Is Guilt Stopping You From Setting Boundaries? 7 Tips From a Therapist
A very common barrier to putting in boundaries is not wanting to feel guilt for expressing your needs. Not wanting to feel like an unkind, rude or mean person, when expressing something that you think (or fear) that someone else will not like. Guilt is a highly unpleasant feeling, no wonder we try to avoid it. So, we avoid putting in boundaries because we don’t want to feel the guilt. However, a life without boundaries is one where we can guarantee to feel disappointed, hurt, rejected, taken for granted and more.
Unfortunately, when we live our lives avoiding putting in boundaries and expressing our needs, our lives are dictated by other people. Our needs don’t get met, we don’t enjoy life as much and we don’t get seen and heard for who we are. We feel powerless over time and fearful of speaking up. This gets internalised as ‘I don’t really matter.’ Which obviously does not feel good.
Perhaps for you it plays out like this, you’re feeling exhausted from a difficult week at work and you’ve planned to go to the cinema with your friends, but you would feel guilty for saying that you can’t make it. You fear that they would feel let down or maybe even be annoyed with you for not going. Maybe you fear that they would leave you out in future and then you fear you would end up with no friends and be all alone! In therapy, we call this catastrophising and this is exaggerating the outcome. It’s driven by anxiety which wants to control the situation and prevent bad things happening. It’s trying to protect you! However, it can get a bit overprotective and stop you getting your needs met as it’s taking the extra safe option of putting others’ feelings and needs (or potential feelings and needs that you’ve guessed) before your own. So, what happens is that you go to the cinema, feel more exhausted and the next day feel exhausted for the next invitation and the cycle carries on.
If we always put others first, we will eventually get depleted, stressed, anxious and eventually burnt out. This is when we feel too overwhelmed, anxious and stressed to continue with our daily commitments. So, it’s so important that you look after yourself because burnout is really unpleasant. It can take years of people-pleasing to get to this point, but it can happen. On the surface it seems a lovely thing to want to please others and put them first but it’s not lovely for you to feel depleted, drained and unhappy as a result.
It’s true that trying to express your needs when you feel guilty is difficult. However, if we can learn to feel more worthy, we can feel less guilt for expressing ourselves and get our needs met. When we start to become aware of what we’re doing to perpetuate the feelings of worthlessness by neglecting ourselves, we then have the power to make gentle changes to build the self-worth, courage and the strength to express ourselves.
Keep reading to learn how to feel more self-worth and less guilt.
Feeling immobilised by guilt
The biggest downside of not overcoming the guilt caused by setting boundaries is that guilt is addictive, the more you give in to guilt, the more guilt that you feel. For example, if you don’t say no for helping with the school parent’s association even though you are completely exhausted, you will not learn how to tolerate the feelings of guilt and let it pass. So next time you don’t say no because you feel guilty, you will not build confidence to feel the guilt, so you avoid it again the next time. The fear and intolerance for feeling guilt builds, and if this continues you eventually will rarely say no. When we give in to excessive guilt, we feed its power over us.
Just remember lots of people struggle with expressing their needs, we’re not really taught how to do this from a young age. Maybe a few of us had this modelled to us by people around us, but it can be much easier in the short run to just ‘go with the flow.’ But we have an epidemic of unworthiness, and guilt goes hand in hand with not feeling good enough. If we want to feel more worthy, we need to respect our needs and preferences, so that others can too. It doesn’t mean of course putting our needs in front of others all the time, but when we know that something is not okay with us, we can have the confidence to express that..
How to overcome guilty feelings
Making these changes is not as difficult as you think. Some people think ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’, whilst this works for some, for many this can lead to overwhelm. Then we either put off taking the challenge of going all in and expressing the most intimidating boundary on earth or we go for it and we’re not prepared, so it doesn’t go well or end up with intense anxiety or panic attack. This puts you off trying again in the future. So it’s not always the best option to start with the boundary that will cause a flood of guilt.
My approach is to go gently and work out the way that suits you. We need to learn what your needs are, build a sense of self-belief and self-awareness, before we can look at expressing yourself.
Step #1 — Start to become aware of when you feel guilty for expressing your needs or when you feel guilt after expressing your preferences. See if you can notice it without judgement. Where you can feel it in your body? You might feel it in your chest or your belly. How intense is it on a scale of 0–10? See if you can get to know the feeling.
Step #2 — Notice your feelings towards your guilt. How do you feel about having these guilty feelings? Is it uncomfortable, is it inconvenient, do you feel angry, accepting or curious about it. Just see if you can notice that with kindness.
Step #3 — See if you can send compassion towards the guilt and the feelings towards the guilt. It’s trying to protect you from receiving more difficulty. Be curious about what it’s trying to protect you from.
Step #4 — Now you are building self-awareness of what your guilt feels like and how you feel about it. It’ll be easier to notice. See if you can find a pattern about what circumstances trigger the guilt. Is it with certain people or situations or when you have been feeling a bit low about yourself beforehand? Start to build a picture of what’s going on.
Step #5 — Then think of what the easiest situation would be to start to express your needs or feelings with only a low level of guilt. Think of what you would want to express in an ideal world without any guilt and then think about how much of that you could express that would produce less guilt but a level of guilt you could tolerate.
Step #6 — Try expressing the need! You might want to practice or rehearse what you would say with someone else first so you can feel more confident. Remember, that you will probably feel guilty still but we’re not trying to get rid of it, we are trying to befriend and allow it to be there. If we can accept that we can feel guilt, we will less likely avoid it. Be curious about how you feel after expressing your need. What happens to the guilt? Does it dissipate quickly or does it lessen with time. Maybe it gets more intense at a point. See if you can get to know it. The more you get to know guilt, the more you can navigate it.
Step #7 Be kind to yourself afterwards. Congratulate yourself for setting a boundary. You might want to practice self-compassion, maybe search for a self-compassion meditation. You are being brave, going out of your comfort zone, allowing yourself to feel your difficult feelings. That takes courage. Know that whatever happens, you are building self-awareness and gaining knowledge about what step is needed next.
This of course sounds so simple and easy as a list. It IS hard work. It isn’t always easy. But with time and practice you will build more courage, confidence and calm while expressing yourself and your needs. You will live a life where your needs are valued as much as anyone else’s, you will do more of what you want to do as well as what other people want to do. A life that is more balanced, equal and empowered.
If you feel like this is too much for you to tackle alone, you might want support by seeing a therapist or joining a coaching group. I offer one-to one psychotherapy sessions online or in-person in Essex, U.K. I also am going to be offering workshops and group coaching programs to help you set better boundaries and live a more empowered life. Click here to find out more.