10 Boundary Mistakes I See in Every Client, Team, and Organization I Work With
The Color-Draining Click
I had a coaching client—brilliant, capable, someone who'd built a successful career by being adaptable, reliable, and endlessly accommodating. Midway through a session, her face went pale. All the color drained away.
"What's happening right now?" I asked.
She froze for a moment, then the words came tumbling out. "HR told me I had boundary issues. My boss said it. My direct reports complained about it. Even my husband brought it up." She paused, her voice getting smaller. "But I don't understand—I feel very clear about my boundaries. I know exactly what I believe in. I have strong values."
Then came the moment of realization: "Oh my God. I think I'm confusing my values with my boundaries. And maybe I don't actually know what boundaries even are."
There was almost an audible click—the sound of something finally making sense.
If you've ever felt this same moment of confusion, you're not alone. I've seen it in entrepreneurs drowning in impossible workloads. In working parents snapping at their kids because they're running on fumes. In nonprofit leaders who care so deeply they've set themselves on fire. In laid-off federal workers trying to figure out why they're still exhausted even though they're not working anymore.
Most of us think we understand boundaries. But our behavior—and our exhaustion—tells a different story.
What We're Actually Dealing With
Let's be honest about what's happening when boundaries go wrong. The cost shows up in predictable ways.
There's resentment that creeps in like a slow leak. You find yourself quietly furious at people you claim to care about. You grumble under your breath. You lie awake mentally rehashing conversations. You feel taken advantage of, even when no one actually wronged you.
There's the physical exhaustion that sleep doesn't fix. You wake up tired. Your body feels heavy. You get sick more often. Your nervous system is perpetually activated, burning through your reserves like a battery that won't recharge.
There's the emotional dysregulation that shows up as a complete shock to everyone around you—and to yourself. You snap. You cry at things that shouldn't make you cry. You feel numb and then suddenly furious. You don't recognize yourself in your own reactions.
And underneath it all, there's the creeping sense that something is fundamentally wrong with you. That you're just broken. That other people have figured this out and you're the one who missed the memo.
Here's the thing that neuroscience tells us: none of this is a personality flaw. It's a sign that your boundaries aren't actually working—or that you don't have them at all.
Research shows poor boundaries or lack of boundaries create feelings of being taken advantage of, resentment, increased stress, depressed mood, invisibility, and low self-esteem—feelings that often sum into one overarching experience: burnout. And burnout isn't just psychological. Studies have linked burnout to concentration and memory problems, difficulty in decision-making, reduced coping capacity, anxiety, depression, dissatisfaction with life, low self-esteem, insomnia, and irritability. It's a full-body, full-life exhaustion.
But here's what I've learned through coaching hundreds of people through this exact maze: the issue usually isn't that you don't care enough about boundaries. It's that you don't actually know what they are.
10 Things I've Learned About Boundaries
1. You can't set a boundary you don't believe you deserve.
This is the real starting place. Before you can set a boundary around rest, you have to believe you deserve rest. Before you can set a boundary around your energy, you have to believe your energy matters. This isn't a boundary-setting problem. This is a self-worth problem. And it's deeply treatable.
2. A boundary is about what YOU will do—not what someone else has to accept.
This is the fundamental misunderstanding. "Crossing your boundary" isn't actually possible because your boundary is your action, not their behavior. If you say you're not checking email after 7 PM, then the boundary is that you don't check email after 7 PM. You do the thing you said you'd do. That's the whole boundary. Whether your boss respects it or your partner understands it or your family is upset about it—that's actually none of your boundary's business.
3. Your strongest boundaries often start as requests—and that's okay.
First, notice if something is a pattern. Notice it bothering you repeatedly. Then, you can start with a gentle request: "Would you mind if I didn't respond to texts after 7 PM?" If they continue to cross that line after you've asked, then you can choose to set a boundary—which, again, is about what you do for you. The progression from request to boundary is natural and gives both you and the other person time to adjust.
4. Not all boundaries need to be spoken out loud.
Some boundaries are energetic. Some are internal commitments. Some are unspoken. When you're in burnout, your brain loses the capacity to recognize exhaustion—much like carbon monoxide poisoning—and this is where internal boundaries become critical tools for protecting your cognitive function. You can decide that you won't internalize someone's bad mood, won't take on their responsibility, won't keep yourself awake worrying about their choices. And you can do all of that without ever saying a word. It's not always safe or productive or even relevant to speak your boundary out loud. Sometimes the boundary exists between you and yourself.
5. You don't owe anyone an explanation—and explaining weakens your boundary.
If you get caught in the loop of over-explaining, over-justifying, trying to make people understand your boundary, you've just made the boundary about them instead of about you. "No" is a complete sentence. "I'm not available" is a complete sentence. If you find yourself saying "because..." and then listing reasons why your boundary is justified, you're weakening your own boundary. Stop. You don't need permission. You don't need their understanding. You just need to do what you said you'd do.
6. Values and boundaries are not the same thing—and confusing them is the #1 reason people stay burned out.
You can have strong values around helping people, family, integrity, and still not have boundaries around how you express those values. The confusion happens like this: you have strong values around helping people. So you say yes to everything. You take on more than you can handle. You abandon your own needs because helping matters to you. You're honoring your values, right?
Except you're not setting boundaries around how you express those values. And now you're burned out, resentful, and running on empty—which makes you worse at actually helping anyone.
A boundary would sound like this: "I value helping people. I also value my health, my family, my own capacity to think clearly. So I will help by doing X, Y, and Z. But I won't do A, B, or C, even if someone asks, because doing those things would compromise my ability to show up well in my own life." That's not cold. That's not unkind. That's actually the most loving thing you can do.
7. Porous and rigid boundaries are two sides of the same coin—both keep you hidden.
Porous boundaries show up as: you think, worry, and feel a lot about stuff that goes on for other people. When your therapist asks how you're doing, you spend ten minutes talking about how other people in your life are doing. Hearing about someone else's problems sends you into frantic problem-solving mode. You get resentful when people don't take your advice. You only feel good when people around you feel good.
Rigid boundaries show up differently: you have a reflexive No instinct for encroachments on your comfort, safety, or security. And if you're being honest, it relates to your discomfort with uncertainty, other people being themselves, and you being yourself with other people. Because if people saw the real version of you underneath that boundary, you wouldn't survive that exposure.
Both porous and rigid boundaries keep people from knowing the real you. The result? You don't experience the life-giving and energy-giving experience of living your authentic self. You burn out—either from exhaustion or from the weight of your own walls. What you're actually building when you learn healthy boundaries isn't rigidity or porousness. It's clarity.
8. Resentment is your signal that a boundary is needed—not your sign to abandon the relationship.
The resentment cycle looks like this:
You do something you resent
Resentment builds
You either explode or collapse
Guilt follows
Notice the parts in this cycle. Usually, what's happening is that you've silently agreed to something you don't actually want to do. The boundary is often small. It's often just a conversation or a simple shift in how you're approaching the relationship.
Boundaries around resentment look like: "I notice I'm resentful about X. What boundary would help?" Or "I'm resenting this activity. Maybe I'm forcing it." Or "I feel guilty about rest. That's a signal I need permission to rest."
Find the boundary, implement it, and watch what happens to the resentment. Psychologist research shows that assertiveness is the cure to resentment.
9. When you change, everyone else gets weird—and that's exactly when you know your boundary is working.
Here's something nobody tells you: when you start setting boundaries, the people around you are going to behave differently. They're going to push back. They're going to test the boundary. They're going to get upset. They might even tell you that you're being selfish, rigid, or unkind.
This is actually evidence that your boundary is working.
If someone is upset about the boundary you're setting, it's usually because one of a few things is true:
They benefited from you not having that boundary
They're insecure about their own boundaries
They care about you and are projecting their own fears about what boundaries mean
They learned in their own family that boundaries were dangerous, so anything that looks like a boundary feels threatening
Reframe their upset: When they say "I'm being selfish/mean/rigid," the truth is often "This person benefited from me not having boundaries" or "This person might be insecure about their own situation and projecting their worries on me" or "This person cares about me and struggles with boundaries themself—they think they need to fix my feelings, but I'm actually okay."
When they say "I should back down," remember: "This actually confirms I need this boundary" and "Collapsing the boundary means the other person learns my boundaries aren't real."
The pushback isn't about you being wrong. It's about them learning that your boundaries are real.
10. Your struggle with boundaries isn't a character flaw—it's survival intelligence you learned too well.
If you're neurodivergent, you're far more likely to struggle with boundaries (and to experience burnout). If you have a history of childhood trauma, emotional neglect, or emotionally immature parenting, you likely learned that your job was to keep everyone else comfortable—which means no boundaries.
If you're navigating the world as a person socialized as female, you've probably absorbed decades of messages that being "nice," accommodating, and self-sacrificing is what makes you lovable. If you have a chronic illness, or if you've lived with ongoing stress that's created physical symptoms, you may have learned that your body isn't reliable, which makes it harder to trust your own signals about what you need.
If you're a person of color or someone whose perceived or internalized identity is seen as "other," your lack of social power and inherited trauma means that historically, safety came from keeping other people feeling safe and in power—consciously or not.
And if you're in a system (a workplace, a family, a culture) that explicitly or implicitly rewarded your lack of boundaries—that praised you for being flexible, adaptable, the person who could handle anything—then setting boundaries now feels like betrayal. Like you're breaking the rules that kept you safe.
But here's what I want you to understand: those old rules kept you surviving. They did their job. But surviving isn't thriving. And the deeper into burnout you go, the more your brain tells you that boundaries aren't possible, that it's too late, that you've messed this up irreparably. That's not truth. That's neuroscience talking to you from a place of scarcity.
What Changes When You Actually Live This
Once you understand and start implementing these boundaries—not perfectly, just consistently—things shift. Not immediately. Not without effort. But measurably.
Within the first few weeks, you often notice:
You can actually sleep
Your brain fog lifts
Anxiety quiets down
You stop snapping at people
You get access to your own thinking again
Over a few months, the deeper shifts start:
You realize there's nothing fundamentally wrong with you
You were in an impossible situation and couldn't think clearly enough to see it
You understand where your actual boundaries need to be
You build the capacity to handle stress without it eroding you from the inside
You develop a different relationship with the emotions that have been pushing you underground—anger, grief, resentment
You recover your sense of yourself as distinct from your roles, your productivity, and what you produce
You remember that you're a whole person with needs and limits and a life that belongs to you
That's not just better. That's freedom.
The Work That Matters
If you're reading this and feeling that familiar click—that moment where something finally makes sense—you're not at the starting line by accident. Your exhaustion is data. Your resentment is information. Your burnout is the system telling you that something needs to fundamentally shift.
The good news is that burnout is reversible. It's not a personality flaw. It's not evidence that you're broken or incapable or doing life wrong. It's evidence that you're operating without the guardrails you need.
Setting real boundaries—and understanding the difference between your values and the actions you need to take to honor them—is the guardrail that changes everything.
If you're ready to explore what's possible for you, I offer a single coaching session called "The Next Right Step." Sometimes one conversation with someone trained to see the invisible patterns is enough to shift your whole trajectory.
But whether you work with me or someone else or do this work on your own, the truth remains: the boundaries you don't have aren't a character flaw. They're a signal that you deserve support in building something different. And that support is available.
You've survived this long operating with what you've had. Now it's time to build something that actually lets you thrive.
Sources
UR Medicine Behavioral Health Partners. "Combating Burnout with Boundaries," 2023.
WebMD. "What Is Psychoneuroimmunology?" Health & Medical Information.
Wignall, Nick. "Emotional Opportunity Cost." Clinical Psychology Article.
Kim Paull Coaching. "The Quitter's Club Blog: Tactics for Sustainable Joy."
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