3 Unbreakable Boundaries for People Pleasers
As a recovering pleaser and helper, I understand how challenging it can be to suppress the urge to take care of other people’s needs. The role of the peacemaker was assigned to me even before my birth when my parents hoped that a second child would repair their fraught relationship. To leave no doubt about my job description, they gave me the unusual name Friedemann—man of peace. Thus, right from the crib I was given the responsibility for everybody in my family to get along. The problem with being the designated helper and peacemaker was that this pattern became my identity and extended into other relationships. I’ve wanted to make others like me by giving them time, attention, and things they didn’t even ask for, and I’ve tried to win their hearts by pleasing them into submission. I broke this pattern when I realized that the problem wasn’t a failure to please others enough, but rather, a failure to appreciate myself enough. But to effectively prevent myself from overdoing and overgiving, I needed to learn how to set boundaries.
Boundaries for People Pleasers
By Dr. Friedemann Schaub, M.D., Ph.D.
If you have been falling into the pleaser and helper category, you know it can feel more challenging to set boundaries than to endure the pain of getting drained, disrespected, or walked all over. The deep desire to get approval and the constant fear of rejection can thwart any efforts to speak out, push back, and stand up for yourself. Yet in the past, you’ve used excuses to talk yourself out of even noticing when you’ve given in to giving too much to others. And no matter how many times others kept on guilt-tripping you to provide them with the last bit of your energy, you continued to suppress your hurt and disappointment by telling yourself that you always overreact because you’re just too sensitive.
Establishing boundaries is a powerful statement of self-commitment, as it shows that we honor and respect ourselves, even if it means we may lose approval from others. But as you’ll see for yourself, just as a lack of boundaries invites a lack of respect, the opposite is true as well. The following three boundaries will make it easier for you to no longer unconsciously squander your energy on short-lived external validation.
Internal Boundary: Awareness
Recognizing that you need a boundary is the first and maybe most important boundary. This means paying attention to your feelings, respecting your needs, and taking responsibility for your safety and energy. The most direct boundary break is when people disregard your limits, after which you usually feel anxious and small. For example, some people assume that you’re always available for them and ignore your need for privacy. Others don’t accept your “no” for an answer, continuing to relentlessly bombard you with their problems, even though you’ve indicated that you’re not comfortable listening to them. Another more subtle boundary breach occurs when people don’t accept you and your choices. Let’s say you start feeling good about your progress as you work on yourself. But your family shows you unequivocally that they prefer the “old” you. And when you get together with your friends, they usually get a kick out of making fun of you, no matter how red-faced and embarrassed you become.
Generally, you know somebody overstepped your boundaries when you feel confused, uncomfortable, frustrated, hurt, anxious, or ashamed. As a sign of self-commitment, honor so-called negative feelings as messages from your mind indicating that it’s time to pay attention to yourself. Don’t ignore or argue with your emotions, but trust that they have a valid meaning for you. These underhanded ways in which those you want to feel close to and accepted by overstep your boundaries hurt the most and leave you feeling insecure and ashamed of yourself.
In my experience, the most common but also most elusive breakdown of our boundaries is the one committed by ourselves. Perhaps you find yourself still preoccupied with work on Saturday morning, rehashing a difficult conversation with a frustrated client from a few days earlier. Maybe you tend to take on your partner’s anxious moods and quickly feel stressed and worried in their presence. Or at three o’clock on a Saturday morning, you fret about why, for Heaven’s sake, you’ve agreed to help your buddy move, even though you would rather chill with your family. You break your inner boundary when you continue to give your mental and emotional energy to situations or people you can’t change. The helper’s insecurity and empathy often result in such an internal boundary breakdown. You ignore all your good intentions to focus on yourself and instead fall back into the old pattern of worrying about what you need to do to please others.
When you realize that your boundaries get frequently disregarded, your initial reaction may be to either attack or avoid those who crossed them—including yourself. However, are confrontation or retreat really the best ways to strengthen your boundaries? Let’s take your health as an analogy; to avoid getting a cold, it isn’t enough to eliminate bugs with disinfectants or stop leaving the house. You also need to strengthen your immune system. So how can you strengthen your boundaries?
External Boundary: Assertiveness
The best way to truly educate others about what you accept and what you don’t is by giving yourself a voice that can’t be ignored. My wife, a great role model for healthy boundaries, likes to say, “No is a complete sentence.” As a helper, “no” wasn’t necessarily a part of your daily vocabulary. There are, of course, wordier and more eloquent ways to stand up for yourself. Here are a few examples of what you can say if “no” feels too harsh or still too intimidating to you.
- Explain your needs and priorities: “I can’t, because I need to focus on myself / my projects right now.”
- Share your view: “I understand what you need, but I am working on making my needs a priority, so it doesn’t feel right for me to help you with this.”
- Express understanding for the other person’s demand: “I know how stressed you are about this, but I really can’t take care of this for you.”
- Buy some time and then decline later: “Let me think about it. I need to see whether I will have the time and energy.”
- Share your feelings: “You probably didn’t intend this, but when you continued to ask me to do xyz, it really made me uncomfortable.”
- Make a suggestion: “Unfortunately, I can’t be the one who does this for you, but you may want to call X. He may have some availability.”
- Ask for what you need: “It is really important to me that you respect my decision not to take this on.” •
Call out pushy behavior: “I don’t think you are hearing me. I meant it when I said that I can’t / don’t want to do (or talk about) xyz.”
- Negotiate. A boundary doesn’t have to be as rigid and unmovable as the Great Wall of China: “I am not able to help you with everything now, but I can give you a couple of hours tomorrow.”
- And when all fails: “I’m done. For my own sanity, this conversation is over.”
It can be scary to speak up on your behalf and potentially be judged and rejected for doing so. However, staying small and powerless while others are taking advantage of you—knowingly or unknowingly—is even scarier.
Internal Boundary: Disconnection
Have you ever accidentally put your hand on a hot stove? While you may have touched the hot plate just for half a second, the pain afterward probably lasted for hours. Getting your inner boundaries breached can have the same effect. A troubling interaction of five minutes can occupy you for weeks as you continue to agonize on why you’ve been treated so badly, or what you’ve done wrong and what you should have done differently. However, unlike when you suffer a physical burn, you can choose whether you want the hurt to continue. Let’s face it, even though we can’t control the people or circumstances we’re dealing with, we can always choose how to respond to them. Rather than spinning your mind around somebody’s inappropriate behavior, remind yourself that you keep on giving your power away every moment you are still thinking about them. To create an internal boundary that stops a person’s negativity from triggering your doubt and insecurity, imagine watching the situation that bothered you as though it were a movie, ideally black and white, on a tiny little screen. As you observe the event from a safe and neutral distance, ask yourself these questions:
- Is the other person’s behavior a reflection of who I am?
- How is this person’s behavior a reflection of who they are?
- Why do I deserve to be treated with greater respect?
- Why is this person’s behavior no longer acceptable for me?
- How can I set stronger boundaries next time? Once you’ve answered these questions with self-commitment and self-compassion, you can turn the tiny screen off and shift your focus onto something more peaceful and positive.
One of my favorite ways to stop my inner helper from turning on the mental hamster wheel is to hold a conversation with this part of my mind. To stop our mind from pushing against our inner boundaries, it needs to receive from us what it seeks to get from others—safety and validation. Therefore, I’m telling my inner helper that it’s safe to stop focusing on others because I have his back. I remind him of everything I appreciate about myself and why I know I am a good and valuable human being. I emphasize that I deserve to disconnect and pay attention to my needs and desires.
Having clear boundaries doesn’t mean you become uncaring and self-centered. However, these internal and external boundaries stop you from automatically overdoing and overgiving and instead calmly and compassionately evaluate your own needs and desires and how much time and energy you can give to others. On my journey to overcome the pleaser pattern, I learned that once I honored my needs and included myself in my propensity to support and nurture, I could establish a more balanced and harmonious relationship with myself and the world around me.
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About the Author
Dr. Friedemann Schaub, M.D., Ph.D., is not just a physician and researcher but also a personal development coach and the acclaimed author of “The Fear and Anxiety Solution.” His expertise has graced the pages of renowned publications such as Nature Medicine, Oprah Magazine, Huffington Post, Reader’s Digest, Teen Vogue, and Shape. Tune in to his “Empowerment Solutions” podcast, and find him splitting his time between Seattle, Washington, and the picturesque South of France. Explore more at https://drfriedemann.com/.
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