What to Do When Someone Pushes Your Boundaries

written by Shawn M. Burn, Ph.D., posted on Psychology Today

Setting boundaries with others is an important life skill. Sometimes we need to set limits on what we’re willing to do for someone else, or how much we’re willing to let someone takes advantage of us or mistreat us. A lack of healthy boundaries can harm our emotional, psychological, physical, or financial health and negatively impact our other relationships. Without good boundaries, we can enable unacceptable behavior by rewarding it.

Despite healthy boundary benefits, some of us have a troubled relationship with personal boundary-setting because we:

• Feel guilty about how our boundaries will affect others.
• Fear others’ anger, emotion, abandonment, or rejection.
• Feel selfish because we believe “good” people should sacrifice for others.
• Are empathic and want to relieve other peoples’ suffering.
• Are “people-pleasers” that want everyone to like us.
• Have low self-esteem and don’t think that what we want or need is as important as what others want or need.
• Don’t know how to effectively advocate for ourselves.

If you’re like me, having healthy boundaries took emotional work and practice, motivated by experiencing some of the costs I outlined earlier. I’m happy to report that I’m better at having healthy boundaries and most people accept my boundaries without conflict. But that’s not to say it’s easy, especially when I encounter the dreaded “boundary pusher.”

Boundary Pushers and the Things They Do

Boundary pushers come in a variety of forms and may be narcissistic, immature, entitled, selfish, privileged, desperate, clueless, or some combination. They want what they want, our boundaries be damned. They do things like:

• Flat out ignore our boundary.
• Test us to see if we mean it.
• Argue with our reasons for the boundary.
• Repeatedly request or expect unjustified rule-bending that’s unfair to others.
• Try to manipulate us into relaxing our boundary. They act like we’re unreasonable or mean and exaggerate their plight. They say things like, “It’s just this one time, I’ll never ask again.” If it’s unfair to others, they promise not to tell. They try to wear us down by asking repeatedly even after we’ve said “no.”