Setting Boundaries Without Guilt:
Inner Work for Highly Sensitive People

By the end of this episode, he’ll discover why boundary setting is hard and how to make it easier.

Welcome to Stress Management for Highly Sensitive People, a podcast helping HSPs avoid overwhelm, eliminate stress, and find true inner freedom. I’m your host Todd Smith, a certified facilitator of the work of Byron Katie. In this episode, you’ll discover what stands in the way of setting healthy boundaries. How to do some inner work to make asking for what you want easier. And how to feel less guilt about taking care of yourself. This is an edition of Guided Meditation Mondays, where I’ll be guiding you to do the work of Byron Katie as you listen.

Setting boundaries is hard for almost everyone. This is because we are purposely doing something that someone else is not really in favor of. We’re deciding that doing what we would like to do or taking care of ourselves is as important or actually more important in this case than getting along or doing what other people want to do.

This can be challenging, obviously, because people don’t always like it, but it can be especially challenging for highly sensitive people. because we’re so attuned to what other people are feeling and what their judgments of us and that feeling of rejection that may come as a result of it. The ironic thing is that highly sensitive people need to set boundaries almost more than anyone else because we’re so used to going along with what other people, would like.

We’re so used to prioritizing. The good feeling of the whole group and deprioritizing our own experience, our own, preferences in a way. And as highly sensitive people, we actually have needs that non highly sensitive people don’t have. We have more need for avoiding situations that create overwhelm.

We have more need for taking care of ourselves in a way that others may not even understand. So if we’re not setting boundaries, then it’s going to be very easy to be overridden by the others and to end up not taking care of ourselves. And of course, that can cause a lot of stress in ourselves and can actually backfire out into our relationships as well.

Thank you. So, in order to begin to make this process easier of setting boundaries, I like to do a process called the work of Byron Katie, which is a way of identifying a stressful thought and then questioning it. And when we question our stressful thoughts, those are the things that make it hard for us to do things, in this case, set boundaries.

So, if we question the thoughts behind the resistance to setting boundaries, it can actually begin to loosen that and make it easier for us. So that’s what we’re going to do today in this meditation, and we’ll start with looking for a situation where you wanted to take care of yourself.

So, think for a minute if you can find a situation like that, where you wanted to, maybe you didn’t actually stand up and ask for it, but you wanted to.

And once you find a moment like this, then Look at who would be upset. Who do you think will be upset if you decide to take care of yourself in this case? Who’s not going to be liking that? Maybe it’s your friends, maybe it’s your spouse.

I can think of a situation from a long time ago, I remember this situation. I was walking with my partner summer evening and he wanted to stop and get some ice cream. And I didn’t want to get the ice cream, but I felt like a party pooper because he really wanted to.

So can you find a situation like that where you, you’re afraid someone would be upset with you. You stuck to your guns, took care of yourself in some way.

So once you find a situation, then let’s go through the four questions of the work of Byron Katie. And the statement we’re going to question is, I need him or her to not be upset with me. So maybe your husband will be disappointed that you won’t be able to spend much time with him this weekend for some reason.

Maybe you just want to rest. You’ve had a really long week, and you just need some downtime. Whatever your situation, the statement we’ll all be working in common here is, I need him or her to not be upset with me. So let’s question that thought. Is it true? You need them to not be upset with you. This is just a yes or no, so sit with it until you feel a yes or no coming.

And it’s not that important what you think when you’re answering this question, more important what you feel. Is it true? You need them to not be upset with you.

In my situation, I’m going to go with a yes. Yeah, I need him to not be upset with me. It feels true.

So if your answer was yes, like mine, then we’ll go to question two which is, Can you absolutely know it’s true? Do you need him or her to not be upset with you? Again, a yes or a no. Can you absolutely know it’s true?

For me, I’m going with no. I can’t absolutely know it’s true. Then I need him to not be upset with me.

So the third question, how do you react? What happens in that moment, and find a moment if you can, like specific moment, what happens when you believe that you need him or her to not be upset with you?

And let’s think about it even before something happened, like before you said anything even. I can see myself walking down the street and my partner’s asking and I haven’t even said no yet, but I’m thinking I need him to not be upset with me. I clench.

I freeze. What happens to you? Where do you feel it in your body?

I feel a kind of tightness all over, constriction maybe in my throat, a little bit in my heart.

And then if the situation is in the past, how did you react? What did you actually say? What did you actually do? That also is reaction. What did you say? What did you do when you were thinking, I need him to not be upset with me.

I actually said no, but then I felt guilty, 

and then I got even tighter inside.

And when I heard him actually not happy about it, it made me feel even worse.

This is how I react.

I need him or her to not be upset with me. How else do you react in your situation?

Could be you say yes when you don’t mean it. That’s also a possibility. I’ve done that many times.

And then how are you treating yourself when you think that you need him or her to not be upset with you? How are you treating yourself?

I’m treating myself like I don’t count.

Treating myself like there’s something wrong with me.

I’m treating myself like I’m a party pooper.

How do you treat yourself?

And how do you treat the other person when you need them? To not be upset with you.

In a way, I treat him like he’s more important than me.

Treat him like I have to be careful.

It’s like a little bit of fear.

Fear of what? Of him being upset with me. That’s my fear.

Then I became defensive, and started blaming him a little bit, and my speech was a little bit, angry.

I’m blaming myself, I’m blaming him. It feels very stressful.

So, question four of the work, who would you be without the thought? Imagine you’re in the same situation, but you don’t have the thought that you need this person to not be upset with you. When you’re thinking about taking care of yourself in some way or another, who would you be without that idea? I need him to not be upset with me.

Sometimes I’ll, I’ll just imagine that it, like my body double came in and same thoughts as everything except this thought wasn’t there. I need him to not be upset with me. Who would you be? Who would that body double be without the thought?

What I see in me is less fear. Really no fear.

I kind of am allowing my partner to be upset. Without that thought, I’m happy that I decided to say no. I’m paying attention to my internal world, and I like it when I take care of my digestion. So who would you be without the thought, you need him or her? to not be upset with you in your situation.

It feels kind of free, almost like equals.

He’s allowed to have his want, I’m allowed to have my want. In fact, I’m kind of happy to go along and be with him while he eats his ice cream. It feels easier without this thought.

And if he gets upset, I can listen to it. It

doesn’t bother me as much.

I see it’s about him more.

Okay, so let’s try turning the thought around. The original thought is I need him to not be upset with me. And the turnaround would be, I need me to not be upset with me. So look for examples in your situation of how this turnaround could be as true or truer. You need you to be not upset with you is maybe more important than you need him to not be upset with you.

In my situation, I see that his upset doesn’t have to stress me out. what I do with his upset will make the difference as to whether it upsets me or not. I just want to feel good inside of myself.

And I’m believing at first that I can’t be okay inside of myself if he’s upset with me. But this turnaround is saying, actually. It’s when I become upset with myself and become, feel guilty, or think there’s something wrong with me, or blame myself for being a party pooper. That upsets me more. That upsets me as much as him being upset.

So at least I have some control over that. If I have control over anything, it would be in that area.

So I need me to not be upset with me. We could even push it and say, I need me to be proud of me. In my case, for actually saying no when I meant it. Celebrate that. That was courageous.

If I’m doing that, it’s harder to be upset. It’s hard to be scared of him being upset. It doesn’t change his upset, but it’s not as, it doesn’t affect me as much.

I think this is a really important turnaround. I need me to not be upset with me.

So what’s another turnaround? I need him to not be upset with me could be turned around to I need me to not be upset with him. That sounds fair. How could that be true in your situation? How could that help? How could you do that?

What I’m seeing is that Everybody, all of us get attached to our wants. You know, I want an ice cream who, who doesn’t get attached to a thought like that. And whenever a thought gets blocked due to whatever reasons, then for attached to it, anger comes up So, so understandable that he would be upset and he may be blaming me.

It’s just him getting blocked, that’s all. So I need me to not be upset with him for getting upset when I see it that way. It’s so peaceful. It’s so easygoing. Okay, yeah, I can hear. Just tell me more about your upset. but I’ll go with you.

Like, there’s just so much gentleness. What I think I did in that situation was, he became upset with me, then I became upset with him for being upset with me, so I could sidestep that by leaving room for him to be upset, kind of like we do with little kids.

You know, they cry, they have tantrums, they don’t get what they want, they get angry. And somehow, there are limits, but we tend to be understanding.

So what if I was understanding with my partner in that moment? He just wants an ice cream and he thinks I’m blocking him. So no need for me to be upset with him for that.

Okay. Another turnaround. I need him to not be upset with me. Turn around. I need him to be upset with me. So how could this be true? That you actually need him to be upset with you, him or her. How can it serve you that somebody gets upset with you when you are asking to do something to take care of yourself?

I need, I need it. Where my mind’s going is I need that kind of practice. I need that kind of, challenging situation so that I can build this muscle asking for what I want and not feeling guilty. And if it was just easy, if my partner just went along and there was just no conflict, that muscle wouldn’t be very strong.

So I need, it’s actually a need for me, I need him to be upset with me so that I can practice this.

So that I can see that his upset is just about him. and so understandable. And my upset is there if I try to fight that, or if I try to blame myself. I look at the history of my relationship, and this has happened many times in different situations. I don’t need to be protected as much.

So how else could this be true in your situation? Any advantages

in him to be upset with me? Sounds so contradictory to what we would want. What is good about someone being upset with you? Could there be any good in it?

I think it could show In my case, that my partner cares about me, he wants to do things with me, kind of shows that he likes me.

So yeah, I would say I need to be liked. And if it shows up as upset,

I can take that. I may just have to translate it in my mind and see that that’s what’s really going on. It’s a desire for connection, desire to do something fun with me, desire to do something together. So yeah, I need to be liked. So every situation will be different. My example may not work in yours, but what we’re looking for is how could upset, you know, the worst thing in the world, how could upset actually be serving you, be a good thing, How could it be good for the other person?

They’re being honest, they’re getting it off their chest, they’re opening a kind of discussion even though there’s upset and emotion there. They’re being vulnerable, really.

So yeah, I need him to be upset with me. We can work things out from there.

In this episode, we looked at what stands in the way of setting healthy boundaries.

And it’s always what you’re thinking and believing. This gets in the way, and in this case we saw that the thought that I need him to not be upset with me was causing that block. So, we then looked at how to question that thought, and we did some inner work, and we started to look at how that thought on an experiential level was causing the stress, and then how turnarounds could help balance that.

And that’s always what we look for when we’re doing these turnarounds. Some of them may sound really, bizarre or strange or like the opposite of what you would naturally But we play with these opposites just with the idea of creating some balance in our thinking so that we’re not as stuck or not as out of options when this kind of thing happens.

And then finally, we looked at how to feel less guilt about taking care of ourselves. And this comes again through this process of questioning our, thoughts about the other person. So the other person, if they’re going to be upset with me, then that’s going to make me try to, change myself or feel guilty about it if I actually try to take care of myself.

So the more you question your own thoughts about other people and what they’re thinking and your fears about them getting upset, The more you do this kind of work in different situations, the more you’re going to be able to experience less guilt when you take care of yourself. So thanks for listening, and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day, and we’ll catch you next time.