This is the time of life when your kids are leaving the house, or maybe they've already left, and your children are getting married, maybe they're bringing in, you know, a daughter in law, a son in law, into the family. And those people that get brought into your family, they have a night, they have a very different idea of what family relationships look like and how to handle them. And that can throw a lot of difficulties into your family dynamics. It can throw a wrench into your marriage, which is your most important relationship, and at the very least, it can put the family under stress. It's very easy for the when the family is under stress, for the marriage then to go under stress, because you have different ideas about how to handle things, about what to do about certain situations, and it's very easy to not agree, and it's easy to point fingers to blame and then to get defensive. It's easy to think that if your spouse would just lighten up and be a nicer person, and maybe they're the one of the ones that are causing part of the problem that there would be more peace in the family. About 11 years ago, ish, give or take, this was not unlike what was happening in my family. I remember one day I was really, really mad at one of my children, and this was at a point in our family's life that we were under constant stress. There was tension. You could have cut the tension. Have you ever heard, you know, cut the tension with a knife. You literally could have cut the cut the tension in our home with a knife at any given moment. That was it was constant stress, and I know now. I didn't know then, but I know now that my body was in a constant state of fight or flight, and it was like I was a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off. I was ready at any moment to fight somebody or to just pack up my bags and leave. And one day, that time bomb went off, and I let loose on one of my kids, and I said some things that were not nice. I don't even remember what I said, but I know that it was very unkind, and I know that now that I was out of line, I didn't see that then I was so far from acting like a reasonable adult that I have no idea what I said, but I do remember this that my husband called me out in front of everybody, and he told me I was out of line and that I needed to stop and get a hold of myself. I was so mad at him when he did that. I thought we were a team. I thought we were on the same page, but in that moment, I felt so completely alone. I was so activated. I could not see how out of line I was and how right he was, and I couldn't see that he actually still was on my side. So I did leave for the next seven hours. I disappeared. I probably would have left longer if I had taken a purse with me, I probably wouldn't have come home for a day or two. But I disappeared, I cried, I screamed, I I did everything that I knew how to do just to let the steam out, and I calmed down. Family stress can put stress on your marriage just like that. I'm so glad that my husband called me out that day. It doesn't always turn out that way. Though, when we get called out by a spouse, it's not it doesn't always turn out that we can, that we can move on like I was able to. Sometimes all that does is open the door for more contention in our marriage. So then not are you only at odds with everybody else you know your kids or your siblings and your in laws or your parents. You're at odds with your spouse as well. That can feel very threatening. Last week, I opened up my email on Monday morning, and this was the subject of one of the emails. It really stood out to me. It said, canceled children who will no longer talk to their parents. Do you know somebody who has a child that is no longer talking to them? This is becoming more and more common adult children, even teenagers, are cutting their parents out of their lives. Parents are getting canceled. This divisive culture that we live in is no longer confined to just politics or high school football rival teams. Us, or even different racial and ethnic groups. It's moving into our homes. It's being commonplace in our families and in our homes. Our homes are the place that should be a safe place for everyone that lives there, so that we can have peace and refuge from the world and all the things that though, the ways that the world tries to beat us down and tear us down. Our homes should be a place of refuge, but we have to create that refuge. So do I think this cancel culture is a problem with the adult kids and the teenagers? Yes. Do I think this problem is with the parents? Yes. But actually, I don't think that that's where the problem originates. I think the real problem is, is the lack of actual learning real relationship skills and how to be in an authentic, honest relationship with another human being, and our lack of knowing that is finally catching up to us. It caught up to me 11 years ago when my husband called me out. When I was gone for seven hours, I promised myself that I was going to figure it out. I was not going to be the one to let my family fall apart. I was not going to live in constant contention in my home. I was going to be the one who created a home of peace and refuge and safety. I was going to be the one who made a difference, even if nobody else was on board with me. I was going to do that for myself, and I promised myself that I would change because that was the only thing that I could control, was my response to my husband, to my children, to my circumstances. I could decide who I wanted to be. I made that decision years ago, and it has been the hardest thing that I have ever done, and there was a lot of trial and a lot of error on my part, but I'm a very different person now than I was then. When I started to look for answers, I found resources all over the place. I listened to podcasts, and when that podcaster that I was listening to, I began to trust that person. And they would say, Hey, do you know this person over here? I would go and find that person, and I would start listening to them, and they would refer somebody else. And it just came became like a domino effect, where, pretty soon I had, I don't know, 100 different podcasts listed on my playlist. Not that I was able to get to all of them, but I tried, and I would read books. And any books that these podcasters or people that I was listening to. They're saying, hey, you need to read this book. I was reading that book, and I started taking courses, and I piecemealed things together, a lot of things that I was gathering from different places. I piecemealed it together, and it was starting to finally feel like there was some movement coming within myself, and then I found coaching, and then I got a coach, and then I became certified as a coach, and I've continued ever since then, that's been years ago, but I've continued to get more training on an ongoing, consistent basis, and I've also read more books, and I've learned more tools, and I've listened to more podcasts, and now I have a podcast, but because of I've done so many things to get to where I am now, and because I have coached hundreds of people, I've been able to see what is truly effective in helping people transform their relationships. Because I've lived it. I've coached others through it, and now I've seen miracles happen in my life and in the lives of some of my clients. So I want to save you some time, and I want to cut right to the heart of what has been so helpful for me and for my clients, and that is the skill of differentiation. I've talked a lot about it lately, and last week, if you want, if you haven't listened to that episode, I would suggest listening to that one, because the whole episode was dedicated to differentiation. And if it's helped me and so many of my clients, maybe it's going to be helpful for you too. So let's just talk about a little piece of differentiation today, and that is boundaries. Why do we have such a hard time getting along with each other? Have you ever thought about that? Is it because people are just so difficult? They might be looking at you and saying the same thing. Here's what it really boils down to. We all want to belong to ourselves. We want to feel like we're important, like we are loved, worthy, and we want to be our authentic selves, and we want our agency to make choices that help us to grow as human beings on this earth. We want to have the freedom to become who we came here to become, and we want to have the freedom to think. For ourselves to figure out, what do I believe? How do I want to see the world? What do I want for myself? How am I going to get that? We want to know our own minds and our own purpose. So we want to belong to ourselves. What we also want to do is to belong to others. It's in our DNA. We want to be in relationships with other people. We want to belong, not to just fit in. So Brene Brown said that fitting in is not the same as belonging to fit in means that we are masking our true self in order to be accepted, and that is not our authentic like we have to, we have to leave ourself in order to belong to someone else. It's very common to try to fit in in our families, because it might be specifically stated or just understood that we know that if we don't fit in, there will not be acceptance there. Families often require a certain amount of sameness in order to truly to feel like you're truly accepted and belong. So we want to belong to ourselves and we want to belong to others. And here's the problem, we don't know how to do both of those things at the same time. We will either give up ourself, our authenticity, our individuality, we will outsource our thinking to someone else, and we'll do all of this in order to belong and to fit in, or if we are prioritizing ourself over connection with others, we're going to cut other people out of our lives, or at the very least, we will separate ourselves from them in order to hold on to ourselves and our authenticity and our individuality. What I'm proposing here, through this skill of differentiation is that we don't have to give up one to get the other. We can belong to ourselves and to others at the same time, but we have to learn how to do it. Now, with all my piecemealing things together that I've learned through my own journey, I'm offering to you so this skill so we can cut right to the chase, I want you to be able to save yourself some time. Get right to what will help you if your family is one of those that is having trouble right now, and I know that if you're listening to this podcast, if you've listened to this far and you're like, that is my family. I know you don't want to keep living the way that you're living. That's why you're listening, and that's why you're still listening. I want you to put yourself 10 years in the future. Put your family 10 years into the future. Where do you see your family relationships? Where are you going? Where is that trajectory heading right now? Are you repeating the same patterns that you've always been repeating, or are you able to disagree? Are you able to let everyone be individual and different and still hold on to each other and still stay close? If you continue to do things the way that you've always done them, you're going to keep getting the same result you've always had. Your family will be the same or worse off in 10 years, if you're playing the waiting game. And by the waiting game, I mean you're just waiting for someone else to change, or someone else to come to their senses so that everything gets better. You could be waiting a really, really long time, and even if that other person is totally out of line and they do need to change, there are still things that you can do today that are in your control. Our family relationships are systems. They repeat on autopilot. We are really good at mapping each other and predicting how each other will react in certain situations. We get very, very good at that. And think about what your input to that system is. Everyone has an input to the system. When you change one input in the system, the system itself begins to change. You don't have to wait for someone else to be the one who changes the input that can be you. Just from you changing the way that you do things, it will change the system. It puts pressure on the system, and the system then must respond the healthiest, strongest relationships have the strongest boundaries. We are humans, and humans are imperfect, and we will do and say things that are hurtful to others, and we will be hurt by what other people do and say. It happens every single day in every family. Some. Times the sad thing is, is that we mean to hurt each other, but I think most of the time we don't, so we need to learn how to protect ourselves. How do you let what someone else does or say affect your own sense of self worth? That goes back to the need that you have to belong to yourself, to hold on to your own worth. When someone says or does something that affects your sense of worth and value, you are giving that person way too much power in your life, no matter who that person is, the meaning that you were giving to that thing that they said is having far too much power on you. What I want to help you do is to begin moving that sense of value and worth internally, rather than getting it externally. We want to move your sense of self, of your worth, of your value, of your individuality, internal and not external, because here's the truth, your value never changes, no matter what somebody else says or does. It is never on the table for negotiation no matter what. But so many of us are constantly renegotiating our own value depending on what someone else thinks of us, and this is not okay, then our value becomes a moving target, and our value should never be a moving target. Now, can you be doing something better? Of course, you can. Everyone can be doing something better, but that is never a measurement of your value. Your value is fixed, constant and infinite. I was watching this movie with my husband the other day, and it was a murder mystery, and the main character, of course, you know, there's always a twist. So the main character had been befriended by the murderer. And there was a point, you know, towards the end of the movie where the main character discovers, Oh, this guy who's been helping me, he's actually the murderer. And so he went, he knew that the guy was not at his house, and and he went snooping around the murderer's house, and then he heard the murderer come home, and he ran outside. But the murderer saw the main character in his backyard and caught him in his backyard trying to run away, and he just called out to him, like, Hey, what are you doing? And the main character is there, he makes an excuse about why he's in the backyard and and then the murderer says, Hey, why don't you come in and have a drink with me? And you could see the look of hesitation on this main character's face, but he agreed. He agreed, and he went into the house. So what do you think happened next? Well, pretty soon that main character ends up in the murder dungeon in the basement, tied up, and the murderer is telling him how he's going to kill him. What was so interesting, why I'm telling you this story is because the murderer said something like, Why did you come back in? You knew what you were getting into. I could see it on your face. And then he said, Isn't it interesting that a person will agree to something that they know is dangerous or they know they shouldn't agree to just to not offend someone. Isn't that interesting? We do this all the time. Now this is an extreme example. But do you ever agree to something because you don't want to offend somebody, or because you think that just because someone asks you to do something, you're obliged to say yes, or maybe you don't even wait to be asked. You just jump in and you do way more than your share, because that's what you do. You take care of other people. That's your job. You're just you have no needs of your own. You're just there to serve others. But each time you do that, you sacrifice a little bit of yourself and a little bit more resentment develops. This type of situation applies to this protecting boundary. The protecting boundary encompasses all of how do I hold onto myself and who I want to be even when I know I might disappoint the other person. Anytime we are sacrificing part of ourselves to stay in connection with someone else, we are not holding our protecting boundary very well. Now don't get me wrong, I am not saying that we should never serve others because I believe that serving others in a true and authentic way is vital to our well being, but when we do it out of obligation, out of trying to gain our worth, out of trying to keep someone happy with us, and then we are resentful. Full or we're sacrificing our own health and well being in order to do it that is not serving others in a way that is healthy for everybody involved, especially you. So we need to have that protecting boundary. How do I decide what to let in in order to hold on to myself and to be who I want to be. There's another piece of this. We need to connect with others, right? We have to hold on to ourself, and then we also want to connect with others. So how do we truly learn how to connect with others? Well, we need better relationship skills. Here's one of them. We have a containing boundary. This involves what we let out. What do we let other people see about us? Are you able to connect with others in a way that drives others to you or drives others away? One of the main factors that determines whether you will draw people towards you or drive them away is if they feel safe with you. So some of the things that get in the way of other people feeling safe with you are whether you talk more or listen more, the way that you listen and the way that you ask questions. How does a person feel when they are around you, the words that you use when you're talking with them are important. Words are so important because so often we try to control other people by the words that we use, and when we feel like we're trying to be controlled by another person, when we feel that pressure, and you can feel that pressure, that's not a safe environment. The number one thing that creates safety for others is for you to be a person who is at peace with yourself, so that you can give them the space to be who they really are, because you're not trying to get them to change or trying to get them to be different in order to be accepted by you. And you are not trying to get your value from them, because you already have it internally. So often we are trying to extract our value from somebody else so that we can finally feel good enough. But when we're not trying to extract that, it gives people space. Very few people are truly at peace with themselves and able to do this. There's some other things that go into creating safety for people, and those have been covered in other podcasts. So I will just go over those really briefly. Unbridled self expression. Just because you're thinking or feeling something doesn't mean that you should be able to say it without any regard to what the other person how they will about how it will affect them. Unbridled self expression is just you keeping yourself unchecked. I can do or say whatever I want, and then I'm going to leave you to deal with the mess. It's verbal and emotional vomit. Another one is talking at someone instead of talking with someone. Do you know when anyone like that? It's almost like they don't really care what you think or if you, even if you like talk with, like talk back and say anything. They just want a warm body to spill everything onto, lots of talking, very little listening. That's not a safe person to be around. If you're a person that criticizes other people, even if you think that it's constructive criticism, no one likes to be criticized. You need to check your motives here. So often, when we're criticizing somebody, it has more to do with us than it has to do with them. And if someone feels criticized by you, they will not feel safe with you. Complaining about someone also does not create a safe environment. If you're complaining about someone, that means there is a need that you have within yourself that you are not taken care of very well, and you need to be looking internally. What am I not taking care of within myself that I feel the need to complain about this person. If someone is complaining about another person, they'll be complaining about you to someone else, so also not creating a safe environment. Another thing that we do, and there's a whole podcast episode on this one, is fighting for the need to be right. Our brains are always going to think that we're right, and we're going to go to great lengths to prove that to others, this is always a lose, lose situation. And just the last one I'm going to highlight today is not managing our own emotional responses to a situation. You let your anger or your anxiety or whatever your emotion is get dumped all over another person, and then you're you have relief. Oh, I can feel better now I got that out like that's not safe, not managing yourself. So containing yourself is just as important as protecting yourself when it. Comes to boundary work. In this boundary boot camp, we're going to work on the containing boundary and the protective boundary. The interesting thing about containing work is that when we learn to be more in control of ourselves, we don't just improve our relationships with other people. We will improve the relationship we have with ourself and that relationship, the one that you have with yourself, that one affects everything else in your life. Here's the truth, and we know this, but we act so often against what we know. We don't have the ability to control anyone else, but you also don't have to make yourself into a victim of anyone else, either. If you want change in your family, but you're waiting for someone else to change. I want you to stop you have no control over that. Focus on what you do. Have control over yourself and your response. Take responsibility for yourself, what you let in and how you let it affect you, and what you let out and how that affects others. Because relationships are ecosystems. I recently did an episode on ecosystems of relationships. If someone wants to do or say whatever without any regard to other people, they are going to pay the price for that toxic garbage they're putting into the world, they are polluting the air of their relationship, and then they have to breathe in that same air, so clean up the air that you're putting in to that relationship ecosystem. Here's my takeaway today, the strongest boundaries make the strongest healthiest relationships you can learn to strengthen your protecting boundary and your connecting boundary. I'll be teaching more about how to do this, and we're going to practice it. We're putting it into practice at the boundary boot camp. What is your takeaway from this episode? Send me a DM on Facebook or Instagram, and is there some way that you can share your takeaway with someone else and impact their life today? You.