The only reason we fear someone’s reaction to our boundary is that we aren’t fully okay with the boundary ourselves. When you are genuinely firm in your own boundary—when you truly believe it’s okay for you to walk away, to say no, to take care of yourself—the other person’s attack becomes irrelevant. You can simply leave until they’re ready to treat you with respect.
Joe Hudson points out that our inability to draw external boundaries always mirrors an inability to draw internal ones. If we yell at ourselves, it’s hard to see that it’s not okay for someone else to yell at us. If we constantly criticize ourselves, we can’t draw a boundary with someone who constantly criticizes us. The real work of boundaries is being okay with the boundary yourself.
This reframes boundary work from an interpersonal skill to a self-relationship practice. The fear of attack is not about the other person’s power—it’s about your own ambivalence. As Joe says: “You only care about the response when you aren’t firm on your own boundary.”
Related Concepts
- Boundaries are for you, not them
- Boundaries open your heart
- Inner critic mirrors relationship patterns
- What’s scariest about boundaries is the freedom on the other side
- Being yourself either gets you promoted or freed
- Boundaries, not VIEW, are the tool for narcissists