SO many people struggle to set and hold boundaries. And the struggle is understandable - this is a very complex topic that impacts all of our relationships as well as our view of our selves.

I've gathered the top 10 reasons people struggle with this essential life skill. I've gathered these through working as a psychotherapist over twenty years and helping thousands of people develop healthier boundaries (and, of course, my own journey has informed my work!).

Also, in my boundary program, participants share what holds them back from setting effective boundaries, and the themes are very consistent!

I'm presenting this as a Top Ten Countdown. You are likely to recognize several of these roadblocks, and I provide guidance about how to get over the roadblock! 

This is really the learning part of setting boundaries. The self-awareness involves knowing what your values are, what you desire, what your needs are, and what your limits are. All of that goes into setting effective boundaries.

Then comes the skill component—learning assertive speech and how to actually set those boundaries effectively.

This is where people usually start when learning about boundaries. It's also where a lot of available information focuses. Yet it is not actually one of the main roadblocks, as this information-gathering stage is quite doable.

Some cultures or societies might pigeonhole you into a role that doesn't feel like it fits, making it very difficult to break out of that role. 

Different cultures prioritize the collective versus the individual differently, but don't make the mistake of thinking that highly individualized cultures always have better boundaries—those cultures might actually have walls, not boundaries. There's a balance with boundaries in terms of taking care of one's social group and taking care of oneself. 

The counter to this is having a support group, a therapist who supports you in setting boundaries, or a subsection of your social group that can support you in determining your boundaries and really individuating—becoming the individual you're meant to be.

This can still be an individual who cares about their family and other people, so don't feel like this is all or nothing, which leads us to the next roadblock.

If you see boundaries as "all-or-nothing" it will be very hard to set and hold effective, healthy boundaries. We tend to see boundaries as either "their needs matter and I have to do what they want" or "it's what I want and they need to do what I want." 

Either I put everybody else first or I put myself first—no in-between.

The counter to this is to look for the in-between, because relationships are part of our self-care as long as they're healthy, and boundaries are about healthy, balanced relationships. This all-or-nothing thinking will definitely get in the way of effective boundary setting.

We have significant difficulties setting boundaries in situations that are critically important and where a horrible consequence is considered possible. 

For example, if you financially need your job, it makes it much harder to set boundaries, say no, or put limits on situations. Or if you're in a marriage with children and you really don't want the marriage to break up, you might be afraid that asserting yourself and setting boundaries will result in major retaliation.

In these situations, it can be really hard to figure out what appropriate boundaries are and how you can set them to your advantage.

The keys to this are to really think it through and look again for that middle ground. There might be room for compromise and negotiation. Sometimes people think, "You can't mention compromise when setting a boundary!" but in a healthy enough relationship, boundaries really are about discussion, compromise, and negotiation to find middle ground.

In situations that aren't healthy enough and there's major reprisal or retaliation, it still might be to your advantage to look for compromise initially... until you can work yourself out of that situation. If you're in one of these high-stress, important situations, take the time to think it through, maybe look initially for middle ground, and fall back on the support we talked about earlier.

Sometimes we're not really setting a boundary— our intent is actually to get the other person to change. 

If that's the focus of the boundary, then it's not about taking care of ourselves or protecting ourselves. It's not about our own inner boundaries, which can exist regardless of the other person's behavior.

I know this is complicated because, of course, when we set boundaries, we want the other person's behavior to change. But that doesn't always happen, and we can't always make it happen. Our boundaries really have to be about us and for us to be effective.

It's very common to fear conflict, want to avoid it, and then not speak up in situations that might become conflictual. Often, setting boundaries is conflictual, but conflict is necessary in life and in relationships.

If you have a fear of conflict that's really holding you back from taking care of yourself, it's helpful to look into where that fear came from and what it's about. This actually relates to my number one point, so I'll come back to it.

We sometimes get almost panicked if we think people aren't going to like us. This doesn't apply to everybody, but it can be a major obstacle. If there's a very strong fear that you won't be liked, really dig into where that came from. What are you really afraid of here? How do you begin to heal this fear?

It's not necessarily about saying, "I don't want to be a people pleaser anymore and I'm mad that I'm a people pleaser." 

It's really more about healing the fear, which might be tied to abandonment or other difficulties that happened in childhood.

Again, this doesn't apply to everybody, but many people in my courses have said, "I have all this empathy, and when somebody else is in pain, I feel pain. I hate inflicting pain on them."

Empathy is a wonderful thing, and we don't want to lose it, but this is where internal work on emotional boundaries becomes really helpful. Whose feelings are you feeling? Whose feelings are you taking care of?

Sometimes when people get angry at our boundaries or upset or hurt by them, it's not really about us and the boundary—it's more about how they are responding. 

We can't protect other people from their emotions. If we've thought through our values, considered how to express our boundary, and determined that the relationship is important but needs to be healthy, then we're not being mean or purposefully hurtful.

Our past experiences and traumas, particularly those based in childhood and with our family of origin, drive our concept of boundaries. We learn how to be in relationship through our family (or community) when we are young. We learn what role we are "supposed" to take. We learn whether our needs and wants matter.

With trauma or dysfunctional living situations, we learn to cut off parts of ourselves in order to stay in relationship. Maybe we were the parentified child, the caretaker, or the emotional caretaker of others. To do that, we had to cut off parts of ourselves, and then we replay that pattern in one relationship after another throughout life until we heal.

What we learn in childhood needs to be investigated, and not with a sense of blaming. I always say this is a fact-finding mission, not a fault-finding mission. We're not looking to blame parents or grandparents because this usually goes back generations. But we're looking for the facts: How did this impact me? How did that impact stay with me through other relationships? How is it influencing my relationships now? How is it causing me to either hold back from setting boundaries or be way too aggressive in setting boundaries?

When you grow up in a dysfunctional family (and most families have some dysfunction), we usually learn something negative about ourselves that we believe to be true, even though it's not. 

We develop negative core beliefs from very difficult situations, and these underlie all boundary problems. They also underlie most of the problems we have in life.

Working with people as a therapist and using EMDR tools and techniques, it was amazing to me how many different situations in people's lives, if you just keep drilling down into those core beliefs, come to basically one, two, or maybe three core negative beliefs.

Common negative core beliefs that impact boundaries include:

"My needs don't matter"

"My needs aren't as important as other people's needs"

"My emotions don't matter"

"My emotions are not as important as other people's emotions"

"I'm unworthy" or "I'm not good enough"

"I'm in danger if I'm not perfect"

"I'm in danger if I don't put other people's needs first"

"I'm in danger if I'm selfish"

"I can't trust others, so I have to do everything—it's my job to have all this responsibility"

Healing these negative core beliefs is super important for developing the ability to navigate healthy relationships.

I address healing negative core beliefs within my boundary program, which also includes a whole section on assertive language and assertive communication and how you can effectively set boundaries. The program gets to the core issues underneath boundaries.

I also have a free PDF called "Transform Your Negative Core Beliefs." It helps you identify your negative core belief and gives you three ways to begin overturning and healing that core belief. You can find the link in the description.

Understanding these top 10 reasons we struggle with boundaries is the first step toward overcoming them. Remember, most of these obstacles are interconnected—your negative core beliefs (number 1) often drive your fear of conflict (number 5), fear of not being liked (number 4), and fear of hurting others' feelings (number 3).

The good news is that you can develop healthy boundaries. With awareness, practice, and often some healing work around past experiences and core beliefs, you can develop the ability to set healthy boundaries that improve your relationships and your life.

Let me know what you think of this top 10 countdown of reasons we can't set effective boundaries. Which ones resonated most with you? I'd love to hear from you in the comments.