"I resolve to remember my boundaries. 'No' is a complete sentence."

In which I consider just how complete that sentence is.

I love this resolution! (Thank you, Amanda Grimm, for these words, which appeared in a New York Times article on work I read at the beginning of this new year.) I love it because remembering — or, for many, establishing for the first time — one’s boundaries does a ton of good work. And I love the succinct beauty of putting a full stop after “NO.”

Let me explain.

First: Boundaries do a ton of good work.

• Boundaries prevent me from filling voids. That is, honoring my boundaries — the walls that divide my issues, my psyche, my reality, my garden from yours — means I let you have your stuff so you can exercise your own authority, competence, and will to solve your own problems. And, bonus! If I let you solve your own problems or do your own work, your skills develop and I avoid feeling resentful. Resentment is a natural — and terribly corrosive — consequence of crossing boundaries to fill voids.

• Boundaries contain us. Like our most obvious boundary, our skin. Contains all our internal guck. Quite an important job. Emotional boundaries also contain us. They are impossible to see but essential to sense. For example: Let’s say I’m a parent who has had it with remote learning/teaching during COVID. I am frustrated and overwhelmed and put upon; I am not getting the recognition and love I deserve for doing all this added work for my children that teachers are supposed to do; I am falling behind in my own work and worried about the consequences; I am actually losing the ability or even the desire to keep everything going. My panic is rising and I am ready to scream. If I allow myself to overflow my boundaries, I do scream. I scream at my children’s teachers. I scream at my children. I scream at my partner or the cashier at the grocery store. I discharge my overwhelmedness. And nothing changes except my panic, which has abated for now but will, inevitably, return. Oh and my relationships. They have changed even if only slightly because I have proven myself unreliable and unsafe. And the more I prove myself unreliable and unsafe — which is going to happen if I don’t figure out how to contain myself — the more my relationships will change for the worse. OK but what if I remain within my emotional boundaries? Well, then I’ve got some work to do. (Sorry. Honoring boundaries can be work. Especially at first.) I recognize that what I’m doing is unsustainable, that I’m asking too much of myself, and commit to sorting out — on my own or, preferably, with help from someone I trust — what I have control over and what I don’t. What I’m willing to do and what I’m not. How my personal reality — my strengths, my weaknesses, my limitations, my growth edges — dovetails or not with the reality I’m living within. I manage my emotions, my internal emotional guck, by paying attention to what those emotions mean about me and my situation and responsibly, like an adult, make decisions that bring me back to being an agent in my own life. No matter how crappy that life might be.

• Boundaries encourage others to contain themselves. If someone decides now’s the time to overflow their boundaries and spew their overwhelmedness on me, my respect for my own boundaries permits me to draw the line. I can walk away. I can describe their behavior (or hell: record it on my iPhone!) and let the mirroring speak for itself. I can look underneath the content at the emotional bedrock and sympathize with the truth of the matter. “You’re clearly overwhelmed. You’ve been working so hard and feel ineffectual and unappreciated. That totally sucks.” (If I make a close-enough guess about the emotional bedrock underlying an inappropriate spew, the conflict usually dissolves. Like magic. Cuz humans tend to respond well to being seen accurately.) I can circle back to the boundary violator and have a talk: “This behavior you exhibited? This is the impact it had on me. If you don’t want to have that impact on me, you need to stop the behavior. If you DO want to have that impact on me, you need to stop the behavior. Cuz it’s unacceptable either way. I’ll help you by saying, ‘STOP’ when I perceive your boundaries are failing you.” Point being: The fact that I have boundaries does not stop others from trying to breach them. What helps others to contain themselves are the moves I make to assert my boundaries repeatedly and, ideally, compassionately, knowing that letting people keep the shit they’d rather spew on me is hard for them. But absolutely essential.

• In short, boundaries promote healthy development. They honor difference: this is my reality, that is yours, and we can (must!) work with them. By staking out reality, boundaries allow for the thrilling projects of reclaiming one’s agency, understanding and honoring oneself, and discovering and understanding others. Boundaries strengthen connection: When I respect myself and my boundaries, I encourage you to respect yourself and your boundaries. When I feel safe from your boundary-breaching assaults, I can empathize with the emotion work you’ve got to do. And support you in doing it. (In part by not doing it for you.) When you do your emotion work, you grow up and stop acting like a child adult. When I do my emotion work, I grow up and stop acting like a child adult. Win-win.

Second: “NO” is enough.

I know I know: So many of us who are accustomed to having our boundaries violated have a hard time saying “no” in the first place. It comes out more like “Sure!” and then, in our heads, “Shit!” Or sometimes we don’t even know or notice we have a choice. So figuring out how to say “no” is a crucial step in setting and maintaining boundaries.

I mean, I remember my very first class in feminist studies, which didn’t happen until graduate school (when I was over 30 years old, people.) In one of my classes, the professor had the entire class stand up — I kid you not — stamp their feet, and yell, “NO!!!” Could I do it? No. Not even when I was given permission. Not even when I was TOLD to.

So getting started on saying “NO” is crucial. Just saying the word. But then you’ve got to figure out when it’s appropriate. Now? Now? Not now? I mean, when do you draw the line when you’ve had very little practice at it? One signal that I’ve come to trust is my anger. To me, anger is a sign that something unjust is happening. And boundary violations are unjust.

But anger is confounding. It can take over. If I’m flooded with anger about a boundary violation and I’m just as thrown by my anger as I am by saying the word “no,” then I’m kinda screwed. Except: If I welcome my anger as an emotion I can contain and channel by setting my boundaries, then I’m in good shape. If I refrain from spewing and say the word my anger is teaching me I have to say, then I have succeeded. Boundary set.

But the work is not finished. No no. Because after the “NO” comes guilt. Those of us who learned that our “NO” was a threat to their “YES,” that our self-respect blocked others’ disrespect of us, we know that putting ourselves first, insisting on existing, giving ourselves what others wanted to refuse us brought on pushback. Wheedling, ridicule, bullying, rage. Blame. Responses we’d rather not experience. Responses that made “yes” or just passive acceptance a whole lot easier than “NO.”

This is why “NO” is a complete sentence. Because my honoring my boundaries is a justified, respectable act. Because your pushing back on my self-respect is unacceptable. Anger and guilt are mine to contain and process and, through the processing, to eventually still. (Because the more I set my boundaries, the less I’ll need the anger and the less guilt I’ll feel.) But “NO” is all I have to say. Full stop. In this way I give people practice at respecting me as much as I respect myself.