You can listen to the full episode here: Listen to Ep 24: Why Setting Boundaries Feels So Uncomfortable
Setting boundaries can feel incredibly uncomfortable. Especially if you’ve spent years prioritizing other people’s needs over your own. In this episode of Anchored & Alive, we explore why learning to set boundaries often feels harder before it starts feeling natural. We talk about how practicing small boundaries builds confidence over time and how creating supportive structures in your life helps protect the things that matter most.
🌿 In this episode we explore:
• Why setting boundaries can feel uncomfortable or unnatural at first
• How suppressed needs often lead to emotional explosions later
• Why pushback from others doesn’t mean your boundary is wrong
• How practicing small boundaries builds long-term confidence
• The role of structure and routines in protecting your time
• Why boundaries help creative projects and personal growth take root
Hello friends, welcome back this week. This week I want to talk about how difficult it can be to set up a boundary around something that you want to do or something that you just need or want, and how it can feel harder before it starts feeling natural.
What I want to say is that if you've had difficulty speaking up for yourself or standing up long enough for one of your projects to actually take root and start, you're not alone.
And I want to convey that even though it's really uncomfortable, trying to get the support and the structure set up that helps you have just what you wanted and needed in your life, with practice and with time, setting up this kind of support starts to feel more natural.
And with practice and with feedback and continuing to do it even through discomfort.
At some point you realize that it becomes easier for you to do it, and it's more natural for you to always kind of state what you need and to set up support, and that that doesn't necessarily mean that you're coming across as either needy or bitchy or annoying or just demanding of stuff.
I think women for a long time, maybe all the time, get told that, you know, if they state that they want something or need something that they're being annoying or pushy or awful.
And we don't necessarily see that same feedback towards our male counterparts.
And how men can say what they need and they're being assertive and women say what they need and they're being whiny.
Or if we say that we want more from something, why are we so sensitive, why do we need so much?
But I want to say... that all people need support, all people need boundaries and want structure that helps their lives work.
And we're all deserving of that. And you don't need to be any particular gender to deserve the ability and space and being received in that, that you have boundaries and they should be enforced. All of us need that.
And when we're learning how to communicate it, and get used to doing it when we're used to being shut down or we fear that we're gonna be shut down.
It does feel uncomfortable and it does feel unnatural. I know that when I very first started moving into this space of being able to
Even consider thinking, talking about maybe something that I felt or needed or had an inkling or idea about. It was so uncomfortable for me.
I was absolutely convinced that it was going to end every friendship or relationship that I ever had.
And it would take me getting super duper angry to even... like blurt anything out ever about what was wrong.
And I think because I had repressed so much, it actually kind of reinforced itself because I would get to the point where I was ready to blow everything up and ruin relationships in order to finally have some relief and get the space or whatever it is that I needed, or to express the emotion that I was upset about.
And because I had held back for so long and the dam was like so full, all of that came out and it could mow down relationships and a lot of good friendships and relationships ended because of my inability to communicate well.
And then through practice and through time and through having an incredible partner, I was able to say the difficult things or test out.
Really, it was like many years of me testing out like, "Is it okay if I say that I don't like the toothpaste like this?"
"Is it okay if I flip the toilet paper roll?" Like really low-stake stuff, but that felt so impactful for me to just say like this matters to me and I want it to be a different way and to realize that, you know, the people that I'm talking to or communicating with might not actually care that much about it, and it's an easy adjustment for them.
So one, that blew my mind that everything didn't have to be a fight or an argument, and I wasn't always going to get immediately shut down.
I think I came from a perspective of feeling like no matter what I wanted, it would get shut down and done a different way anyway. So saying what I wanted probably wasn't going to help.
And then I had bad coping methods, which was just do what you want and don't tell anybody and do it privately and it'll be fine.
Because you don't want to upset anyone by them realizing that you wanted to have chocolate at 5 p.m. or something. It was ridiculous.
So learning how to start to say when little things were irritating to me added up over years to a life now where I...
I'm able, and I have better discernment now, too, about when to bring things up, to be fair.
But that I'm able to bring things up and say, "Hey, this is concerning me, and maybe we need a plan, or this isn't working for me, and this is what I'd rather see happen, is that possible?"
or to even say, "Hey, I'm changing this because of XYZ. Is that a problem for you?" And for me to be able to take the feedback and not feel like it's an attack on my way of doing things and all of my needs.
But all of it had to build up slowly and I had to learn those skills over time. So...
This week I want to talk about how we're all feeling.
It's starting to be the middle of April. A lot's going on. The energy is high.
And you may find that you have a low tolerance for bullshit right now. And I want to let you know that that's not like a regression in you. You're not going back to two months ago where everything was super frustrating.
This tends to coincide more with you starting to notice what's actually been growing and what's been nurtured in the season and what needs more protection and more boundary.
So if your tolerance for someone interrupting your stuff is higher right now, that's actually feedback and letting you know that there's something that's growing that is important or special to you and that it matters.
So when something matters, we need to be able to speak our mind about it and give it the space to grow and see what happens.
It's part of creativity. It's a really great thing. And it can be super uncomfortable.
Letting people in your life know, "This is important to me," or letting them know, "I need space for this, please don't interfere," or, "Hey, what you're doing is actually really disruptive to me right now. Is there another way to do it?"
So spring boundaries are kind of like proactive sensing to prevent everybody coming in and trampling all of your dreams.
I can say that by now you're probably getting a sense of where the actual growth is happening in your life. So if you've, say, started a lot of projects or had a lot of impulses that you've followed and tried,
Now is the time that you're starting to feel like actually it's this one yoga class that I love and I'm going to keep going to.
Or you're realizing, like, you know what, I just really want my Thursday Girls Night Out with my friends.
And that's going to be a thing this year. And you're really starting to get a rhythm for it.
Understanding how you feel about it and what's important and what's helping you feel whole and complete and grow as a person.
And with that comes a sense of, I'm not going to say sensitivity because that sounds like a softening of it, but a sense of like "back off my stuff."
Where you want to be protective of it and you don't want anyone to take it away. I know that when I find that something's going really well and I'm excited about it, I have this impulse that I want to share with everyone. Oh my god, look at my thing.
And it's often paired in the early stages with "also please don't look at my thing" because I don't want any negative feedback and I don't want anyone crushing my dreams.
And please don't trample it and it's still a little bit like it's a baby, don't kill it, just like we need to nurture but not too hard, like not too much.
We don't want to overwater it or anything or drown stuff.
So I feel such a conflict of energy around the things that I'm excited about right now. And if you're feeling that too, I think it's completely normal and natural, and the way that we can help these things establish, I guess, and enjoy our lives better, is learning how to set some of these boundaries that help our new habits grow or help our new hobbies, have some space to be.
And sometimes it starts with something as simple as sitting down with the people in your life and saying, "Hey, I'm really enjoying Wednesday nights and how every Wednesday night lately I've been going out and I don't know... working on, I wanted to say working on my garden, (but) I'm not working on my garden on Wednesday nights. (laughs)
Scratch that. Maybe what it takes is learning how to sit down and have a conversation around how to protect that stuff. So to say, you know,
Some of these hobbies that I've been doing, like Thursday night, Girls Out, has started to become really important to me and I know that everyone else in the house also has things that they want to do and that they would like to have me involved in. I don't want to have to move the day.
This is important to me and this is what's working out for me and my friends. So how can everybody synthesize around this so that everybody's supported and get what's they need?
Particularly because I live in such an active household with so many different age groups, I guess. There's a lot of negotiation around what needs to happen when and who has events when. So my daughter will have sports events or activities after school or she's going to have stuff in the summer and that's fine and I can plan around that.
But here's where I find having clear communication and structure really helps me so that I can see what's possible to grow and nurture and what isn't, and also how I can make things happen that I want to have happen around what's already happening anyway.
When it's not taking me by surprise that all of these things are happening, I don't get as resentful.
I know that when you're a caretaker, either of children or older parents or whatever,
It's easy to start to be depleted or feel like your time isn't your own and you're always giving to other people's projects and transportation and their needs and their feedback and all of that stuff.
It is so important to carve out some time for yourself so that you can continue to be there for the people that you care about without that sense of resentment or like you're not getting what you need too.
So some of my personal boundary setting is around realizing what is happening in the house and what am I going to.
What interruptions are on the horizon so that they're not interruptions, they're just things that I know are going to happen.
One of the things that our family has done is gotten one of those whiteboards where we can put up the whole month and see everybody's activities and what days people have off and who needs transportation wear and when are doctors appointments and when are sports events.
All of that stuff and it helps all of us be on the same page so that nothing takes any of us by surprise. And then if we add something new, we can just say, hey, I added that to the board.
And it's an additional way to know what's going on.
So not only have I been told, but I can see it and then I can add it to my personal calendar if I want or need to, if I need to add a reminder, I can.
But it's allowing me to carve out my times and spaces.
Something that I can do as well is start to add things like unavailable times for myself. And this is something that can be really difficult to do if you've never done it before.
And it can be very awkward and uncomfortable, is saying, "Hey, from this time to this time, I'm just unavailable on these days."
Learning to stand behind it. And I can admit that that's something new for me. Usually I've been so flexible in my life and I've wanted to be there for people and I've felt like, "Ah, you know, I own my own businesses and I can do what I want so I can adjust around what other people need and I can adjust around other people's schedules."
What I can tell you though is that after years, a decade plus, two decades of doing that,
My tolerance for having my schedule altered for other people is dropping at a very fast plummeting rate like a little rock that I threw off a cliff into the sea.
It's interesting. I'm wondering if that's also part of the season of life, is that you just hit a certain point and you're like, "I've done enough giving and now I just... I don't have any more. I need something that's...predictable and that's mine now, please. Thank you very much and that's how it's going to be."
So noticing that that tendency is rising in me, I'm trying to build an infrastructure around it that allows me to carve out those times without having the people that I care about in my life feel like I'm punishing them or taking something away from them or being unpredictable or somehow demanding more.
I'm not doing it because I think that I need to kowtow to other people or always be available.
But it's because I genuinely like them and I want their lives to be good and I don't want to disrupt everybody.
But I'm also recognizing that I'm a part of this equation now too, and I also don't need to be disrupted all of the time. Part of this for me is really thinking about what are the activities and times in my life that I need to not be interrupted.
And I've thought about like, well, when do I feel the most motivated to do them? What are my (things), and the most in flow? And what circumstances do I need to do these activities?
Are they things where I actually need silence and I need peace and I need no one around? And if so, that gives me a very narrow window of available times for me to do some of these activities. So that's when I have to plan them.
So I do. But then I guess in part because of that, because there's things in my life that require so much isolation or silence or planning.
I want. And it's a want. I don't know if it's a need. It's very hard for me to articulate it. I want/need.
Other spaces and times in my life where there are people around and stuff is going on where I still carve out time to be by myself and do my own thing.
I don't even think it's as a protest. I think it's just a need that I have and I don't want to continually be interruptible.
And to have whatever I decide to do in those time blocks, whether it's knitting or doing an art project or writing or whatever creative thing I'm doing at that moment.
Maybe it's just sitting with a cat in my lap reading a book and sipping tea. I don't want it to be open for anyone to come in and just ask me questions about life and plan new things and have a conversation.
And I'm having to learn how to have that conversation and say, "I'm not available right now."
I used to think that I could do it by just saying, you know, sometimes I'll just be unavailable.
But I'm realizing now that because I'm dealing with other people, this sounds so stupid that I didn't figure this out earlier, because I'm dealing with other people in a real life, they also crave predictability and understanding when people are available in the same way that I probably do too.
Like I like to know when it's okay to like go into someone's office or if they're working.
And I want to have clear parameters about what's okay and not okay. And I looked to how my husband handles it when he worked at home.
And I was like, "Oh, it's so much easier with him because if his door is closed, you just, you don't go in. You don't even really knock because he's probably on the phone and you just let him do his thing."
I, too, could close the door to my office and not be available. And I realized that I had never enforced that.
And so my daughter never learned about it, and so my door was not an enforceable door.
And I went, "Oh shit, I kind of did that." And I made myself always available. And now I have to figure out how to make myself not always available. And that's so uncomfortable for both of us.
I'm sharing it because I know we all get into situations like that or just find that our lives have kind of created situations like that.
So the thing that I want to say is it's not wrong to need to change or to build that boundary. I think that's perfectly healthy and it's fine in this time and season of life for me to do that and for things to change, and it is uncomfortable as I'm doing it.
So as I'm educating my daughter, and like right now, we are in the couple of months before summer break where I know things are gonna change.
We're not doing as many summer camps, like schedules are going to be open and there's going to be people in the house all the time and there's going to be sleepovers and loudness and whatever.
I am setting now the conversations and the boundaries that don't feel comfortable today so that they feel comfortable later and they start feeling more natural and they're not a surprise.
Because I think when it's a surprise, that's when there's the fighting and the pushback, and it's me questioning like, oh, how much do I want this boundary because there's pushback?
I also want to say when you put up a boundary and there's pushback it doesn't mean that the boundary is wrong and it doesn't mean that the person actually doesn't want you to have the boundary.
It just means it's different and nervous systems respond to each other in different ways.
I know with me and my daughter, like, she really wants to know what that boundary is and she will have an emotion about how she doesn't like that something has changed.
She'll come at me hard. And if I take that to be like her 100% truth forever that she's upset and that was bad, then I would cave and then we'd go right back to having this conversation again in another few days when I'm burnt out and need the space.
If I can hold and let her go through the emotion, she goes through that emotion pretty fast and adjusts.
And there's also like a one- or two-week kind of adjustment period of not necessarily testing, but kind of forgetting like, wait, what is the boundary? Like something changed here until the ground is firmer again and she knows what's going on. So me practicing me if my door is closed.
Please don't knock, please don't try to come in, don't shove me a note under the door. Like, this is me working or me doing something.
But also giving her the knowledge that I come back; that her needs are also considered. So like this is for me and this is for you and we can do both and both of us can be happy.
I think that's part of the back and forth of this particular situation, and I'm really glad that I'm starting to lay these boundaries and these spaces to let the infrastructure support me so that summer becomes a lot smoother because when all that chaos erupts and it will be chaos,
I will need pockets of calm and a space I can go that's already established that I can trust.
And I think that's what I'm wanting to convey to you too, is like you deserve spaces and routines that you can trust because that's really what holds us when things get chaotic and crazy.
Mmm. So, as you set your boundaries, as you move towards having spaces and times and conversations and like ways that help you feel supported.
Just know that it does feel uncomfortable and it's worth it.
That there's support available for you.
If you're learning how to do that and you need help with the practice, please come check out the website and learn more.
But also enjoy what you're creating right now.
And I hope that you are really starting to notice the things that are giving life to you in this season right now and the things that you are surprised have started to grow, I can't wait to hear from you about what projects are happening, what you've decided to pursue, and what you think you're going to be putting more energy into as the rest of the season continues.
I really look forward to talking to you next week. We're gonna talk about what happens when you realize that you're kind of outgrowing an old version of yourself, and what to do about that so that you feel good to keep growing and safe to start being seen as the person that you are now versus the person that you were them.
Have an awesome week and I'll see you next time.
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🌿 Start Living in Rhythm with Your Energy
If you’re beginning to notice how your energy, emotions, and motivation shift through the seasons, the Living in Rhythm Starter Kit will help you understand and work with those cycles more intentionally.
Inside the free kit you’ll find simple tools to help you:
• understand your emotional and motivational cycles
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• build supportive rhythms that actually fit your life
You can download the free Living in Rhythm Starter Kit here
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