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

by Henry Cloud

Sometimes people who give guilt messages just want to tell someone how hard it is. Be a listener, but don’t take the blame.

The consequences of setting boundaries will be countermoves by controlling people. They will react to your act of boundary setting.

Some people are so controlling that if someone starts to stand up to them, they will not relate to them anymore.

Others have what psychologists call “character disorders”; they don’t want to take responsibility for their own actions and lives. When their friends and spouses refuse to take responsibility for them, they move on.

Boundaries without consequences are not boundaries. You must decide if you are willing to enforce the consequences before you set the boundaries.

the hard part is just beginning. Setting the limit is not the end of the battle. It is the beginning. Now is the time to go back to your support group and use them to spiritually nourish you so that you will be able to keep your stand. Keep working the program that got you ready to set your boundaries.

When we begin to set boundaries with people we love, a really hard thing happens: they hurt.

The Bible is clear about two principles: (1) We always need to forgive, but (2) we don’t always achieve reconciliation.

Forgiveness is something that we do in our hearts; we release someone from a debt they owe us. We write off the person’s debt, and she no longer owes us. We no longer condemn her. She is clean. Only one party is needed for forgiveness: me. The person who owes me a debt does not have to ask my forgiveness. It is a work of grace in my heart.

This brings us to the second principle: we do not always achieve reconciliation. God forgave the world, but the whol...

We do not open ourselves up to the other party until we have seen that she has truly owned her part of the problem.

When we have unmet needs, we need to take inventory of these broken places inside and begin to have those needs met in the body of Christ so that we will be strong enough to fight the boundary fights of adult life.

accepting the reality of who they are and letting go of the wish for them to be different is the essence of grief. And that is sad indeed.

Giving up boundaries to get love postpones the inevitable: the realization of the truth about the person, the embracing of the sadness of that truth, and the letting go and moving on with life.

As in every other step in the process, you cannot face these hard truths in a vacuum. You need the support of others to help you own up to your internal resistance and also to empower you to do the work of grief. Good grief can only take place in relationship. We need grace from God and others.

To let go of what you never had is difficult.

Letting go is the way to serenity. Grief is the path.

If angry people can make you lose your boundaries, you probably have an angry person in your head that you still fear.

God does not want angry people to control you. He wants to be your master and does not want to share you with anyone. He is on your side.

You may be seeing the world through the eyes of a six-year-old instead of the thirty-five-year-old you are. Rework the past and do not let it become the future.

Hope is rooted in memory. We remember getting help in the past and that gives us hope for the future. Some people feel so hopeless because they have no memory of being helped in the past.

The wrong can never be undone. But it can be forgiven and thereby rendered powerless.

I want to be around people who honestly fail me, not dishonestly deny that they have hurt me and have no intent to do better. That is destructive for me and for them. If people are owning their sin, they are learning through failure. We can ride that out. They want to be better, and forgiveness will help. But if someone is in denial or is only giving lip service to getting better, without trying to make changes or seeking help, I need to keep my boundaries, even though I have forgiven them.

Forgiveness gives me boundaries because it unhooks me from the hurtful person, and then I can act responsibly, wisely. If I am not forgiving them, I am still in a destructive relationship with them.

Unforgiveness destroys boundaries. Forgiveness creates them, for it gets bad debt off of your property.

Forgiveness is not denial. You must name the sin against you to forgive it. God did not deny what we did to him. He worked through it. He named it. He expressed his feelings about it. He cried and was angry. And then he let it go. And he did this in the context of relationship. Within the Trinity, he was never alone. Go and do the same. And watch out for the resistance that will want you to stay in the past, trying to collect what will never be.

We have to be careful about listening to guilt feelings to tell us when we are wrong, for often the guilt feelings themselves are wrong.

Many people stay in destructive relationships because they fear abandonment. They fear that if they stand up for themselves, they will be all alone in the world. They would rather have no boundaries and some connection than have boundaries and be all alone.

When you begin to do things Jesus’ way, you will encounter troubles—from both outside and inside. The world, the devil, and even your own flesh will resist you and pressure you to do things the wrong way.

One of the first signs that you’re beginning to develop boundaries is a sense of resentment, frustration, or anger at the subtle and not-so-subtle violations in your life. Just as radar signals the approach of a foreign missile, your anger can alert you to boundary violations in your life.

People who can’t get angry when they are being violated, manipulated, or controlled have a genuine handicap.

when we find relationships in which we have freedom to set limits, something wonderful happens. In addition to the freedom to say no, we find the freedom to say a wholehearted, unconflicted, gratitude-driven yes to others.

To a boundary-injured person, people who can say a clear no sometimes seem curt and cold. But as the boundaries become firmer, curt and cold people change into caring, refreshingly honest people.

This drawing to boundaried individuals extends to God. Some people will begin finding out that the holy, just God about whom they read in the Old Testament isn’t so bad or scary. He just has very clear boundaries: “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isa. 55:9).

Wayne despaired of ever developing mature work boundaries. About this time he joined a support group at church. His relationships in the group deepened, and he began to trust the members. Finally, he was able to emotionally “take them with him” to work the day he sat down with his boss and worked out the overtime conflict. It was the safety and support of the group that gave Wayne the strength he needed to tell the truth at work.

Jesus defined fellowship as two or three people gathered in his name, saying that he would be there in their midst (Matt. 18:20). It is this very combination of his Spirit and the emotional memories of those who believe in us that helps us keep firm boundaries. Why? Because we know we have a spiritual and emotional home somewhere. No matter how caustic the criticism, or how severe the rejection of the one we’re in conflict with, we aren’t alone. And that makes all the difference in the world in boundary setting.

After you feel safe being around people who believe that grace and truth are good (John 1:17), your values will start to change. You will begin to see that taking responsibility for yourself is healthy, and you will begin to understand that taking responsibility for other adults is destructive.

Our basic sense of ourselves, of what is real and true about us, comes from our significant, primary relationships. That’s why many people who were unloved in childhood can be inundated by caring people in their adult years, yet not be able to shake a deep sense of being worthless and unlovable, no matter how much people try to show them their lovability.

I need to be as careful and concerned about myself as I am about others. There’s no difference between what God thinks of others and what God thinks of me.”

Boundary setting is a large part of maturing. We can’t really love until we have boundaries—otherwise we love out of compliance or guilt.

Sometimes the large no will precipitate a crisis. Someone important to you will be angry. Or hurt. Or abusive. The truth will expose the divisions in relationships. The conflicts and disagreements already exist. Boundaries simply bring them to the surface.

Courtney showed the fruit of maturing boundaries. She wasn’t sure, so she said no. People with undeveloped limit-setting abilities do the opposite. They say yes when they are unsure. Then, when they have committed themselves to someone else’s schedule, they realize that they don’t want to be in that particular situation anymore. But by then it’s too late.

“There are two ways you can start off with kids: first, you can say yes to everything. Then, when you start putting limits on them, they’ll resent you and rebel. Or you can begin with clear and strict limits. After they get used to your style, you can loosen up a little. They’ll love you forever.”

Boundary-injured individuals make promises and then do one of two things: (1) They resentfully make good, or (2) they fail on the promise. Boundary-developed people, however, make good freely and gladly. Or they don’t promise at all.

the ultimate goal of learning boundaries is to free us up to protect, nurture, and develop the lives God has given us stewardship over.