Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life

by Henry Cloud

First, trying harder isn’t working.

Second, being nice out of fear isn’t working.

Third, taking responsibility for others isn’t working.

Made in the image of God, we were created to take responsibility for certain tasks. Part of taking responsibility, or ownership, is knowing what is our job, and what isn’t.

It takes wisdom to know what we should be doing and what we shouldn’t. We can’t do everything.

Any confusion of responsibility and ownership in our lives is a problem of boundaries.

Think how confusing it would be if someone told you to “guard this property diligently, because I will hold you responsible for what happens here,” and then did not tell you the boundaries of the property. Or they did not give you the means with which to protect the property. This would be not only confusing but also potentially dangerous.

Problems arise when people act as if their “boulders” are daily loads and refuse help, or as if their “daily loads” are boulders they shouldn’t have to carry. The results of these two instances are either perpetual pain or irresponsibility.

We need to keep things that will nurture us inside our fences and keep things that will harm us outside. In short, boundaries help us keep the good in and the bad out.

In short, boundaries are not walls.

Often, when people are abused while growing up, they reverse the function of boundaries and keep the bad in and the good out.

She had to reverse the ways her boundaries worked. She needed fences that were strong enough to keep the bad out and gates in those fences to let out the bad already in her soul and let in the good she desperately needed.

People with poor boundaries struggle with saying no to the control, pressure, demands, and sometimes the real needs of others. They feel that if they say no to someone, they will endanger their relationship with that person, so they passively comply but inwardly resent. Sometimes a person is pressuring you to do something; other times the pressure comes from your own sense of what you “should” do. If you cannot say no to this external or internal pressure, you have lost control of your property and are not enjoying the fruit of “self-control.”

There is always safety in the truth, whether it be knowing God’s truth or knowing the truth about yourself.

Sometimes physically removing yourself from a situation will help maintain boundaries.

Or you can remove yourself to get away from danger and put limits on evil. The Bible urges us to separate from those who continue to hurt us and to create a safe place for ourselves.

When a relationship is abusive, many times the only way to finally show the other person that your boundaries are real is to create space until they are ready to deal with the problem. The Bible supports the idea of limiting togetherness for the sake of “binding evil.”

Many people are too quick to trust someone in the name of forgiveness and not make sure that the other is producing “fruit in keeping with repentance” (Luke 3:8). To continue to open yourself up emotionally to an abusive or addicted person without seeing true change is foolish. Forgive, but guard your heart until you see sustained change.

But the point is, your feelings are your responsibility and you must own them and see them as your problem so you can begin to find an answer to whatever issue they are pointing to.

Attitudes have to do with your orientation toward something, the stance you take toward others, God, life, work, and relationships. Beliefs are anything that you accept as true.

People with boundary problems usually have distorted attitudes about responsibility. They feel that to hold people responsible for their feelings, choices, and behaviors is mean. However, Proverbs repeatedly says that setting limits and accepting responsibility will save lives (Prov. 13:18, 24).

Making decisions based on others’ approval or on guilt breeds resentment, a product of our sinful nature. We have been so trained by others on what we “should” do that we think we are being loving when we do things out of compulsion. Setting boundaries inevitably involves taking responsibility for your choices. You are the one who makes them. You are the one who must live with their consequences. And you are the one who may be keeping yourself from making the choices you could be happy with.

The first is setting limits on others. This is the component that we most often hear about when we talk about boundaries. In reality, setting limits on others is a misnomer. We can’t do that. What we can do is set limits on our own exposure to people who are behaving poorly; we can’t change them or make them behave right.

Our model is God. He does not really “set limits” on people to “make them” behave. God sets standards, but he lets people be who they are and then separates himself from them when they misbehave, saying in effect, “You can be that way if you choose, but you cannot come into my house.” Heaven is a place for the repentant, and all are welcome.

But God limits his exposure to evil, unrepentant people, as should we. Scripture is full of admonitions to separate ourselves from people who act in destructive ways (Matt. 18:15–17; 1 Cor. 5:9–13). We are not being unloving. Separating ourselves protects l...

The other aspect of limits that is helpful when talking about boundaries is setting our own internal limits. We need to have spaces inside ourselves where we can have a feeling, an impulse, or a desire without acting it out. We need self-control without repression. We need to be able to say no to ourselves. This includes both our destructive desires and some good ones that are not wise to pursue at a given time. Internal structure ...

We are the only creatures who are called to love God with all our mind (Mark 12:30).

Mike does have a responsibility to connect with Brenda, not only as a provider and as a parenting partner but also as a loving husband. Connecting emotionally with Brenda is part of loving her as himself (Eph. 5:28, 33). He isn’t responsible for her emotional well-being. But he is responsible to her. His inability to respond to her needs is a neglect of his responsibility. Termed “nonresponsives” because of their lack of attention to the responsibilities of love, these individuals exhibit the opposite of the pattern exhorted in Proverbs 3:27 (NRSV): “Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it” (that last phrase, “in your power,” has to do with our resources and availability). Another key Scripture here is “If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all” (Rom. 12:18 NRSV). Again, note the condition: “so far as it depends on you.” We can’t bring peace to someone who doesn’t accept it!

God wants us to take care of ourselves so that we can help others without moving into a crisis ourselves.

The Compliant: Feels guilty and/or controlled by others; can’t set boundaries

God’s desire is for you to know where your injuries and deficits are, whether self-induced or other-induced. Ask him to shed light on the significant relationships and forces that have contributed to your own boundary struggles. The past is your ally in repairing your present and ensuring a better future.

No matter how much you talk to yourself, read, study, or practice, you can’t develop or set boundaries apart from supportive relationships with God and others. Don’t even try to start setting limits until you have entered into deep, abiding attachments with people who will love you no matter what. Our deepest need is to belong, to be in a relationship, to have a spiritual and emotional “home.” The very nature of God is to be in relationship: “God is love,” says 1 John 4:16. Love means relationship—the caring, committed connection of one individual to another.

As baby experiences needs and the mother’s positive response to those needs, he or she begins to internalize, or take in, an emotional picture of a loving, constant mother. Babies, at this stage, have no sense of self apart from Mother. They think, Mommy and me are the same. It’s sometimes called symbiosis, a sort of “swimming in closeness” with Mother. This symbiotic union is the reason babies panic when Mother isn’t around. No one can comfort them but their mother. The emotional picture developed by infants forms from thousands of experiences in the first few months of life. The ultimate goal of Mother’s “being there” is a state called emotional object constancy. Object constancy refers to the child’s having an internal sense of belonging and safety, even away from the presence of the mother. All those experiences of constant loving pay off in a child’s inner sense of security. It has been built in.

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Generally, the earlier and more severe the injury, the deeper the boundary problem.

It is crucial that their disagreements, their practicing, their experimentation not result in a withdrawal of love.

Parents need to stay attached and connected to their children even when they disagree with them. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t get angry. It means they shouldn’t withdraw.

When parents pull away in hurt, disappointment, or passive rage, they are sending this message to their youngster: You’re lovable when you behave. You aren’t lovable when you don’t behave.

When I’m good, I am loved. When I’m bad, I am cut off.

Parents who pull away from their child are, in essence, practicing spiritual and emotional blackmail.

Children whose parents withdraw when they start setting limits learn to accentuate and develop their compliant, loving, sensitive parts. At the same time, they learn to fear, distrust, and hate their aggressive, truth-telling, and separate parts. If someone they love pulls away when they become angry, cantankerous, or experimental, children learn to hide these parts of themselves.

Parents who tell their children, “It hurts us when you’re angry” make the child responsible for the emotional health of the parent. In effect, the child has just been made the parent of the parent—sometimes at two or three years old.

When children feel parents withdrawing, they readily believe that they are responsible for Mom and Dad’s feelings. That’s what omnipotent means: “I am powerful enough to make Mom and Dad pull away. I’d better watch it.”

A parent’s emotional withdrawal can be subtle: A hurt tone of voice. Long silences for no reason. Or it can be overt: Crying spells. Illness. Yelling. Children of parents like these grow up to be adults who are terrified that setting boundaries will cause severe isolation and abandonment.

They don’t learn that delaying gratification and being responsible have benefits. They only learn how to avoid someone’s wrath.

The results of this hostility are difficult to see because these children quickly learn how to hide under a compliant smile. When these children grow up, they suffer depression, anxiety, relationship conflicts, and substance-abuse problems.

Sometimes a lack of parental limits, coupled with a lack of connection, can produce an aggressively controlling person.

A trauma is an intensely painful emotional experience rather than a character pattern.

A good way to look at the difference between character-relating patterns, such as withdrawal and hostility, and trauma, is to look at how a tree in a forest can be hurt. It can be fed inappropriately, through bad ingredients in the soil, or it can be given too much or too little sun or water. That’s an illustration of character-pattern problems. Trauma is like lightning hitting the tree.

A trauma can affect boundary development because it shakes up two necessary foundations to children’s growth: 1. The world is reasonably safe. 2. They have control over their lives. Children who undergo trauma feel these foundations shaken up. They become unsure that they are safe and protected in the world, and they become frightened that they have no say-so in any danger that approaches them.

The heart of God seems to beat especially close to the victim of trauma: “He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted” (Isa. 61:1). God desires the wounds of the traumatized to be bound up by loving people.