How to Set Boundaries Without Guilt~ Listening to What You Need
If you are like me, you might have wondered before where guilt even comes from when trying to set boundaries?
For many of us, turning inward feels unfamiliar or even selfish. We have been conditioned to push through exhaustion, override physical cues, and prioritise the needs of everyone around us before considering our own. When we finally start setting boundaries, guilt often rushes in not because we are doing something wrong, but because our nervous system isn't used to putting our own needs first. Dr. Gabor Maté, trauma expert renowned for his pioneering work linking childhood trauma, stress, and addiction, describes guilt as an outdate survival mechanism from childhood and a ‘stupid friend’ that tricks people into abandoning their authentic selves.
If you are a empath or had grown up people pleasing, guilt might bubble up from somewhere deep, as you try to build a strong sense of self, an authentic and meaningful life. For me, it is deep within me, it is a core wound that requires a lot of compassion, I know that this feels true for many other people too.
Rather than trying to block guilt out, we can noticing the automatic feeling with curiosity and asking whether it aligns with your actual adult values rather than old conditioning, which takes patience and effort and time and is not always easy.. but on the positive note if we want to feel free and secure within ourselves, its just part of the practice. When we ask ourselves what we need from a place of kindness, we help not only ourselves, but more people because we live from an authentic nourished, and honest place.
Boundary-setting is as uncomfortable as it is personal. It starts with turning inward to ask, "What do I actually need right now?" We can’t set an authentic boundaries until we know what it is what that we need, and so many of us struggle with identifying what that is.
Yesterday, I was chatting with a friend about needs, about how I was struggling to identify what I needed in my current season of life. I told her that each time I would sit with space, I was processing something and it felt as it it got in the way of me identify what it was that I was needing.
The question What are my needs? can require deep thought, and also how it demands that we allow it to be simple at times to not create exhaustion and further confusion when we don’t know exactly what we need. Together we contemplated that maybe we are on such high alert that all we need is breathing space, space to process our feelings, that sometimes identifying a need can be and should be easy and simple, and that perhaps one simple need leads to another.
Sometimes, we know what we need on a profound and deep level. Other times, our needs might be so simple. It doesn’t matter what they are, they are personal.
What truly matters is asking the question regularly and listening, whether the answer arrives as a loud whisper or a quiet nudge.
My friend shared her current needs with me, followed by her wants. n her current season of life, navigating early motherhood, she felt ok putting her wants on hold for a time, holding firm on her needs because filling her physical, emotional, and mental cup was non-negotiable.
We reflected on how different seasons ask different things of us. There are seasons where you feel ok to temporarily push aside your wants to tend to immediate care. But there are other seasons where you simply can't. There are chapters where your "wants" feel as important to you as basic living needs, and that is ok, your creativity, your self-exploration, your career vision, your sense of personal leadership, can be so deeply intertwined with your soul and identity that ignoring them feels like self-abandonment. In these seasons, honouring those deeper callings becomes a vital need in itself.
There are seasons for everything and there is no right or wrong.
Today, I shared this conversation with another friend and confessed that I was exploring my own needs and finding it challenging, that learning how to set boundaries around my energy wasn't as simple as it sounds in this season I’m in and I was finding it frustrating. She resonated immediately, sharing that she was doing the same and that we both desperately needed the space to process.. to digest the past couple of months. Then the frustration surfaced: Why does the space feel so full of panic, grief, and confusion?
And then came the realisation: That is exactly what processing is. The space to process isn't about neatly identifying a polished, specific answer; it is about having the room to digest an experience.
What are your needs and wants right now? Have you asked yourself that lately?
What do you need this season you are in?
To be able to identify our own boundaries, it might help us to explore what we are needing.
We don’t need to know everything, no one does, but perhaps a little bit, a theme, or something that we can use to anchor us may help guide us when we do set boundaries and then hold space for the emotions that come up. We are better able to remind ourselves why we are doing so.
If you struggle to start this conversation with yourself, or If you are finding it challenging to connect with yourself, set boundaries without guilt, or navigate major life transitions, relationship counselling can provide a safe, supported space to explore and reconnect with your inner self. I would love to help you understand and process the season you are in and be a mirror to help you identify what exactly you need, because I know that sometimes we do need the support of others to do so. It is only natural.
Warmly,
Alana