How To Establish Boundaries With Your Family

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Family relationships can be so complicated you almost wonder if God (or whoever is in charge) gave them to us so we’d have to practice diplomacy, patience, and compassion our entire lives. Because those are traits you need to have to keep the peace with your family — most of the time.

There’s no other relationship like that with your family. With coworkers, it’s normal to set up hard boundaries and keep things totally professional. You can’t do that with family. You can try but, you know they won’t let you keep that up for long. With a romantic partner, you can put all of your guards down. If you find the person who is best for you, then that is someone with whom you should feel safe sharing everything – your secrets, your desires, your insecurities. You can’t quite lean that far into vulnerability with family because, well, sometimes they can’t handle it. They love you, but they aren’t suited to know everything about your private life.

Family exists in this ever-difficult in-between world where there must be boundaries and closeness. That’s why dealing with a family who doesn’t respect your boundaries can be so difficult. You can feel bad doing something about it. We spoke with licensed psychologist Dr. Jessica Jackson (IG: dr_jlauren) about how to deal with a family that has no boundaries.

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Intentions vs execution

“Setting boundaries is a skill. We don’t expect everybody to just automatically do it. If that happened, a lot of us would be less stressed than we typically are,” states Dr. Jackson. “In terms of family members, they may mean well. Generally, it’s coming from a good place,” says Dr. Jackson. But, they can’t provide an unbiased opinion in a bubble on your life choices because they know your background. They have a personal investment in you. They know your whole backstory and speak to that – even if you don’t need them to at that moment.

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Considering career changes

Dr. Jackson provides this example illustrating the different in how family versus a therapist may respond to a career change. “Say I have a friend who’s been an attorney for 10 years and now she wants to quit and become a baker. As a friend, I worry, ‘How will you pay your bills? I know your history. You’re not consistent with baking.’” This type of questioning can A) feel unsupportive and B) make it difficult for one to clearly assess what they want and why, without all the backstory their family is bringing up, clouding their view.

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A therapist can provide clarity

Family and their opinions aren’t going anywhere, but you do need a safe space to understand yourself and your wants/needs, away from their input. “Therapy can be useful in clarifying your values without all of the voices. A therapist has no background [on you]. The only info they have is what you give them,” says Dr. Jackson. “So therapy gives an opportunity to clarify without all of the extra voices around. They [the client] can be in a bubble in figuring out what’s important for them.”

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Motive now; logistics later

Going back to the example of the baker, Dr. Jackson says, “As a therapist, I don’t know all that about the baker. I could help her figure out why it is important for her to switch careers. Friends and family don’t generally ask those questions [the “why?]. They jump to ‘That doesn’t make sense’ make sense and ‘How will you figure it out?”

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You don’t have to answer

“In terms of family with input, we don’t have to respond every time somebody says something to us,” advises Dr. Jackson. “Despite that being our urge, we are allowed to say ‘I hear what you’re saying’ or ‘I need to process that.’ We feel this pressure to defend ourselves – to respond. So if somebody says ‘How are you going to pay your bills?’ we feel we need to lay out our plan step by step for them. It’s possible to say ‘I appreciate all the advice that you’re sharing’ and leave it at that.”

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They don’t need control to feel validation

When family wants to know your plan, in detail, about how you’ll carry out a proposed life change, it can feel disrespectful to not offer that information. But it really isn’t. “We often feel that we have to respond in a certain way. As humans, we like to feel validation. What people get wrong about validation is it does not mean saying ‘You are correct’” says Dr. Jackson.

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They just want to feel heard

“Validation can mean saying ‘I hear you.’ We can say ‘I hear why that’s distressing for you.’ We don’t have to say ‘I agree that that’s distressing.’” Dr. Jackson provides a quote that she says is not her own, but that she finds very useful: “You don’t have to attend every argument you’re invited to. You have the power to just say ‘Thank you.’”

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Only you need to be satisfied with the plan

“If you feel the urge to defend yourself, you can say ‘I’ll think about it and come back to you. The need to respond right away in detail is our own compulsion,” notes Dr. Jackson, adding that, even when you do provide information, you don’t always get the response you want. “Most of the time even when we explain, it doesn’t stop the conversation. It doesn’t always help to engage in the conversation.”

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Clarify the support you want

Dr. Jackson says when you are sharing news about your life with family, it can be very useful to just tell them what sort of support you want at that moment. “You can say ‘I want to share this with you, but I just want to share it.’ Or say ‘I want to feel supported.’ On the flip side, when you’re the one listening, you can say ‘Do you want my opinion or do you want me to listen?’ You can set up the boundaries within the conversation.”

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Every talk can have new rules

You don’t need to panic that the rules you set for one conversation are the new, permanent rules of engagement with your family. “It doesn’t have to be a hard and fast rule. [It can be] ‘Maybe today, all I really want from my family is support.’ Maybe in a week, you need their advice. That can be fluid. But when we don’t state what we need, it’s not clear all the time for the other person.”

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Your family and your marriage

When it comes to your family input on your marriage, “With relationships, culture plays a large role. One size does not fit all,” says Dr. Jackson. She encourages people to think about their cultural values. “What is the role that parents have typically played within that culture?” Once you’ve thought about this, Dr. Jackson says it’s easier to set a boundary.

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Meet them halfway

“If I come from a culture where typically my parent chooses my partner and here I’ve chosen my own partner, that’s going to be a completely different conversation,” says Dr. Jackson. She reminds us to come to the conversation from a place of empathy, and realize we’ve already asked a lot of the parents in this situation. “We see that, culturally, I’ve already changed the boundary. [So we must] figure out where the middle ground is.”

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As for the (typically) hands-off parents

When it comes to setting a boundary with your parents surrounding your romantic relationship, “That will all be different for someone from a culture where the parents are typically hands-off on dating,” says Dr. Jackson. If suddenly those parents have a lot to say, again, try to have empathy. “[Ask] ‘Where is this coming from? How does this align with my culture? What do I want from them?’”

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We know your “wonts,” what about your “must-haves?”

“Often, for many of us, we know what we don’t want, but we don’t know what we do want. We can say ‘I don’t want you asking questions all the time. I don’t want you giving me advice,’ but then, what do you want? Once you’re able to think about what your values are, where you are, and how your culture influences that, you can say to your parents ‘Here’s what I would like.’”

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Give them an actionable plan, or they’ll find one

Dr. Jackson says that, when you finally explain to your parents what sort of support you want in your relationship, it must be specific. It may be something like. “I would like you to occasionally offer me advice about communication skills.” Dr. Jackson adds, “If you don’t tell them what they can do, they’ll try to make up their own things they can do.”