Healthy Boundaries
* younger me around the time I learned about boundaries :)
By Amber Bateman
3/14/2025
Understanding the concept of healthy boundaries was life changing for me. As a driven, overly responsible, rule-following, perfectionistic first born, I was constantly burdened by other people’s opinions, beliefs, and behaviors. As a result, I often came across as critical and judgmental, even when I tried to say things as nicely as possible.
What freedom it was to finally understand that I am not responsible for other people’s actions. I am only responsible for mine! I can let go of things which are out of my control and focus on the things that I can actually do something about.
‘Healthy boundaries’ is a broad topic that could be applied to many different areas of life. There is a lot we could talk about on this. For the purposes of this article, I am going to zero in on a simple definition.
Healthy boundaries is about:
Owning/taking responsibility for one’s own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors
NOT owning/taking responsibility for other people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors
Many troubles that people come into counseling for revolves around these two ideas. Let’s look at an example:
The person who blames his anger outbursts on his wife. If she wouldn’t be so frustrating, I wouldn’t be made to look so bad.
The person who makes excuses for his wife’s anger outbursts on him. If I wasn’t such a lousy husband, she wouldn’t be so angry.
In both of these points, this man is mis-assigning the responsibility for change. While it is true that human relationships are complicated and everyone has something to work on, getting the responsibilities right is critical for resolving conflict and making true change. This husband needs to own his own behaviors, not his wife’s. He needs to focus on expressing his feelings and needs in a healthy way. Let’s look at another set of examples:
The person who vents to her friends that her coworker is always asking her to do things. I get reprimanded because I can’t get my own work done! She wails.
The person who offers to do her coworker’s assignments because she doesn’t want the coworker to get in trouble. Helping others is always the right thing to do, right? But secretly, she is starting to feel resentment towards her.
Here again, we see a person who is not owning her own responsibilities. It is her job to decide if helping her coworker is the right thing to do. She should not make the decision based on the coworker’s feelings or behaviors. And she should not blame the coworker when she says yes to every request.
This is not to say that we shouldn’t care about other people’s feelings! We should care about the effect our words and actions have on others. However, other’s responses should not be our primary guide because people’s responses are often influenced by a variety of factors. Sometimes people don’t respond well to correct behavior. That’s why we should make decisions based on our moral or ethical principles. There is a lot of freedom in this because we can feel secure that no matter how the person responds, we did the right thing.
Practicing healthy boundaries is a simple but profound way to decrease stress and depression, as well as build better relationships. It is life changing!