Boundaries

We tend to think of boundaries as restrictions — limits that hold us back. But boundaries are what make anything possible. In this episode, Mary explores boundaries as a universal pattern: the structures that define what is inside and outside a system, regulate what flows in and out, and protect the capacity that makes growth sustainable. From cellular biology to family systems, from organizational design to spiritual traditions, the pattern holds — and understanding it changes how we relate to ourselves, each other, and the systems we're part of.

✅Key Topics

• What boundaries actually are — and why filters, not walls, is the right frame
• Autopoiesis and the biology of self-maintaining systems (Maturana & Varela)
• The immune system as a model of self/non-self-distinction 
• Polyvagal Theory and how the nervous system regulates input (Stephen Porges)
• Family systems and the spectrum from enmeshment to disengagement (Salvador Minuchin)
• How porous and rigid boundaries show up differently — and what drives each 
• Organizational boundaries: bounded rationality, decision rights, and information flow (Herbert Simon)
•  Societal boundaries: identity, belonging, and imagined communities (Benedict Anderson)

💡Takeaways

• Boundaries exist on a spectrum — too rigid leads to brittleness; too porous leads to dissolution. Healthy systems calibrate, not eliminate
• What looks like generosity is sometimes a lack of boundary. What looks like strength is sometimes protection from vulnerability
• Building healthier boundaries starts inside — getting clear on what is yours to carry before negotiating anything with anyone else
• In relationships, boundary erosion doesn't always look like conflict. Sometimes it looks like losing yourself gradually in a pattern you never consciously chose
• Organizational clarity — defined roles, decision rights, structured information flow — is boundary design at scale.
• Revisiting your boundaries isn't a sign that something went wrong. It's a sign that something is growing.

🎤Memorable Quotes

• "Boundaries aren't walls. They are filters." — Mary Schaub

🔗 Resources / External Links  

• Salvador Minuchin — family systems and structural therapy https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapy-types/structural-family-therapy
• Herbert Simon — bounded rationality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounded_rationality
• Erich Fromm — Escape from Freedom (1941) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_from_Freedom

Keywords boundaries, personal boundaries, systems thinking, self-regulation, polyvagal theory, enmeshment, codependency, organizational design, family systems, biophilia, autopoiesis, relational intelligence, capacity, regression, Fractals of Change, leadership, psychology, transformation, inner work, nervous system

Disclaimer:

***The information, opinions, and recommendations presented in this Podcast are for general information only and any reliance on the information provided in this Podcast is done at your own risk. This Podcast should not be considered professional advice.***

Credits: Written, produced and hosted by: Mary Schaub. Theme song written by: Mary Schaub

Contact: FractalsofChange@outlook.com  

Website: M. Schaub Advisory (MSA)

Transcript

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Growth requires openness. Connection requires permeability. But without boundaries, systems don't expand. They dissolve. We tend to think of boundaries as restrictions, limits, as something that holds us back. But in reality, boundaries are what make anything possible. A cell without a membrane cannot live. A relationship without boundaries cannot sustain. An organization without boundaries cannot operate. So if regression showed us what happens when capacity is exceeded, boundaries show us how systems protect, preserve, and structure that capacity. At their core, boundaries are the structures that define what is inside and outside a system, regulating flow, protecting integrity, and enabling function. Said more simply, boundaries determine what comes in, what stays out, what is held, and what is released. They aren't walls, they're filters. And like everything else in this series, they exist on a spectrum. Boundaries that are too rigid lead to isolation and brittleness. Boundaries that are too porous lead to overwhelm and dissolution. Healthy systems don't eliminate boundaries, they calibrate them. Boundaries show up everywhere once you start looking for them, and they've been studied across disciplines for a long time. From biology to spiritual traditions, boundaries all serve the same function. They define what a system is and regulate what it can handle. Let's start with biology. In the 1970s, biologists Umberto Mazzurana and Francisco Varela introduced the concept of audioparesis, the idea that living systems continuously produce and maintain themselves. At the center of that idea is a boundary. A cell doesn't just exist, it actively maintains a membrane that defines what is inside and what is outside. That membrane regulates exchange, it protects integrity, it allows the system to remain itself. Without that boundary, the system risks dissolution. You see something similar in immunology. The immune system is constantly performing one essential function, distinguishing self from non-self. That distinction is what allows the body to respond appropriately, too weak, and the system becomes vulnerable to external threat, too aggressive, and it begins attacking itself. Autoimmune disease is in many ways a failure of boundaries. The system loses clarity about what belongs and what doesn't. You've probably heard the word boundaries used constantly in psychology, and for good reason. Psychological boundaries define what belongs to us and what doesn't. They help us understand where our responsibility ends and someone else's begins. When those lines are unclear, we start absorbing what isn't ours, and sometimes projecting onto others what actually is. That's where terms like meshment, codependency, and emotional reactivity come in. They're not character flaws, they're boundary failures. Researchers like Stephen Porges, through polyvagral theory, have shown that the nervous system is constantly scanning for safety and threat, and regulating what we take in based on that assessment. In safe states, we're open, we connect, we process, we engage. In threatened states, the system tightens, input narrows, responses become more protective. This is boundary regulation at a physiological level, and it connects directly to what we talked about in regression. When boundaries fail to regulate input, the system becomes overwhelmed and eventually collapses into more primitive states. When boundaries are too diffuse, families become meshed. People absorb each other's emotions, roles blur, and individuality gets lost. When boundaries are too rigid, families become disengaged, connection breaks down, and emotional distance increases. So again, the same pattern, not absence, not rigidity, but clarity with flexibility. And perhaps the most surprising place we find boundaries, spiritual traditions. Many Eastern and Judeo-Christian traditions speak of unity, interconnection, and the dissolving of ego, but they also emphasize discernment and balance. Boundaries aren't the opposite of connection. They're what make healthy connection possible. We all know, and more importantly, feel how boundaries affect our daily lives. And often it's subtle. Saying yes when you mean no, taking on what isn't yours, avoiding a necessary limit, overextending your time, energy, or attention, and not quite knowing how you got there. At a deeper level, this usually comes from something that once made sense. If being agreeable, helpful, or accommodating helped you avoid conflict, stay connected, or feel valued, that pattern got reinforced. So what looks like generosity may actually be protection, protection from rejection, from disconnection. On the other side, overly rigid boundaries show up differently. Withdrawing too quickly, shutting down emotionally, needing control. This often comes from the opposite experience, where openness led to hurt or overexposure. So the system adapts by tightening. What looks like strength is often protection from vulnerability, uncertainty, from loss of control. And many people don't sit at one extreme, they oscillate. Openness leads to being overwhelmed, to then shut down, to then reconnection, and repeat. What's worth recognizing is that building healthier boundaries starts inside. Before we negotiate anything with anyone else, we need to get clear within ourselves. What's mine to take in? What am I choosing to carry? And what am I choosing to let go? Psychologist Eric Frome wrote that when we don't have a strong internal sense of self, we escape freedom either by dissolving into others or by giving ourselves over to structure. Both are ways of avoiding the responsibility of holding our own boundaries. Developmental psychologist Harry Harlow's work with infant monkeys demonstrated that healthy development requires both connection and separation. A secure base allowed exploration without collapse. This research showed that without a secure base, the system either clings or withdraws. Boundaries form in that tension. Even something as small as overhearing a comment not meant for you to hear, let's say you heard it anyway, and it didn't feel good. In that moment, you have a choice. Do you let it in or do you let it pass? That's a boundary, not external, internal. Individual boundaries are a powerful place to start, to better know and support yourself. Just as you lock the door before bed, establishing inner boundaries is an act of self-care, of self-respect. Frederick Nietzsche wrote about the importance of the individual in defining themselves and to avoid losing ourselves in what Martin Heidegger called the they. In this way, boundaries are part of becoming who you are. Boundaries and relationships are where this gets most visible, because now it's not just you. It's you, another person, and the space between you. I like to think of it as three circles: me, you, us. When boundaries are clear, those circles stay distinct, but connected. When they're not, they start to collapse into each other. A healthy relationship has a rhythm to it, a back and forth, like a good game of tennis. When boundaries erode, it starts to feel more like racquetball. Everything coming at you, fast and constant, with no space to respond. Have you ever sat down to lunch with a friend, maybe someone you haven't seen in a while? And an hour later, realize you haven't said a word. You might have tried to share something about your own life, only to watch the conversation circle back to them. I've had this experience more times than I can count. And for a long time I just went along with it because I didn't want to be unkind. And because it had always been that way. What I eventually came to understand is that these relationships weren't serving either of us. That person wasn't looking for a friend. They were looking for an audience, or in some cases, a therapist. And I was showing up as both, without ever consciously deciding to. Listen, we all do this from time to time, usually without realizing it. And continuing to play that role is usually just as unconscious. I'm not someone who enjoys hurting people's feelings, and extricating yourself from a long-standing dynamic is awkward and uncomfortable. But staying in it isn't connection, it's a pattern. The answer, though, isn't a swing to the other extreme. With overly rigid boundaries, we end up disconnecting. And in doing so, we lose the intimacy that is the foundation of every meaningful relationship. People who've been hurt or betrayed often come across as guarded, hard to read, or difficult to trust. The relationships they form tend to stay surface level, pleasant, but shallow. There's nothing wrong with those kinds of connections. They have their place, but they can't give you what real intimacy does. To build relationships with genuine emotional depth, you need honest communication and mutual respect for limits. That's what transforms boundaries from rules into what I'd call relational intelligence. When boundaries break down in relationships, capacity tends to follow. We absorb too much. We lose our clarity. We become reactive instead of relational. If regression is what happens when systems lose capacity, boundaries are what help systems maintain it. In organizations, boundaries aren't abstract. They're structural. They show up in very concrete ways. Who owns what, who decides what, what information moves where, and where one team ends and another begins. When those lines are clear, work has a place to land. Decisions have a home. People know what they're responsible for, and just as importantly, what they're not. That clarity creates stability. When lines blur, the system starts to lose its shape. Work overlaps, ownership becomes ambiguous. People step into areas that aren't theirs, or avoid areas that are. Over time, that creates friction. Not because people aren't capable, but because the system isn't holding its structure. Herbert Simon, a noble laureate in economics, described organizations as systems of bounded rationality, where decision-making is shaped by limits in information, structure, and roles. For over 25 years, I've spent my career focusing on operating models, frameworks systems, and governance design. They all rely on one core idea. Clear boundaries enable effective execution. Defined roles, clear decision rights, and structured information flow. Without these, organizations don't become more innovative, they become slower, more political, and more chaotic. And yet, boundaries can also become too rigid. Roles calcify. Information stops moving across teams. Groups optimize for themselves rather than the whole. The system holds its shape, but can't adapt to anything new. So organizational boundaries serve two functions simultaneously. They define structure and they enable flow. Too little structure, nothing holds. Too much, nothing moves. Zoom out to the societal level and the same pattern appears. Boundaries define nations, laws, identity, belonging. When they're unclear, systems fragment. When they're too rigid, they polarize. The pattern holds at every scale. Boundaries aren't about separation for its own sake. They're about creating enough definition for a system to function while staying flexible enough for that system to evolve. Good fences make good neighbors. Most people attribute it to Robert Frost, and they use it to mean clear boundaries keep relationships clean. But here's what's interesting: Frost wasn't endorsing that idea. He was questioning it. The line is actually spoken by the neighbor in the poem Mending Wall, the stubborn one who just keeps repeating the old saying without thinking about it. Frost's narrator is the one wondering why the wall is there at all. What's it actually keeping in or out? Whether the boundary itself is the point or just a habit. The poem is a meditation on unexamined rules. Which brings me to something that happened to me recently. I had a fence dispute with my neighbor. Turns out part of our fence was sitting on their property. Technically, their issue to raise, legally straightforward once we got there. But what made it resolvable wasn't the paperwork. It was that I went and talked to them. Not an email, not a text, a real conversation. And not just about the fence. We talked as neighbors first, built some connection. By the time we got to the actual issue, there was enough goodwill that we could handle it in the right way, respecting their legal rights, doing it properly, but from a place of relationship rather than position. Boundaries aren't just a concept, they're a daily practice, a way of staying in balance with yourself, your relationships, and the systems you're a part of. Here are three practices to help you work with them more skillfully. Practice one, notice where you leak. Before you can change anything, you have to see it. And this kind of noticing isn't about judgment, it's about impartial observation. Your body is actually one of your best instruments here. Fatigue, diffuse focus, low-grade resentment. These are often the first signals that something is out of balance. When you feel them, curious. Ask yourself, where am I overextended? What am I carrying that actually isn't mine? Build in a brief daily check-in, even 30 seconds. Attach it to something you already do. A morning walk, brushing your teeth, your first cup of coffee. Don't judge what you find and don't rush to fix it. Just notice. Practice number two, define before you defend. Most boundary problems don't get resolved because we try to enforce something we haven't fully defined yet. We react, often on autopilot, before we've gotten clear on what we actually need. If something doesn't feel right, start there. Write it out by hand if you can. It doesn't have to be journaling. Just a few bullet points is fine. Get specific about what's bothering you and what you actually need. Then, when you're ready to communicate it, do so without framing it as an attack or as a verdict on someone's character. People and systems are constantly evolving. Think of boundary recalibration less like a confrontation and more like rotating the tires on your car. A necessary adjustment that keeps things running well. Practice three, calibrate, don't harden. Boundaries aren't fixed. They adjust based on context, capacity, and relationship. What made sense at one stage in your life or one stage of a relationship may need to shift at another point in time. That's not inconsistency, that's intelligence. I came across a cartoon recently. One person says sadly to the other, You changed. And the other one replies, but we're supposed to. The goal isn't rigidity, it's alignment. Healthy people and the relationships and systems they're part of need to adapt. Revisiting your boundaries isn't a sign that something went wrong. It's a sign that something is growing. Boundaries are widely misunderstood. They're seen as limitations, but they're what allows systems and people to function, to relate, and to sustain themselves over time. Without boundaries, there's no structure. Without structure, there's no capacity. And without capacity, we return to regression. So the work isn't to build stronger walls, it's to build clearer, more intelligent ones. Boundaries that hold enough shape for a system to function while remaining permeable enough for it to grow. Because in the end, a system isn't defined by how open it is. It's defined by how well it regulates what it allows in and what it chooses to hold. I'm Mary Schaub. This is Fractals of Change, wishing you curiosity, presence, and flowers.