For the longest time, I thought of boundaries as all-or-nothing. High, fortified stone walls that kept out events, efforts, requests I didn’t like.

But as a people-pleaser, I couldn’t help noticing that stone walls also kept out connection and community. Maybe that’s why I always struggled to assert them.

These days, I think of boundaries differently. It’s not about keeping other people and their frustrating requests out of my space. It’s about protecting my ability to give the best of me.

So my boundaries are more like bodily membranes, permeable, shifting, defining a path forward. They billow in the wind of my breath, sometimes near, and sometimes far.

My boundary starts with noticing what’s going on for me. When resentment starts to build up, when my body flinches at a new request, when my shoulders hunch forward. When I say yes but I actually want to say no.

Last year I realised my people-pleasing had become a huge problem. I ended up doing a large amount of unpaid work for a client. Because of that, I had to turn down other paid opportunities, which directly affected my income.

That unpaid overtime meant I was less present with my family, I slept less, and I had less personal time to recover.

The same pattern was showing up in my parenting, where I would give in and say yes rather than pushing through the inevitable conflict.

That experience made me realise how habitual this pattern is for me. I was putting myself second, and then being passive-aggressive and resentful when following through on my commitment. That’s not how I wanted to show up.

It’s one thing to have a moment of truth. It’s quite another to break down long-held patterns of relating and coping.

I’m trying to make small, sustainable shifts over time that individually feel easier, but have a compounding effect.

Sometimes, holding the boundary means I need to stop myself from rushing ahead with my yes, yes, yes, when my body means no, no, no. I have a quaint superstition that turning down one potential client will mean no one will ever want to work with me again.

One of the hardest parts is simply noticing that a situation has become unsustainable. My people-pleasing tendency means that it’s pretty scary to say things like:

• “This isn’t working for me.”
• “This is too much.”
• “Can we slow this down?”

Recently, I had to do just that. I had to have a difficult conversation with a client. I reassured them that I would follow through on my commitments, but after that, we needed to find a new way of working.

I asked if we could build buffers into the schedules and be more intentional about our planning.

I realised boundaries often require honest conversations. I was pleasantly surprised at how this was received. We both cared about the quality of the work and how best we can create it. Getting clear about what we needed to protect that work made for better outcomes all round.

I still feel unqualified to give advice on boundary-setting, but I suspect this is one of those life lessons where you’re always revising, always writing the exam but never yet passing with flying colours.