Reflection prompts for healing people pleasing and guilt around setting boundaries
So let's talk about feeling guilty about setting boundaries, because it's a very common concern folks have, including many clients. If you struggle with people-pleasing, this is for you.
For folks who feel a lot of guilt about boundary setting, what are some reasons that you feel guilty?
Do a free write or just speak out loud and share with a coach, friend, or even to yourself.
What do you feel guilty of doing?
Do you believe it is objectively wrong (against morality/ethics) to set boundaries?
or
Do you have unrealistic and distorted standards of behaviour where you conflate compliance with goodness and the lack of compliance (or assertion of your own needs) with wrong-ness or being bad?
Do these beliefs come from having to please and appease adults growing up, in order to secure their continued care/warmth/support, because it was redacted and you were criticized or pushed away when you stood up for yourself?
As children, we have not developed to where we can assign responsibility for this type of parental dysfunction to our parents and are more likely to internalize it and believe there is something wrong with us.
“It's why a big part of boundary work is knowing what's ours (our needs, voice, values, priorities, concerns, fears, desires, longing, feelings, thoughts, emotions) and what isn't, so we don't develop rigid self-beliefs about our own worthiness based on how others treat us based on their own baggage and biases.
It also helps us not make ourselves responsible for managing or anticipating the needs, feelings, thoughts and concerns of others. That is theirs to convey”.
- Jay Asooli
Yes we meet folks with responsiveness and curiosity, and we prioritize our own well being, but a lot of the overlap between perfectionism and people-pleasing is about needing to perfect anticipating and meeting the needs of others to avoid rejection, abandonment and disconnection.
8) Do you feel you don't deserve to set and sustain boundaries because you are unworthy of being treated with care and respect just as you are or unworthy of the same unless you do/perform X/Y/Z roles/function?
Question no. 6 specifically addresses shame whereas the previous ones speak to guilt.
Healthy guilt is when we feel we've done something objectively wrong without reducing our worth to our errors.
Unhealthy guilt comes from unrealistic distorted standards of right action that are formed as a response to neglect, inconsistency, emotional unavailability and insecure bonds with caregivers, siblings, extended families, even previous partners.
So see if we say boundary setting isn't objectively unethical, then your guilt is coming from an unhealthy place and likely intermixed with shame.
So, I'd like you to sit with this:
What do you need to believe (about yourself and the role of boundaries) that would allow you to see you are inherently worthy of being treated with care and respect? and that you are worthy of the boundaries that make this possible?
Let me know your thoughts below.
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And if you'd like to learn more about how I can help you heal and release exhausting cycles of people-pleasing. codependency and perfectionism in dating, relationships and even work, that further entrench our intimacy wounds and burnout, using my trauma informed, research based and anti-oppressive coaching, contact me for a completely relaxed chat.
