Why You Might Need Internal Boundaries

The word boundaries is thrown around a lot in a therapeutic context—we all know we need them and should probably be standing up for them. But for many of us, this work is complex. How do I know what healthy boundaries are? What does it look like to stand up for them? And what do I do if I try to set a boundary with someone and it doesn’t work?

External Versus Internal Boundaries

I’ve found it helpful to separate the concept of boundaries into external versus internal. When we think of the word boundaries, the ones that come to mind are usually external: personal space, a locked door, and maybe an agreement put in place with someone else, like asking them not to call us after a certain time of day. But the reality is that most boundaries are actually internal: the boundaries we hold within ourselves.

Even an external boundary, like saying no to a social invitation when you’re not feeling well enough to go out, isn’t really about the person we’re saying no to. It’s about our own relationship with ourselves. Are we listening to our bodies enough that we’re even aware that we don’t want to go out? Are we afraid of what will happen when we say no? Were we raised to be people pleasers who sacrifice our authenticity for the benefit of others?

In order to get by, many of us have found ways to suppress our needs to the point that we don’t even know what they are. Being in the practice of listening to the needs of our bodies, minds, and hearts helps us understand ourselves better—and boundaries are a natural part of that practice.

Boundaries and Needs

Behind a boundary is almost always a need. Let’s say, for example, that one of your boundaries is that you don’t want to discuss a certain topic with a family member. Why is that boundary in place? Because you have a need for peaceful conversation or privacy about your own views.

If one of your boundaries is that your kids aren’t allowed in your home office, that’s because you have a need to keep your work in order, to maintain a clean and professional space, and have some separation between your career and family life. Understanding our needs will often show us where boundaries should be placed.

Boundaries and Anger

How, then, do we know what our needs are? The (possibly) surprising answer is that your anger will tell you. Anger is the emotion that protects us—our personal and physical integrity, our right to be a self, our right to our own thoughts, feelings, and authenticity. Though many of us have a difficult relationship with anger, it’s a vital part of our emotional compass. It’s there to help us get our needs met and our boundaries respected. If we have a history of suppressing our anger, it’s likely we also have a history of suppressing our needs and boundaries.

So, whenever someone is working on boundaries with me in my therapy practice, I always start by asking them about their experiences with anger. When does anger come up? Is it allowed to arise or is it suppressed and repressed (as it is for many of us)? If we could ask our anger what boundaries are being crossed or what needs are not being met, often the answer comes through quite clearly. Anger is like the fire alarm that goes off when the house is ablaze—many of us rush to try to turn off the alarm rather than attend to the fire itself.

It’s important, however, to slow down when anger shows up, as it’s easy to also react to the fire alarm with fire, and that’s not always the best way to get somewhere when anger is pointing out a boundary. Rather, we should use our anger to find out what needs are not getting met or what boundaries are being crossed so that we can communicate those in a loving way.

How to Communicate Boundaries

When we can identify our own needs and boundaries, we can take responsibility for those. Believe it or not, it’s not someone else’s responsibility to meet your needs. (Of course, a parent-child dynamic is the exception here.) So, what we can do is communicate lovingly with others what our needs are while taking responsibility for our own feelings.

This might look something like you saying to your partner, “Honey, it really bothers me when I wake up in the morning to make the children’s breakfast and the dishes from the night before aren’t done. We’ve agreed, or I’ve assumed, that that’s your job, and I’ve realized that I have a need for a clear space in the kitchen in the morning to feel like we are equal partners in this. Can you help me sort out this problem?”

Presenting the issue in this way allows you to take responsibility for your own needs. Rather than telling someone that they should have done the dishes because that was their job, we express it from a place of our own emotions and needs.

In a healthy relationship, both partners want to meet the other’s needs. We simply need to know what they are. These conversations could bring up some conflict or defensiveness, but ultimately it should allow for both people to express their needs and collaborate on how to get everyone’s needs met. It’s not that your partner must do the dishes—maybe they get home from work late and have a greater need to decompress rather than do the dishes. So, what’s a compromise? Is there something else your partner could do to make the situation work so both people’s needs are met?

This works best when everyone is aware of their needs and willing to work on collaborating even when your individual needs conflict. Unfortunately, this kind of communication isn’t always what we get in our relationships. Sometimes people don’t care about meeting their loved one’s needs and won’t try, or they promise up and down that they will but then don’t (often because that partner is not aware of their own conflicting needs). We can’t force someone to do the work of knowing and communicating their needs—that’s not our responsibility. Only our own needs are. So, what do we do when our best efforts at loving communication and boundary-setting don’t work?

How to Establish Internal Boundaries

The clearer we are on our needs and boundaries, the earlier we can communicate them and the less likely we’ll face conflict. Conflict, however, can be a healthy way of working through issues as they come up, especially in long-term relationships where challenges and life situations change over time and our needs and boundaries change in reaction to that.

But if we’re stuck in a relationship with someone who won’t compromise or won’t work with us, then we need to get clear on our internal boundaries—our own boundaries with ourselves. When the other person will not help us meet our needs or respect our boundaries, the ball is back in our court—we need to decide what we can do that will be most empowering for us and help us get our own needs met as best as we can. This could look like compromising with ourselves when figuring out how to handle a messy kitchen in the morning. It could be hiring someone to clean the house more often. It could also look like refusing to answer the phone after a certain time of day, or limiting visits to once a month rather than once a week. When communicating across needs isn’t working, we must find ways to meet our own needs.

This is a practice that should be clear and assertive—and actually gets your needs met. It’s not a passive-aggressive move to try to force the person to do what you want; it’s about doing what you need to do to make your life livable on your own terms. In many ways, it’s about reclaiming your power.

In some ways, this can be more challenging—it’s easier to blame someone else for not meeting our needs than really looking at ourselves and what we need to change internally. Sometimes identifying our needs and accepting that our loved one can’t meet them means a relationship has to end, and that’s a painful possibility in doing this work. But keep in mind that needs are needs—not preferences. If your needs really aren’t getting met, then something has to change either internally or externally.

So, with all this in mind, what are you noticing about your needs right now? What boundaries do you need to hold within yourself in order to get your needs met?

"Fragrant boundaries" can be profoundly helpful for empaths.